Forgive me for starting off with a pun, but: So far, it's been quite a ride.

I took over as transportation reporter for The Journal News/LoHud.com a few weeks ago, and I've barely stopped to catch my breath.

Look at what's happened just in the past month or so.

A large stone fell from a Bronx River Parkway overpass, temporarily closing the southbound lanes. Metro-North Railroad released its annual survey showing that 93 percent of riders are satisfied (or "very satisfied") with the service. Its parent company, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, released a $30 billion plan for new trains and buses, bus routes and renovated train stations for the next five years.

Congestion pricing is coming to a head. The state must decide by the end of the month whether to approve the plan to charge motorists $8 for traveling Manhattan's 60th Street during workdays. Mass transit advocates love the idea - the MTA's plan relies partly on the revenue from it - and they see it as a way to encourage more people to ride trains and buses, to cut down on greenhouse gases and congestion. Many commuters object to it, though. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, D-Greenburgh, is hot to defeat it, and proposes easing Manhattan congestion with higher fees for taxi rides and fines for parking offenses.

On top of all that, a Long Island businessman proposed drilling a tunnel - the longest in the world for cars and trucks - from Syosset to Rye.

In other words, there's a lot to watch.

Each week, I'll write this column, hoping to address some of the complaints people have - the impositions on the quality of life like noise, pollution and persistent traffic snarls. I also plan to showcase the people who make the trains run, the buses roll and the airplanes arrive and depart.

I'm taking over transportation at a critical time. Locally and nationally, our roads and bridges have been in the news, and often not for good reasons.

That stone that fell on the Bronx River Parkway hit the news the same day that Iona College hosted a conference on infrastructure. At the conference, sponsored by Terex, a Connecticut-based maker of heavy construction equipment, people talked about the minor local mishap at the same time they discussed last year's collapse of the Interstate 35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, a tragedy that killed 13 and injured almost 150.

Is it a stretch to compare them? Perhaps. But both pointed out the same problem. Infrastructure isn't the juiciest topic, and people tend to forget about it until it fails. (To be fair to Westchester County, however, Commissioner of Public Works Ralph Butler said the stones on the bridge overpasses are maintained regularly.)

Stephen Flynn, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank, summed up what a lot of people at the conference were feeling when he said that we have inherited the great infrastructure projects of the past century - the interstate highway system among them - but don't seem to appreciate the responsibility that comes with them.

"We're a bit like a generation who has inherited our grandparents' mansion and we've decided not to do any of the upkeep," Flynn said. "Now the plumbing's falling apart, the wiring's going down, but people driving by think it's a nice house."

As I tackle this beat, I'm certain I'll hit on other issues, like the environment and the challenges to developing the region, things I've become familiar with as a reporter for The Journal News and its predecessors for more than 20 years.

Here's an example of how: At that conference, I met Frederica Rudell, chairwoman of Iona's Department of Marketing and International Business, who said she felt people were beginning to understand that our infrastructure needs investment. I spoke to her afterward, and she turned the discussion toward conservation. Why not use solar-charged lights on the roads, even encourage more people to work at home to keep them off the roads? She touched on the "locovore" movement, which encourages people to eat food grown locally - think more apples from northern Westchester and fewer oranges from Florida. That would mean fewer trucks driving great distances.

"Why don't we think in those terms and put less strain on the roads?" she asked.

Two weeks ago, we saw another problem when a vacant building near the Metro-North tracks in East Harlem crumbled, and New York City officials ordered Metro-North to stop running trains. They were worried that vibrations from the tracks would topple the rest of the building, possibly one next to it. That section of track is a trunk corridor, the stem for Harlem, Hudson and New Haven lines.

The trains moved again after about 90 minutes, but the mishap snarled rush hour. When thousands of people trying to reach points throughout Westchester, Putnam and Connecticut can be inconvenienced by the collapse of an old, empty building, it shows how many ways our crucial systems can be impaired and how important it is to keep the systems running.

I'll be watching.

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