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Cuomo’s Misplaced Transit Priorities

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While obviously New York City has mass transit that most of the country would envy, it’s becoming both worse and more expensive:

Fares are about to go up. Delays are driving riders to distraction. And on a recent evening, Ian Nolan’s train was out of service.

Widespread problems across the subway system in recent weeks have left weary commuters waiting on crowded platforms, stranded inside stalled cars and scrambling to find alternate routes. With a fare increase set to go into effect on Sunday, riders across New York City are complaining of having to pay more when service is worse.

But transit experts and advocates say conditions will not improve unless the Metropolitan Transportation Authority invests heavily in upgrading and expanding the system’s infrastructure — the tracks, the trains and the tunnels that power the city’s daily transit miracle, except when they don’t.

A plan is being proposed to deal with it:

Transit advocates say that while they understand the angst over another fare increase, they are focused on securing money from state and city officials for the authority’s capital plan, which includes many of the very upgrades that would bring meaningful improvement to commutes. The plan proposes $32 billion in spending over five years, but it is $15 billion short — the largest funding gap ever and a striking sign of the difference between what the system needs and what the authority can afford.

Andrew Cuomo has other priorities:

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has called the plan “bloated” and has not addressed the funding gap, instead publicly drawing attention to other infrastructure projects, including a new Tappan Zee Bridge and his proposal for an AirTrain to La Guardia Airport.

The Tappan Zee replacement is a project of legitimate importance and value. But an LGA Air Train? Even on its face, the idea that this would be more important than the basic subway system is absurd. Via Atrios, I see it’s worse than that: even on its own terms, the project is essentially useless:

As proposed, the project would do next to nothing to improve access to the airport. In fact, compared to existing transit services, most riders using the AirTrain would spend more time traveling to LaGuardia than they do now.

There is no hope that this AirTrain will “solve” the access to LaGuardia problem.

Yeah, that should really be a high priority.

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