Today’s Headlines

  • How Much Will Cuomo Strip Out of the MTA Capital Plan? (CapNY, News)
  • Daily News: Albany’s Dereliction of Transit Is Appalling
  • Driving 25 Saves Lives (News)
  • 30 Percent of Motorists at Gates and Evergreen Run the Red Light (Bklyn Paper)
  • Daily News Takes the New, Serotta-Designed Citi Bike for a Spin
  • The New Bikes Will Start to Hit the Street Later This Month (AMNY)
  • DMV Has Permanently Revoked the Licenses of 3,942 DWI Offenders Since 2012 (Post)
  • Three Injured in Multi-Car Pile-Up in Fort Greene Sunday Morning (Post)
  • DOT Proposes Slow Zone for Midland Beach on Staten Island (Advance)
  • The High Bridge Reopens Tomorrow After 45-Year Closure! (News, NYT)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Komanoff

    Re Bklyn Paper story on Bushwick red-light running: glad to see Hunter College Prof. Milczarski training his research on dangerous driving behaviors, in contrast to his past focus on cyclist infractions. Now let’s see if the tabs that covered his cycling reports will be all over this new one.

  • joe shabadoo

    Maybe ‘Which projects will Cuomo strip’ would be a more accurate headline? It’s not clear to me that the entire $32B capital plan is necessary. Metrocard replacement and countdown clocks are nice to have but they don’t increase capacity or reliability.

  • Bolwerk

    Yes they do, but they’re also side-effects of more important projects like modernizing fare control and signaling. You can make an “it costs too much” case. I haven’t looked in a while, but I doubt there are too many things in the capital plan that aren’t or won’t be necessary.

  • Simon Phearson

    What’s “modernizing fare control?” Are you talking about easing inter- and intra-system transfers, changing the fare model from a flat-fee to a distance-traveled approach, dynamic pricing, or something else?

  • Bolwerk

    MetroCard is just plain approaching EoL/obsolescence, and newer technology is simply less maintenance-intensive. I don’t see distance-based prices going anywhere, but, yes, having most those possibilities would be great.

    More immediately, some kind of smartcard system has the potential to speed up bus boarding and maybe even to reduce bottlenecks at turnstiles.

  • HamTech87

    The cuts conversation should not be limited to just the MTA. The new Tappan Zee Bridge should also be on the table, especially Second Span’s excess lanes.

    It would be great to see a campaign: “Stop the Second Span.”

  • Jesse

    The silver lining in the MTA budget crisis is that even the Daily News supports Move NY.

  • sbauman

    Be careful what you wish.

    The bike/pedestrian path that Nyack finds so objectionable is predicated on the second span being built.

  • sbauman

    Bus entry fare collection time savings by itself isn’t enough to cost justify a new fare collection. The present pop-in/pop-out fare boxes require an average of 1.3 seconds per passenger. The potential savings per passenger second are $44 Million (based on 926 million passengers per year and $200/revenue-vehicle-hour cost). A billion dollar replacement program would require a 20+ year payout. The electronics will be obsolete within 10 years.

  • mattkime

    I’d trade the bike path for sensible funding of infrastructure projects.

  • Bolwerk

    It may not be, but the point that bringing the Windows NT4-powered fare collection system into the 21st century is reaching the point of being critical ought to end the discussion!

    But I don’t see why it needs to cost a billion dollars either. Readers and scanners are pretty cheap.

  • ahwr

    A few years ago the MTA said per dollar of revenue metrocard cost them 15 cents. A new payment system was supposed to cut down on that significantly. Every penny of savings is another $44 million or so.

  • BBnet3000

    All we can hope now is that after Cuomo is gone (which is whenever HE wants, not us, as neither the states Democrats nor its overall electorate seem inclined to get rid of him) he is remembered as the Governor who gutted the MTA.