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New York City Transit’s new president, Andy Byford, recently presented a major plan to fix the subways, called “Fast Forward,” which involves a massive sustained investment in upgrading and modernizing the subway system, combined with a spending speed-up by closing more subway lines on nights and weekends to get the work done more rapidly. Other…
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The Congress 2018 column I published in early April looked at how the Democrats and Republicans are doing in the race for Congress this fall through a question entitled the National Generic Congressional Ballot: Are you planning to vote Democrat or Republican for the House of Representatives this fall? The column compared the results of…
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The MTA received two significant infusions of new money in the State Budget adopted effective this April 1st. The first is a full $836 million to be provided to the MTA by December 31st of this year, to fund the Phase One Subway Action Plan developed last July by Chair Joseph Llota and the MTA…
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The flow of polling across the country about politics includes a question regularly asked of the electorate called the Generic Congressional Ballot. It simply asks how do you plan to vote in the upcoming 2018 election for the House of Representatives—Democrat or Republican? With seven months to go before the November election, this column looks…
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With the New York State budget deadline of April 1 fast approaching, the Assembly, Senate, and the Governor are now actively negotiating to adopt the budget on time. Despite the Governor’s Fix NYC Advisory Panel proposing a congestion pricing plan in January, Governor Cuomo never actually submitted legislation, either as part of the budget or…
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There is plenty of debate ongoing in Albany now about the pros and cons of congestion pricing-but little discussion yet about the purpose of creating such a large flow of money($1-1.5 billion a year), which logically must be a way to fund the next MTA Capital Plan. That plan is due out in the fall…
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Governor Cuomo’s “Fix NYC” Commission produced a framework for a congestion pricing plan, released just after the Governor’s Executive Budget for the 2018-19 Fiscal Year, whihc begins April 1. The congestion pricing framework outlines a three-year phase in that would provide revenue of $1 billion to $1.5 billion a year by 2020, most of which…
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Governor Cuomo described the Upstate New York economy as suffering from a “ bad fifty years “ as he tried to explain why it was hard to stimulate rapid growth in the region’s economy, which has grown far more slowly than the rest of the State and nation (See Gotham Gazette Opinion, Upstate New York…
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Responding to criticism that his administration’s efforts to help the economy in upstate New York have been ineffective, Governor Cuomo recently stated at a luncheon in Glens Falls, a small upstate city, ” It’s been a bad fifty years.” He added, ” You’re not going to turn it around in a couple of years. But…
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Summer 2017 saw a political breakthrough for mass transit riders when Governor Cuomo declared a “ Transit Emergency “ after the Harlem subway derailment, effectively acknowledging the State’s responsibility for addressing the deteriorating and delay-plagued subway, bus, and commuter rail system. Within a month, the MTA’s new Chair, Joe Llota, proposed an $836 million “…