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Happy Surplus Tuesday!
New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
Feeling Better About Fare Increases
Last Remains of Old New York Being Outed: Crotchety Subway Workers
Bloomberg Promises Free Buses, To Be Driven By Magical Elves
Copycat Shoe-Hurler Terrorizes Transit Authority
Express Train To Douchebaggery
MTA Screwing You
Dear D.C.: Whatever, Our Rats are Better Than Yours
NYT Makes Comma Error Inside Semicolon Article

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AzureTexan
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
Yeah, but just as soon as the conformal coating system gets the scenester endorsement, here comes the anticonformal system, being all hip and ironic.
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OMG! Ponies!
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am sorry to bother you today. Unfortunately, I lost my job four months ago and, last week, my apartment was damaged when my neighbor's kitchen caught fire.

I am not looking for pity. Just a little change or even just something to eat. If you don't have it, I understand, cuz I don't have it either.

Thank you and God bless.
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Rozelle’s Bagman
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
I'd love a 600 lb. safe, but a bit useless without the combination
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RCrumbudgeon
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
Hey, NYC subway seats! Now I know what to get John Rocker for Christmas this year.
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BettyCrocker
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
A stanchion fo' yo mansion, dawg!
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misslinda
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
I don't care what fancy name they give them, you take a "stanchion pole" out of the subway and put it in your home and you've got yourself a stripper pole.
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The Real JR
11/24/09

In reply to Happy Surplus Tuesday!
I'm still in the midst of the bidding war for some bridge the Port Authority has been offering.
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
11/22/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
Everything you said about the misallocation of resources (more highways, less mass transit) is true for schools, too

Local funding of local transit and local schools with national funding of highways is a recipe for a big country filled with long roads driven by itinerant illiterates.
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Proofer3
11/21/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
Thank you for reminding me how much I love Griffin Dunne, and what an unappreciated film After Hours is.
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raincoaster
11/22/09

@Proofer3: You and me both. I wanted to live in that world when I was growing up and now, sadly, I do.
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badasscat
11/21/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
Fares are simply taxes—incredibly regressive taxes, just like the sales taxes that New York City residents suffer to fund our own transit while suburban New Yorkers bitch about the prospect of being charged to clog our streets with their cars

Yeah, and we do that because if you think subway fares are ridiculous, look at LIRR or Metro North fares once in a while. And then look up how fast they've risen over the past few years.

You guys in the city really don't know how good you've got it.

You think $100 a month is a lot to pay for a monthly ticket? Try doubling it. For traveling the same distance in the same amount of time. And how about a 23% increase over the last 3 years?

And you wonder why we want to drive?
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cassandra
11/22/09

@badasscat: seriously, the LIRR charges something like $8, one way, for destinations in the five boroughs - forget actual Long Island. How can anyone afford that on a daily basis?

Pareene, I thought you were totally wrong about Bloomberg (and you are). But you are absolutely correct about the MTA.
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garbanzo314
11/21/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
Can we also outsource all labor within the MTA to a non-union shop. The TWU has stood in the way of implementing new technology (they fought automated announcements in favor giving unintelligible conductors something to do), has made it impossible to fire workers for anything short of murder, and has hopefully featherbedded the system with way too much labor. And did we mention the sweetheart pension and benefit deals. In other municipal news, did anyone notice as part of the news about Bloomberg's city staff cuts that the benefits to salary ratio of city employees is 37% (in the private sector, it's less than 25% typically). Just goes to show that unions are bleeding the taxpayer dry.
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seekingwhat
11/20/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
I'm building an MTA bus depot in Staten Island right now. The stuff I could type here would probably get me fired but... OH MY GOD! THE WASTE!!!
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i'm a bottle
11/20/09

@seekingwhat: I can believe it.
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sensitivitycop
11/20/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
I lived in NYC for 18 year during the Abe Beame, Ed Koch, and David Dinkins years, and still visit NYC 4 times a year. When I do I rely heavily on the subway. Here is why you don't get federal money - because your public transit still runs better and more affordable than anywhere else in the country. I live in LA and my 45 minute commute in my 18 mpg car is still much cheaper, faster, more efficient and more flexible than public transportation - in fact it is much, much cheaper - even when gas was over $4 a gallon. Most politicians in DC comes to NYC a few times a year and they still marvel at how efficient your transit system operates compared to their own, no matter where they're from - and when they come to NYC, it's usually Manhattan and Manhattan is a delightfully easy place to get around in by train. So, maybe some serious, long-term service cuts in Manhattan would make what you feel more obvious to those of us whose systems really suck
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pollyannacowgirl
11/20/09

@sensitivitycop: It's true that our subway system is pretty amazing, all things considered. However, there's PLENTY of room for improvement.

