Yesterday's MTA board meeting was the usual high-stakes game over how to pay for public transit, aka the lifeblood of the city and region.
The talk was about shortfalls and dedicated funding streams (amNY, NYDN), precipitous ridership declines (NY Post), out-year budget brinksmanship (Streetsblog). The City had a good angle: McKinsey & Co., which has been so wrong about so much with regard to the city, got its forecasts wrong.
We're tired of it.
Simply stated, millions of New Yorkers depend on transit: So, stop with the neo-liberal blather. Get congestion pricing working. Put a price tag on every one of our three million "parking" spaces to fund transit. Get people out of cars and onto trains and buses before the whole goddamn town is underwater because of climate change.
Please.
Kevin Duggan of amNY, as he often does, found a silver lining in the meeting: The MTA inked a deal to roll out cell service in its tunnels and provide free Wi-Fi at its stations. The Daily News dug into a document for an early morning dispatch: The agency will vote on fixing Roosevelt-era signals in Brooklyn before working on busy lines with newer (Nixon- and Reagan-era!) ones.
In other news:
- Why are sharks so much smarter than people when it comes to the real danger? (Hell Gate)
- Another car driver crashed into another Staten Island home, this one on molto pericoloso Hylan Boulevard. Either drivers on the Rock are whack or the roads stink, Joe Borelli! Maybe both? (SI Live)
- A New York City cop who lives on Long Island got himself arrested in a road-rage incident that ended with a drawn gun. (NYDN)
- A speeding driver killed his passenger and maybe himself outside of JFK. (NYDN)
- The allegedly speeding, drunk man who killed a family of three, including two New Yorkers, on Jericho Turnpike, was arraigned. (NBCNY)
- So many questions about Gateway. (Mass Transit)
- Gov. Hochul signed a speed-camera carve-out for Medical-emergency first responders, such as Hatzolah drivers. (Yeshiva World News)
- Who's using all those dirt bikes and ATVs that Mayor Adams is so fond of crushing? Delivery workers, many of whom don't realize the machines are illegal. (Documented)
- The Riverdale Press bids the city to keep attacking the scourge of ghost cars.
- ICYMI: Some entitled Manhattanites think that resident parking permits will save them from having to spend money on garaging their cars. They're wrong. (NY Post)
- We love "stupid motorist" pix because, as pedestrians, we are constantly astonished by the sheer incompetence, inattention and lawlessness of the people who routinely operate several-ton vehicles, most of which goes unremarked. On the plus side, simple infrastructure like the bollard in the picture below clearly saves lives when reckless drivers are on the road. (Via Twitter)
