Comments on: Petro: Where is the Bloomberg money?

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:45:57 +0000

It’s quite easy to explain, once you stop thinking of Bloomberg as an idealist and start thinking of him as a megalomaniac who does things either to make a name for himself (CP, bike lanes) or to satisfy developer friends of his (exclusively funding the 7 extension, upzoning, Atlantic Yards).

By: Boris

Boris — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:55:31 +0000

For me, this puts things into a totally new light. While over at Streetsblog and other places they spend most of the time bashing the state and federal government, only recently has there been talk about the city’s share. It is more than ironic that the city thinks in the same car-oriented way as other levels of government.

But how can we explain Bloomberg’s fundamental paradox: support for bike lanes and parking-heavy shopping malls, for CP and against regular transit funding, simultaneously?

By: Adam G

Adam G — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 23:02:50 +0000

The 34th St transitway does serve the purpose of getting people over to the huge medical complexes on the far east side around there more quickly, but yes, SBS and dedicated rights of way are so needed on 86th St. Bunching and traffic delays on the M86 are bad enough to make schedules (and frequently the bus) useless.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:27:44 +0000

But Bloomberg’s CP plan failed, largely due to his incompetence as a politician. Silver explained that there were only 15-20 votes for it in the Assembly, the same Assembly that would later vote in favor of the Ravitch plan when Bloomberg was silent.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:26:04 +0000

The 34th Street transitway isn’t where SBS money is the most needed. There’s already decent east-west service in Midtown, provided by the 7, S, and L. The real problem is uptown. It would be much more useful to invest the money in SBS on 125th and/or 86th.

By: Red

Red — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:28:42 +0000

It’s not fair to say “nothing.” The one area where Bloomberg has made a difference when it comes to transit is getting NYCDOT and MTA on the same page when it comes to Select Bus Service. No way projects like 34th Street transitway and Hylan Blvd. even get on the drawing board without DOT support.

By: drosejr

drosejr — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:21:49 +0000

Let’s also not forget that the money being paid toward maintenance and repair of the free bridges would have been re-directed towards the MTA should the Ravitch plan have been adopted in its entirety. Thank you again, Carl Kruger.

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:20:32 +0000

That’s still not money from the mayor’s discretionary spending fund though. The congestion pricing plan would generate new revenue that would be siphoned to the MTA. Petro is talking about a $60 billion of which a minuscule amount goes to the MTA.

By: Kai

Kai — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:16:53 +0000

Well, to be fair, his congestion pricing proposal would have funded the MTA.

But yes, there’s really no excuse for the underfunding – Police officers or not.

By: quadboy

quadboy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:16:56 +0000

I always knew that bloomberg’s campaign was a bunch of lies the second I laid my eyes on them. These constant ads (“tell the mta no more excuses!!!”) are a joke. No more excuses, huh? I wonder what’s bloomberg’s excuse for not properly funding mass transit, not to mention why he didn’t ask the mta to implement these in the first few years he had. I would love to have someone call him out on this.
What scares me though is that people will see these ads and actually think that bloomberg really can do something with the mta. This is beyond frightening, because you know that those who aren’t aware with the mta will just assume that bloomberg can fix it. I could be wrong, as everyone I spoke to about this isn’t buying it.