And it's just plain mean that you would wish serious, long-term service cuts on us because your system sucks worse.
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sensitivitycop
11/20/09

@pollyannacowgirl: I don't really wish it on you - I have lots of friends there and I still visit often and I look forward to a rush hour laughing at all the fools in their cars and taxi's while I zip to my destination 30 feet below them. I was just making a point that it's gonna take something really drastic to get the feds attention. And while I agree that there is always room for improvement, my experience is that New Yorkers (myself included when I lived there) tend to view the world as if from inside a bubble and sometime fail to appreciate just how good they really have it. Trust me - try living in Los Angeles and you'll never complain about the MTA again. In terms of improvement, I would have chosen to bitch about the lack of underground cross-town and eastside options in Manhattan - a problem for at least 3 generations now. Wondering why the Feds don't pity a transit system that the rest of us think is pretty awesome just sounded kind of whiney.

#tips
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allyzay
11/20/09

@sensitivitycop: It doesn't strike me that the commentary regarding the federal transit funding has so much to do with specifically singling out the MTA for all of the overage but rather the unbalanced nature of the funding in general, favoring highways in the Bronx to mass transit options (as an example relevant to the MTA). They're not giving funds to these programs in general - which is a massive problem.
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
11/22/09

@sensitivitycop: In theory, Obama is a president who understands and cares about cities, but evidence of that has yet to become manifest
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
11/22/09

@allyzay: That's exactly right. In the same way that Wyoming, which has as many people as one NYC apartment building, gets 2 senators just like NY state, so the $$/per capita spent in nowhere places on highways, which support the endless recreation of sprawl upon sprawl upon sprawl, are like 100000000x what is spent on mass transit, even as federal tax dollars are taken from the smart productive places (ie cites) to subsidize the flat and empty stupid places

Organize and protest: Demand that cities get the benefits of their people's labor and that we stop sending federal tax dollars from the places where progressive people live and work to the places where the haterz dwell.
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OMG! Ponies!
11/20/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
$205 monthly LIRR pass plus $89 monthly Metrocard equals the reason I now drive.
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ErrolFinch
11/20/09

In reply to New York City Just Gives Up on Subway Service
This post made my day -- that's just how furious I am at the MTA (Most Terrible Assholes). I'm sure if I think hard enough I can come up with a less efficiently run enterprise, but I don't have the rest of my life to come up with it. Not only does my line NEVER run on a regular schedule/route on the weekends, for about the last 3 years, but now I have to be on my train before 10 p.m. or get stuck going home during the late-night service that is not supposed to start until midnight.

Oh, and stop hating on the workers because they have good benefits. You want good benefits, too? Join a union! Just not the UAW.
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garbanzo314
11/21/09

@ErrolFinch: I'm paying for these union benefits, and every dollar that goes into some sleeping token clerk's pension is a dollar not spent upgrading or extending the system. It's not like a lottery or found money -- this is not a victimless crime.

My tax dollars should fund government that efficiently provides quality services in a low cost manner. In a labor free market, if you don't treat your employees well, they go somewhere else. The level of benefits should be based on that, not a giveaway for political reasons. I never understand all these pro-union arguments, because in the end, someone has to pay and it's usually us.
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cassandra
11/22/09

@ErrolFinch: Oh, you mean these benefits? With the 80% claiming "disability" while golfing?

[www.nytimes.com]
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cassandra
11/22/09

@ErrolFinch: "Virtually every career LIRR employee — as many as 97 percent in one recent year — applies for and gets disability payments soon after retirement, a computer analysis of federal records by The New York Times has found. Since 2000, those records show, about a quarter of a billion dollars in federal disability money has gone to former L.I.R.R. employees, including about 2,000 who retired during that time. "
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