MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-08-05 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout - NYLXS] MTA
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cont...
Just prior to this, on June 5th, the F train passengers were stranded
for hours below surface for no apparent reason, between the West 4th
Street and Broadway-Lafayette Street stations, two of the most familiar
and closest stations in Manhattan, until passengers smashed windows for
relief. The New York Times reported:
"It felt like a greenhouse. It felt like we were going to suffocate,"
said Michael Sciaraffo, 36, an analyst for the New York City Department
of Parks and Recreation. He was on his way home to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn,
when the train slowed to a halt and suddenly went silent and black. "We
were trying to keep cool. We were coming close to the point where people
were ready to start flipping out," he said. "We were teetering
toward that."
Obviously, even the most incompetent stewardship of any organization, if
after pouring billions of dollars into a product, if it then failed to
deliver on the most basic enterprise milestones, that management team
would be relieved of duty and humiliated. That the stewards of the MTA,
the Mayor of New York City and the Governor of New York State, face this
crisis now and while both failed to purge the MTA's upper management,
there passive response goes to the very heart of the problem that has
been a festering sore for generations. The MTA has a disregard for its
customers and no accountability.
It's priorities are drawn up in well lit rooms at 2 Broadway, and 330
Madison Avenue, drumming up big plans and projects, each a line item for
the "subway of the future", while unable to presently consistently move
people safely. It pays off politicians with sprinkles of pet projects,
and has failed on the fundamentals, to provide a safe and reliable ride,
something which has been as dependable as tap water until the recent
administration.
The roots of the current crisis finds its way back to the 1930's and the
great expansion of the New York transportation system under the guise of
the New York States Parks Department and Boss Robert Moses. Anyone not
familiar with this classic story of local government gone wild needs to
familiarize themselves with the legend of lore of Boss Moses. From the
1930's to the 1960's, Moses cut through New Yorks legendary stalemate
politics to construct all of the toll bridges which are now owned by the
MTA and developed the major highways that today run through the city.
Among these bridges and tunnels includes the Henry Hudson Bridge,
Triborough Bridge, Queens Midtown Tunnel, The Battery Tunnel, and the
Verrazzano Bridge. Additionally, he was able to cajole the city and
state to foreclose on huge tracks of property to lay out the Cross Bronx
Expressway, the BQE, the Belt Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, Van
Wick Expressway, Grand Central and Interborough Parkways, while building
Jones Beach and promoting good suburban living.
Moses was capable of this astonishing growth by leveraging the toll
booths income to do an end run about the Governor and the Mayor and to
design and implement is projects with just a moniker of public oversite.
When he ran into opposition, he largely just ran it over, sometimes
bribing it to go away, often using the press as his bully pulpit. At
some point, Moses had amassed an enormous political base and challenged
outwardly both the governance of Governor Lehman and Mayor LaGuardia.
One of the few local victories against him was when he threatened to
annihilate the bulk of Brooklyn Heights for his new road system leading
to the Battery Tunnel. The prominent and wealthy people of the Heights
organized against him, finally beating him back, forcing the highway to
run underneath a new promenade, which today is a hallmark of the borough.
In midst of the Depression, Moses was awash with money from the tolls on
the Triborough Bridge. He wanted a bridge instead of a tunnel for the
Brooklyn-Battery connection. And he would have gotten his way since he
controlled the funds, if not for FDR interceding and declaring a bridge
would be a security risk, blocking the Brooklyn Navel Yard if it was
bombed. Moses had raw power with the tolls funding. Out of spite he
tried to raze Castle Clinton in the Battery, one of the country's most
significant historical monuments. The Feds saved it by taking it over,
twice needing to intervene in order to prevent Moses from razing most of
lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn.
LaGuardia was a powerful Mayor. Those that followed him, Vincent R.
