Editorial: Save Mass Transit Riders
In today’s print edition of the New York Daily News, an editorial urged lawmakers to protect mass transit riders from disastrous fare hikes & service cuts. Lets take a look at a sample of the editorial:
Confronting the certainty of astronomical fare hikes and disastrous transit cuts, city lawmakers must act in the interests of the millions of people who ride the subways, buses and commuter lines every day.
This should be a no-brainer. There should not be a moment’s doubt that the Legislature will provide the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with the funding necessary to maintain and expand service while minimizing the hit on riders’ wallets.
But it is far from certain Albany will come through for the huge population that relies on mass transportation because so many politicians dread asking a far tinier number of drivers to pay their fair share.
There are two components to the rescue-the-riders plan that is being bruited about behind closed doors in the capital.
To this point, no one has advanced better, workable ideas for raising enough money to prevent the city’s lifeblood from deteriorating. Barring a flash of genius, tolls are unavoidable under these dire circumstances.
Lawmakers must summon the courage to do right for mass transit-using constituents – who every day make 8 million trips on subways, buses and trains, a number that dwarfs the 100,000 vehicles crossing the bridges.
Click here for the complete editorial.
As one would expect, most of the responses left for the editorial are beyond ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I do not agree with a lot of the Ravitch Commission’s proposals. However I know for the better of our transit infrastructure & system, we need some if not all of those proposals to go through. So even though most of the ideas are poorly thought out (mainly the corporate tax), the positives that they would bring have to trump the negatives for the greater good.
xoxo Transit Blogger
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