As to how things could be improved, one option could be "point to point" bus runs for special events and desitnations at non-central destinations, with pick-ups and drop offs at several neighborhood points. Kind of like the Atlantic City buses do.

But federal policy -- a ban on using transit buses for charter service backed by the charter companies -- gets in the way. The TWU blocks private vans and private bus companies prevent transit riders from using buses paid for with their own tax dollars. In government producers, not consumers, rule.

Chicago's Soldier Field renovation cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but at least all of our stadiums have excellent transit connections.

But you really can't compare NYC with Paris. Paris is the place the rest of France dumps money into; NYC is the place the rest of the U.S. sucks money out of. It took 12 years of study to get a 30% federal contribution to an overpriced three-stop extenstion of the BMT Broadway line, probably not even paying for the cost escalation during that time. And after 2015 or so, ever last dime will be doing to the seniors. We'll be lucky to keep what we have.

To transplant this to New York City, imagine that Yankee Stadium is between the Harlem and Hudson lines, with stations for both close by. But instead of terminating at Grand Central, they stop at a station below the existing Lower Level. The Hudson Line trains continue on to a station under Penn Station and down the Raritan Valley Line to the end, while the Harlem Line trains make a stop at 14th and Seventh before crossing under the river to Hoboken Terminal and going up the Erie Main Line to Ridgewood. Naturally, connections are available at Grand Central, Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgewood for other trains.

This wasn't an easy thing to accomplish. Between 1969 and 1977, large tunnels were dug under the center of the city, linking four different commuter rail stations, and a huge pit (see the last picture) was dug on the former site of the central market for the transfer station. This required a large expenditure of public money.

What were we spending money on between 1969 and 1977? Oh yeah, things like this, this and this.

It's not a dilemma when good options are available.

A large share of Yankee fans are in New Jersey, and a transit ride home from the stadium after a late night game is, to say the least, unpleasant and long. It's tough getting up for work or school after arriving home at 2 am, and God Forbid you miss the last train from Penn or bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

True, we take transit to Shea, but it is at least 1 1/2 hours each way from a fairly close in part of Brooklyn. We only go once a year, to a day game.

I emailed Governor Spitzer, who controls the EDC and thus the IDA. Hopefully he can stop this thing before it's too late.

This Metro article was informative, in an infuriating kind of way, especially this quote:

“We’re the 501(c)(3) corporation, which is the pass-through to give the parking garages tax-exempt financing,” explained CIDC senior vice president Joseph Seymour, the former executive director of the Port Authority. “Instead of the city taking on the debt, and having that put under consolidated debt, it goes through Community Initiatives Development Corp.”

...

“We’re only providing the tax-exempt status,” said Seymour. “We get a fee, which hasn’t been negotiated yet. We don’t get the revenue — there’s a trustee that gets the revenue and disburses it to the bondholders and pays off the development.”

Nice. So even though there are laws requiring for-profit companies to pay taxes and preventing the state from lending them money tax-free, our friend Seymour set up this little shell nonprofit to circumvent those laws ... for a fee, of course. With this kind of "good government," why did the Times endorse Pataki three times? Why would anyone even think twice about voting for him for President?

In front will be high concept bike racks that look like bent baseball bats and have room for 9 bikes.

If each car averages a 10 mile trip at 20mpg, that's one gallon roundtrip, 9000 for the whole lot, and times 81 for the season (not counting playoffs), that's 729000 gallons a year. Every burned gallon of gas puts out about 20lbs of CO2, so that's 14,580,000lbs or 7,290 tons a year.
Seems like the kind of thing PlaNYC should be trying to avoid.