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While automation sounds elegant, it has nothing to do with the problems or solutions here. The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture t

While automation sounds elegant, it has nothing to do with the problems or solutions here. The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids. Many modern subway systems have similarly huge networks with far higher traffic than NYC but manage to maintain low failure rates and CLEAN tracks simply because they value and prioritize maintenance and quality of service. Some are private, some are public. It truly baffles me why NYC and actually the SF BART both fail so utterly to even attempt to provide quality service.

concerned_user 9y ago
I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car, dislike of mass transit in any form (except planes) and as a result mass transit is meh and makes people even more miserable.
- CaptainZapp 9y ago
  I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car New York is different. Car ownership is extremely low and the subway is a vital part of the city's transportation infrastructure. The problem seems more attitude wise. We want great infrastrure while paying low taxes. This contradiction, of course, isn't really solvable as can be seen in the generally pretty rotten state of infrastructure in the US.
  - AznHisoka 9y ago
    New York has one of the highest state tax rates, 2nd to only California. It is absurdly high given the quality of public transportation. They cant have it both ways.
    - lovemenot 9y ago
      This reply seems to be a good illustration of the attitude described by its parent. The word they is telling. I live in a city with one of the most cost-effective public transport systems. People in Tokyo tend to think of the railways as an extension of themself / their home / their city. Whereas I imagine most Americans tend to look at such systems from an external perspective: hence "they".
      - AznHisoka 9y ago
        ... If my subway was cost-effective, timely, and orderly, I certainly would find it easy to consider it an extension of myself. So there's nothing special about the Japanese (or bad about New Yorkers)
    - diogenescynic 9y ago
      A good example of this issue would be the escalators in BART. BART installed these shitty escalators 30 years ago that don’t work well outside and are prone to breaking down, plus homeless defecate on them... Instead of replacing the escalators that constantly break (or installing a bathroom... they’ve all been closed since 9/11...) they just keep fixing the escalators over and over and over again. It’s a penny wise, pound foolish mentality. We refuse to make long term investments in our infrastructure and just use bandaid solutions that end up costing much more. Oh and the person in charge of selecting the escalators for BART was eventually hired by the escalator company. It’s a perfect example of everything wrong with public goods in America.
  - martinald 9y ago
    I think one of the core issues is the very heavy unionisation of the staff, much more extreme than anywhere else. Apparently union labor rates are 3-5x more expensive in transit than Europe. Considering how labor heavy it is to do repair work on old subway lines it means you need an insane budget to do any more work. And guess what, as soon as the budget gets raised the union notice and want a larger slice. So many examples of this. Another is the way NY subway cars have 3 staff minimum. Whereas London, Paris, Berlin have one. Assume they make 3x the money and you need 3x more than other cities and you have a 10x cost increase in operational labor costs. Plus the complexity of ensuring you always have 3 people there with no sickness etc, as if you lose one you can't run the train at all. It's really insane and will take a mayor with serious backbone to fight.
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      Unions are far more widespread and far stronger in Europe than they are anywhere in the US. By your logic, then, transit maintenance in Europe should cost unbelievable amounts of money. (there are plenty of well-documented reasons why NYC comes up short on money for its transit system, and "unions are the devil" is an insufficient explanation for them)
      - AlgorithmicTime 9y ago
        It's not a question of how widespread they are, it's a question of whether or not they have effectively captured the transport system in question. In NYC, the answer is they have it thoroughly captured. I don't know about Europe, but I'd wager that they have not captured the transport systems as thoroughly.
      - ameister14 9y ago
        Do labor unions have an extremely combative relationship with business in Europe, and have they been traditionally associated with city/state corruption and criminal families? If not, I'd say there are cultural differences here that can't be simply explained by 'unions are big'
      - rayiner 9y ago
  - twobyfour 9y ago
    Of course, part of the problem is that our subway system is run not by the city but by a state government dominated by car culture types. And heck, even our current mayor gets driven around in a black SUV all day and didn't know when questioned last week that less than half of New York households own cars.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      If the MTA provided service to more than the NYC metro region, this would be less of a problem. Half the population the state is paying for a system they never use, so they are understandably upset. If the MTA operated commuter systems around Albany, Buffalo, and other towns and cities in New York, people would be less apt to cut their budget.
      - maxerickson 9y ago
        State funds are not a major portion of the budget: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/ http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/ (the Petroleum tax and State & Local operating assistance combined are less than 10%)
        betterunix2 9y ago
        The MMTOA is 10% on its own, so I am not sure I see your point.
        maxerickson 9y ago
        The way I read Metropolitan Mass Transportation Operating Assistance Fund: This is a pot of tax money collected for the MTA and other downstate transportation systems. It’s made up of revenue, such as statewide tax on petroleum companies, a sales tax in the 12-county MTA region and corporate franchise taxes and fees both statewide and in the MTA region. MMTOA this year will collect a total of $2.3 billion - 72% of which goes to the MTA. That fund isn't "purely" statewide. But the broader point still holds if statewide taxes are contributing all of 20%, the MTA is quite locally funded.
