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Byford, Ex-Subway Chief in New York, Will Be London Transport Commissioner


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Another great breaking story by Dana Rubinstein, now at the Times!

This is amazing. I am so glad that he got the post. He will do a lot to help their system, and will show use what we missed. Even more amazing, he will show what can be done when transportation (bus, rail, streets) are all done under one roof, being that of a city.

I wish he would have come back, but I am so so happy for him. He deserved this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/nyregion/andy-byford-mta-london.html

By Dana Rubinstein
May 27, 2020
Updated 9:09 a.m. ET

New York City’s former subway chief, Andy Byford, won’t be returning to New York City after all. Instead he is going back to the European city where his transit career began.
On Wednesday, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, confirmed Mr. Byford’s appointment as commissioner for Transport for London, the agency that runs that city’s sprawling subway, bus, and road system.
“I am delighted to be taking up the role of Commissioner and to have been chosen to lead the organization where I started my transport career over 30 years ago,” Mr. Byford said.
Major transit agencies in London, New York and elsewhere around the world have seen their ridership and revenues plunge as the coronavirus pandemic prompted stay-at-home orders and people avoided subways and buses.

Now, as the pandemic eases its grip in many places, transit agencies face the challenge of regaining the confidence of riders and finding ways to protect the public’s health.
Mr. Byford, one of the most revered transit leaders in recent memory, left the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in January, after clashing repeatedly with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
Critics faulted Mr. Cuomo for failing to embrace the man he had hired to run the foundering system. But Mr. Cuomo’s allies faulted Mr. Byford for not doing more to find a way to get along with the governor, who controls the system.

At the time of his resignation, Mr. Byford said he would like to remain in New York, a city he had grown to love. Mr. Byford had already worked as a top official transit official in London in the years before coming to New York.  
He was credited with helping improve subway service in New York,  including on-time performance, after Mr. Cuomo had declared a state of emergency.
 

“Andy Byford did wonders for New York and put us on a track that will serve us well for a generation,” said Danny Pearlstein, the policy and communications director for Riders Alliance, an advocacy group. “London is very lucky to have him.”
Mr. Byford is scheduled to start his new post on June 29.

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I've been trying to think of something constructive to say about this all morning but I just keep going back to: par for the course...

The facts are that New York (city and state) have become the fiefdom for two incompetent morons who have a power complex and no competent leader of his or her field would want to come here and want to deal with either of them. It has become painfully clear after watching live cameras, train rides and night walks of other cities around the world during this quarantine that our city and state is nowhere near world class in anything and we are the quintessential example of resting on our laurels. The best chance to fix this was just driven across the Atlantic Ocean by a megalomaniac who somehow receives positive press even after completely botching the response to this pandemic and then boldface lies about it on multiple occasions, scapegoating anything he can think of to avoid casting any blame on himself.

Good luck New York, you'll need it.

 

 

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40 minutes ago, Around the Horn said:

The facts are that New York (city and state) have become the fiefdom for two incompetent morons who have a power complex and no competent leader of his or her field would want to come here and want to deal with either of them. It has become painfully clear after watching live cameras, train rides and night walks of other cities around the world during this quarantine that our city and state is nowhere near world class in anything and we are the quintessential example of resting on our laurels. The best chance to fix this was just driven across the Atlantic Ocean by a megalomaniac who somehow receives positive press even after completely botching the response to this pandemic and then boldface lies about it on multiple occasions, scapegoating anything he can think of to avoid casting any blame on himself.

 

Post of the year.

Even before the current situation, the general public and the media were paying way too much attention to Trump's wrongdoings, without paying noticeable mind to Cuomo's or deBlasio's shit.  The proverbial swamp is not just in D.C. after all.  Maybe if all these citizens had been sufficiently involved in the civic process, we wouldn't be stuck in this trifecta of federal, state and municipal malaise.

Unfortunately, Byford is not the first person to have been shot out of a cannon by the Albany circus clowns.  Same thing happened to Howard Roberts when he was president of NYCT.  

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The problem is that both NYC and NYS governments have such strong executives that basically require the second coming of the Messiah to function properly. But a ConCon was rejected the last statewide elections and the next one is up in the 2030s so y'all are gonna have to live with it.

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8 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

The problem is that both NYC and NYS governments have such strong executives that basically require the second coming of the Messiah to function properly. But a ConCon was rejected the last statewide elections and the next one is up in the 2030s so y'all are gonna have to live with it.

What do you mean by ConCon?

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31 minutes ago, R68OnBroadway said:

What do you mean by ConCon?

New York State puts a Constitutional Convention on the ballot every 20 years to rewrite the entire NYS Constitution. The last one that successfully passed was held in the '30s.

