Over the last few months, I’ve been highly critical of advocacy efforts in support of Student MetroCards. The most vocal groups have targeted the MTA despite the fact that the city and state — and not the MTA — should be funding student transit. Today, though, the Straphangers Campaign ramped up their efforts to target Albany. The campaign members and City Council rep Margaret Chin parked themselves outside of Stuyvesant High School this afternoon and gave out 1200 leaflets urging parents to call Gov. David Paterson and ask him to support Student MetroCards. “Call now or pay later for student MetroCards,” Gene Russianoff said.
The Straphangers also noted that the city is supposed to reimburse the MTA for student transit due to lost revenue from subsidized fares. As it is painfully obvious that the city and state’s combined $70 million in student transit contributions do not cover the $214 million the MTA says it costs per year to run the program, the appropriate governing bodies should be paying for this program. Mayor Bloomberg continues to say that the city has no money for student transit, but someone — be it Albany, City Hall of the city’s parents — are going to have to pay.
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It’s crazy that they can get away with saying “we have no money for it” because they’re lucky enough to have a subway. Imagine a city with no public transit saying that, and essentially saying “too bad kids, I guess you can’t get to school.”
There’s no money for student transit, but there’s plenty of money for gold-plated pensions and health-care benefits for city workers. I wonder if this will be the event that makes voters sit up and take notice of where their highest-in-the-nation taxes are going.
Health care benefits are about the same as the private sector.
I suppose these days any pension is “gold plated” since few companies offer them, but workers pay into the system, and have accepted lower salaries in return for the pension benefit. Unions don’t negotiate salaries, or pensions, or benefits independently – they look at total compensation. Politicians prefer ramping up the retirement benefits and not putting the money aside…pushing the costs into the future when someone else will be in office.
A young Ben K.?
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/pro.....;start=860
A conservative? Me? Hardly. I might not approve of the MTA’s latest contract with the TWU, but I am not at all a conservative. A young pundit, perhaps.
You do seem somewhat more conservative (and I’m talking only economics, of course) than the “stereotypical” New Yorker–or politician. NTTAWWT.
I’m not so sure Ben’s that conservative. Opposition to union interests is common among people who aren’t union members. This is true even among liberal opinion leaders. For example, Brookings’ latest opinions on education are hostile to teachers’ unions’ agenda.
just having a little fun. 😉
c-span put up their *entire* archives–
fascinating stuff out there
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/85751
Well, by “conservative”, I meant a “direction” rather than a “position”, if that makes any sense. My positions on such matters are probably more conservative than his but yeah, I would never call myself “a conservative” either.
I would really like to know how the MTA comes up with 214 Million as a cost of the student Metrocard program. How many extra trains and buses does it really have to run?
For buses, you can look at schedules that have different frequencies on school days and on other weekdays. If I remember correctly, the posted schedule on the M79 bus stops has extra runs on school days only around 3 pm (but the online schedule doesn’t).