Today’s Headlines

  • Dahlia Bus Crash That Killed 3 Was a Total Failure of Driver Safety Regulation (NYT, News, Post)
  • Daily News: Companies Like Dahlia “Have No Business Doing Business Here”
  • TransAlt: Vision Zero Fixes on Northern Boulevard and Elsewhere Falling Behind Schedule (News)
  • Newsday Calls for Congestion Pricing to Relieve Traffic, Runs a Primer on How Other Cities Do It
  • NYT: End the Regressive Status Quo of Car-Clogged City Streets
  • Cuomo Got to Blame Crummy Subway Service on ConEd Again (DNA)
  • Assembly’s Powerful Ways and Means Chair Bequeathed to Southern Brooklyn’s Helene Weinstein (SoP)
  • Lower Level Boarding Returns to Staten Island Ferry for First Time in 13 Years (AMNY)
  • Gene Freidman’s Old Taxi Medallions Went for Less Than 20% of Peak Value at Auction (Crain’s)
  • The Post Remembers the Cataclysmic 1950 LIRR Train Wreck That Changed Transit in NYC

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Steve M

    RE: 1950 LIRR Train Wreck

    The MTA wasn’t created in 1968 because of a fatal train wreck 18 years prior; it was created primarily to strip Old Man Moses of his power, fund transit, and to remove transit from city politics.

    With the creation of the MTA, TBTA revenues were diverted to fund transit as opposed to more revenue generating bridges/tunnels, highways leading to said bridges/tunnels and random Moses pet projects like the New York Coliseum.

    After decades of the subway fare being an NYC political football, folding the TA into the MTA served to totally remove the TA from city politics. The current state of affairs where the governor and mayor shrug and point fingers at each other when the subway’s messed up isn’t a bug but a feature.

    The TA’s (and predecessors) undercharging for subway service meant that there was no money for capital improvements and practically all of the money that was raised via bond issues to build the second avenue subway ended up diverted for other projects, such as new signals and platform lengthening on the IRT in the 1950’s and the construction of the Chrystie Street connection, DeKalb rebuild, and 6th ave express tracks in the 1960’s.

    The Second Avenue Subway along with the ill fated Queens Blvd Super-Express bypass and extensions in Eastern Queens were all started in the wake of the MTA’s formation but ended up being stillborn due to the 70’s fiscal crisis. To this day, most of the projects started as part of the MTA’s 1968 “Plan for Action” are either still ongoing (East Side Access) or have been shelved (subways for South Eastern Queens).

    Anyway, I know I’ve gone on a bit of a tear here, but I can’t stand it when we’re all blatantly lied to by the likes of the New York Post.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “The TA’s (and predecessors) undercharging for subway service meant that there was no money for capital improvements and practically all of the money that was raised via bond issues to build the second avenue subway ended up diverted for other projects.”

    However, while the Second Avenue Subway bond issue was diverted, capital projects took place at a steady rate prior to the MTA. You had the addition of the 6th Avenue express tracks, the Chryste Street connection, the connection of the Queens Boulevard line to the 60th Street tunnel, and the lengthening of the old IRT platforms in the 1950s and 1960s — before the MTA.

    After the final big systems expansion to the Rockaways opened in 1956, about 50 years after the original line opened, the existing system was rebuilt at a steady pace, starting with that original line.

    This all came crashing to a halt once the MTA took over. though there were other reasons. The MTA fell behind on system rehabs in the 1970s, tried to catch up, and is now falling behind again.