{"id":3312,"date":"2008-04-03T08:57:29","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T13:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3312"},"modified":"2008-04-03T09:01:28","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T14:01:28","slug":"insert_fancy_new_program_her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/04\/insert_fancy_new_program_her.html","title":{"rendered":"[Insert Fancy New Program] Is The Most Powerful Policy Tool At The Hands Of City Officials To Improve [Insert Intractable Problem Here], And Protect Our Quality Of Life By Reducing [Insert Unwanted Behavior Here], Promoting [Insert Adverbally Positive Attribute Here], And Financing 21st Century Improvements To Our [Insert Vitally Important Infrastructure Here]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The fact is, <a href=\"http:\/\/ny.metro.us\/metro\/local\/article\/Put_that_way_354M_isnt_that_much_cash\/12156.html\">there are many ways to fritter away $354 million<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Champions of congestion pricing wonder why any politician would turn down $354 million. The feds have offered just that to implement Mayor Bloomberg&#8217;s traffic fee. <\/p>\n<p>But the city and the state already spend that kind of dough on projects that don&#8217;t seem as vital as mass transit. <\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve committed $403 million to the Yankee Stadium project, for example, and just one city program granted $409 million in property tax breaks last year to Midtown office towers like the MetLife Building and such fast-food outlets as McDonald&#8217;s. <\/p>\n<p>City workers have staged protests against a $410 million payroll system that uses biometric devices, including palm scanners. &#8220;They say it will reduce &#8216;buddy punching,'&#8221; said a union spokesman, &#8220;but we&#8217;ve not had one case of that in ten years.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While $354 million sounds like a huge amount of money, it will be almost gone before you start congestion pricing,&#8221; said Brooklyn Councilman Lewis Fidler. <\/p>\n<p>The MTA puts its necessary upgrades at $767 million. The tolling system would take $73 million, and the operating cost is $62 annually.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fact is, there are many ways to fritter away $354 million: Champions of congestion pricing wonder why any politician would turn down $354 million. The feds have offered just that to implement Mayor Bloomberg&#8217;s traffic fee. But the city and the state already spend that kind of dough on projects that don&#8217;t seem as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follow_the_money","category-things_that_make_you_go_oy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}