Generally speaking, every special interest group has their own reason for hating it:

  • if you live upstate, you generally are against it because any rewrite has a decent chance of giving NYC even more power, which in their eyes is a bad thing
  • if you work in a union, you generally are against it because the constitution has a provision that you can't rescind pension benefits after they are given, which has a decent chance of being tossed out if the constitution gets rewritten
  • etc

So every special interest group takes the position of "devil you know is better than the devil you don't", even though the document is, for all parties involved, worse than the sum of its parts. Therefore the system will never be fixed.

Edited by bobtehpanda
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9 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

New York State puts a Constitutional Convention on the ballot every 20 years to rewrite the entire NYS Constitution. The last one that successfully passed was held in the '30s.

Generally speaking, every special interest group has their own reason for hating it:

  • if you live upstate, you generally are against it because any rewrite has a decent chance of giving NYC even more power, which in their eyes is a bad thing
  • if you work in a union, you generally are against it because the constitution has a provision that you can't rescind pension benefits after they are given, which has a decent chance of being tossed out if the constitution gets rewritten
  • etc

So every special interest group takes the position of "devil you know is better than the devil you don't", even though the document is, for all parties involved, worse than the sum of its parts. Therefore the system will never be fixed.

Would you ever consider secession of NYC and it’s suburb counties to be a possible alternative to get rid of the financial and political burdens NYC faces? (Not advocating for it, I’m just curious)

Edited by R68OnBroadway
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2 minutes ago, R68OnBroadway said:

Would you ever consider secession of NYC and it’s suburb counties to be a possible alternative to get rid of the financial and political burdens NYC faces? (Not advocating for it, I’m just curious)

TLDR I don't think the suburbs would really agree to this. Listen to Long Islanders talk about the city for five minutes.

That being said New York is really three distinct regions (Western New York, Downstate/Hudson Valley, Other) with wildly different needs and economies, so I would support splitting up the state.

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45 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

New York State puts a Constitutional Convention on the ballot every 20 years to rewrite the entire NYS Constitution. The last one that successfully passed was held in the '30s.

Generally speaking, every special interest group has their own reason for hating it:

  • if you live upstate, you generally are against it because any rewrite has a decent chance of giving NYC even more power, which in their eyes is a bad thing
  • if you work in a union, you generally are against it because the constitution has a provision that you can't rescind pension benefits after they are given, which has a decent chance of being tossed out if the constitution gets rewritten
  • etc

So every special interest group takes the position of "devil you know is better than the devil you don't", even though the document is, for all parties involved, worse than the sum of its parts. Therefore the system will never be fixed.

I was furious that that was voted down.

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5 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

TLDR I don't think the suburbs would really agree to this. Listen to Long Islanders talk about the city for five minutes.

That being said New York is really three distinct regions (Western New York, Downstate/Hudson Valley, Other) with wildly different needs and economies, so I would support splitting up the state.

I would never be in favor of breaking up the state.  I've lived here my whole life.  I lived in Queens when I was really young, then moved to Orange County to start school, and went to college in the North Country.  I don't consider myself any more or less of a New Yorker than someone from a different part of the state.  Breaking up the state would also weaken the area that was once New York on a national level.

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2 hours ago, Collin said:

I would never be in favor of breaking up the state.  I've lived here my whole life.  I lived in Queens when I was really young, then moved to Orange County to start school, and went to college in the North Country.  I don't consider myself any more or less of a New Yorker than someone from a different part of the state.  Breaking up the state would also weaken the area that was once New York on a national level.

Whereas me, the ex-Californian who’s lived through three attempts to try splitting that state, the only reasons I’d be against splitting up NYS is that Downstate already subsidizes upstate heavily - and it’d be just as bad via Congress, and worse due to the debt burden and secession payments Downstate would make to Upstate after the split (to support their economy to self-sufficiency immediately afterward - like parachute payments when soccer teams are relegated), and it’d be rewarding a tantrum instead of dealing with the ineffective government problem upstate towns, cities and counties suffer.

Why I would be for it is effectively the same reason I would’ve voted to split California and why I want the US government reformed to either a parliamentary system and/or the Senate apportioned via “one person, one vote” (like SCOTUS ruled in Reynolds v Sims in ‘64): big cities and states shouldn’t have their needs held hostage by legislators representing empty space.

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6 hours ago, Collin said:

I would never be in favor of breaking up the state.  I've lived here my whole life.  I lived in Queens when I was really young, then moved to Orange County to start school, and went to college in the North Country.  I don't consider myself any more or less of a New Yorker than someone from a different part of the state.  Breaking up the state would also weaken the area that was once New York on a national level.

