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MTA may lose funds because of court ruling
Perhaps this ruling will start to bring the MTA back to reality - it has a bloated management, and over paid, overstaffed and underworked staff.
The best way to cut costs is to eliminate all weekend service on the entire system and next stop running trains before 6 AM and after 8 PM. That will cut the costs right away and allow them to dump a lot of people. Of course it will tick off a lot of people but hey “tough luck” for those urban workers that rely on the trains to get around. At least start with eliminating all service to Nassau county and that should save a lot of money.
How about making the people who commute by road pay the real cost of their use??
Jeff, your outlandish comments need to be applied to the toll roads as well. The toll hogs who run them don’t give a *&@#^ about maintaining them, and are only looking to line their pockets at the taxpayers’ expense. The worst thing your home state of Illinois coild do now is build that greedway known as the Illliana Turnpike. Say goodbye to morre of your state’s farmlands and higher costs of goods sold since both Indiana and Illinois will force big trucks to be routed that way. Shippers will then wise up and put the freight on the rails instead to save money. Greedy land develoers will rely on building more caSINos along the greedway (toll roads) to increase traffic that way and promote more urban sprawl. CaSINos also bring more crime, and cities like Gary, IN along the proposed route don’t need any more of that than what they already have. Cintra, the private company leasing the Indiana Turnpike and Chicago Skyway got so greedy by insisting that emergency service vehicles pay tolls as well when answering emergency calls,a dn the skyway is in no better shape now than it was when it was first leased out, in fact, even worse.
If you’ve followed other recent articles on the MTA, they are rife with corruption, and the employees and supervisors receive almost-incredible salaries, gold-plated healthcare and can retire at age 55 with a full pension.
Over 8,000 of them made over $100,000 last year, including a conductor paid $239,000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/nyregion/03mta.html)
It needs to be said: pigs at the trough.
Fire some fat cats, outlaw the unions, and jail the crooked doctors and lawyers. Everything will be cool.
Increase payroll taxes. Then wonder why businesses and people are leaving New York and the transportation system is going under. Only a left wing nut progressive can’t figure this one out.
Here’s an idea. How about charging ticket prices that reflect the cost of operating and maintaining the trains and track.
Oh yes. Outlaw the unions. They’re the ones who caused all the problems. In the mean time, as you enjoy labor day at the beach, backyard, pool. bbq, weekends off, the forty hour work week and work and safety conditions and other things that we enjoy today, you should thank the unions. As for the tax situations, lets get real. All forms of transportation is subsidized by taxes. If people had to pay the real prices, people would be screaming their heads off! As people are slowly realizing that we do need government to do the big stuff such as running the railroads.