9 ms·

Why Subways in the Northeast Are So Troubled

17 points by gwintrob 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kiruwa 10y ago
Worth considering when reading that article... http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge-america http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridg...
- Animats 10y ago
  The new eastern span of the SF Bay Bridge is about 6x over budget because politicians wanted it to look pretty. There's no need for a suspension bridge there; the water isn't deep and it's not a major navigation channel. It could have been a set of short spans, like the old one, and much cheaper.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    And we still can't ride a bicycle all the way to SF from the east bay (well, without going via San Jose at least)
Volscio 10y ago
DC's metro system is in another league of dysfunction from the other systems which suffer from the typical, chronic burden of heavy use. The article lumps it all together; "hey, we should do a transit article today".
jmount 10y ago
Because to the New York Times only the Northeast exists. San Francisco Bay Area BART is having troubles- but I doubt we will be seeing federal dollars routed our way. But by all means lets all worry about DC and NY.
- ojbyrne 10y ago
  It is called the "New York Times."
- yompers888 10y ago
  The author wrote what she knew. Better to stop short of some relevant instances than to make sweeping generalizations that you can't defend (especially if they turn out to be wrong.) So yes, by all means let's worry about the problems that we understand, rather than swinging in the dark at ones we've never seen or studied. On another note, have some faith in Silicon Valley. The enormous wealth of the area ties back to massive federal spending, and surely they still remember how to grab some money while it's being passed around.
- basseq 10y ago
  > The Federal Transit Administration found that public transit systems have a backlog of $86 billion in critical maintenance nationwide. I wonder how that backlog is allocated: e.g., how BART's backlog compares to NYC, Boston, and DC. DC and BART are about the same age (1972 vs. 1976), but DC has 68% more riders[1] and an operating budget that's almost double[2]. (So, yes, WMATA also spends more per rider.) Everyone's hurting for investment in general. [1] Weekday Daily Ridership from Wikipedia: 423,120 (BART) vs. 712,843 (WMATA). [2] FY16 Annual Operating Budgets: $900k (BART) vs. $1.8B (WMATA)
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    You mean BART spends more per user.
    - basseq 10y ago
      No, not according to these numbers. $2,528 for WMATA vs. $2,127 for BART. (Operating budget divided by daily riders.)
  - DrScump 10y ago
    But is that an apple to apple comparison? Operating budget means only so much -- it ignores major costs like pension and benefit obligations and debt service (BART is among the worst at both).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yompers888 10y ago
I know that this article is talking just about subways, but they brought up the issue of infrastructure spending being far too low. In many cases, however, it's more about the spending being incredibly poorly directed. I was talking to someone who used to sit on the commission of a Virginia city. He told me that VDOT pays for 95% of road construction and maintenance if it conforms to VDOT urban code. This is incredibly foolish for two reasons: 1. Urban code requires a minimum 28 foot road width. Understanding that "urban" here best means "where there might be some people" rather than significant density, this is a horrendous plan because it encourages huge roads designed for ~45mph. these roads optimize traffic throughput in places that should be optimized for livability, resulting in unnecessarily high spending and, more importantly, dangerous car-paths that discourage crossing the street, or even using it at all without a car. 2. More relevant to infrastructure spending, this imbalanced gravy train means that a town can easily add the tax base of large retailers at the edges of town, and the only cost to them is 5% of the huge roads involved in getting people out to those relatively unproductive stores. The result is a land-use problem where people have no inclination to build near one another, and the resulting dysfunctional road system that tries to move people and foster economic activity with the same infrastructure, and does both quite poorly. It's the futon of roads. And sure it's nice (if you live in one of these places) to be able to drive to the huge grocery store and pick from 8 different kinds of mustard, but if you're buying the specialty versions, you should probably just be ordering it online. Granted, that's just the Virginia system, but it seems reasonable to expect that it would be similar in other states. In my travels, I haven't noticed many (U.S.) places that didn't fall into similar patterns.
- rayiner 10y ago
  > And sure it's nice (if you live in one of these places) to be able to drive to the huge grocery store and pick from 8 different kinds of mustard It's not. It's a disaster. It takes you 30 minutes just to grab some toothpaste if you run out. The NOVA suburbs are utterly dysfunctional and traffic is near a breaking point. It's often faster to drive to DC from Annapolis than from Great Falls or Reston (despite the latter being half the distance).
  - 10y ago
StillBored 10y ago
Replace subway with road or airport and you get the same article for the rest of the major cities in the US. The 2 hours a day I sit in my car to drive 10 miles to work and back cost me more in lost time (translated to money) than the property taxes I pay. You can't tax cut your way to prosperity.
benbenolson 10y ago
Raising federal gasoline taxes to pay for infrastructure? Since when does that make sense? Let the people that use the subway, pay for the subway's maintenance-- that way, the larger the amount of people that use it, the more money that gets allocated to maintaining it. Keeping this kind of thing within the cities that are affected by the issues ensures that the amount of funding scales with the population of the cities, and ensures that a the infrastructure being maintained doesn't depend on the (often unreliable) federal government to give them money.
- tobz 10y ago
  If we assume that these systems are in dire need of repair (which many of them are), and that they are unreliable (which they frequently are), then it can be a hard sell to ask riders to pay more. Pay more for what? Improvements years from now, when what I really need is reliable transportation to and from my job NOW? Also, if we can continue with the assumptions about these systems, they're not in a position to sustain increased ridership or increased trips, which makes it very hard to capture that revenue in the way you propose.
danielschonfeld 10y ago
I just want to leave this here - http://narrowstreetssf.com/ http://narrowstreetssf.com/ one can dream.... America with narrow streets
- burfog 10y ago
  That kind of dream is called a nightmare. We block out the Sun. We replace the nice smooth concrete sidewalks with cobblestones... causing more noise from wheels (carts and strollers and bikes too, not just cars) and causing people in high heels to sprain their ankles. Oh, and cobblestone is crazy expensive. I guess we'll be needing mass transit, but we just made the street to narrow for it. We make it really tough to transport a family. We made the area inhospitable for people (often women and elderly) who feel unsafe out of their cars. I know it's cute. It's not actually livable, unless maybe you are an athletic single male who telecommutes. Oh, and the weather is at least as nice as SF.

