by nyceve
I live in New York City. Public transportation is the life blood of this teeming metropolis. Most people who live in New York don't own cars, we use public transportation for everything. Yet, we are approaching doomsday here, the MTA which runs our transit system has announced huge cuts due to a lack of funding. But New York’s Metropolitian Transportation Agency (MTA) faces a nearly $400 million budget shortfall this year after tax revenues plummeted in the recession. The agency’s debt load has more than doubled in the last decade, it was $13 billion in 2000. It now owes $30 billion in outstanding bonds, payable at interest rates of between two percent to five percent. Seeing the BP catastrophe destroy lives all along the Gulf Coast, and weeping over the graphic images which recount the tragic consequences of our addiction to oil, it is unfathomable that mass transit in New York City and many other great American cities struggles to survive.
continued at Daily Kos....
