EDITORIAL : SNEAKY BUSINESS AS USUAL; MTA'S SECRET MONEY SHUFFLE ON RAIL IS A GROSS INSULT.AFTER years of spending more than it can afford on subway subway: see rapid transit. subway Underground railway system used to transport passengers within urban and suburban areas. The first subway line, 3. and other rail projects, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is finding it awfully hard to kick the habit. Even though the MTA (1) (Message Transfer Agent or Mail Transfer Agent) The store and forward part of a messaging system. See messaging system. (2) See M Technology Association. 1. (messaging) MTA - Message Transfer Agent. has been told point blank that it's going to run out of money for essential services in just a few years unless it stops additional rail projects, the agency's staff members aren't ready to go cold turkey just yet. As the Daily News reported Friday, a confidential memo revealed that the out-of-control agency is trying to juggle the books to keep its rail projects alive. The MTA staff has been secretly doing that even though the MTA board - if it does the reasonable thing - will officially impose a moratorium A suspension of activity or an authorized period of delay or waiting. A moratorium is sometimes agreed upon by the interested parties, or it may be authorized or imposed by operation of law. as early as this week on all new rail projects. The insiders are trying to set aside hundreds of millions of state transportation dollars for rail, which is money that should be spent in other areas - for more buses, expanded bus service, freeway improvements, sound walls and signal synchronization (1) See synchronous and synchronous transmission. (2) Ensuring that two sets of data are always the same. See data synchronization. (3) Keeping time-of-day clocks in two devices set to the same time. See NTP. to get traffic flowing more smoothly. Under the MTA plan, only $483 million will be available to pay for $2.6 billion in unmet un·met adj. Not satisfied or fulfilled: unmet demands. transportation needs. Instead of these worthwhile projects, which would benefit millions of people daily, the bureaucrats are rushing to please their political masters by favoring favoring an animal is said to be favoring a leg when it avoids putting all of its weight on the limb. A part of being lame in a limb. rail lines that won't be built for decades if ever and which will benefit only a few thousand passengers. They're shortchanging millions to benefit a select few. Sad but true. That's the tradition of the MTA's rail fantasies, which have benefited a generation of self-serving politicians and construction, design and planning firms that have gotten rich on the public dole while doing virtually nothing to help the millions who ride MTA buses every day and the additional millions who commute TO COMMUTE. To substitute one punishment in the place of another. For example, if a man be sentenced to be hung, the executive may, in some states, commute his punishment to that of imprisonment. on the freeways daily. As it turns out, this latest development is just more sneaky business as usual. Now is the time for MTA board members to show some backbone and halt the foolishness. For a change, it would be nice to see board members serve the public instead of themselves. Stop new rail. Stop sneaking around trying to finance it. Now. |
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