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0 pointsbogomipz8y ago0 comments

>"There are people that never fly on airplanes but still vote for Federal officials who manage the FAA. There are people in NYC who vote for Federal officials that administer cattle grazing. So what?"

Yes exactly those people vote in those instances. The key word being vote - i.e they have a say and can research the candidate before casting a ballot. The context here is positions where people CAN'T vote because those MTA board positions are political appointees. Ir'a apples and oranges. Your comparison makes no sense.

>"Or stuff like how they didn't bother to connect the 4/5/6 line to the PATH system during WTC reconstruction despite the fact that they are compatible"

Except you are wrong those are actually connected via the Dey Street Concourse. See:

https://www.metro.us/new-york/mta-to-open-passage-connecting...

>"The idea that separating LIRR from Metro North from the Subway and creating yet another set of competing bureaucracies is going to somehow help things is delusional, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how NYC area politics works."

No its quite simple, if infrastructure passes through multiple counties its under the purview of a state agency. I its infrastructure that falls within a single county or just the 5 boroughs then it should be a city specific agency.

Lastly I have actually worked in NYC politics so I'm pretty sure I have a firm grasp of how NYC politics works.

It's interesting that you choose to make statements like that without knowing anything about a person's professional background. So an opinion contrary to your own constitutes delusion and indicates that someone misunderstand how things work? Is that correct? That seems like a pretty fool-proof prescription for an echo chamber.

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CPLX8y ago

> Yes exactly those people vote in those instances. The key word being vote - i.e they have a say and can research the candidate before casting a ballot. The context here is positions where people CAN'T vote because those MTA board positions are political appointees. Ir'a apples and oranges. Your comparison makes no sense.

That's flatly untrue. People don't vote for FAA administrators or USDA policymakers, they vote for representatives who pick civil service people and so on. The MTA governance isn't strange or unusual, that's my point.

> Except you are wrong those are actually connected via the Dey Street Concourse.

Well yes, the lines are connected if you get out of the train and walk. By that definition all transit lines in the country are connected.

But we could have had a subway that runs from Grand Central to Newark: https://newyorkyimby.com/2014/09/the-port-authoritys-missed-...

I mean in Europe they can figure out how to run fast trains through three countries in an hour or two. But I have to transfer three times to get to the airport. Our way of doing this sucks.

> No its quite simple, if infrastructure passes through multiple counties its under the purview of a state agency. I its infrastructure that falls within a single county or just the 5 boroughs then it should be a city specific agency.

But.... what if you don't want the infrastructure to just fall within a single jurisdiction. That's the entire point I'm making. I want transportation infrastructure to be planned out and integrated on a larger scale. I want to consolidate the various agencies. Having MTA and PA and Amtrak and NYC DOT and NYS DOT and NJ DOT and so on makes for insane schizophrenic policy. Your idea that the subways and regional rails should be split into separate agencies makes that worse not better.

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