Today in Unfortunate Branding

There are a number of things that I tend not to write about because they never happen, you know, things like carnivorous killer sheep, sentient slime molds,honest Republicans, etc.

One of these things is, "Expansions in the Los Angeles Metro."

It's not good or bad, it's just never gonna happen.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that they have extended some lines, including, so it seems, the "D" line, which will be adding 3 lines later this Spring.

The folks at LA Metro are excited about this.  They are so excited that they are selling a T-shirt to commemorate this.

What does this shirt say?  

It says, "Ride the D."

The shirts have sold out.

L.A. Metro really wants people to take their soon-to-be-opened rail line extension, and have come up with a wildly popular marketing method to spread the word — a new line of merchandise proudly emblazoned with the phrase, “Ride the D.”

The cheeky shirts, available both in full length and as crop tops, have become a viral sensation, with the initial release selling out in just one day. But those eager to own their own need not despair: The transit system announced shortly before 3 p.m. Friday that a limited batch was back in stock.

“If you neeeeeeeeD it GO NOW,” L.A. Metro wrote in an Instagram post announcing the restock. The T-shirt is on sale for $21 and the crop top for $20. Fans were encouraged to snap them up quickly before they sell out again.


The shirts’ release Thursday coincided with the announcement that the first phase of the Metro D Line subway extension will open May 8, with three new stations connecting downtown Los Angeles to Beverly Hills. The new stations are located at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, Wilshire/La Cienega and will collectively serve Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Carthay Circle, the Fairfax District and Beverly Hills.

Gee, What a Surprise

1 week in, and congestion pricing is already working in New York City.

Faster traffic speeds, faster mass transit, and better air.

Exactly as forecast.

This is not a surprise. This is what happens everywhere that this has been implemented.

New Yorkers are cruising much faster along Manhattan’s bridges and tunnels since their city implemented its long-debated congestion pricing plan early this month, according to newly available traffic data.

Morning rush-hour speed from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, a main route under the Hudson River into Manhattan, has almost doubled to 28mph compared with a year earlier. Evening speed over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn has increased from 13mph to 23mph.

If these trends hold, motorists willing to pay the $4.50-$14.40 toll to enter the congestion zone in the centre of the US’s busiest city will save thousands of hours per year they currently waste crawling through smoggy tunnels or over clogged bridges. New York’s congestion-pricing scheme, which went into force on January 5, is meant to cut traffic and help fund $15bn in sorely needed improvements to local mass transit.

It's a good policy, and it works, so doubtless Trump and his Evil Minions™ will try to kill it.

I'm Assuming that Hochul is Running a Political Ploy

You may recall that New York Governor Kathy Hochul killed New York City's congestion pricing plan.

My guess is that much like all of her policy decisions, this was an an attempt to suck up to big donors.

Well now, the Governor has reversed herself and will support the plan.

New York will revive its once-abandoned plan for the nation’s first congestion-pricing program, but at a reduced rate of a $9 toll for most vehicles to enter Midtown and Lower Manhattan, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Gov. Kathy Hochul intends to announce the state’s revised proposal on Thursday, lowering the initial $15 charge for cars to enter Manhattan’s core at peak hours.

The new plan would be fast-tracked for implementation. It would go before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board for approval next week, and would most likely take effect before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office in January — a time frame that aims to pre-empt Mr. Trump’s vows to kill the program.

My guess is that she has not actually reversed herself, but that she is hoping that she can score political points for supporting the plan while allowing Donald Trump to kill it.

State officials believe that they will not need to repeat the lengthy environmental review process because the previous review accounted for a range of tolls from $9 to $23. The state and city must sign an agreement with transportation officials in the Biden administration, who have been supportive of the plan.

The last-minute effort to save the tolling plan comes as Ms. Hochul has faced growing pressure from transit advocates and state lawmakers to secure funding for the transit system. She also faces legal challenges from supporters of congestion pricing.

Ms. Hochul shocked New Yorkers in June when she announced she would pause the toll “indefinitely” just weeks before it was slated to go into effect. She has consistently insisted that she held up the plan because she believed that a $15 toll was too high, but many speculated that she also believed the toll could hurt Democrats in the November election.

Bullsh%$.  She wanted to pander to suburban commuters and f%$# the poors.

All Trump has to do is to rescind approval, something he has already promised that he will do, and it's dead.

Do not mistake a fraud for a policy change.

Full Safe Driving, Huh?

It turns out that the Teslas operating in the Boring Company tunnel beneath Las Vegas, a 2 mile circle with no weather, pedestrians, or cross traffic, cannot operate autonomously.

The task is too tough for the Tesla "Full Safe Driving" hardware and software to handle.

Hoocoodanode?

Autonomous driving capabilities are a central component of Tesla's stratospheric share price, with CEO Elon Musk repeatedly telling investors that they're the difference between "being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero." But real-world performance on the road lags far behind Musk's claims, with the latest data point coming from another Musk venture, the Boring Company, and its tunnels under Las Vegas.

………

So far, there's just a 2.2-mile loop with three stations serving the Las Vegas Convention Center, albeit with the potential to expand the subterranean system to 68 miles (110 km) in total.

When the Boring Company tunnels were first proposed, the concepts featured custom-designed autonomous electric people movers, but when Ars got a ride in a test tunnel in 2018, it was in a Tesla Model X SUV with a human behind the wheel. The mode of transport inside the Boring Company's tunnels remains Tesla road cars, but they are resolutely human-driven despite the controlled environment with constant lighting and a lack of weather, other traffic, or pedestrians for the camera-based system to worry about.

In fact, there's no timeline for eliminating the driver in the (Vegas) loop, according to Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention Center and Visitors Authority. Speaking with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hill said, "Hopefully this will get started just lightly, using a driver assistance tool by the end of this year."

Gee, Elon R. Musk, sooper genius sounds a lot like Wile E. Coyote, sooper genius, doesn't it?

Elon Musk has an even more distant relationship with the truth than Donald Trump, and that is not a low bar.

Unbelievably Lame

As I have mentioned earlier, Kathy Hochul suspended New York City's congestion pricing program.

In addition to being bad policy, which she supported by falsehoods, and possibly being illegal, it also resented in a major hole in the MTA's budget, both because it cut billions in revenue, and because the money had already been spent on the technology to implement this.

When questioned by a reporter on replacing the revenue, the Governor's response was to eject the reporter from the press conference, because her spirit animal is apparently the Karen:

At a Sunday event in the Bronx, Governor Kathy Hochul refused to provide details on her plans to fund mass transit after her decision earlier this month to pause congestion pricing punched a $15 billion hole in the budget of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

A New York Focus reporter repeatedly asked her how she plans to provide cash to the authority, which was scheduled to begin a program on Sunday that would charge drivers $15 to enter downtown Manhattan during peak hours. Without replacement funding, the nation’s largest public transit system will be forced to cancel projects ranging from new subway stations to elevator installations, and could fall into general disrepair.

………

After Hochul entered the side room at the Bronx event, New York Focus’s reporter was ejected from the venue, the Latino Pastoral Action Center, and told to wait for the governor to come outside for further questions. She still hadn’t emerged from the main entrance by the time her security and press staff left the venue, suggesting that she may have departed through a side door.

Liam Buckley, a Hochul press aide, apologized for the reporter’s ejection and said it “shouldn’t have happened.” He declined to answer questions about congestion pricing and directed New York Focus to the governor’s press office, which has also declined to provide details to the press in recent days.

She really is a complete chicken sh%$.

 

And She Gets Even Worse

I am referring, of course to New York Governor Karen Kathy Hochul, who is reportedly banning the wearing of masks on the New York subway.

Seriously, has she ever been on a subway during rush hour?

The Subway is Covid, and soon to be Bird Flu, central:

Gov. Kathy Hochul says she is exploring at least a partial ban on masks in the New York City subway system after images and videos of masked anti-Israel protesters on a train ricocheted around social media earlier this week.

In a news conference at the state Capitol on Thursday, Hochul said she has started discussions with Mayor Eric Adams and state lawmakers about what a mask crackdown would look like and how to craft exemptions for health and religious reasons. The mayor’s office confirmed it was looking into the issue.

But Hochul made clear she wants to see mask restrictions in some form, which she believes would help deter crime on public transit.

OK, show us the numbers?  What percentage of Subway crimes have been committed by people wearing N-95 masks?

**crickets**

This is not fighting crime, this is crime fighting theater, and it will kill people.

At this point, my guess is that there are some New Yorkers out there feeling nostalgic for Andrew "Rat Faced Andy" Cuomo.

Now the Lawsuit

You may recall that New York Governor Karen Kathy Hochul shut down the congestion pricing scheme for downtown Manhattan, claiming, among other things, that she talked to the owners of 3 diners who said that it would destroy their businesses.

That last claim was a lie, the good folks at Gothamists went to the 3 diners that she mentioned, and while the confirm her eating there, none of them discussed congestion pricing.

She also claimed that people who work after hours would be impoverished by these fees getting in and out of downtown in the wee hours of the morning, despite the fact that late night fees were less than ¼ that charged at peak hours.

This, of course,  means that the roughly $1 billion that would have gone to mass transit is missing from the MTA budget.

Immediately following, car dealers set up a $100 a plate fundraiser for her. (What a coincidence?)

One of the interesting thing is that the congestion pricing program was instituted through legislation, and it appears that she lacked the authority to postpone the program without getting approval from the MTA, and now the New York City Comptroller has sued to roll back her action:

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York may believe she has the power to unilaterally shut down the nation’s first congestion pricing scheme, which was slated to pump $1 billion a year into the coffers of the nation’s largest transit system.

Not everyone thinks she’s right, and her opponents are eager to prove their case in court.

The New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, has assembled a collection of stakeholders to develop a legal strategy that would underpin one or more lawsuits seeking to get the central business district toll program back on track.

Mr. Lander is planning to outline the likely avenues of litigation at a news conference on Wednesday. The gathering underscores the swelling outrage among environmental and transportation advocates who have spent years persuading the government to enact tolls on drivers entering Manhattan’s core — only to see Ms. Hochul abruptly halt the plan less than a month before it was to go into effect.

………

[Environmental lawyer] Mr. [Michael] Gerrard said the group believes Ms. Hochul may have violated a litany of laws, including the 2019 statute that the State Legislature passed and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed saying that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority “shall” implement the congestion pricing program.

“It creates a mandatory duty, and it doesn’t give the governor the authority to cancel it,” he said. “We believe that the governor broke the law by putting an indefinite hold on congestion pricing.”

………

And although Ms. Hochul effectively controls the M.T.A., Janno Lieber, the authority’s chief executive, used plain language to describe her decision’s painful impact on mass transit in New York City. He said on Monday that the authority would have to drastically shrink its investment program and that his primary goal was to ensure “the system doesn’t fall apart.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Lander described Ms. Hochul’s decision as “disastrous,” and said he expected the coalition to file at least one lawsuit challenging the move, if not more.