Sunday, February 8, 2015

Transit setback roundup: I can't even

These past few weeks have been discouraging for me as a transit advocate. From almost every* level of government I've heard elected (and appointed) officials promoting "roads and bridges," or crappy, uninspiring, unproductive transit, or opposing reasonable transit improvements.

* I say almost because I haven't heard anything stupid from a local congressional representative recently. Added: I just heard from Maloney! To the contrary, Jerry Nadler's efforts to promote the Cross-Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel project seem to be making progress.

So much crap, so much of it things that transit advocates have discussed for so long, I feel exhausted thinking about writing more than a sentence about each one. Thanks to Streetsblog for going into the details in many of these so that I don't have to; you can donate here. Also thanks to Ben Kabak, Yonah Freemark and Alon Levy for taking the time to call bullshit on Cuomo's AirTrain proposal, and Ben again for calling bullshit on de Blasio's ferry proposal.

4 comments:

The Amateur Transporter said...

Thanks to you for summing up exactly how I feel.

jazumah said...

The ferry program is a real estate program. They expect property values to jump between 2.5% and 8% near the ferry terminals. I wonder who benefits from that?

Hmmm...

neroden@gmail said...

Right now, we have too many elected officials in the "brain damaged" age bracket -- the ones who inhaled lots of leaded gasoline as kids.

See this:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

And Kevin Drum has done several followups.

Andrew Cuomo is an example: born 1957. Car fan as a kid! Severely brain-damaged by lead, no doubt.

Don't vote for anyone currently over 40 (the main phaseout started in 1975), but under 20 is better (the complete ban was in place in 1996).

Cap'n Transit said...

Neroden, you may be joking, but I want to go on the record that I don't support that kind of prejudice. Plus, I'm over forty.