New York's major political issues mostly stem from 

- a refusal to give the City any more power than it already has so it can't lord it over the state; but because the city doesn't have that control, it

- uses its representation in the legislature to lord it over the state, thus actually manifesting what other parts of the state fear the most.

The current political arrangement works once in a blue moon, and "work" is a strong word for a state where half the legislature is under federal investigation at any given time.

New York breaking up would give the former parts of it more than the two Senators it currently has, which I don't think really "weakens" the area, any more than the NE is "weakened" by being a bunch of separate states as opposed to one massive mega-state.

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On 5/27/2020 at 11:25 PM, Deucey said:

Whereas me, the ex-Californian who’s lived through three attempts to try splitting that state, the only reasons I’d be against splitting up NYS is that Downstate already subsidizes upstate heavily - and it’d be just as bad via Congress, and worse due to the debt burden and secession payments Downstate would make to Upstate after the split (to support their economy to self-sufficiency immediately afterward - like parachute payments when soccer teams are relegated), and it’d be rewarding a tantrum instead of dealing with the ineffective government problem upstate towns, cities and counties suffer.

Why I would be for it is effectively the same reason I would’ve voted to split California and why I want the US government reformed to either a parliamentary system and/or the Senate apportioned via “one person, one vote” (like SCOTUS ruled in Reynolds v Sims in ‘64): big cities and states shouldn’t have their needs held hostage by legislators representing empty space.

New Yorkers tend to hate Albany far more than the city although that's changed over the past years thanks in part by Mayor Deblasio's actions. Albany has always been hated for corruption with politicians taking bribes for favors to the party in power. The City is complex in that it's corruption has gone back to the days of Tammany Hall. Things quiet down when Fiorello LaGuardia vowed end corruption and crime.  Everything wrong with New York City can be rooted back to Guliani taking credit for things he didn't do and reaching fever pitch buying into the myth of being America's Mayor and now Mayor Deblasio forgetting that he's mayor of NYC, not South Boston in his approach to governing. Bloomberg alternates between being criticized for being a Nanny to the other states or securing more power akin to a Roman Emperor.

What makes New York complicated for me is that Trump, the once millionaire playboy celebrity matured into a law and order candidate while Andrew Cuomo is still desperate to live up to the high expectations placed on him and securing for himself. It doesn't make for good optics that Trump looks far more mature than Cuomo who spent 2 months doing frat boy comedy with his younger brother during a lockdown.

Edited by NY1635
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4 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

"Trump looks far more mature"

I had to do a double take before I realized this was coming from the usual fountain of nonsense.

I wish I was joking but things are so bad in the city that Nassau is suspending bus service into Queens as early as 5pm today because of the curfew and the protests. The problem boils down to Cuomo and DeBlasio slacking off so much during the past 2 months and not having a game plan that they're unprepared for a situation that's beyond New York State or the City's ability to control.

Edited by NY1635
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1 hour ago, NY1635 said:

I wish I was joking but things are so bad in the city that Nassau is suspending bus service into Queens as early as 5pm today because of the curfew and the protests. The problem boils down to Cuomo and DeBlasio slacking off so much during the past 2 months and not having a game plan that they're unprepared for a situation that's beyond New York State or the City's ability to control.

Sigh.

Forgive me @bobtehpanda but I'm going in.

George Floyd was murdered 10 days ago. How would Cuomo or DeBlasio have had two months to prepare for that - since it was beyond their control, as the protests spread from 1500 miles away?

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3 hours ago, NY1635 said:

I wish I was joking but things are so bad in the city that Nassau is suspending bus service into Queens as early as 5pm today because of the curfew and the protests. The problem boils down to Cuomo and DeBlasio slacking off so much during the past 2 months and not having a game plan that they're unprepared for a situation that's beyond New York State or the City's ability to control.

If there's going to be a curfew in place in New York City after 5 pm any responsible agency would shut down bus service into Queens. I personally feel that the response to Covid-19 is the most important task at hand and it that case Cuomo may not be perfect but Trump is as worthless as used toilet paper. My opinion. Carry on.

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4 hours ago, Deucey said:

Sigh.

Forgive me @bobtehpanda but I'm going in.

George Floyd was murdered 10 days ago. How would Cuomo or DeBlasio have had two months to prepare for that - since it was beyond their control, as the protests spread from 1500 miles away?

I've heard local law enforcement used contact tracing and state license plate information to catch that the looters weren't residents of New York but people using the death of George Floyd to go after luxury goods. Many Non Violent Protests like the one in Queens were shown to be peaceful with police and protestors bowing for silence. Many Shopkeepers have also heard the looters planning to do this before the riots break out.

For the record, I do think that Trump is doing a very poor job of governing the country, it's just that the opposition is doing a poorer job of discussing matters.

