MTA pitches $65.4 billion capital plan to save mass transit in DYING black ruined NYC

[Adams Follies]

The MTA on Wednesday released an ambitious $65.4 billion plan to keep New York’s mass transit system from falling into disrepair — but agency officials said they still need Gov. Kathy Hochul and other lawmakers to find new money to cover more than half of its cost.

The proposed capital plan, which would run from 2025 to 2029, doesn’t center on new rail lines, but instead on work to simply keep the city’s creaky subway and bus systems up and running.

“There are assets within this system that are in real danger of failure,” Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s president of construction and development, said at a press briefing Tuesday.

Both the plan's release and the MTA's dire warning come as Hochul’s order to halt congestion pricing in June leaves a $16.5 billion funding hole in the agency’s current capital plan, which runs from 2020 to 2024. The money from the proposed Manhattan tolls were required by law to finance mass transit upgrades, and the governor has not announced how she plans to replace the money.

The MTA said it's identified some funding sources for its next capital plan, like federal subsidies and bonds. But the agency’s Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens on Tuesday said the plan has a funding shortfall of at least $33 billion. That means Hochul and state lawmakers have to find upwards of $48 billion for the MTA when they return to Albany next year, or else the agency will have to scale back its work.

“We take them at their word that they will be addressing that funding in one way or another at the appropriate time,” said Torres-Springer. “[Legislative leaders] have also been clear and the governor has also been clear their intention to fully fund the MTA's capital needs in the next five-year plan.”

Torres-Springer noted about a quarter of the agency’s 8,000 train cars are “beyond their useful life” and train breakdowns are “one of the things that cause those cascading delays that cause a significant issue.”

She said she hopes to spend $10.9 billion on new trains, the top expenditure in the plan. That would buy 1,500 modern subway cars to replace some of the fleet's oldest cars, which date back to the 1980s. Officials said old cars run about 40,000 miles before breaking down, compared to the MTA’s newest A trains, the R211s, which can run 200,000 miles before having an issue.

What's inside the MTA's new capital plan
$10.9 billion for 2,000 new train cars

$7.1 billion new accessibility work, including elevators and ramps for at least 60 subway stations

$1.1 billion for fare evasion-proof subway gates

$5.4 billion to modernize aging subway signals

$2.75 billion to advance work on the Interborough Express light rail line

$7.8 billion to fix crumbling stations

$9 billion to repair dilapidated elevated tracks and tunnels

$4 billion to upgrade the MTA’s aging electrical systems

The MTA also plans to order 500 new commuter railroad train cars to replace the ones brought back into service at the recently opened Grand Central Madison terminal, which are 40 years old and have seats that are held together by duct tape.

While the agency earlier this summer stopped work on adding elevators to 23 subway stations due to Hochul’s congestion pricing pause, the agency plans to make accessibility upgrades to at least 60 more subway stations through the new plan.

If all of those projects are completed, half of the city’s subway stations would be accessible. That would help keep the agency on track to meet its legal requirement of making 95% of the system accessible by 2055.

The plan also focuses on much upgrading less visible parts of the subway, like its aging electric system. It also aims to repair crumbling roofs at the MTA's train depots, where subway cars are maintained.

One project included in the plan that would be highly visible to the public is a pitch to spend $1.1 billion on new fare gates, which would be rolled out at 150 of the city’s 472 subway stations. MTA planning documents note the new gates would “reduce fare evasion and improve accessibility.” MTA renderings show new gates with tall glass doors and no device for swiping a MetroCard — only an OMNY reader.

The documents note the agency loses $300 million a year to subway fare evasion, and that half of the people who enter without paying use the exit gate. It’s not clear how new fare gates will address this.

The plan for the new fare gates comes days after police officers opened fire on an alleged fare beater in Brooklyn, injuring bystanders and another officer.

One of Hochul’s pet projects, the Interborough Express line that would connect Brooklyn and Queens via a light rail running on mostly existing tracks, would get $2.75 billion through the plan. Officials said that would cover about half the project's cost and would allow it to fully design the Interborough Express and complete the necessary environmental reviews needed to begin construction.

The MTA also plans to upgrade subway signal systems — which are nearly a century old in some places — on stretches of the N, Q, R, W and J lines — as well as the elevated lines in Rockaway. The signal work would also address two Brooklyn subway bottlenecks in Crown Heights and the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, officials said.

Still, the MTA can’t move ahead with roughly half the projects in the plan until lawmakers come through with the $33 billion the agency's leaders have asked for.

“We will review the MTA’s proposal for the upcoming five-year capital plan and fight to secure as much funding as possible,” Hochul said in a statement. “That includes pressuring Washington to deliver additional infrastructure dollars and working with our partners in the Legislature and City Hall to determine priorities and capacity during the upcoming budget negotiations.”

https://gothamist.com/news/mta-pitches-654-billion-capital-plan-to-save-mass-transit-in-nyc

[Orpheus]

Post by Adams Follies
eleased

Trump gets shuttled around in limos

[Kore]

Yo

They say Putin has AIDS from being assfucked by an African man.

