Results tagged “federaltransitadministration”

The Federal Transit Administration has approved the first part of the Second Avenue subway, and the Post reports that it means the MTA can start using $1.3 billion (of the $5 billion it'll take to create the 63rd to 96th Streets part; $13 billion for an entire East Harlem to downtown Manhattan) for design and engineering. The quote the Post has from Representative Carolyn Maloney is "The wheels are turning on the Second Avenue subway project, that's for sure. This is another sign of the progress we're making," but Gothamist has to say the wheels are very, very slow - public hearings for the Second Avenue subway began back in 2003 (okay, we're impatient). We really doubt the 63rd-96th Street part will be done by 2012, as hoped, but what's cool is that the Q train will be connected to what we think may be the T line at 72nd, 86th and 96th Streets. In the end, the Second Avenue subway will be a good, if semi-Quoixotic experience - it'll make things like the 4/5 construction issues easier to bear, even if we'll be wearing orthopedic shoes by the time it's ready.

The MTA will be paying for the additional police presence in the subways, according to Mayor Bloomberg. Police overtime to put one police officer on every train is costing the city $1.9 million a week, and Bloomberg said, "Let me give some credit to the MTA. They're willing to do this. They have some money. The governor has pushed them," even though he hasn't been happy about the MTA's footdragging on spending security funds. During his weekly radio talk, Mayor Bloomberg also said he "couldn't disagree more" with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision to focus on securing airline travel. Many of our commenters have questioned our anger at Chertoff's remarks, and there were quite a few valid points, but Gothamist thinks that this quote from the NY Times' Sewell Chan's Week in Review piece (which is a helpful overview of mass transit security) sums it up:

The United States mass transit system also lacks the aviation system's built-in security: limited accessibility, a ticketing system that requires identification and a single governing agency, the Federal Aviation Administration. By contrast, the Federal Transit Administration has little say over security policies. That's left to the country's 6,000 mass transit agencies.

Of course, whether or not the cities want the feds meddling more is another issue, but federal funding would be critical. Newsday looks at transit security across the country in Chicago (security cameras on buses), San Francisco (no more garbage cans underground), DC (chemical sensors), and Atlanta (bombproof trash cans ever since the 1996 Olympics) - and how NYC compares. And the police are now patrolling Amtrak train cars as well. Isn't Amtrak federally funded? We hope there are some federal funds coming to pay for the security!