In the meantime, another project–one which would serve a vastly greater number of (ostensibly less well-connected) city commuters seems to be languishing: the Second Avenue subway. It too costs many billions of dollars, but at least it serves a real purpose–to relieve the severely overcrowded Lexington Avenue line–and extends from 125th Street all the way down to the Wall Street area. Oh, and it’s been on the drawing board for eighty years. Which means that the next time you’re packed like a sardine on the 4/5 and it’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, you can console yourself with the fact that it was never meant to be this way.

Well, the good news is that this stupid line is about to run out of money due to the MTA’s perennial money shortage. At seven billion dollars to tunnel one mile, it’s easy to see why there’s no money. One can hope that in the meantime somebody else will come into power–someone not beholden to suburban commuter demands–and put a stop to this nonsense before it sucks in any more of our tax dollars.

It might sound like pie in the sky– but a new plan unveiled today would not only keep bus and subway fares down, it would eliminate them altogether. It’s an extreme congestion pricing plan that makes Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s look tame.

Not mentioned in the article–or anywhere that I’ve seen–is the cost savings that could be realized by eliminating the massive fare-collection apparatus required by the current system: token booth clerks, the computerized metro card system, card readers. One wonders whether the idea of eliminating fares might actually pay for itself, without the need for the draconian congestion pricing mentioned in the article (which doesn’t have a hope in hell of passing). Which leads to:

However worthy an idea, it seems unlikely New Yorkers will see free subways and buses anytime soon. It’s not even being considered by the Congestion Pricing Commission, which votes next week on a proposal to forward to lawmakers.

Of course no one will take the idea seriously. The Transit Workers Union would become apoplectic. They know that their salaries–like in almost any business–are the largest cost of running the system. And since the city sings to its tune, there’s no eliminating those jobs, let alone getting even modest cuts on the table.

Spitzer called on the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] to throw away a proposal that would have raised the price of those individual rides [from $2] to $2.25, and the MTA went along with him. It sounds like a small thing and is the opposite of that. It is a big thing Spitzer did, a big story of the city. This was the governor of the state acting like a true advocate for the city that grew him and grew his ambitions.

This flapdoodle goes on for about a dozen more paragraphs in the same vein. The problem? Almost nobody pays $2 to ride the subway or bus in New York City.

The MTA itself has stated on many occasions that something like 90% of all riders pay a discounted rate; the average fare is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.70. This is because anyone who puts at least ten dollars on a MetroCard gets a 20% discount. Also there is the popular monthly pass, good for unlimited rides at $76. The MTA has also stated that discount fares will go up regardless of whether the base fare of $2 is increased. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to whether the MTA will increase the price of a monthly pass more, now that the base fare stays $2? (Hint: they’ve already threatened it.)

In other words, the fight over a $2 fare (a fare paid only by tourists and by residents who occasionally get out of their cars, not by the “little people”) has been a completely meaningless waste of time. Nothing to see here, please move on.

Here is what your New York City tax dollars are getting for the long-planned, hardly-awaited extension of the 7 train to the west side:

The $2 billion project will result in one new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue. Plans for a station at 41st Street and Tenth Avenue have been dropped.

And of course we know that $2 billion dollars will likely become $4 billion dollars before all is said and done. Why the fuck are we building this again?!