  - chrischen 9y ago
    I would add that SF is even more different in that nobody owns cars and the transit network isn’t rxtensive enough for one to rely on it for all parts of the city. So people end up taking uber and lyft everywhere.
    - bhousel 9y ago
      SF also has like 1/10 the population of NYC.
    - santaclaus 9y ago
      > SF is even more different in that nobody owns cars 70% of SF households own a car, so still a majority by a long shot [1]. [1] http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-v...
      - kurthr 9y ago
        Many of those households have more than one person in them (2.3 by the 2010 census) so I'm not sure it's a majority. http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.... 40% drive alone, while a bare majority 51% use a car, bus or van for transport (including carpools). It's so popular, nobody does it anymore.
        jernoble 9y ago
        Interesting. At 1.10 cars per household, and 2.26 people per household, about 47% of SF residents own cars. (Though subtracting out the under-18 population means 55% of driving-age residents own a car.) Also, given there must be some people who own more than one, the actual percentage is probably lower. Still, that's a lower number than I imagined.
    - djsumdog 9y ago
      > So people end up taking uber and lyft everywhere. People also cycle a lot. Most Caltrain services almost always have two bike cars.
  - tooltalk 9y ago
    Red herring. It doesnt cost arms and legs to maintain what we have, and last I checked, infrastructure is a small fraction of our federal/state budget. We get crappy subway and infrastructure b/c of the efficient public sector workers and unions.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Ma8ee 9y ago
  It's part of the general "Starve the beast" policy. Underfund everything public so its miserable to have to rely on. Then use that as proof that everything government is bad.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 9y ago
    MTA spends 60% more of operating costs per mile of track than the London Tube system: https://www.google.com/amp/s/ny.curbed.com/platform/amp/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mta-operating-cost-analysis https://www.google.com/amp/s/ny.curbed.com/platform/amp/2017.... MTA also gets far more ofnits budget from the government (40%) than the Tube (25%).
  - ameister14 9y ago
    New York City operates on an 84 billion dollar budget. The beast is not starving.
- dazc 9y ago
  But a lot of mass transit infrastructure in Europe is just as bad, if not worse. Save a few 'showpiece' systems. For example, in Spain we high speed rail between major cities which is great but regional and local rail is terrible.
wdn 9y ago
The biggest problem here is MTA is government run. Return the subway to the private sector. Get rid of the union. The union took the city hostage many times. Enough is enough.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > The biggest problem here is MTA is government run. Return the subway to the private sector. Get rid of the union. You're going to get downvoted for this because there's a very strong pro-union contingent on Hacker News, and most people reading Hacker News aren't from New York. That said, it's true that many of the problems that New York transit faces stem from the extreme incompetence and greed of the TWU. It's not even about protecting their members' interests; it's about the TWU protecting its own interests as a corporate entity.
andreasklinger 9y ago
Non-NYC-er here: > The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids Do they have the time and budget horizon to do long-term planning ? To me it seems like SF and NY subways are underfunded
- rayiner 9y ago
  http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf Transport for London budgeted 2.26 billion pounds for the London Underground in 2016. Even at peak exchange rates from 2014, that's $3.8 billion. The MTA spent $8.18 billion on the subway in 2017. The London Underground handles about 5 million rides per day, versus a bit under 6 million per day for the NYC subway. So the NYC MTA spends 120% more to serve about 20% more subway riders.
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  They're underfunded for the level of management and expectations for reliable service. As another comment noted, the MTA uses 120% of London's transportation budget to serve 20% more riders. Superior management could improve the service without additional expenditures but it would probably involve breaking the gravy train for political factions like unions and politicians' friends.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > > The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids The management culture you're referring to stems from the TWU, which actively fights efforts to impose long-term planning and solutions, in favor of quick, short-term responses that pad their bills. The government doesn't push back against these, because (for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article), New York city and state government are not really accountable to their own constituents. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the mayor of New York hasn't ridden public transit regularly in decades and doesn't even know basic transit ridership facts[0]. The former Speaker of the NYS Assembly (who was convicted for corruption a few years ago) was one of the strongest advocates for cutting the bus service that his own district was entirely dependent on[1]. Because of said corruption, he was essentially untouchable, so there was no democratic avenue for holding him accountable. Corruption in NYS is widespread; it's the most corrupt state in the country[2], and it's no surprise that this corruption impacts the public transit infrastructure. [0] https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/943158489064624128 https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/943158489064624128 [1] His district has essentially no subway coverage [2] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/elaine-phillips/new-york-has-been-most-corrupt-state-decades/ http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...