17 points by gwintrob 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Worth considering when reading that article... http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge-america http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridg...

Animats 10y ago
The new eastern span of the SF Bay Bridge is about 6x over budget because politicians wanted it to look pretty. There's no need for a suspension bridge there; the water isn't deep and it's not a major navigation channel. It could have been a set of short spans, like the old one, and much cheaper.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  And we still can't ride a bicycle all the way to SF from the east bay (well, without going via San Jose at least)

Volscio 10y ago

DC's metro system is in another league of dysfunction from the other systems which suffer from the typical, chronic burden of heavy use. The article lumps it all together; "hey, we should do a transit article today".

jmount 10y ago

Because to the New York Times only the Northeast exists. San Francisco Bay Area BART is having troubles- but I doubt we will be seeing federal dollars routed our way. But by all means lets all worry about DC and NY.

ojbyrne 10y ago
It is called the "New York Times."
yompers888 10y ago
The author wrote what she knew. Better to stop short of some relevant instances than to make sweeping generalizations that you can't defend (especially if they turn out to be wrong.) So yes, by all means let's worry about the problems that we understand, rather than swinging in the dark at ones we've never seen or studied. On another note, have some faith in Silicon Valley. The enormous wealth of the area ties back to massive federal spending, and surely they still remember how to grab some money while it's being passed around.
basseq 10y ago
> The Federal Transit Administration found that public transit systems have a backlog of $86 billion in critical maintenance nationwide. I wonder how that backlog is allocated: e.g., how BART's backlog compares to NYC, Boston, and DC. DC and BART are about the same age (1972 vs. 1976), but DC has 68% more riders[1] and an operating budget that's almost double[2]. (So, yes, WMATA also spends more per rider.) Everyone's hurting for investment in general. [1] Weekday Daily Ridership from Wikipedia: 423,120 (BART) vs. 712,843 (WMATA). [2] FY16 Annual Operating Budgets: $900k (BART) vs. $1.8B (WMATA)
- infinite8s 10y ago
  You mean BART spends more per user.
  - basseq 10y ago
    No, not according to these numbers. $2,528 for WMATA vs. $2,127 for BART. (Operating budget divided by daily riders.)
- DrScump 10y ago
  But is that an apple to apple comparison? Operating budget means only so much -- it ignores major costs like pension and benefit obligations and debt service (BART is among the worst at both).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

