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> Why would it take 50 years to install signalling across the system ? Because currently, the residents would riot over the taxes/fees cost of redundancies req

> Why would it take 50 years to install signalling across the system ? Because currently, the residents would riot over the taxes/fees cost of redundancies required to enable faster maintenance and upgrade projects of a 24x7x365 operating system, where the pain of maintenance is constantly deferred until it turns into a looming, critical safety-liability issue. Back when the population density was lower and the pace of life slower, and less economic dependencies upon this infrastructure, the disruptions were affordable and more palatable, but now there are likely powerful stakeholders pressuring the Port Authority from taking as many outages as they'd like these days, comparatively. When I used to live in NYC, the Port Authority took a lot of abuse from a lot of different quarters for every line shutdown for planned maintenance. Increases in fares to fund future expansion/maintenance was met with a lot of resistance. They were like sysadmins for NYC.

tacostakohashi 9y ago
This is the real reason for all of these problems. It's political. The fares don't come close to covering the operating and capital cost of the system. It's not user-pays, it requires constant government subsidies (as an implementation detail, the required government subsidies form a convenient way for the state and city to hold each other hostage, but that's another story). Any talk of use pays is met with outrage about how low income people out in the boroughs couldn't afford it, so the whole system continues to operate as a horribly inefficient welfare system for poor people to get to underpaid jobs in the city, instead of a transit system. It would help a lot to double (triple?) the fares overnight, and give the poor people out in the boroughs a free metrocard - at least that way you're capturing the value provided to the rich people and tourists all the way through manhattan and brooklyn.

tacostakohashi 9y ago

This is the real reason for all of these problems. It's political. The fares don't come close to covering the operating and capital cost of the system. It's not user-pays, it requires constant government subsidies (as an implementation detail, the required government subsidies form a convenient way for the state and city to hold each other hostage, but that's another story). Any talk of use pays is met with outrage about how low income people out in the boroughs couldn't afford it, so the whole system continues to operate as a horribly inefficient welfare system for poor people to get to underpaid jobs in the city, instead of a transit system. It would help a lot to double (triple?) the fares overnight, and give the poor people out in the boroughs a free metrocard - at least that way you're capturing the value provided to the rich people and tourists all the way through manhattan and brooklyn.