Jewel Avenue and 73rd Avenue in Queens meet at a dead end at Utopia playground. There, UPS trucks, Fedex trucks, and ambulances line the street, their drivers asleep at the wheel.
In the mornings, the truck drivers meet there for their morning coffee before they drive off on their rounds. Often, ambulance drivers simply sit in their cars, as if waiting for emergencies.
I want to find out whether these ambulance drivers are paid by the hour, and who pays them. Is it a private hospital or a non-profit organization? Their idling perhaps can be a small example of how our health care system is inefficient. I’ve heard of ambulance rides costing upwards of $300. What accounts for such high costs?
I will interview some of the residents in the surrounding homes, and ask them whether they’ve noticed a pattern in the idling of trucks on their street. I will find out from where these ambulances dispatch, whether they are the same drivers, and whether there is a time of the day when they are more likely to be idling in the space (perhaps in the middle of the day, when less accidents occur?). I will call the hospital and ask them whether their ambulance drivers are required to make rounds in specific neighborhoods, and how they can be sure that their drivers are actually on the job.