concerned_user 9y ago

I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car, dislike of mass transit in any form (except planes) and as a result mass transit is meh and makes people even more miserable.

CaptainZapp 9y ago
I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car New York is different. Car ownership is extremely low and the subway is a vital part of the city's transportation infrastructure. The problem seems more attitude wise. We want great infrastrure while paying low taxes. This contradiction, of course, isn't really solvable as can be seen in the generally pretty rotten state of infrastructure in the US.
- AznHisoka 9y ago
  New York has one of the highest state tax rates, 2nd to only California. It is absurdly high given the quality of public transportation. They cant have it both ways.
  - lovemenot 9y ago
    This reply seems to be a good illustration of the attitude described by its parent. The word they is telling. I live in a city with one of the most cost-effective public transport systems. People in Tokyo tend to think of the railways as an extension of themself / their home / their city. Whereas I imagine most Americans tend to look at such systems from an external perspective: hence "they".
    - AznHisoka 9y ago
      ... If my subway was cost-effective, timely, and orderly, I certainly would find it easy to consider it an extension of myself. So there's nothing special about the Japanese (or bad about New Yorkers)
  - diogenescynic 9y ago
    A good example of this issue would be the escalators in BART. BART installed these shitty escalators 30 years ago that don’t work well outside and are prone to breaking down, plus homeless defecate on them... Instead of replacing the escalators that constantly break (or installing a bathroom... they’ve all been closed since 9/11...) they just keep fixing the escalators over and over and over again. It’s a penny wise, pound foolish mentality. We refuse to make long term investments in our infrastructure and just use bandaid solutions that end up costing much more. Oh and the person in charge of selecting the escalators for BART was eventually hired by the escalator company. It’s a perfect example of everything wrong with public goods in America.
- martinald 9y ago
  I think one of the core issues is the very heavy unionisation of the staff, much more extreme than anywhere else. Apparently union labor rates are 3-5x more expensive in transit than Europe. Considering how labor heavy it is to do repair work on old subway lines it means you need an insane budget to do any more work. And guess what, as soon as the budget gets raised the union notice and want a larger slice. So many examples of this. Another is the way NY subway cars have 3 staff minimum. Whereas London, Paris, Berlin have one. Assume they make 3x the money and you need 3x more than other cities and you have a 10x cost increase in operational labor costs. Plus the complexity of ensuring you always have 3 people there with no sickness etc, as if you lose one you can't run the train at all. It's really insane and will take a mayor with serious backbone to fight.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    Unions are far more widespread and far stronger in Europe than they are anywhere in the US. By your logic, then, transit maintenance in Europe should cost unbelievable amounts of money. (there are plenty of well-documented reasons why NYC comes up short on money for its transit system, and "unions are the devil" is an insufficient explanation for them)
    - AlgorithmicTime 9y ago
      It's not a question of how widespread they are, it's a question of whether or not they have effectively captured the transport system in question. In NYC, the answer is they have it thoroughly captured. I don't know about Europe, but I'd wager that they have not captured the transport systems as thoroughly.
    - ameister14 9y ago
      Do labor unions have an extremely combative relationship with business in Europe, and have they been traditionally associated with city/state corruption and criminal families? If not, I'd say there are cultural differences here that can't be simply explained by 'unions are big'
    - rayiner 9y ago
- twobyfour 9y ago
  Of course, part of the problem is that our subway system is run not by the city but by a state government dominated by car culture types. And heck, even our current mayor gets driven around in a black SUV all day and didn't know when questioned last week that less than half of New York households own cars.
