City Official Under Fire for Questioning the Benefits and Equity of Transit

She wanted to “start a conversation,” but not necessarily this kind.

A City Planning Commissioner was under fire on Monday from advocates for transit and equity, as well as by the MTA, for a series of statements that suggested she opposes transit improvements and service increases because it might lead to gentrification — a stance that runs afoul of her agency’s own policy.

Planning Commissioner Leah Goodridge’s comments came in a Twitter thread to Twitter that specifically raised questions about the MTA’s long-planned Penn Access project to add four Metro-North stations to underserved and low-income areas of the East Bronx, but also raised more general issues of the alleged deleterious role that better transit plays in neighborhoods of color and poverty.

Here is the start of the thread, with the rest of it below (Streetsblog has embedded the links chosen by Goodridge):