This comes from the days when interurban rail was formally self-funding because it was the only game in town (and often associated with paying bribes to officials for competitive advantages over rivals), and federal support for rail consisted of land grants along rail lines connecting the east of the Mississipi to the west and west coast.
And yes, its egregiously bad policy that the US administration has been short-changing "fixed guideway" project spending so that massively high ratios of benefits to cost attract 20% to 30% support from the Federal Government ... but that does not necessarily mean graft. You do not always have to pay to get that kind of backward looking, total failure of imagination bad policy from the Bush regime, they are often willing to give it away for free. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Similarly Bloomberg has proposed extending the #7 line westward to the Javits convention center rather than spending the money on extending it eastward through Queens to the city border.
His idea, once again, benefits the business interests while ignoring the needs of residents. I think it a type of cultural blindness that only sees the concerns of one's own class as being important.
For both projects there is an underlying type of trickle-down mentality at work. Making things easier for the business class will (eventually) lead to more prosperity and jobs for the working class. This itself is a culturally blind argument. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
(*Note: I aint a lawyer, but the head of the FAA does not appear to be much of a civil servant either, so I reckon that makes us about even)
That is not graft, its just normal industry capture of its Federal funding and oversight agency. Through rail connections at airports will make regional commuter airlines less attractive, even though it makes perfect as an integrated transport solution.
And extending a line to a traffic destination rather than a traffic origin is implied by "commercial" criteria for judging public transport lines rather than a public service orientation ... go out to get more passengers, and you have to provide for capacity expansion all down the line. Provide a traffic driver against the normal flow of peak hour patronage, and you have that capacity almost for free, in seats that are empty heading out to make another morning run in ... or empty heading in to make another evening run out.
Now, heading out to provide a public transport trunk in a heavily built up urban and inner suburban region may well be more effective in terms of getting cars off the roads, but the way we organize funding in the US, providing more public service at the cost of more infrastructure spending throughout the system is not very attractive.
Indeed, the integrated transport solution is probably to head the rail line out to extend the reach of the regular commuter flow of travel, and to run some form of light rail system from the convention center to integrate with the rail system. As heavily built up as much of NYC is, an Aerobus system may have an appealing balance of costs and benefits:
