Today’s Headlines

  • Hit-and-Run Garbage Truck Driver Kills Cyclist, 27, on Franklin Street in Greenpoint (Gothamist)
  • Hit-and-Run SUV Driver Kills Alejandro Tello, 18, on Skateboard in Gravesend (News)
  • MTA Bus Driver Kills Kevin Zeng, 25, on Union Turnpike (News)
  • Danielle Davis on How NYPD’s Crash Investigation Compounded the Pain of Her Sister Lauren’s Death (Medium)
  • Subway Delays This May Were Up 33 Percent Compared to May 2016 (NY1)
  • F Train-Riding de Blasio: Cuomo “Needs to Take Responsibility for the MTA” (NYT, Politico, News, WNYC, AMNY, Post)
  • Here’s the “Both Sides” Coverage of the Subway Crisis You Knew Was Coming From the Times
  • TWU Submits a 10-Point Plan to Improve Subway Reliability (News)
  • Advocates Give AMNY Their Take on What’s Wrong With the Subways and How to Fix It
  • Signal Priority for Buses Works, But Just a Few Routes Have It (AMNY)
  • Queens Pols Still Fighting to Water Down Woodhaven Boulevard Bus Lanes (QChron)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Larry Littlefield

    “The head of the city Transit Workers Union knows what’s behind the summer straphanger nightmare: Too many budget cuts. Not enough upkeep and inspections. And mismanagement by the clueless hierarchy at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which remains unable to fix the sprawling subway system.”

    If I’m not mistaken, didn’t the MTA try to use cash revenues to pay for capital projects to limit the extent that it takes on more debt? And didn’t the TWU and LIRR go to a state arbitration for a ruling that if the MTA has money to maintain the system, which it does’t really have to do, it can give out raises to transit workers in excess of the rate of inflation.

    http://www.twulocal100.org/sites/twulocal100.org/files/atu-mta_arbitration_award.pdf

    Even as other workers fall further and further behind inflation, to keep the cost of living for those who work on Wall Street, and are connected to the government, down. And the subway fare rises faster than overall inflation.

    https://larrylittlefield.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/chart-6.jpg

    I’d like to see the number of subway maintenance workers in back in 2010, when the subway was well maintained, compared with the latest budget. Best as I can determine from the MTA budget documents (because the categories change) there are about the same number. But there is clearly less maintenance. What is going on?

    “The lesson that needs to be learned is that you can do all the long-term investment you want in a capital plan, but you can’t forget about day-to-day reliability of the system,” said Samuelsen.”

    The actual pace of “investment” in the capital plan is going down. What is happening is those who operate the system, and those who work on those capital projects, keep getting richer and richer relative to everybody else, mostly in more costly retirement benefits. So the serfs can afford fewer and fewer of them and/or must pay more and more of their incomes.

  • Vooch

    The medium article on the death of Lauren Davis is vital for all advocates to study. It illuminates the cultural hurdles we need to overcome

  • Elizabeth F

    Re: Queens Pols Still Fighting to Water Down Woodhaven Boulevard Bus Lanes

    It would be nice if there were that much outrage over blocked bike lanes.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Here is the problem. Because of that arbitrator’s decision, which followed other decisions like it, we have to believe that even if we jacked up taxes or instituted congestion pricing to accelerate the replacement of the signal system. We have to believe that the result would just be larger wage increases for unionized transit workers, relative to the serfs, and more pension increases. So there is no way out.

    That is, after all, what happened when there was a huge increase in funding for the NYC schools. All the money was grabbed off the top, and now we are being sued for more (presumably funded by cuts to the MTA?) because there isn’t enough for actual education.

    https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/census-bureau-data-on-public-school-spending-in-new-york-robbed-sneered-at-resented-and-sued/

    And they are all in on it. Pataki and Giuliani signed off on the retroactive pension increases in 2000. Spitzer/Sander gave away the store to the TWU. Cuomo and his cronies have done the same for the LIRR and the unions that work on MTA capital projects. Consultants and contractors have done well all along.