The Albany Business Review and Gothamist both reported today that, starting next year, Metro-North will extend service to Albany. The news is not exactly as good as it seems. It appears that Metro-North service will be limited to just one roundtrip a day. The following is quoted from Gothamist:
The expanded service means Metro-North's Hudson Line will extend roughly 80 miles beyond its current northernmost point of Poughkeepsie. The roundtrip train will depart Grand Central for the Albany-Rensselaer station mid-morning and return to Grand Central in the afternoon, according to the governor's office.
The route will follow the existing Hudson Line stops from Grand Central to Poughkeepsie before making stops in Rhinecliff, Hudson, and Albany-Rensselaer, according to the MTA. The transit agency hasn't yet set an exact cost for the trip, but expects it to be similar to the lower end of Amtrak's one-way tickets from New York City to Albany--which are $38.
I think it's also worth celebrating that Amtrak is adding back one of the two daily trains they cut when tunnel work began, and have agreed to make the maximum price charged for a one-way fare between NYC and Albany $99.
ReplyDeleteThis could be another game changer
ReplyDeleteWhenever a major change comes to Hudson, people tend to fall into two camps.
ReplyDelete>> Growth mindset:
This is excellent. More trains mean more visitors, cheaper tickets for locals, and a livelier economy. They start thinking about new ventures, how to attract those visitors, how to turn momentum into opportunity. More tax payers means we don't have to raise taxes and will have more public funds to offer the same services.
>>Fixed mindset:
This is terrible. More visitors mean more residents, and they might “displace” me with their higher salaries earned by working competitive and hard jobs. It must be gentrification. They start organizing, complaining, and lobbying Albany for grants that will do little but raise taxes and arrive too late to matter. They suggest additional taxes on the newcomers that alter behavior of the productive and arguably leave the less fortunate worse off.
Hudson is not HBR-locals versus transplants or “cidiots.” As Kamal and his dwindling base would want you to believe.
It is a battle of mindset and attitude, growth versus fixed. And there are plenty of locals who can out work and out-ambition any "transplant".
~
We can all have our slice of cake if we bake more cake, by enabling more bakeries and ovens and training more skilled bakers.
Hudson should stop dividing the same size cake among more people, while charging different prices for the same size slice.
To take this analogy the extra step... Quintin Cross, Gary Purnhagen, The Tides Foundation, For the Many, and Kamal might propose:
The Good Cause Cake Law...
Hudson’s newest coercive law, the Good Cause Cake Law, would require bakers to charge different prices for the same slice depending on the buyer’s income.
Richer customers pay triple, poorer ones pay less, and the baker is forbidden from refusing service, even to those who never pay or make a mess in the shop and refuse to leave.
The baker can only stop serving the bad customers if they decide to feed their own family instead.
Polite customers willing to pay full price must wait outside while the crumbs are rationed in the name of fairness to existing customers.
Over time, fewer people bother baking, and the town that once smelled of fresh bread now smells of resentment.
Kamal and Gary then exclaims: Hudson has a cake affordability problem!
And they run for political office to solve the problem that their thinking baked... with more taxes and more disincentives for cake abundance. They promise a lot of icing.
But in this town and this analogy... Kamal secretly secured for himself a guaranteed cake every month from the OG baker who also supplies City Hall and gets the biggest dough subsidy from City Hall... Kamal and his employee, the Cake Justice Director, now live together and share the cake... but no one can know the price of their cake (procured from the subsidized baker, where Kamal's biggest pal Rick works) and why his cake is nicer than the stale slices offered to all his voters and sweet toothed pals.
~
Excerpted from the forthcoming "Animal Bakery; A cautionary tale about moral vanity and economic decay on the Hudson"
Simone & Shuckster
Reference:
The case of the secret price for the mayor's cake from the government supported monopoly bakery:
https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/kamal-johnson-galvan-home-20386108.php
In NYS, the MTA is funded in part by a surcharge (read: tax) on payrolls in counties where its train and buses run. Welcome, Columbia and Rennselear Counties to the MTA surcharge zone. Guess who pays for the difference between the actual cost of carriage and the $99 one-way fare, and why Albany is so happy about this move the governor characterizes as “revenue neutral?”
ReplyDeleteNote the $99 fare is for Amtrak, which is not part of the MTA. The price for a one-way Albany-NYC Metro North ticket has not yet been set, but is reported by multiple outlets to be likely somewhere around $40.
DeleteFascinating John...
DeleteRedistribution-driven mayors (read socialists) such as Kamal accelerate what economists call the tax-base erosion cycle, or fiscal-flight-feedback.
Problems are framed through an equity or race or systemic lens, followed by vague promises that require no individual responsibility or trade-offs.
Grants are chased and sometimes flow in with a big match requirement and no maintenance planning, taxes rise quietly on productive families and firms, "net contributors" leave or shift their taxes elsewhere, and "net recipients" move in.
The cycle feeds on itself. And that is how Hudson cannot afford itself. Many tax parcels in the hands of county government and churches do not help either.
Ironically... this lead to many of Kamal’s own voters later moved to Greenport and beyond after being priced out by Hudson’s last reassessment and the city’s failure to control spending.
What share of property parcels, whether households or businesses, now carry the tax load? Which households or 501(c)(3)s receive the resulting revenue through education and other state, national, and local subsidies, including Kamal’s undisclosed/secretive Rental Assistance Program administered by Michelle Tullo?
The case for heavy redistribution rests on moral duty. Most Democrats and Hudson residents believe in it.
But when subsidies and weak programs trap people in dependency, the logic collapses. Slowly... and then suddenly.
Residents eventually see that such systems harm those they claim to help. They are funding harm, often inter generationally.
And it turns out we can look at a natural experiment to prove the point... why do some of Kamal's few (woke) wealthier supporters (at least in previous elections) send their kids to private schools and not HCSD, and rarely to the Youth Center outside of select short summer programs?
If the school and youth center is not good enough for their kids, why should it be good enough for other families, and good enough to eat our hard earned tax dollars?
Thanks for the clarification. Either way, however, if the MTA runs here, every employer and employee is about to find a new line item on their pay stubs.
DeleteLike many of your comments about the law, this is simply false and uninformed.
DeleteThe Hochul administration, if you took the time to read the article, has pledged not to extend the MTA payroll tax to our region.
This talking point is an invention of conservative anti tax fear mongers like Mr Friedman and Elise Stefanik, and is simply untrue.
The MTA payroll tax will not be added to the paystubs of Hudson residents under this proposal. It would require an act of the legislature, which is extremely unlikely and not even on the table.
Dear Woodhull -
DeleteWhen it comes to trains and public transport... does Columbia County contribute to any of these public services and quasi public-private train companies?
What about the local shopping shuttle service that Chameides and others worked on?
Thank you!
I'm not anti-tax. Nor pro-tax. But I don't believe the governor -- any governor -- who says "we're not extending a tax into . . . " or ". . . for . . .". They just haven't said "yet." Watch. Besides, what possible impetus would anyone have to oppose better train service except that it makes it easier for people from NYC to come to Hudson -- people like me, you know, from NYC.
DeleteHappy to see lower fares, but my concern is that enhanced train service doesn't turn Columbia County into New Jersey or Long Island. I think there are practical issues that make high-speed rail unlikely, thank god.- PJ
ReplyDelete