Monday’s Headlines: World Cup Fuss Edition

We’re still trying to make heads or tails of the “uproar” over New Jersey Transit’s decision to charge $150 for train tickets to the eight World Cup games at MetLife Stadium this summer.

On the one hand, good for Gov. Mikie Sherrill for standing up to FIFA, which is charging record-high ticket prices while draining local resources across the New York region and cities in three countries.

The impact of the World Cup is just starting to sink in: Besides charging $150 for trains and $80 for buses to games, NJ Transit also plans to suspend all westbound service between Penn Station and New Jersey for four hours before each match. (NJ Transit is telling New Jersey-to-Midtown commuters to work from home on those days; I’d call that waving the white collar flag)

The World Cup is here, whether you like it or not. And it’s not just New Jersey clamping down on the everyday activities of locals. In New York City, NYPD has ordered the Parks Department not to issue any new events permits from June 11 to July 19. A report in the Times over the weekend attributed that directive partly to the World Cup, and partly to planned celebrations for the nation’s 250th birthday. (The policy has already rained on Streetsblog’s parade, by forcing us to figure out other options for our big 20th anniversary street fair.)

For that reason, it struck us as odd to see New York politicians mocking and criticizing New Jersey’s response as our state and city also get similarly weighed down by an institution — FIFA — that expects host jurisdictions to subsidize its profits (while cynically reiterating restating its “non-profit” status at every turn). On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer backed Sherrill up and called on FIFA to foot the bill.

On the other hand, maybe the backlash to Sherrill’s $150 ticket is simply the Garden State’s bad policymaking come to roost: Unwilling to raise local taxes, Sherrill supports a proposal to raise sales taxes specifically in the vicinity of the World Cup. Unwilling to adequately fund NJT, she wants sports fans to foot the bill to get to a stadium her predecessors put on a train line that doesn’t run regular service.

It feels easy for New York transit supporters to beat up on the Garden State after its failing, years-long attempt to kill our congestion pricing toll in court. But the justification for devoting infinite public dollars to eight World Cup matches — that they’re a net-positive to the city’s economy — feels flimsy at best. As good government watchdog Reinvent Albany rightly argues, corporate subsidies have little impact on economic development.

In other news:

• DOT is collecting input to select 50 locations for e-bike battery charging stations. (amNY)
• The city’s partial redesign of McGuinness Boulevard has already made the street safer as DOT prepares to finish the job. (Brooklyn Paper)
• NYPD identified the pedestrian struck and killed by a truck driver in Queens as a 32-year-old mother who had just dropped her 6-year-old off at school. (Daily News)
• Columbia still hasn’t reopened its campus to the public. (Gothamist)
• Left-wing allies of the mayor want him to veto the City Council’s bill to create protest “buffer zones” around houses of worship. (The City)
• The Post managed to find a few whiners about the plan to redesign Grand Army Plaza, but the Times could not. We asked Doug Gordon what he thought, and he wishes the plan was bolder.
• Yet another “street takeover” occurred in a district where politicians resist safe street designs. (CBS News)
• Albany tried free buses in the 1970s. (Gothamist)
• NYPD’s federal monitor has tasked two academics to research racial bias in the department’s approach to traffic stops. (Daily News)
• DSNY’s “Better Bin” is already falling apart. (Curbed)
• Spectrum’s Capital Tonight featured opposing views on the governor’s car insurance proposals.
• The MTA spent $1.4 million on a bus driving simulator. (Gothamist)
• Staten Islanders are debating what to do about a dangerously narrow two-way street in Dongan Hills. (S.I. Advance)
• Opponents were back at City Hall conflating e-bikes and illegal e-motos last week. (NBC New York)
• Council Member Lincoln Restler wants real-time tracks of city school buses. (Daily News)
• More coverage of Columbia’s deal with the MTA to help fund accessibility at W. 125th Street. (amNY, The City)