Today’s Headlines

If you look at the big picture and not just transit, you realize that state legislation to make us pay more and more for less and less, as SAS wrote about yesterday, is the rule rather than the exception.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/nyregion/01handouts.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

Add on more and more benefits and tax exemptions for today’s senior citizens, more and more debt, and more and more of the nation’s private sector income captured by the most rapacious union of all, the de facto union of corporate executives and directors, and we are heading for an institutional collapse. Or something worse, impoverished serfdom for everyone else, indefinately.

“In what is practically a rite of summer in labor-friendly Albany, there are dozens of bills to “sweeten” the pensions of public workers. According to an analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed group that favors the restraint of spending, at least 50 such bills are being considered in the Legislature. Some are claimed by sponsors to have no fiscal impact, despite conferring more costly benefits on dozens, hundreds or thousands of people.”

This has been going on for decades. I guess the legislators, if pressed, could argue that public services and benefits for ordinary people are going to collapse anyway, based on what has already been done.

“Critics note that even as lawmakers seek to expand pension benefits for public employees, they are close to approving a controversial bill that would allow financially troubled local governments to borrow from the state’s pension fund to cover payments they owe to the same fund.”

The money is borrowed to hide the consequences for as long as possible, so more can be extracted from our severely and permanently diminished future.

“A veritable flotilla of special-interest bills is quietly floating through the Legislature as lawmakers prepare to wrap up for the year, part of the end-of-session rush to pass bills sought by their political allies or campaign donors.”

And signature collectors. While this is going on, the beneficiaries are out collecting signatures for the incumbents. Their donations will tie up any challengers in court and cost them $tens of thousands just to get on the ballot even if they complied with all the rules.

By the way, the MTA contractor piece is instructive. There is no way Angeledes passed on the savings from violating union contracts to the MTA, as the cost of the work it does has soared to the moon.

The MTA isn’t being killed off by mosquitos. It is being killed off by 500 pound vampires.

BTW – I was out with Sandy and James from the East Side committee last night at the Queensboro bridge and we got over 70 hand written letters to Mayor Bloomberg supporting First and Second Ave bike lanes by the end of 2011. Thanks to the volunteers on the East Side Committee that have generated over 300 letters in just two weeks.

Join the google group http://groups.google.com/group/TAEastSideCommittee and come to the meeting next Tuesday at the 47th Street YMCA.

It would really be unfair to impose a congestion fee. Motorists are, after all, rugged individualists. Unlike those of us who use other modes of transportation, and admit that we require some level of government resources and need to pay taxes accordingly, the infrastructure needed to move automobiles runs not on government subsidies, but on magic.

The public health costs associated with the tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries caused by automobiles? Magic. The additional costs of running non-transportation-related infrastructure (sewers, water, police protection, etc.) to all corners of the Earth so that everyone can have driveways and parking lots? Magic. The military force needed to secure certain parts of the area so that we can continue bathing in oil, all day every day? You guessed it: Magic. Even the wholesale destruction of the Gulf of Mexico will be rectified by magic, and magic alone. I won’t even bother reminding you all how the East River bridges are maintained in such a way that private vehicles can flood them day and night (I’ll give you a hint: It starts with an M, and ends with a C).

I’m really not sure how all of this works. After all, I am not a magician. What I do know, however, is that we have a city, and a nation, full of people who are convinced that it’s somehow possible to drive cars everywhere and not pay any taxes or user fees to mitigate the effects thereof. 300 million Americans can’t be wrong, can they?

I’m glad the city discovered that there’s a neighborhood between Times Square and the Javits Center. One neighborhood down, 100 more to discover. At this rate, by 2047 the Bloomberg Dynasty would start to actually give a crap about the ungentrified outer parts of the city.

I’d rather have a large fare increase, but no cuts in service. Obviously I would rather have neither, but given those choices I think the majority of riders would agree with me.

Since that option screws the working poor, it politically unpopular, even though it would be more optimal for the city as a whole.

Of course the elephant in the room is the capital budget, or lack thereof, which has been in the hole for so long that I don’t think we can get out on the back of fares.

J:Lai, the silver lining of fare increases over service cuts (apart from maintaining service) is the possbility of modal shift toward cycling. At a nominal fare of $2.75, you’d have a post-discount “opportunity savings” of $5 per roundtrip biked instead of transited. That’s enough to convince some folks to go off the unlimited monthly card, and opt for a bike in nice weather and a pay-per-ride card instead.