New York City will charge drivers going downtown
My main concern as NYer is the governments inability to build transit, and not for lack of money.NY will find it relatively easy to institute a new tax on drivers, but will the billions collected actually make transit better in any tangible way?NYC is also hamstrung by having its streets controlled locally by our DOT, but our transit & bridges controlled by a state agency.We just caved (again) entirely to the transit unions in the last contract negotiation.  We have subway lines & trains wired up for 1 man operation but run them staffed with 2 due to union work rules.We have for years instead of building elevators, paid 3rd party access-a-ride minibus/van drivers to provide Uber-like service to anyone in need.We are planning to spend something like $3B/mile to expand a single train line a few stops further north.The MTA estimates they can put in platform doors like other developed world cities in only 1/3 of stations, at an average cost of $50M/station.We spent something close to $10B building an entire new terminal for LIRR underneath an existing Metro North terminal when there was enough capacity to serve both out of the existing station.  Bureaucratic squabbles between divisions of MTA serving LI & NY/CT were mitigated by spending $10B.  Oh and for the average LIRR rider, despite having 2 Manhattan terminals they can get a train to, the net service has actually been reduced in terms of trains per day.We basically need a modern era Robert Moses to consolidate NYC DOT/MTA/Port Authority and whatever other agencies and bring us into the modern era.