[pothead]

The MTA on Wednesday released an ambitious $65.4 billion plan to keep New York’s mass transit system from falling into disrepair — but agency officials said they still need Gov. Kathy Hochul and other lawmakers to find new money to cover more than half of its cost.
The proposed capital plan, which would run from 2025 to 2029, doesn’t center on new rail lines, but instead on work to simply keep the city’s creaky subway and bus systems up and running.
“There are assets within this system that are in real danger of failure,” Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA’s president of construction and development, said at a press briefing Tuesday.
Both the plan's release and the MTA's dire warning come as Hochul’s order to halt congestion pricing in June leaves a $16.5 billion funding hole in the agency’s current capital plan, which runs from 2020 to 2024. The money from the proposed Manhattan tolls were required by law to finance mass transit upgrades, and the governor has not announced how she plans to replace the money.
The MTA said it's identified some funding sources for its next capital plan, like federal subsidies and bonds. But the agency’s Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens on Tuesday said the plan has a funding shortfall of at least $33 billion. That means Hochul and state lawmakers have to find upwards of $48 billion for the MTA when they return to Albany next year, or else the agency will have to scale back its work.
“We take them at their word that they will be addressing that funding in one way or another at the appropriate time,” said Torres-Springer. “[Legislative leaders] have also been clear and the governor has also been clear their intention to fully fund the MTA's capital needs in the next five-year plan.”
Torres-Springer noted about a quarter of the agency’s 8,000 train cars are “beyond their useful life” and train breakdowns are “one of the things that cause those cascading delays that cause a significant issue.”
She said she hopes to spend $10.9 billion on new trains, the top expenditure in the plan. That would buy 1,500 modern subway cars to replace some of the fleet's oldest cars, which date back to the 1980s. Officials said old cars run about 40,000 miles before breaking down, compared to the MTA’s newest A trains, the R211s, which can run 200,000 miles before having an issue.
What's inside the MTA's new capital plan
$10.9 billion for 2,000 new train cars
$7.1 billion new accessibility work, including elevators and ramps for at least 60 subway stations
$1.1 billion for fare evasion-proof subway gates
$5.4 billion to modernize aging subway signals
$2.75 billion to advance work on the Interborough Express light rail line
$7.8 billion to fix crumbling stations
$9 billion to repair dilapidated elevated tracks and tunnels
$4 billion to upgrade the MTA’s aging electrical systems
The MTA also plans to order 500 new commuter railroad train cars to replace the ones brought back into service at the recently opened Grand Central Madison terminal, which are 40 years old and have seats that are held together by duct tape.
While the agency earlier this summer stopped work on adding elevators to 23 subway stations due to Hochul’s congestion pricing pause, the agency plans to make accessibility upgrades to at least 60 more subway stations through the new plan.
If all of those projects are completed, half of the city’s subway stations would be accessible. That would help keep the agency on track to meet its legal requirement of making 95% of the system accessible by 2055.
The plan also focuses on much upgrading less visible parts of the subway, like its aging electric system. It also aims to repair crumbling roofs at the MTA's train depots, where subway cars are maintained.
One project included in the plan that would be highly visible to the public is a pitch to spend $1.1 billion on new fare gates, which would be rolled out at 150 of the city’s 472 subway stations. MTA planning documents note the new gates would “reduce fare evasion and improve accessibility.” MTA renderings show new gates with tall glass doors and no device for swiping a MetroCard — only an OMNY reader.
The documents note the agency loses $300 million a year to subway fare evasion, and that half of the people who enter without paying use the exit gate. It’s not clear how new fare gates will address this.
The plan for the new fare gates comes days after police officers opened fire on an alleged fare beater in Brooklyn, injuring bystanders and another officer.
One of Hochul’s pet projects, the Interborough Express line that would connect Brooklyn and Queens via a light rail running on mostly existing tracks, would get $2.75 billion through the plan. Officials said that would cover about half the project's cost and would allow it to fully design the Interborough Express and complete the necessary environmental reviews needed to begin construction.
The MTA also plans to upgrade subway signal systems — which are nearly a century old in some places — on stretches of the N, Q, R, W and J lines — as well as the elevated lines in Rockaway. The signal work would also address two Brooklyn subway bottlenecks in Crown Heights and the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, officials said.
Still, the MTA can’t move ahead with roughly half the projects in the plan until lawmakers come through with the $33 billion the agency's leaders have asked for.
“We will review the MTA’s proposal for the upcoming five-year capital plan and fight to secure as much funding as possible,” Hochul said in a statement. “That includes pressuring Washington to deliver additional infrastructure dollars and working with our partners in the Legislature and City Hall to determine priorities and capacity during the upcoming budget negotiations.”
https://gothamist.com/news/mta-pitches-654-billion-capital-plan-to-save-mass-transit-in-nyc

Add 20 years to that timeline and maybe, just maybe, it will be completed.
I wouldn't count on it though.

