Today’s Headlines

  • Queens Straphangers Counting on Albany to Avert MTA Doomsday (News)
  • Congestion Pricing Foes Jeffries and Lentol to Stage Mock G Train Funeral (2nd Ave Sagas)
  • New York to Receive $1.3B in Stimulus Cash for Transit (News)
  • Attorney Claims Racial Profiling Made Client a Hit-and-Run Killer (News)
  • DA Elections a Chance to Make Traffic Justice a Campaign Issue (Cap’n Transit)
  • The Problem With Bonus Plazas (Grist)
  • Richard Florida on the Post-Crash Shape of American Cities and Regions (Atlantic)
  • Guess Which State Legislators Drive Taxpayer-Owned Cars (Times Union)
  • Ratner Gets Loan Extension, Looking for Stim Cash to Keep Atlantic Yards Alive (City Room)
  • What If Portland Had Been Overrun by Freeways? (BikePortland via Streetsblog.net)
  • Omri

    So now my tax money is going to pay to steal the homes of innocent people to built that obscenity?

    That is an outrage.

  • In today’s Times, David Brooks uses a Pew study to defend his contention that the exurbs still have a future. The words “peak oil” appear nowhere in the piece. But the real weak spot in Brooks’ analysis is that the data he’s picked up on is opinion polling on where people would like to live. He offers no data on where they’re actually moving out from, and where they’re moving to.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “New York to Receive $1.3B in Stimulus Cash for Transit”

    How is $1.3 billion in two years going to pay for $3 billion per year in capital spending, absent tolls and a regressive payroll tax?

    Hey Weiner, you’ve got eight months to fix this. Higher gas taxes to pay for everything, now that those right wing Republicans have been prevented from imposing “congestion taxing” on the middle class, right? We’re waiting.

    Heck, to be fair, shouldn’t Weiner be delivering enough money so the MTA could eliminate all the tolls into Manhattan?

  • Rhywun

    RE: Ratner Gets Loan Extension, Looking for Stim Cash to Keep Atlantic Yards Alive

    “Still, the Atlantic Yards project faces a critical test in the coming weeks at the state Appellate Court, which will hear oral arguments Feb. 23 in a lawsuit challenging the state’s use of eminent domain to seize privately owned property on behalf of the project. A victory for the opponents could be devastating for the developer.”

    I guess that’s the last best hope of stopping this boondoggle, and this outrageous gift of public tax dollars to this billionaire. Well, that and the collapsing economy.

  • Peter

    i suspect the term ‘straphangers’ is a good way to help keep people off transit.

  • Another major problem of Brook’s column: he doesn’t mention that foreclosures are most common in the most remote suburbs, and that means that people who are the least able to afford housing and who have the least choice of where to live are the ones buying houses in the most remote suburbs. His opinion piece is named “I dream of Denver” – but I don’t think anyone is dreaming of Stockton, where most foreclosures are. They settled for Stockton because they couldn’t afford anything else, and they would have preferred a more central suburb.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “His opinion piece is named ‘I dream of Denver’ – but I don’t think anyone is dreaming of Stockton.”

    Stockton — named the most miserable city in the United States.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29183670/

    My sister lives in the Denver area. Among those dreaming of Denver, and older suburbs close to it, are those in new exurban developments, where the foreclosure level is to the moon.

  • Boris

    AY is not a boondoggle, it’s an urban version of a mega-mall. It’s just that in the suburbs, they are built without public money. Actually, Ratner should be paying the MTA and the city to improve transit and infrastructure to bring more people to his project.

  • Rhywun

    > Stockton — named the most miserable city in the United States.

    I generally loathe such lists (but am fascinated by the date and methodology behind them), mainly because the criteria are usually slanted toward the “American Dream” and the things that supposedly drive people away usually attract me, but… in this case I think I would have to agree.

    > AY is not a boondoggle, it’s an urban version of a mega-mall.

    No, the existing crapola across the street is an urban “mall”. The stadium project is a boondoggle because we the taxpayers are footing a big chunk of the bill and getting little to no benefit out of it other than some temporary construction jobs (which, by the way, will materialize just as surely if the site is sold to individual developers in the normal manner).