BusTalk

[Mr. Linsky]

The New York Times - April 7th. 2011


A late infusion of cash from Albany has postponed the plan of the Nassau County executive, Edward Mangano, to cripple his county’s bus service, but only until the end of the year.

The State Senate came up with an $8.6 million bailout for Long Island Bus. That will allow the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the system, to put off cuts on more than half of the system’s 48 routes. At least 16,000 riders would have lost service, and 200 disabled riders would have lost their paratransit service. All bets are off in January because the system still faces a financing shortfall that Mr. Mangano doesn’t want to fill.

The transportation authority and Nassau County have long squabbled over financing for this essential service. Last year the county contributed $9.1 million of Long Island Bus’s $134 million operating budget. The transportation authority, which has long subsidized the money-losing bus system, wanted Nassau to kick in $24 million more to close a chronic $33 million shortfall. (It said the county has avoided paying its fair share for its own bus system the way Suffolk and Westchester Counties do. Westchester, whose bus system is as big as Nassau’s, paid almost $33 million last year for its buses.)

Mr. Mangano is going in the opposite direction. He wants to cut the county’s contribution to $4.1 million, sever Long Island Bus from the transportation authority and hand it over to a private operator. Buses limit traffic congestion and keep the economy moving. They are a means of survival for thousands of riders. Instead of protecting that vital service, Mr. Mangano says a privatized system would run better for significantly less money. That’s ludicrous, as anyone will tell you who remembers the 1970s, when the failures of Nassau’s jumble of badly run private bus lines prompted the state to rescue the system.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York

[HwyHaulier]

Mr 'L' -

Doubtless this was an "OP-ED" piece, or at the least, "LETTER TO THE EDITOR"?

Choices of language a tad charged for an objective report? (I thought NYT Style Manual dealt with all that!)

......................Vern...................

[Mr. Linsky]

H.H.,

Yes, it was an op-ed piece and with a slant that once would have been unheard of from the 'journalists' at the New York Times (my bible).

The slogan is no longer 'All the news that's fit to print' - it's more like 'All the news that fits the print!'

Colorizing wasn't enough of an insult! they now accept photos of the dead in death notices ala the Dumptruck Iowa Gazette (don't confuse death notices with obituaries - death notices are nothing more than paid family announcements whereas obituaries are news driven stories about those who have made important contributions to society and are usually accompanied by a photo).

I'll tell you though that if the New York Times didn't have such a fabulous Science Section on Tuesdays I'd probably have already canceled my subscription long ago.

Regards,

Mr. 'L'