[Wallace McKinley]

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs is staying locked up after a judge Wednesday rejected the hip-hop mogul’s proposal that he await his sex trafficking trial in the luxury of his Florida mansion instead of a grim Brooklyn federal jail.

U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter ruled that Combs’ plan — which included a $50 million bail offer, GPS monitoring and strict limitations on visitors — was “insufficient” to ensure the safety of the community and the integrity of his case.

Carter, agreeing with prosecutors who fought to keep Combs in jail, found that “no condition or set of conditions” governing his release could guard against the risk of him threatening or harming witnesses — a central charge in his case.

Combs’ lawyers were making their second attempt in as many days to spring him from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been held since pleading not guilty Tuesday to charges he physically and sexually abused women for years.

Combs has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday night at a Manhattan hotel. A federal magistrate on Tuesday rejected Combs’ initial bail request. On Wednesday, he and his lawyers struck out with Carter, the judge who will preside over his trial.

Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo says he will now ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Carter’s ruling and release Combs. In the meantime, he wants Combs moved from the Brooklyn lockup, which has been plagued by rampant violence and horrific conditions, to a jail in New Jersey. Carter said decisions on placement are entirely up to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

“I’m not going to let him sit in that jail a day longer than he has to,” Agnifilo said to reporters outside the courtroom.

Combs looked at family members and tapped his heart several times as Wednesday’s hearing began, then sat stoically as he listened to arguments. Afterward, as federal agents led him away, his relatives somberly embraced and exchanged hand slaps.

Combs, 54, is accused in an indictment of using his “power and prestige” to induce female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” that Combs arranged, participated in and often recorded on video. The events would sometimes last days and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover, the indictment said.

The indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women for years, with the help of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.

Arguing to keep Combs in jail, prosecutor Emily Johnson told Carter that the once-celebrated rapper has a long history of intimidating both accusers and witnesses to his alleged abuse. She cited text messages from women who said Combs forced them into “Freak Offs” and then threatened to leak videos of them engaging in sex acts.

Johnson said Combs’ defense team was “minimizing and horrifically understating” Combs’ propensity for violence, taking issue with his lawyer’s portrayal of a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles hotel as a lovers’ quarrel. Security video of the event, which only came to light in May, showed Combs hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway.

“What’s love got to do with that?” an incredulous Carter asked.

Johnson also seized on a text message from a woman who said Combs dragged her down a hallway by her hair. According to Johnson, the woman told the rapper: “I’m not a rag doll, I’m someone’s child.”

“There is a longstanding pattern of abuse here,” Johnson said.

Combs’ Florida house is on Star Island, a man-made dollop of land in Biscayne Bay near Miami Beach, reachable only by a causeway or boat. It is among the most expensive places to live in the United States. Combs’ request echoed that of a long line of wealthy defendants who have offered to post multimillion-dollar bails in exchange for home detention in luxurious surroundings.

If he had been granted bail, Combs would have been confined to his home, with visits restricted to family, property caretakers and friends who are not considered co-conspirators, his lawyers said. After prosecutors said they served a search warrant Tuesday on Combs’ private security chief, his lawyers offered to hire a new firm to monitor him and ensure he abided by the proposed agreement.

Carter was unmoved, questioning the plan as an “allegedly fool-proof system.”

Many allegations in Combs’ indictment parallel accusations in a November lawsuit filed by Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura. Combs settled the suit the next day, but its allegations have followed him since.

The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Ventura did.

Without naming Ventura but clearly referring to her, Agnifilo argued that the entire criminal case is an outgrowth of one long-term, troubled-but-consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. The “Freak Offs,” he contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.

“The sex and the violence were totally separate and motivated by totally different things,” Agnifilo said, contending that Combs and Cassie brought sex workers into their relationship because “that was the way these two adults chose to be intimate.”

Prosecutors portrayed the scope as larger. They said they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses.

Like many aging hip-hop figures, Bad Boy Records founder Combs had established a gentler public image. The father of seven was a respected businessman whose annual Hamptons “White Party” was once a must-have invitation for the jet-setting elite.

But prosecutors said he facilitated his crimes using the same companies, people and methods that vaulted him to power. They said they would prove the charges with financial and travel records, electronic communications and videos of the “Freak Offs.”

In March, authorities raided Combs’ Los Angeles and Florida homes, seizing drugs, videos and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, prosecutors said. They said agents also seized guns and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers.

A conviction on every charge would require a mandatory 15 years in prison with the possibility of a life sentence.

___
This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Cassie’s legal first name: Casandra, not Cassandra.

https://apnews.com/article/diddy-baby-oil-sean-combs-indictment-unsealed-b60db3252403f2bfbe24c54b34f0cfdb