Though We Wouldn’t Need A Faster M42 If We Could Just Have Coca-Cola In The Fountain At Bryant Park

Mayor Bloomberg’s full of ideas about shit he can’t control. In that sense he’s just like every other person striving for elected office. Wow, maybe that means he’s just a Regular Joe — you know, someone you could call “Mike” and have a beer with. Howard Wolfson is a genius:

It was billed as the first major proposal in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s quest for a third term in office. But in the chronicles of city elections, Mr. Bloomberg’s choice of topic on Monday was an odd one because it involved a sweeping overhaul of mass transit, an area over which the mayor has very little say.

In a 33-point proposal spanning subways, buses, roads, ferries and other parts of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the mayor appeared to be trying to assert a greater role for the city in mass transit even though the authority is a state entity.

. . .

But the gap between Mr. Bloomberg’s ambitious plan and actually putting it in place is wide: Unlike the Police Department and the school system, the transportation authority is subject to scant influence by the mayor, who controls only 4 of 17 votes on the authority’s board.

Still, Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal quickly became fodder for widespread discussion, debate and criticism, especially his idea for dealing with Manhattan’s notoriously slow crosstown buses, like the M34, M42 and M50.

Those lines move at such a snail’s pace that the transit agency should stop collecting fares on them so that the buses can load riders and take off more quickly, Mr. Bloomberg said.