Because You Have To Pay For That Attitude & Incompetence

There is no other "organization" that baffles and infuriates me more in this city (well, perhaps my now ex-employer who I believe is running a ponzi scheme) than the MTA. Why did I get laid off while they refuse to dispose of the cretins that sit behind the bullet-proof glass reading a book ot sleeping, and have no idea why the L train isn't running today, or the people who speak muffled gibberish over the loudspeaker on the A?

Why is it so hard to make a train run smoothly? Every other major city can do it. Everywhere I have been in Europe has shocked me with its cleanliness, efficiency and mastering of the English language, why is it so hard for these idiots?

Now, instead of laying off these ex-cons, the rest of us unemployed have to pay an extra 25 cents (no fucking way we can afford the monthly passes) per ride so they can continue to take up space. Yes, it could have been worse, but just get rid of all of them. I can't even get on the 6 train going downtown-when it shows up-how are they in so much debt? Also, why would you cut back on cleaning crews when there is a swine flu pandemic?!

And this writer is almost as bitter as me, so please enjoy him:

From Dark Days to Merely Grim at M.T.A.

So it wasn’t doomsday, after all, only gloomsday.

Instead of fare increases in the 25 percent range and appalling service cuts that would have turned many riders into walkers — the so-called doomsday scenario — the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a less oppressive plan on Monday.

For the city’s mass-transit passengers, the basic fare will soon rise to $2.25 and not to $2.50, as previously feared. Subway and bus routes that were destined for oblivion are saved — for now.
In short, no doom. But there’s plenty of reason for gloom. There will, rest assured, be pain.

Fares and tolls may not skyrocket but they are nonetheless going up, and at a time when New Yorkers’ pockets are shallower than a Hollywood summer movie. A new fare-rescuing payroll tax will hurt many businesses, not to mention nonprofit organizations already operating on a shoestring. Trains are sure to become dirtier because cleaning crews are scheduled to shrink. And nobody can swear with fingers uncrossed that the worst is over.

If the powers in Albany patted themselves any harder on the back for the transit bailout that they agreed to last week, they might have needed orthopedic surgery. But there is no absolute assurance that further service cuts or fare increases will not be required next year or even sooner.

Moreover, Gov. David A. Paterson and the Legislature put off most of the heavy lifting needed to keep the transit system’s equipment from deteriorating to the sorry state it was in a few decades ago. Those tough decisions await the state’s elected officials as they are about to run for re-election.

Let’s have a show of hands. How many of you find Albany to be an avatar of courage in an election year? That’s what we thought.

Rather than own up to repeated failure by the state — and the city — to give the transit system the money it needs to stay on track, the politicians have resorted to a favorite blood sport: pummeling the transportation authority.

Goodness knows that the authority makes for an easy, and often deserving, target. But more than a few eyes rolled when Malcolm A. Smith, the State Senate majority leader, dragged out a few dreary chestnuts last week to deflect blame from the politicians and to lay it all on the authority. It is “bloated,” Mr. Smith said. It is “a black hole,” he said. It maintains two sets of books, he said, exhuming an old — and discredited — accusation that would have been grounds for prosecution if true.

Intimations of behavior that might be considered criminal are a hoot coming from someone who presides over an institution that has been subject to more indictments in recent years than the Gambino family.

Just over the weekend, State Senator Kevin S. Parker of Brooklyn was charged with assaulting a photographer and Efraín González Jr. of the Bronx, a long-serving senator until this year, pleaded guilty to federal charges of mail fraud...