Quote:
Originally Posted by Chicago Shawn
You can't fault Daley solely for the BRT collapse. This wasn't "free", we had to hike parking rates in the already high garages. That had to pass the city council, and believe me, the alderman where getting quite an earful from angry car-driving constituents. There needs to be time to build a consensus in the democratic forum that you are preaching about, and it was scheduled for a vote, which was just ~13 days over the original deadline. Put some blame on Bush's plant for Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters. She had proven herself to be very pro-car over her tenure anyway.
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Exactly. The BRT money had too many strings attached, NYC was unable to meet an earlier deadline for exactly the same reasons. Add to that the fact that Obama had won the election and it seemed kind of pointless to expend a lot of political capital on what is a relatively small project of questionable value. It makes a lot more sense to just wait a few months and ask for the money with no strings attached if there is a real need for BRT.