Edited by NY1635
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4 minutes ago, NY1635 said:

I've heard local law enforcement used contact tracing and state license plate information to catch that the looters weren't residents of New York but people using the death of George Floyd to go after luxury goods. Many Non Violent Protests like the one in Queens were shown to be peaceful with police and protestors bowing for silence. Many Shopkeepers have also heard the looters planning to do this before the riots break out.

For the record, I do think that Trump is doing a very poor job of governing the country, it's just that the opposition is doing a poorer job of discussing matters.

So in other words, you're not going to answer my question - which was: "How would Cuomo or DeBlasio have had two months to prepare for that - since it was beyond their control, as the protests spread from 1500 miles away?"

I even pasted the post for you to ACTUALLY READ AND ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED WITH A DIRECT ANSWER. See?

 

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2 hours ago, Deucey said:

So in other words, you're not going to answer my question - which was: "How would Cuomo or DeBlasio have had two months to prepare for that - since it was beyond their control, as the protests spread from 1500 miles away?"

I even pasted the post for you to ACTUALLY READ AND ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED WITH A DIRECT ANSWER. See?

 

New York City has the strictest Gun Control Laws as to discourage vigilante style justice and leaving it up to the courts to prosecute corrupt cops and criminals alike. New York State also had a problem with the Attica Prison Riots in the 70s, high crime in the 80s-90s, 9/11, the Blackout of 2003, Hurricane Sandy, and a series of Anti-Trump Protests looming around Trump Tower. It's impossible for them to suddenly evoke the limits of executive power after the Governor shut the state down because of a pandemic, and the Mayor just shut New York City Public Schools. The lack of consistency is what's hurting them.

Long Island had two days of peaceful protests with only one arrest in Shirley and there's one in Far Rockaway and Five Towns following the curfew.

Edited by NY1635
Update based on the News
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26 minutes ago, NY1635 said:

It's impossible for them to suddenly evoke the limits of executive power after the Governor shut the state down because of a pandemic, and the Mayor just shut New York City Public Schools.

So now you're backtracking from this then:

 

9 hours ago, NY1635 said:

The problem boils down to Cuomo and DeBlasio slacking off so much during the past 2 months and not having a game plan that they're unprepared for a situation that's beyond New York State or the City's ability to control.

Because even though you haven't actually answered my question (posted twice for you), you've done so much bobbing and weaving you've contradicted yourself.

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17 hours ago, Deucey said:

So in other words, you're not going to answer my question - which was: "How would Cuomo or DeBlasio have had two months to prepare for that - since it was beyond their control, as the protests spread from 1500 miles away?"

I even pasted the post for you to ACTUALLY READ AND ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED WITH A DIRECT ANSWER. See?

 

That would imply literacy.

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23 hours ago, NY1635 said:

I wish I was joking but things are so bad in the city that Nassau is suspending bus service into Queens as early as 5pm today because of the curfew and the protests. The problem boils down to Cuomo and DeBlasio slacking off so much during the past 2 months and not having a game plan that they're unprepared for a situation that's beyond New York State or the City's ability to control.

You may not be joking but you are a joke.

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14 hours ago, Deucey said:

So now you're backtracking from this then:

 

Because even though you haven't actually answered my question (posted twice for you), you've done so much bobbing and weaving you've contradicted yourself.

He's not here to have any honest discourse & all jokes aside, AFAIC, he's spamming the forums with his bullshit.....

It's the same M.O. with this guy - pop up every so often & incoherently spew a bunch of (seemingly) relevant crap, respond with even more incoherent shit (if he even responds at all) to anyone replying with some semblance of having a cogent thought & an original brain cell in their heads to his posts, then rides the f*** on out...

Rinse, wash, repeat.

47 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

You may not be joking but you are a joke.

He's been a joke.

The Honchkrow dude got the message & kicked rocks, too bad this MF-er doesn't follow suit.... It'd be one thing if this NY1635 jester was making an unpopular opinion on a particular subject, but that aint even the case.... Saying stupid shit for the sake of saying shit & then slip-sliding & slithering away like the Penguin off on some goofy shit....

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2 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

He's been a joke.

The Honchkrow dude got the message & kicked rocks, too bad this MF-er doesn't follow suit.... It'd be one thing if this NY1635 jester was making an unpopular opinion on a particular subject, but that aint even the case.... Saying stupid shit for the sake of saying shit & then slip-sliding & slithering away like the Penguin off on some goofy shit....

100%.

In general my policy on this is usually ignore, don't feed the trolls, and then they get bored and move on once they realize no one cares. Unfortunately every time one of these characters comes up people generally forget this lesson.

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