Rupture...

Manhattan needs its people back. But do the people need Manhattan? COVID-19 may not be a pause, as Gov. Cuomo puts it, but a rupture  one that has vast implications for New York.

For half a century, New York’s growth policy,  has been as follows:

Step one: Build up a dense corporate office hub centered around 150 blocks of Midtown Manhattan. 

Step two: Improve transit, so that you can move these millions of commuters onto the island of Manhattan every day in crowded metal tubes, and then, at the end of the day, move them back out.

Moving people back and forth from Westchester, Long Island and New Jersey during the day. Manhattanites who no longer walked to work from tenements to the docks or the Garment District could take the subway to new jobs in restaurants, retail, cleaning  serving a huge office market.

Yet this system was in peril even before the outbreak. Subways and commuter lines were beyond capacity at peak hours, and even off-peak. Developers had overbuilt, thanks to cheap global money and the politicians hunger for collecting taxes.

So when Covid 19 hit, New York City became death trap.  Just a thought.

Andy...

Andy Byford, the popular former boss of New York City’s subways and buses, will take the helm of London’s transit agency, the city’s Mayor Sadik Khan announced Wednesday.

“I look forward to working with Andy as we build a greener city with clean and environmentally-friendly travel, including walking and cycling, at the heart of its recovery,” Khan said in a statement.

Byford, 54, who previously ran the transit system in Toronto, began his career in 1989 as a station foreman in London’s subway system.

He left the NYC MTA in February after just two years, during which he clashed with Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In his dramatic exit, Byford said Cuomo made his job “intolerable” and “yelled” at transit staff behind his back.

The cheery Brit was also known for taking public transit to work with his nametag on, and a cult of personality developed around him — with fans dubbing him “Train Daddy” and designing stickers with his face in front of a subway car.

Failed...

Whether there was a specific timeline for the next phase of reopening, the governor of the Empire State had a surprisingly candid response.

“Now, people can speculate. People can guess. “I’m out of that business because we all failed at that business. Right? All the early national experts. Here’s my projection model.  They were all wrong. They were all wrong.”

Cuomo continued: “There are a lot of variables. I understand that. We didn’t know what the social distancing would actually amount to. I get it, but we were all wrong. So, I’m sort of out of the guessing business, right?”

The state has reported over 362,000 Covid-19 cases and over 29,000 deaths from the highly contagious virus.

Now is the time to blame all this failure on everybody else. Is not only me, look at the experts.

The governor earlier rejected the experts in remodeling La Guardia air port since he new it all.

Just a thought

Mumble...

Tsunami...

Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Sunday warned that key employees -- including health care workers, firefighters, police officers and teachers -- could be laid off if the state does not receive additional funding from the federal government.

The Democrat  have called for additional federal assistance while the White House is reluctant to provide additional funds to states. On Friday, Murphy announced the state is estimated to have a revenue loss of $10 billion.

Governor Cuomo’s budget office is due to release an updated financial report, and the numbers are grim. Cuomo says the pandemic and the resulting “economic tsunami” caused by stay at home orders has meant a 14% drop in state revenues to $13.3 billion dollars, which is projected to total $61 billion dollars over the next four years.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Sunday said " there should be a data analysis on state budget shortfalls and that some state's requests are "radically more money than the expected shortfall for the year."

Rotten...

Mask...

Please wear it. WE don't have any remedy but the mask and the Social Distancing.

Sold out...

Livelihood...

Yearning...

With a budget of 182 Billion Dollars annually, and three months warning, the State of New York got caught completely unprepared. Needed equipment, beds, ventilators, face masks, and other needed protective items were not available. The front line healthcare workers faced these disastrously condition by themselves.

New York has the largest number of death of Covid 19 virus compared to other States of the Union by 10 to 15 folds. Nursing homes  also been devastated.

The Covid 19 virus exposed the way the State and the City are run. Tax and Tax some more, to waste spend and waste some more. The State just approved Congestion Pricing, taxing whoever needs to drive to work in Manhattan.