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February 2, 2009
MTA Chief Insists: Answer Is in Albany
Speaks to Chamber of Commerce at City Tech
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
by Raanan Geberer
Compared with last week’s tempestuous MTA public hearing in Brooklyn, Monday’s Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce forum featuring Elliott Sander, executive director/CEO of the MTA, was a sedate, polite affair.
The forum, hosted by New York City College of Technology (City Tech), was also sponsored by the Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and Bronx chambers of commerce. And Sander, using a PowerPoint display, unveiled some information about the agency’s last-ditch cutback plans that hadn’t been well publicized.
...Another asked about whether public-private partnerships could be used to help fund subway, rail and bus operations. Sander replied that with mass transit, the only cases where this could be a good fit would be with large-scale real estate developments such as Atlantic Yards and Hudson Yards. Needless to say, neither of these two developments are proceeding at a rapid-fire pace at the moment.
NoLandGrab: "Public-private partnerships... such as Atlantic Yards" would better help fund mass transit if the deals struck by the MTA didn't undercut the agency's own appraisal by more than 50%, or reward the low bidder — two things evident in the MTA's agreement to sell Brooklyn's Vanderbilt Yard to Forest City Ratner.
Posted by eric at February 2, 2009 8:46 PM