Bestocracy
Streetsblog Basics
Good Gov Groups, Transit Advocates Call on Cuomo to Stop MTA Raids
Albany's repeated plundering of the MTA's dedicated funds has robbed transit riders of more than $140 million in the past year alone. With a $9 billion budget gap looming, straphangers could end up paying again very soon. An impossible fix, you ask? I know the subject is Albany and we've all been conditioned to think that change is hopeless, but as it happens, all it takes is one person, the governor of New York, to say enough is enough.
November 23, 2010
If Texting-While-Driving Ban Fails, Blame Albany’s “Democracy of One”
Last week Streetsblog followed up on the stalled progress of a statewide texting-while-driving ban, a bill that appears to be going nowhere even though almost everyone on the Assembly transportation committee supports it, according to Brooklyn representative Felix Ortiz.
June 1, 2009
Assembly Transpo Chair LOLZ @ Txting-While-Driving Ban
When reports surfaced last week that Assembly Member David Gantt intends to block a statewide texting-while-driving ban (again), we were curious: What does the chairman of the transportation committee have against a common-sense measure to discourage dangerous driving habits? After placing a call to Gantt's office yesterday morning, we're still waiting to hear back. The Rochester representative is famously circumspect when it comes to explaining his decisions, so the lack of a timely reply came as no surprise. After all, he doesn't return calls to members of his own committee, either.
May 27, 2009
We Can’t Go on Living Like This
We'll have more on the details of the MTA funding deal as they emerge. For now I'd like to focus on its most salient feature: The failure to impose new fees on car commuters, whose daily trips would slow to a standstill without a functional transit system.
May 6, 2009
Malcolm Smith Spins Transit Band-aid as Victory for “Reform”
Now that Governor Paterson has backtracked on his pledge to secure a long-term solution to New York's transit funding crisis, the push is on to spin the slapdash result as a responsible outcome, not a capitulation to Albany's lowest common denominator.
May 5, 2009
Kruger: MTA Funding Plan Will Be “So Outside the Box.”
Liz Benjamin at Daily Politics and Jimmy Vielkind at Politicker have some updates on the MTA funding discussions in Albany.
March 16, 2009
Silver Gives Gantt Two More Years Atop Transpo Committee
On Thursday, Sheldon Silver re-appointed Rochester's David Gantt to chair the Assembly Transportation Committee (Excel spreadsheet via Daily Politics). Gantt is the chairman who engineered the defeat of bus lane enforcement cameras last June, when six co-sponsors of the bill wound up voting against it in his committee. With the city's bus rapid transit plans relying on bus-mounted cameras to help keep BRT lanes free of auto traffic, the committee vote dealt a big setback to New York City bus riders.
February 9, 2009
Albany’s Transit Sins Come Back to Bite America
Just how bad are the service cuts and layoffs that transit agencies across the country will soon be forced to enact? Severe enough to weaken the national economy, the New York Times reports -- all while Congress pieces together a stimulus plan that does nothing to address the problem:
February 4, 2009