From the NY Post:Gov. Paterson's new nominee for MTA chief promised a careful review of the agency's nearly $12 billion budget yesterday -- and said the agency would not make another push for congestion pricing if he gets the job.
Jay Walder, architect of London's congestion-pricing plan, told a state Senate confirmation hearing in Mineola, LI, that he "had no intent" to advocate for "congestion pricing in the region."
15 comments:
... until after November.
These are the same people that make a habit of threatening to cut programs so that the local hacks charter a bus, fill it up with a local tweeded group, go to Albany, get a photo op with their concerned elected offical, dutifully get it in the budget, then return back to the old neighborhood for yet another photo op with seniors/kids/immigrants/local civic that favors development [put the name of your favorite tweeded here].
Isn't politics fun?
The shit is going to hit the fan next year - like it already has in Florida and California.
The only thing on the table will be the taxpayer as the tweeders will be digging through his body looking for organs to sell to keep developers and tweeded happy.
Bloomberg and Thompson ain't coming clean cause you ain't asking them and the press ain't saying a thing.
"$12 billion budget yesterday"
The budget for the entire state of NH is only $10.2 billion.
Time to reign in the MTA budget, particulalry pensions. They are out of control.
What's wrong with getting a pension? I guess it didn't matter when your 401 was getting 20%annualy and you were making 3x what a city employee was earning.Now that YOUR 401 is down 60%, you call for blood. Tough sh!t buddy!
Yes reign in those fat mta pensions.But it's okay that Alan Hevesi collects 3 pensions while pulling Katz' strings?!?!?!?!?!?
Actually when my 401K goes down I lose the money. Unions have a sweatheart deal that when their pension funds lose money the government makes up the losses.
ew-3: The budget for the entire state of NH is only $10.2 billion.
What does that have to do with anything? New Hampshire has a population of 1.3 million. Compared to just New York City that’s nothing - four of the five boroughs easily outstrip it. We’re going to add that number of people to the city in the next twenty years and we’ll probably barely notice it. Essentially, New Hampshire is empty (and I write this a someone who has a parent living there). Which means that not a whole lot of services are needed. So OF COURSE their budget can be relatively small. The question is, if your figure is accurate, what do they even spend that $10.2 billion on? The MTA is the circulatory system of the largest, most important city in the country, and one of the most important cities in the world. On the average week day the subways - just the subways - transport three or four times the total population of New Hampshire. In a year the population of China, more or less, passes through the turnstiles. New Hampshire does nothing comparable in scope, complexity, or importance. (When there’s a problem with the MTA it’s international news; the entire state government of New Hampshire could immolate itself on the sacred bonfires of Odin and no one would notice.) Let’s be frank, New Hampshire - despite its pretensions to the contrary and its equal suffrage in the Senate - is not a serious undertaking; the MTA is. By all means, open the books on the MTA, attack and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that the things that it does can be done on the cheap.
"We’re going to add that number of people to the city in the next twenty years and we’ll probably barely notice it."
you've got to be fucking kidding. we are bursting at the seams now, with overcrowded schools, overburdened sewers and electrical systems and not nearly enough open space. some subways and buses are operating at capacity. you need to get a clue.
Anonymous: you've got to be fucking kidding...
Yeah, blah blah blah. Just enough new infrastructure will be built, just like always. Hopefully the 2nd Ave Subway will finally be finished and maybe some other improvements will be made. But the fact remains, we're almost certainly going to add a New Hampshire and barely even feel it.
"But the fact remains, we're almost certainly going to add a New Hampshire and barely even feel it."
No I don't agree with this.
The second avenue subway as an answer to our woes? The people will be moving into the outer boroughs more than Manhattan - you know, where WE live. Most people in this city will not be taking the 2nd Ave subway. They'll be crowding onto the 7 train, which already runs trains as close together as possible and generally runs at or above capacity now or driving to work on traffic congested roads (and before you prattle on about congestion pricing, most people from Queens who drive to work do not drive into Manhattan).
We're going to feel it just as we are feeling the pain of the last development wave. But the fact remains, we're almost certainly going to choke on all this development.
Well, the Second Ave. Subway won't solve all our problems, no. But it'll help relieve some dangerous congestion. I agree that we need more and better transit options, especially here in Queens. There are several un- and underused railroad ROWs all over the borough that could be repourposed for transit. My understanding is that every time this has been seriously proposed it has been shot down by local residents. (If I'm not mistaken Geraldine Ferraro made her bones doing just that.) I'd like to see our existing infrastructure used more intelligently - for example, why do the J,M, and Z trains all make only a few stops in downtown Manhattan? It would be technically possible to reroute one of them uptown, along either the 6th Ave or 8th Ave lines. (This was the KK train in the 70s.) Reinstituting that on, say, the M would help relieve crowding on the L and J and Z trains. There are lots of things that can and should be done and hopefully will be, in time.
I never mentioned congestion pricing, although I did support it. Under the plan that didn't pass if a car didn't enter Manhattan it wouldn't have been charged so your "most of Queens drivers" wouldn't have been affected. Although if the program had proved successful it might have been instituted in places like Flushing and Jamaica.
My main point with all this, though, was just to point out that comparing the budget of the MTA to the state of New Hampshire is silly because, though it's a state and New York City isn't, everything about New York City dwarfs New Hampshire.
Believe me,most people on this site will be collecting social security by the time the 2nd ave subway goes online.Unfortunately that ss check will only cover a momthly metro card and a few cans of cat food....................
Well, the world is going to come to an end in 2012 in any case so, really, it hardly matters.
"What does that have to do with anything? New Hampshire has a population of 1.3 million."
Expected someone to say something like this. We are talking about the MTA vs NH. NH is a state. Think of all that a state provides it's population? Education, highways, snow removal, police, fire, medical etc etc etc.
The MTA has an already established infrastructure, all it needs is to pay for repairs. After that it is all about payrole.
The MTA budget is way over the top. Is there a line item budget available? How much goes into pensions?
ew-3: We are talking about the MTA vs NH. NH is a state.
Yep, it surely is. But a state with almost no one living in it so there's not a whole hell of a lot of services it has to provide. I think I read recently there are 150 highschools in the whole state. How many are there in the five boroughs? Or just in Queens? In every way the City is a bigger deal than New Hampshire. Even the MTA is.
I suppose you're right, it would be less expensive if we would just use slave labor to run the trains and buses. Too bad we can't get away with that. Maybe, though, we could import a bunch of illegal workers and pay them $2 an hour. That would cut costs, too. Yes, the the budget should be gone over and every ounce of fat should be removed. But consider this: the MTA has a budget of $12 billion and serves a city of about 8 million people (it also serves a number of counties outside the city with a combined population of a couple of million, but let's not even think about them for now). That works out to about $1500 per New Yorker. It's a chunk of change, but since most New Yorkers don't own cars it saves them on car payments, gas, insurance, parking, etc. I don't have numbers at hand but my suspicion is that most New Yorkers pay quite a bit less per year to transport themselves than do most Americans. And, of course, if all New Yorkers were forced to have cars the city would cease to function entirely. So maybe that is $12 billion well spent.
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