Bestocracy

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.

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.

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.

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.

Liz Benjamin at Daily Politics and Jimmy Vielkind at Politicker have some updates on the MTA funding discussions in Albany.

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.

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: