Photo via NY1
This morning, the national political landscape is waking up to a new reality. Joe Crowley, the number four man democrat and presumed next speaker of the house, has been voted out in a landslide. On a local level, the transit implications of this are very promising.
Who was Joe Crowley?
In 1999, Joe Crowley was appointed to succeed Thomas Manton in his congressional election. As a congressional rep, Crowley was rarely seen using public transit. Indeed, he moved his family to a nice house in the leafy suburbs of Arlington Virginia. When the New York Post called him out on this in 2011, he originally denied it, and made sure to edit a reference to this on his Wikipedia page.
While his Woodside home was in walking distance of the 7, in reality he was living nearly 250 miles away. Meanwhile, his opponent’s campaign ad prominently showed her commuting between the Bronx and Queens via subway.
Ocasio-Cortez campaign ad video, where she takes the subway numerous times.
Joe Crowley has been a terrible representative for Queens. He swooped in for photo ops and didn’t keep his finger on the pulse of the community. He accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the very same real estate developers who have been jacking up our rents, tearing down small homes and replacing them with uninspired, oversized apartment buildings. While the people of Queens have paid through the nose, Team Crowley was spending their time attending real estate developers’ dinner parties.
While Queens was being transformed from a working class middle class boro, where was Crowley? When the 7 train was slogging into its 4th, 5th, 6th year of endless delays and no weekend service due to a never ending signal upgrade project, where was Crowley? A full 7 years later, and Crowley never truly came to bat for 7 train commuters until the 11th hour, when he pretended to care by piggybacking on photo shoot press announcement about a repainting / lead abatement project. Where has Crowley been? I grew up in his district and have never seen him.
The only thing Crowley wanted from Queens was our money. As the manager of the Queens Machine democrats, Crowley’s cronies earned millions through processing the estates of anyone who dies without a will in Queens. Some of his 15 cousins also have made money via control of the surrogates courts. The Machine also made money via forcing any democrats running in NYC to utilize the campaign services of his friends at The Parkside Group. Parkside, in turn, would donate money to Crowley’s warchest. His campaign’s office was located in a building owned by his lobbyist brother, to whom his campaign paid rent. At every turn, Crowley’s machine was filling its pockets with dirty political money.
What most people don’t know about Crowley is how he and his Queens Machine cronies have run NYC’s City Council for a decade now. Crowley’s brother in law, Ramon Martinez is the chief of staff for the speakers office. He was given this job to help pay for Crowley’s nieces & nephews college education, and has maintained this role through three administrations (Quinn, Mark-Viverito, and now Johnson). As chief of staff, he reportedly controls the agenda of the city council.
Neither Crowley nor the NYC City Council have seriously considered Queens commuters needs. The city has upzoned numerous parts Queens, while providing no new additional subway routes to support commuter needs. Instead, Queens commuters have been forced to add up to a half hour to their rides just to make it to work on time. A half hour in each direction is an hour a day, 5 hours per week. That severely impacts our quality of life and cost of living. Queens has the fastest growing population in all of NYC. Long Island City alone is the fastest growing neighborhood in the entire United States. Queens is second in population to Brooklyn by only 300,000 souls – and we’ll surpass them eventually due to the sheer size of our borough. And yet, we are second to last in terms of transit access to Manhattan. The only borough worse off than us for subway routes is Staten Island.
When our idiot Governor first started talking up building an Air Train between the 7 train and LaGuardia Airport, where was Joe Crowley? Anyone who lives in Queens can tell you this is the worst idea ever. Yet none of our so called political leadership are standing up for us. What we really need is an entire new subway route connecting Manhattan to Queens. Real solutions, like running a branch off the Second Avenue subway over to LaGuardia, are not even being talked about. Instead we get the same old tired 1990s schemes to connect the already at capacity N, or this beyond pointless AirTrain scam sponsored by Govenor DerpsALot.
While Queens subways have been going to hell in a hand basket over the last decade, where was Crowley?
Let me ask again: While Queens subways have been going to hell in a hand basket over the last decade, where was Crowley? The answer is right there in the fact that today, nearly THIRTY YEARS after it was first proposed, transit advocates and reporters still bring up the N to LaGuardia plan on twitter as if it is still viable (it is not, the N & W are near capacity with more development in Astoria happening every day). If we had real progressive political leadership in Queens, we would have seen plans for entire new transit routes already under discussion. Thirty years, and not one elected pushed for a single better idea to serve our massively growing population. This is embarrassing.
Cortez’s stunning debut victory over this man was not nearly as shocking as the headlines pretend it was, and it is my humble hope that in Ocasio-Cortez, the working class citizens of Queens will have a true voice, vested in helping us live our day to day lives via smart, considered transit planning throughout the borough. She has already shown, via engagement with advocates, a keen interest in developing solutions for one of the most maddening quality of life issues we face. Even if she ends up as a lone voice in congress on Queens transit needs, at least we’ll finally have a voice. We’ll finally have a congressional rep in northwest Queens who has actually taken the subway this month.
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“not one elected pushed for a single better idea to serve our massively growing population” is not true. Phil Goldfeder and Stacey Pheffer Amato HAVE been pushing for a new line, QueensRail, using the old LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch to provide north/south transportation and a 30 minute trip between JFK and midtown.
Very true, and definitely worth noting. Up here in northwest Queens, though… *crickets*. JVB, Gianaris
& Nolan are great about pushing for maintenance but so far as I know haven’t talked about brand new projects.
QueensRail is a huge part of fixing our transit problems. I really hope it gets done.
The QueensRail is a terrific idea that will greatly benefit Queens commuters, which is exactly why it will never happen. The NIMBY’s who have been poaching the right of way of the Rockaway Line since 1962 will never stand for the reactivation of the line.
This post didn’t age well.
Not true. We still have republicans in charge of the country, short changing transit funding across the entire nation. We are playing a long game here.
I suspect you’re just trolling though, so don’t bother commenting again.