Just when I thought Cuomo couldn't stoop any lower...

[traininthedistance]

F**ker decides to pre-emptively shut down the MTA so he can appear "tough on weather" despite the agency not really wanting or needing a shutdown (it'd cost more to stow all those trains and cancel all those shifts", leading to the ghastly spectre of trains running with normal- empty- service inside stations barricaded off to riders.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/subway-running-blizzard.html

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And this in the wake of Cuomo deciding to, in his recent budget announcement:

* rob the MTA's operating budget to pay for debt service, with only vague promises of filling to back in from the General Fund (which of course he can and will revoke as soon as convenient)
* screw other state transit agencies even worse, so it's not like it's an NYC-only thing, the traditional cores Upstate are getting bent here too
* use the bank settlement windfall to mostly keep tolls down on the Thruway (and let's not forget about his Tappan Zee boondoggle), while of course subway riders are going to have bi-yearly fare hikes until the end of time, because apparently city dwellers are less fully human than suburbanites or something
* barely touch the MTA capital plan, which is pretty scary as far as procuring contracts goes, and keep in mind that this plan is VERY modest and deals with only the most bare-bones necessities like state of good repair and the desperately-need Phase 2 of the SAS...

I could go on and on all day.  It's clear that Cuomo wants nothing more than to stick a shiv into the beating heart of his state, to ignore the actual pressing needs of millions of New Yorkers, to pander to the extremities by depriving the core which not only is a full half the state population, but also simultaneously has the state's most needy while serving as the economic dynamo without which those extremities would be up sh*t's creek...

Anyway, you get the idea.  I could keep ranting on but let's call that enough for tonight.  Aaaaaargh. F**k Cuomo.  F**k him right in the eye.

[traininthedistance]

And, just to make clear: I could understand and forgive this sort of car-only thinking if Cuomo was the governor of a more rural state like Iowa or Mississippi.  (Well, I still wouldn't necessarily like it, my views being what they are, but I'd live with it. )  But one would think that even the city-phobic and transit-averse among us here could recognize that New York of all places is a different animal, and that Cuomo's priorities are perversely hostile to not just the needs of NYC, but really by any remotely fair accounting the needs of the state as a whole.

[traininthedistance]

I saw that. It seems pretty bad, yes, but I also read it was easier to keep some trains running than it was to send them all to the depots like they did during Sandy. Had they done that we'd have had delays for long after the ban was lifted. And I shudder to think of all the slipping and falling that would have happened had people taken the trains. (Another thing we need: platform screens).

Either way though it does come across as bluster for appearances' sake. I might be projecting, but by all indications the boom in project launches under Bloomie has ground to a halt in the past year (and no, I am not just blaming de Blasio). All while they raise fares again. For what? Perhaps the problem is that the "liberal" cause of mass transit requires "conservative" solutions.

Why is the New Tappan Zee Bridge a "boondoggle", though? The current bridge is falling apart.

I wouldn't go so far to say "conservative" solutions (certainly, in an American context, the conservative "solution" is endless sprawl for those who can and leave the city to burn because f**k liberals), but, y'know, "liberal" as opposed to "socialist" solutions I could buy.  Though your perception of Bloomy is a little skewed: the fares went up under him too; a lot of it is the random chance of project timing; even his stuff is coming in way over budget; and I do have a bone to pick with how he handled the 7 extension, trying to get a celebratory ride in long before revenue service happens and throwing the planned 10th Ave stop- which serves lots of real people in a very transit-starved neighborhood- under the bus to preserve the more speculative developer-windfall Hudson Yards stuff instead.

(Despite those nitpicks I will agree that Bloomy was uncommonly fantastic when it came to transit issues.)

As for the Tappan Zee, there's a whole lot of stuff- a) it's not really falling down, it's merely "functionally obsolete" rather than "structurally deficient" (the former designation really just means "crowded and old" and is not a quarter as dire as it sounds, unlike the latter which would be a problem); b) he's basically making it twice as large as it needs to be; c) he threw away months of planning process that called for dedicated transit facilities on and around it because supposedly "we couldn't afford it" never mind that it's being built way too big as-is; d) speaking of can't afford, he's trying to steal from the state clean water fund to pay for it, and e) basically all the independent audits have said it'll be a financial disaster that has no hope of ever paying for itself because setting tolls high enough to do so will lead to a "death spiral" of disuse; f) let alone setting tolls high enough he's basically put any hike off the table because who cares about externalities, or fiscal responsibility, or the future, or any of the other zillion things that the TZ construction money would be better used for.  All that matters is shiny photo-ops and pandering to spoiled motorists.

I mean, yeah.  At some point the Tappan Zee will have to be replaced.  But it needs to be replaced right, with dedicated transit lanes and a sustainable (i.e. not drastically increased) number of car lanes and a responsible funding source that doesn't steal from other important (and not-actually-related) programs and which is similarly, tolled at a responsible level. 

Cuomo's plan, as is?  Pure boondoggle.

[traininthedistance]

But as far as I can tell, the officials were acting on the best information they had.

The "best information they had" would have been to listen to the actual professionals at the MTA, who knew that shutting things down this far in advance (when trains and buses can in fact run in a fair amount of snow)  was unnecessary and even harmful.  Cuomo just decided to do it by fiat to look like a REEL LEADUR, without any input from other levels of government or experts within the agency itself.

[traininthedistance]

The "best information they had" would have been to listen to the actual professionals at the MTA, who knew that shutting things down this far in advance (when trains and buses can in fact run in a fair amount of snow)

But 2 feet? Even if you could get the buses running, someone still has to get there to drive it. I'm not talking about underground subway trains that run automatically. Although I imagine people still have to be there to oversee it? People that should probably be home if there's that much snow.

As far as the subways go... they don't care about snow!  Much of the system is underground, and most of the aboveground portions actively prefer to keep the trains running– not just because of the insane headache that is shutting down and starting up again– because that's the best way to clear snow off the tracks!  They would have shut down those tracks that are in depressed open cuts, but that's a very small portion of the system.

In point of fact, as far as the snow-clearing goes, SEPTA in Philly kept running trains overnight when they don't usually otherwise, for that exact reason.

The MTA knows this, because they are professionals that understand operations, so when the surprise dictum from Cuomo came down, remember that they kept the ghost trains running and keeping most of the system running would have been the right thing even had 2-3 feet of snow fallen.  I mean, the subways didn't shut down for the Blizzard of '96, as pointed out above.

But of course, Cuomo is above the degrading gruntwork of listening to people who know what they're talking about.

[traininthedistance]

Much of the system outside of Manhattan runs above ground (especially in Queens and the Bronx)

Take a look at my post directly above yours for an explanation why that isn't actually a good reason for this no-warning system shutdown, which the MTA neither wanted nor needed.

[traininthedistance]

Gratifying to hear that our Public Advocate, Tish James, gets it:

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I realize these sorts of things are mostly grandstanding, but sometimes it's what ya gotta do.

[traininthedistance]

BUMP

It occurs to me that maybe I conceded too much: there's a case to be made that you don't need to build a replacement at all! 

My practical side is undecided as to whether the idea to just not replace the TZB when it reaches the end of its life is, erm, a bridge too far in terms of short-term impacts (to say nothing of political backlash from folks who benefit from the perverse subsidies/don't have the imagination to see a better alternative).  But the Cap'n is absolutely right about the environmental, fiscal, and social costs of locking the region into continued car-dependency.  Any sane discussion would have had his point of view in the mix, pushing the Overton Window in a more sustainable direction.

Alas.

[traininthedistance]

BUMP

It occurs to me that maybe I conceded too much: there's a case to be made that you don't need to build a replacement at all! 

This is just too much for me to buy. Sorry.

It might be too much for me, too, at the end of the day– but it deserves a fair hearing, it deserves to be on the table.

[traininthedistance]

You're assuming he made a knee jerk political decision, but there may have been a lot of substantive thought that went into the decision concerning the public safety and what is best for the region as the whole. The MTA may know the best way to clear the snow from the tracks, but that's not the only consideration. In the end the system got back up and running and while it may have been a pain for them, it apparently was not a disaster or we would have heard something by now.

I don't assume that he pulled it out of his ass... I know for 100 percent sure.  The MTA has a standard operating procedure for winter storms, from Plan I up to Plan V.  They were all set to go with a Plan V:

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Plan V shuts down parts of the system, yes.  It does not shut down the entire system.  The idea that Cuomo's preening panic had more "substantive thought" in it than a carefully-prepared MTA action plan based on the experience of previous storms... utterly beggars belief.  (Also, as I keep mentioning and the Cuomo defenders keep forgetting, if there was any "substantive thought" that went into this plan, the MTA and de Blasio and other folks whose business it is to know and put into action this plan would have heard about it before the press conference, rather than be surprised and blindsided by it.)

As for the whole "shutting down all the roads and how will workers get there?" bit... remember that a lot of those subway workers would in fact take the subways home, so even if they needed to run on reduced staff they can still run.  But anyway that shutdown was a bad idea (for the whole region) and would have been even had we gotten those three feet.  Encourage people to stay home, sure.  Shut down nonessential services, of course.  But, like, you're still going to need ambulance drivers and police/fire and hospital workers and people who have gone into labor and... you get the picture.  A certain amount of essential service workers and emergencies will have to be on the roads and on the job no matter what, and, well, transit workers count as essential.

[traininthedistance]

Why does the fact that exurban commuters dislike removing the Tappan Zee make it a "pipe dream"? Traffic levels and patterns of development are largely dependent on the means of transportation that are available. We could just as plausibly say that spending at least $6 billion to construct another bridge spanning the widest portion of the Hudson River is a pipe dream.

Because those suburban (not exurban - the NYC exurbs don't start until you go further north) commuters are voters and they would vote out any politician who wants to tear down their way to get to their jobs and to New York City.  The commuting patterns and patterns of development are already there.  It's a non-starter.

The new bridge will be funded one way or another.  It's only a question of how.

Okay, the TZB is a $6 billion lifeline for Rockland County's 300K people.  That's ridiculously simplistic–how many people in Rockland actually need it for their commute, as opposed to just working anywhere on that side of the Hudson or somewhere sufficiently north/south where another bridge is just as good?  But let's roll with it for the sake of argument; perhaps there are a few people commuting from Westchester to Rockland so why not.  $6 billion for 300K people, that's $20,000 per person, okay.

It would only be fair, then, for the MTA to get $160 billion for their capital needs within New York City (many of which are objectively more urgent that a TZB replacement), going by that same formula of $20K for eight million of us.  Unless, of course, you think of city dwellers as less than fully human or something.