Today’s Headlines

  • Obama Accelerates National Fuel Economy Standards, Caps Auto Emissions (NYT, Bloomberg, AP)
  • NY Mag Calls Sadik-Khan ‘Equal Parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses’
  • Driver Hits and Kills 13-Year-Old Student in Flatbush; No Charges Filed (News, Post)
  • House Climate Bill Funds Auto Industry But Not Transit (RT Rider via Streetsblog.net)
  • Citing Anecdotes, News Says That Fare Evasion Is Up on Bx12 SBS Route
  • DOT, MTA Want Your Ideas for Next Round of BRT Routes (MTR)
  • MTA to Cut Number of Station Agents (NY1)
  • Brooklyn Paper Has More on Latest Proposal for RPP
  • Would Targeted Rebates Overcome Pols’ Objections to Congestion Pricing? (538)
  • Missouri Lawmakers: It’s OK to Txt-N-Drive If You’re Over 21 (STL Urban Workshop)

  • Re: The DN article about SBS fare beaters

    Honor systems are for the antebellum South and feudal Japan. What else is there to expect from an entitled riding public of shuckers and jivers.

    Other cities with a pre-pay system had the foresight to replace their open-air bus shelters with enclosed, heated/cooled, camera-monitored, comfortable kiosks that you can only enter into from the sidewalk through a turnstile. Also the only way to get on board the bus itself is directly through the kiosk, not the sidewalk.

  • Oh and none of this so-last-century magnetic-strip card nonsense, when they can have touchless/smart cards instead.

  • Other cities with a pre-pay system had the foresight to replace their open-air bus shelters with enclosed…kiosks

    Would the fare income gained by building such shelters actually pay for their construction and maintenance? It’s possible, certainly, but I would be surprised if the MTA didn’t at least consider that calculation. They’d also take up a lot of limited sidewalk space (not that I’d be averse to some sidewalk widening, though).

    Also:
    “shuckers and jivers“?
    Seriously? This belongs in the antebellum South.

  • Omri

    Sure would be sweet if the MTA & MBTA could agree to use the same RFID card set and interoperate. Same card around NYC and Boston, with Acela in between.

  • RE: Fare Evasion Is Up on Bx12 SBS Route

    The anecdotes imply that there’s little to no enforcement of the fare, yet the tone of the article is the same tired old excuse that New York is full of criminals who can’t possibly be expected to act in the civilized manner seen in other cities around the world. So… which is it?

  • Interesting article in 538, regarding congestion pricing, and mollifying the complaints that congestion pricing would most affect low-income people who need to drive into Manhattan:

    “The problem cases are low-income workers who must occasionally drive into the city on weekdays. For such people, congestion fees would indeed constitute a new burden.

    But this burden could easily be eliminated by giving every low-income worker in Manhattan an annual allotment of transferable congestion vouchers. On the rare occasions when these workers needed to drive into the city, they could do so free of charge. And they could earn some extra money by selling any vouchers they didn’t need on Craigslist.”

  • From the New York Magazine profile of Sadik-Khan:

    The Summer Streets program shut down Park Avenue for three Saturdays last August, and was judged enough of a success that it will be replicated this year.

    Yay!

  • That JSK profile is both heartening and infuriating. How many times does Crowley have to quote John Liu and his faux populist rantings? Ok we get it. Some crazy rich white people are trying to turn New York into Denmark. Form reading this you’d think the big plan at DOT was to force small business owners to sell pickled herring near bike lanes.

  • dporpentine

    How terrible that thirteen-year-old was killed crossing the street.
    I’m not surprised it happened on Rogers Ave. That’s one hellacious street–crying out for traffic calming from top to bottom. Or at least a cop at every corner with a radar gun.

  • It’s astonishing how successful the political class has been at protecting their own interests by casting the young, urban transit-rider as the “elite” while completely ignoring the needs of the “lower” class (for lack of a better word), who have no other choice. I’ve been a member of both groups, and frankly, if I was still a poor person struggling with rent and completely unable to afford a car, I would be insulted by the slavish devotion these pols have to the supposed “working man” and his car. I’ve worked with plenty of folks from places with terrible transit service like South Ozone Park and none of them had a car. We see through your nonsense, Mr. Liu.

  • Boris

    Rhywun,

    What you just described is a classical Republican political strategy, used to cast Democrats as elites and getting the lower class to follow causes they have nothing to gain from. Its invention has been attributed to President Nixon. Suburban New York Democrats like Liu are really Republicans, just like our mayor is really a Democrat.