Today’s Headlines

  • Driver Left Van Double-Parked, in Reverse Before It Killed Kids; No Charges Filed (NYT, News, Post)
  • Oberstar: Transit Pushed Aside for Tax Cuts in Stimulus Bill (TPM)
  • State Senate Warms to Payroll Tax; Bridge Tolls? Not So Much (News)
  • A Visionary Stimulus Would End Six-Lane Boondoggles, Make Cities More Walkable (Bloomberg)
  • Atlanta Leaders Frustrated at Lack of Local Transit Investment (Ryan Avent)
  • How Do You Make St. Louis More Transit-Oriented? (Yglesias)
  • New York’s New Senator Is a Blue Dog U.S. Rep from Upstate (News)
  • Overhead Wires May Soon Be Obsolete (Transport Politic)
  • Wheels Pens Another Hydrogen Car Fantasy

  • I discussed the prospect of Senator Gillibrand a couple of weeks ago: she’s a transit commuter, which is more than you can say for a lot of our politicians. However, she’s done nothing to help prevent the northern part of her district from losing half its train service.

  • The Bloomberg article by James S. Russell is interesting, but it’d be nice if he called for the State to “knock out the fourth, fifth and sixth expressway lanes” on the Henry Hudson Parkway.

  • oscar

    Gillibrand is a horrible pick. Hates gays & immigrants, loves guns & war
    Might as well have picked a Republican

    Paterson is thinkning of himself, hoping for strong fundraising in 2010, when both will lose their seats

  • Larry Littlefield

    (“It’s really the last thing we want to take a look at, however, this is a classic example, I think, of shared sacrifice,” Smith said Thursday.)

    Except for the retired, who always get to share, never sacrifice, have left us with massive debt and pension obligations, and will leave us right back in the same place in five years — but with higher taxes. Meanwhile, plans are afoot to slash the senior benefits of those who come after, once the state and country are bankrupted.

    One word: evil. And no one talks about it.

  • J. Mork

    “Transit Pushed Aside for Tax Cuts”

    “Change” I’m having trouble believing in.

  • If I hung a piano over a sidewalk and forgot to secure it and it fell and killed someone, would I be charged?

  • vnm

    ddartley: And no-one would call it an “accident” either.

  • Moser

    It would be an interesting project to pose the E. Broadway case to the laws in other countries and states and see how they would likely address this sort of fatal negligence.

  • Rhywun

    RE: Overhead Wires May Soon Be Obsolete

    Neat, but NIMBY’s will find something else to complain about.

    RE: Driver Left Van Double-Parked, in Reverse Before It Killed Kids; No Charges Filed

    I read all three stories pretty fast so I might have missed a couple things. But I’d swear The Post made no mention of the fact that the vehicle was double-parked and *left running*. The Daily News mentioned the double-parking only. Only The Times provided enough detail to actually make sense of the story and pin the blame on the driver. The Post made the driver sound rather blameless, and I made the mistake of reading the Post story first and almost not reading the others. I guess I should have expected as much.

    Anyway… if the details in The Times are correct, how is this not involuntary manslaughter?

  • Rhywun, the Post article says the van was left in reverse (it doesn’t say verbatim that it was left running but I think that’s necessarily implied if you say that it was left in gear). It does not say that the van was double-parked, but while I find double-parking as obnoxious as the next guy, I think that’s far less significant than the fact that it was left in gear.

  • oscar > Gillibrand is a horrible pick. Hates gays & immigrants, loves guns & war. Might as well have picked a Republican

    Not every StreetsBlogger is a liberal Democrat, and not everyone with reservations about gay marriage or free immigration is a bigot.

    Frankly I’m ecstatic about Gillibrand; then again, I used to be a Republican.

    I love the piano metaphor for the east broadway incident.

  • Car Free Nation

    Traffic laws need to be stronger in crowded urban areas. It’s different when there are pedestrians around.
    You can swing a bat in a baseball stadium, but in a crowded city sidewalk, it’s assault.
    You can leave your car running in your driveway and leave to get something from your house, but to do so on a crowded street and kill someone should be manslaughter, at least.

  • tal

    If you are discriminating against a certain class of people and denying them equal rights, you are a bigot.

  • chris

    I think we’ll have to wait till Obama’s second term for transit improvements. The transportation improvements on the tabel now are more of political expediency rather than actual need.

    Roads/road improvements/capital improvement is much easier because the edifice is already there.

  • I think we’ll wait until the truth and the red ink are staring ourselves in the face before beginning transit projects.

    We may not start until the 2020s. (I’m pretty kunstlerian about this.)

    When we do start, it will be an explosion the likes of which the world’s never seen. But we won’t do it until it’s too late, and tens of millions of people are going to have a very hard time bridging the gap.

  • Yes, Kaja, everyone with reservations about gay marriage is a bigot.

    Sorry if you don’t like it, but it’s the truth.

  • Gillibrand is a horrible pick. Hates gays & immigrants, loves guns & war

    That’s funny, the Empire State Pride Agenda says she supports marriage equality, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people. I don’t have any information about her feelings towards immigrants or war, but if she hates gays she’s disguising it well.

  • Sorry, forgot the link to the Pride Agenda press release

  • RE: Overhead Wires May Soon Be Obsolete

    I live in Bordeaux right now where we have our tramway with APS (ground level power) system. It had some problems at the beginning but so far it works pretty well. People demanded it in the center city because they didn’t like how it would affect the views of some really beautiful buildings… and, it is nice, I have to agree. The biggest issue is that it cost a lot more money to install… which I doubt is a problem for Bombardier but is for tight budgets. Having wires most places isn’t a big problem until we can find a solution that costs the same.

    RE: Oberstar: Transit Pushed Aside for Tax Cuts in Stimulus Bill (TPM)

    That really is short term thinking. Not that I enjoy paying taxes but right now we need the tax dollars and letting us spend it on anything (which will include imported goods, worthless crap, etc.) offers no long term benefit unlike funding transit. Let’s make sure our stimulus dollars go to projects that will improve our economy not just now but in the future.

  • Niccolo Machiavelli

    Taxes and printed money are driving the American economy and the banks are soaking up most of it. Makes public transit look entrepreneurial by comparison.