yompers888 10y ago

I know that this article is talking just about subways, but they brought up the issue of infrastructure spending being far too low. In many cases, however, it's more about the spending being incredibly poorly directed. I was talking to someone who used to sit on the commission of a Virginia city. He told me that VDOT pays for 95% of road construction and maintenance if it conforms to VDOT urban code. This is incredibly foolish for two reasons: 1. Urban code requires a minimum 28 foot road width. Understanding that "urban" here best means "where there might be some people" rather than significant density, this is a horrendous plan because it encourages huge roads designed for ~45mph. these roads optimize traffic throughput in places that should be optimized for livability, resulting in unnecessarily high spending and, more importantly, dangerous car-paths that discourage crossing the street, or even using it at all without a car. 2. More relevant to infrastructure spending, this imbalanced gravy train means that a town can easily add the tax base of large retailers at the edges of town, and the only cost to them is 5% of the huge roads involved in getting people out to those relatively unproductive stores. The result is a land-use problem where people have no inclination to build near one another, and the resulting dysfunctional road system that tries to move people and foster economic activity with the same infrastructure, and does both quite poorly. It's the futon of roads. And sure it's nice (if you live in one of these places) to be able to drive to the huge grocery store and pick from 8 different kinds of mustard, but if you're buying the specialty versions, you should probably just be ordering it online. Granted, that's just the Virginia system, but it seems reasonable to expect that it would be similar in other states. In my travels, I haven't noticed many (U.S.) places that didn't fall into similar patterns.

rayiner 10y ago
> And sure it's nice (if you live in one of these places) to be able to drive to the huge grocery store and pick from 8 different kinds of mustard It's not. It's a disaster. It takes you 30 minutes just to grab some toothpaste if you run out. The NOVA suburbs are utterly dysfunctional and traffic is near a breaking point. It's often faster to drive to DC from Annapolis than from Great Falls or Reston (despite the latter being half the distance).
- 10y ago

StillBored 10y ago

Replace subway with road or airport and you get the same article for the rest of the major cities in the US. The 2 hours a day I sit in my car to drive 10 miles to work and back cost me more in lost time (translated to money) than the property taxes I pay. You can't tax cut your way to prosperity.

benbenolson 10y ago

Raising federal gasoline taxes to pay for infrastructure? Since when does that make sense? Let the people that use the subway, pay for the subway's maintenance-- that way, the larger the amount of people that use it, the more money that gets allocated to maintaining it. Keeping this kind of thing within the cities that are affected by the issues ensures that the amount of funding scales with the population of the cities, and ensures that a the infrastructure being maintained doesn't depend on the (often unreliable) federal government to give them money.

tobz 10y ago
If we assume that these systems are in dire need of repair (which many of them are), and that they are unreliable (which they frequently are), then it can be a hard sell to ask riders to pay more. Pay more for what? Improvements years from now, when what I really need is reliable transportation to and from my job NOW? Also, if we can continue with the assumptions about these systems, they're not in a position to sustain increased ridership or increased trips, which makes it very hard to capture that revenue in the way you propose.

danielschonfeld 10y ago

I just want to leave this here - http://narrowstreetssf.com/ http://narrowstreetssf.com/ one can dream.... America with narrow streets

burfog 10y ago
That kind of dream is called a nightmare. We block out the Sun. We replace the nice smooth concrete sidewalks with cobblestones... causing more noise from wheels (carts and strollers and bikes too, not just cars) and causing people in high heels to sprain their ankles. Oh, and cobblestone is crazy expensive. I guess we'll be needing mass transit, but we just made the street to narrow for it. We make it really tough to transport a family. We made the area inhospitable for people (often women and elderly) who feel unsafe out of their cars. I know it's cute. It's not actually livable, unless maybe you are an athletic single male who telecommutes. Oh, and the weather is at least as nice as SF.