NY To Extend Subway To Jersey?

Bloomberg says the city is going to have to lay off teachers, close senior centers and libraries, cut subway and bus service, and raise the subway fare in January of 2011 and again in 2013.

He says the city has serious budgetary problems and is in fact announcing more budget cuts this week.

So how is it there's money for this?

Ever since Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey killed an expensive plan for a new commuter rail tunnel to Manhattan, the Bloomberg administration has been working on an alternative: run the No. 7 subway train under the Hudson River.

The plan envisions the No. 7 stretching from 34th Street on the Far West Side of Manhattan to Secaucus, N.J., where there is a connection to New Jersey Transit trains. It would extend the New York City subway outside the city for the first time, giving New Jersey commuters direct access to Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and Queens, and to almost every line in the system.

Like the project scuttled by Mr. Christie, this proposed tunnel would expand a regional transportation system already operating at capacity and would double the number of trains traveling between the two states during peak hours. But it would do so at about half the cost, an estimated $5.3 billion, according to a closely guarded, four-page memorandum circulated by the city’s Hudson Yards Development Corporation.

Unlike the old project, the new plan does not require costly condemnation proceedings or extensive tunneling in Manhattan, because the city is already building a No. 7 station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, roughly one block from the waterfront. In July, a massive 110-ton tunnel boring machine completed drilling for the city’s $2.1 billion extension of the No. 7 line from Times Square to the new station.

Listen, I'm all for commuter projects and making public transportation more readily available for people.

But Bloomberg extended the 7 train to the West Side simply so he and his deputy mayor at the time, Deputy Dan Doctoroff, could pay off their real estate cronies and open a new part of the city to luxury skyscraper construction.

Because if there is anything this mayor and the people around him love, it's luxury skyscraper construction.

When Bloomberg dies - check that - if Bloomberg dies, they ought to put a tombstone on his grave shaped like luxury condos.

Because that's pretty much all that's gone up around here since he took office.

Well, there was that little boondoggle involving the Jets and a West Side stadium, but luckily Shelly Silver killed that Bloomberg/Doctoroff dream.

Still, the 7 train has been extended three avenues and eight blocks.

Of course they have raised the fare on the subways TWICE since that 7 train extension started and of course the construction on the extension has gone WAY OVER BUDGET.

So you can imagine how many times they'll have to raise the subway fare if the take the 7 train over to Secaucus.

Anybody wanna bet the monthly metro card will be $150 bucks by the time Bloomberg and the MTA board get done sticking subway riders with the bill?

And meantime, we will continue to cut teacher jobs, close senior centers and libraries, cut subway and bus services, but keep taxes at all-time lows for hedge fund managers and Wall Street CEO's.

Because as Little Andy Cuomo and Mayor Moneybags like to say, "We love rich people!!!"

And the working and middle classes can go screw themselves.