NEW YORK, NY.The MTA is cutting a sweetheart deal with Bruce Ratner to publicly finance his Brooklyn sports arena project with hundreds of millions of dollars of public money while recently raising the subway fare Roland Rogers New York City mayoral candidate asserts. The public should be outraged. “This is just more city-financed corporate welfare and we intend to mount a petition drive in subway stations to stop it.”
“Unprecedented in recent times, these kinds of issues are simultaneously escalating all over the city, along with rising MTA railroad fares for commuters to NYC. Yet, subway services in 2009 have already declined in on-time performance, along with providing inadequate subway security and maintaining hygienically inadequate subway cars, Rogers went on. It will be a commitment of my administration to closely scrutinize the performance and fiscal health of the MTA and its overall performance will not go unchecked.” Upper East Side residents are furious, scrambling to salvage belongings from their evacuated Second Avenue buildings, charged yesterday that bureaucratic blunders by the city and the MTA have left them suddenly homeless.
“In addition they’re set create a regional bus system to purchase bus companies which comes with new taxes and tolls that New York City residents will finance along with the authority’s operations and capital expenses. Governor Paterson is pushing to have a bill introduced soon in the Legislature that would create this new regional bus system and improve suburban service, his aides said. The tax and toll proposals are already facing opposition from some local officials and legislators. The two largest suburban bus companies are Long Island Bus, which is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the Bee-Line system in Westchester, which is operated by the county.
Recently, the Bloomberg administration proposed a 23% hike in subway fares and for bridges and tolls. Additionally, a number of subway cars will be decommissioned and permanently cut at a time when ridership is at its highest in 20 years. The MTA also plans on raising railroad fares the same 23% in 2009, while its executives are commanding record-high salaries. Yesterday they approved, from a rider-funded program, a mind blowing $600,000 over five years on medical-exam perks for its top officials -- a move critics say is a waste of the cash-strapped agency's money. Maybe this sits well within the Bloomberg administration but cannot be tolerated going forward. Certainly, the present economic crisis cannot be to blame for all of the prior mismanagement by the MTA and City Hall over the past 7 years.
“Mike Bloomberg cannot relate to you. You should not care if he rides the subway. You ride out of necessity. Bloomberg rides the subway to make a statement. That makes all the difference in the world.”
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