Q: I recently moved into an office overlooking the Hudson River near Battery Park. On two occasions I have seen a Staten Island ferry cruising south on the Hudson River, coming from somewhere north of the park, well outside the ferry’s usual route. Do you know what it was doing there?

A: The Staten Island ferry you saw cruising south on the Hudson River was the 6,000-passenger, 3,335-ton Samuel I. Newhouse, named after the publishing magnate who built his fortune after buying the Staten Island Advance. The Newhouse is currently undergoing routine maintenance at a local shipyard and, transportation officials said, was undergoing a sea trial before it is put back into service later this month. A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Transportation, Kay Sarlin, said the ship went in for repair of its “cycloidal propulsion units,” which allow the vessel to move forward, backward, and sideways. Coast Guard law requires that ships be put in dry-dock twice every five years for wholesale inspection. All the safety equipment is inspected, and the Coast Guard certificate of inspection is renewed. Before the ferry returns to its normal route between the St. George and Whitehall terminals, captains will test it in New York Harbor.

If you should see the ferry north of the George Washington Bridge, however, notify the authorities. The boundaries for where ferries can be tested are as far north as the George Washington Bridge, as far south as the Verrazzano Bridge, and as far east as Execution Rocks in Long Island Sound, just past City Island in the Bronx.

Q: What happened to the last minute bill in the state Assembly to make the Segway legal on city sidewalks?

A: Introduced in the waning hours of the legislative session, the Segway bill made no headway. Just before the legislative session ended June 24, the bill to classify the two-wheeled “human transporter” as an electric vehicle safe for city sidewalks looked as though it would find easy passage into law, as it began to segue from the Assembly to the Committee on Codes and, it was expected, on to the Senate floor for a vote. But the bill became tied up in the committee – whose chairman is one of the bill’s sponsors, Joseph Lentol, a Brooklyn Democrat. An aide to Mr. Lentol, Cathy Peake, said opposition from city and upstate officials made it impossible to send the Segway bill to the state Senate before the committee “ran out of time.” It will probably be taken up in the fall when the Legislature comes back to “take care of unfinished business.”

The bill was the second time legislation had been introduced to make Segways legal on sidewalks throughout the state. Lawmakers added an “opt-in” clause in the second version that would allow individual municipalities to decide whether they wanted to allow Segways to operate on sidewalks. That clause did nothing to keep local critics – including New York City’s Law Department – from criticizing the bill as dangerous for pedestrians.