Impellitteri, and William O'Dwyer, were mere twigs to the Moses
hurricane. Moses manages to dismiss the NYC zoning commission, ending
the Comprehensive Zoning Plan, took over the department of housing and
interceded himself between New York City and the power and deep pockets
in Washington, D.C. He helped drive the Dodgers to Los Angeles, built
Lincoln Center, planed what would be Shea Stadium, and built the fair
grounds for the two Worlds Fairs in Flushing Meadows, the 1964 version
being boycotted by the Bureau of International Expositions which was in
charge of World Fairs, and losing a ton of money in the process.
No such luck, however, was available to the communities of the Bronx
when he all but scorched the fabric of the Borough with the construction
of the Cross Bronx Expressway. Nor did Windsor Terrace fair well, being
ripped in half by the Prospect Expressway. In the ultimate irony, he was
bigoted against any kind of railway service. Plans to add rail service
over the Verrazzano bridge was scraped, leaving Staten Island without a
significant rail link until this day. Airport rail services were
dismissed. While the inner city communities where demolished, scared and
run over, Moses promoted the likes of Jones Beach and the new Eden of
Long Island suburbia, while city mass transit was slowly squeezed until
the mid-1970's when usage and service cuts brought the system to its
bare bones. The 2nd avenue subway was scrapped, and the collective
memory of the abuse by Robert Moses lead to New Yorks being still
skittish and reactionary in response to any development.
It wasn't until Mayor Lindsey and Governor Rockefeller finally teamed up
to remove Moses from power, nearly 30 years later, that things finally
ended for the toll driven fiefdom of Robert Moses. Lindsey had Moses
removed as Chief Advocate for NYC infrastructure in Washington. They
eyed using the toll money to support a new organization, the MTA.
New York has permanent political scars from the Moses experience.
Projects that are no brainers and simple to negotiate in cities like
Chicago and Houston die in New York in the colossal web of local
reviews, political grandstanding, and unhealthy intransigence. It is
sad. It took a whopping 14 years after 9-11 to decide that to do with
the World Trade Center site, which is still under construction at this
late date of July 2017.
It wasn't until Robert Moses directly threatened the power and prestige
of Mayor Lindsey and the Governor, that finally anything was done to
curb Moses. He was far better funded than either politician and it took
a full court press to finally get Moses to succumb. And when the dust
settled, the State gave the entire financial empire of the Moses
machine, the tolls from all across the city of New York, and handed it,
lock stock and barrel to the newly formed Metropolitan Transit
Authority. Along with a commuter tax, and surcharges to regional
telephone service, and additional revenues from the gasoline tax, the
MTA should be as well funded as nearly any institution in Western
Civilization that is not the US Military. And in fact, today the MTA has
more funding than at any time in its history. So you would think it
would be able to manage, and yet somehow the MTA seems to always come up
short.
The Manhattan Institute points out in its executive summary of the MTA
in 2017 titled, "THE MTA’S ESCALATING COST CRISIS" the following:
Government officials, including the governor, as well as outside
policymakers, have blamed a lack of funding. Yet a historical
review of the MTA's finances reveals that the authority is taking
in a record amount of revenue. The MTA's revenues have more than
kept up with inflation and with service enhancements to keep up
with ridership growth.
On the surface, it would seem that it would take massive incompetency to
take the economic engine of the Roberts Moses machine, and bankrupt it.
It just defies common sense that it would be possible. And yet, this is
exactly what the MTA claims to have happened under their watch. We went
from graffiti filled, urine odored trains, stations and depots before
Hugh Cary, followed by Rudy Guilliani and Pataki finally stepped in with
a massive infusion of capital and debt that financed the rebuilding of
hundreds of stations. and purchased 100's of air conditioned subway
cars, to being 40 billion in debt and unable to keep simple switches
working.
Early reconstruction, in the 1980's was carefully debated and analyzed,
the public agreed to allow the MTA borrow money and roll out the
reconstruction of stations up and down the system from Times Square to
Stillwell Avenue. And yet, the question has to be asked, why was it
needed to borrow to do this basic maintenance?
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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