Ms. Quinn did not present a plan to expand New York City's subway system.

New York City mayoral front-runner and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn unveiled her mass transit agenda this morning. While she emphasized increased control for the city's next mayor, Ms. Quinn had no new ideas.

Her headline proposal is to take control of the MTA back from the state. But taking over the MTA is a tall order, and to do it, she'll need to prove that she has better ideas about how to run it than the state.

So does she?

Ms. Quinn presented three concrete transit proposals—bringing Metro-North service to Penn Station with new stations in the Bronx, ten new Select Bus Service lines in the outer boroughs and increased ferry service.

The first proposal, to bring Metro-North service to Co-Op City, Parkchester, Morris Park and Hunts Point, with additional stops on Manhattan's West Side, is something that has been planned for the MTA's next capital plan anyway—nothing new here.

As far as we can tell from her plan, she would leave the MTA's regional railroads—Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad—as the the same bloated and inefficient services that they are today. With the same sky-high labor costs—commuter railroads in the Northeast have clung to as many as half-a-dozen employees per train, whereas other countries and cities on the west coast have pared staff down to rapid transit levels—new Metro-North service under Ms. Quinn's plan is likely to be just as infrequent and expensive as it is now, reducing its usefulness for New Yorkers who already have cheaper, albeit slower, options. (Absent as well from her platform was any mention of labor reform on New York City's subways, despite issues like one-person train operation being at the heart of the MTA's negotiations with its union.)

Ramped up Select Bus Service service—otherwise known as "bus rapid transit," which speeds boarding with a fine-enforced honor system and gives buses their own dedicated lanes—is the meatiest part of her proposal, but this idea is hardly original—she merely puts a number (ten new lines) to the Progressive Caucus's plan for "a city-wide network of bus rapid transit lines that connect the boroughs." Her four-year timeline is a welcome improvement from the MTA's current snail's pace roll-out, but given Ms. Quinn's emphasis on public review as council speaker, it's unclear if she could roll this out as quickly as she'd like to.

Ferry rides are scenic, but there's a reason that New York started replacing them with subways in the 19th century.

Furthermore, the reasoning behind improved bus service hints at the elephant in New York City's transit room: astronomical subway construction costs.

"Subways cost roughly $1 billion per mile to construct," she said in her speech. "Bus rapid transit—just $1 million a mile."

For one, Ms. Quinn should check her facts. The Upper East Side segment of the Second Avenue subway clocks in at $2.7 billion a mile, and the 7 train extension is over $2 billion a mile—and that's without the much-needed stop at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, which would cost another half-billion, at least.

But more importantly, using the high cost of subway construction in New York City—much higher than in peer cities like Tokyo, Paris or even London—as an excuse not to build any more lines ("I'm a little bit on the fence about finishing the Second Avenue subway," Ms. Quinn joked, saying that her father has vowed not to die before it's finished) is an admission of defeat.

Select Bus Service on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, for example, is a good start (and something the MTA is already planning), but these high-ridership corridors are crying out for full-blown subway service—first planned over 80 years ago. Better bus service in the outer boroughs would be nice, but Ms. Quinn said nothing about the higher-capacity Triboro RX rail line that many transit advocates have been pushing.

As for ferries, they are essentially a 19th century mode of transit, with no hope of making a dent in the city's transit needs outside of a few places like Staten Island and the Rockaways. "In just 18 months," Ms. Quinn said of East River ferry service, "it’s already served over 1.6 million riders." As a comparison, the Lexington Avenue subway line carries 1.3 million riders each day.

New York is fundamentally a rail-oriented city, and Christine Quinn apparently has no plan to add to this infrastructure, or even make more efficient use of existing lines, aside from the Metro-North plan the MTA is already working on. Buses and ferries are all well and good, but Ms. Quinn is going to need to do better if she wants to give the city back its subways.

How to get to work? They can't decide.

It's like a giant game of distance limbo: How far could you go?

Some are willing to travel more than 90 miles to make it to Manhattan every morning for work, according to WNYC, with New York topping the list of cities with extreme commuters.

Of course, there's an exodus of families moving further up the Hudson River and deeper into New Jersey with Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster counties receiving a 92 percent increase in commuters to Manhattan. MetroNorth spans out an hour and a half in each direction supporting these weary travelers.

Workers are willing to move farther away, for cheaper housing, because Manhattan has "some of the highest paying jobs in the country," the radio reporters note.

But one in eight Manhattan workers commutes more than 90 miles away. Some come all the way from Albany, Boston, and Philadelphia to work in the Big Apple. It's a fun commute of buses, cars, trains, and air.

Yes, air. About 4,00 workers commute to New York in a plane. Every day.

mewing@observer.com

Though 84 percent of subway riders reported they were satisfied with the overall comfort and convenience of using the subway, the number of satisfied customers only increased six percent since last year. Overall satisfaction with local bus service also slightly increased from 62 percent last year to 70 percent.

Our suburban brethren did not have it so good.Overall customer satisfaction decreased to 78 percent on the Long Island Rail Road from 89 percent last year and Metro-North Railroad satisfaction also decreased, from 93 to 89 percent. However, as the M.T.A. explains in a press release, "Satisfaction in the railroads was adversely impacted by weather-related disruptions and other external factors." Yeah, yeah, blame it on the weather.

The agency actually got a little lucky in that regard, considering the annual survey was conducted in June, well before the disruptions from Tropical Storm Irene or the city's summer construction projects began. There was still that cursed blizzard that caught everyone flat-footed, though.

So when we all complain about the subways, are we just kvetzing out usual frustrations, or is it actually somehow better than we like to complain about?

Ms. Raju (left), on the train

Last month, a video of a young woman berating a Metro-North conductor went viral online; the woman—who had responded to the conductor, “Do you know what schools I went to and how well-educated I am?” when asked to stop loudly cursing—was quickly outed through the Internet as Hermon Raju, an N.Y.U. graduate.

After the incident, we exchanged Facebook messages with a profile purporting to be that of Ms. Raju, and she provided us a phone number with an 845 area code—the very code that services Garrison, N.Y., the hamlet to which Ms. Raju told the conductor she was traveling. We eventually called upon hearing the news over the weekend that Ms. Raju had hired a P.R. firm.

Her Facebook page, we noted, had since been deactivated.

“This is her mother,” we were told, “and she doesn’t want to talk to you. Please don’t call again.” Was it true that her daughter had hired public-relations people—and was this what they’d advised?

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

The Daily News says no injuries have been reported, and fireboats are currently battling the "massive, smoky fire" under a Harlem River bridge. A Metro-North spokesman said the cause of the fire has not been determined. Northbound trains are stuck in Grand Central and southbound trains are being held in the Bronx. Officials are currently talking about setting up shuttle service for financiers and others who otherwise would find themselves stranded in their pieds-a-terre.