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    If the MTA provided service to more than the NYC metro region, this would be less of a problem. Half the population the state is paying for a system they never use, so they are understandably upset. If the MTA operated commuter systems around Albany, Buffalo, and other towns and cities in New York, people would be less apt to cut their budget.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      State funds are not a major portion of the budget: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/ http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/ (the Petroleum tax and State & Local operating assistance combined are less than 10%)
      - betterunix2 9y ago
        The MMTOA is 10% on its own, so I am not sure I see your point.
        maxerickson 9y ago
        The way I read Metropolitan Mass Transportation Operating Assistance Fund: This is a pot of tax money collected for the MTA and other downstate transportation systems. It’s made up of revenue, such as statewide tax on petroleum companies, a sales tax in the 12-county MTA region and corporate franchise taxes and fees both statewide and in the MTA region. MMTOA this year will collect a total of $2.3 billion - 72% of which goes to the MTA. That fund isn't "purely" statewide. But the broader point still holds if statewide taxes are contributing all of 20%, the MTA is quite locally funded.
- chrischen 9y ago
  I would add that SF is even more different in that nobody owns cars and the transit network isn’t rxtensive enough for one to rely on it for all parts of the city. So people end up taking uber and lyft everywhere.
  - bhousel 9y ago
    SF also has like 1/10 the population of NYC.
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    > SF is even more different in that nobody owns cars 70% of SF households own a car, so still a majority by a long shot [1]. [1] http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-v...
    - kurthr 9y ago
      Many of those households have more than one person in them (2.3 by the 2010 census) so I'm not sure it's a majority. http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty.... 40% drive alone, while a bare majority 51% use a car, bus or van for transport (including carpools). It's so popular, nobody does it anymore.
      - jernoble 9y ago
        Interesting. At 1.10 cars per household, and 2.26 people per household, about 47% of SF residents own cars. (Though subtracting out the under-18 population means 55% of driving-age residents own a car.) Also, given there must be some people who own more than one, the actual percentage is probably lower. Still, that's a lower number than I imagined.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    > So people end up taking uber and lyft everywhere. People also cycle a lot. Most Caltrain services almost always have two bike cars.
- tooltalk 9y ago
  Red herring. It doesnt cost arms and legs to maintain what we have, and last I checked, infrastructure is a small fraction of our federal/state budget. We get crappy subway and infrastructure b/c of the efficient public sector workers and unions.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Ma8ee 9y ago
It's part of the general "Starve the beast" policy. Underfund everything public so its miserable to have to rely on. Then use that as proof that everything government is bad.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 9y ago
  MTA spends 60% more of operating costs per mile of track than the London Tube system: https://www.google.com/amp/s/ny.curbed.com/platform/amp/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mta-operating-cost-analysis https://www.google.com/amp/s/ny.curbed.com/platform/amp/2017.... MTA also gets far more ofnits budget from the government (40%) than the Tube (25%).
- ameister14 9y ago
  New York City operates on an 84 billion dollar budget. The beast is not starving.
dazc 9y ago
But a lot of mass transit infrastructure in Europe is just as bad, if not worse. Save a few 'showpiece' systems. For example, in Spain we high speed rail between major cities which is great but regional and local rail is terrible.

wdn 9y ago

The biggest problem here is MTA is government run. Return the subway to the private sector. Get rid of the union. The union took the city hostage many times. Enough is enough.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> The biggest problem here is MTA is government run. Return the subway to the private sector. Get rid of the union. You're going to get downvoted for this because there's a very strong pro-union contingent on Hacker News, and most people reading Hacker News aren't from New York. That said, it's true that many of the problems that New York transit faces stem from the extreme incompetence and greed of the TWU. It's not even about protecting their members' interests; it's about the TWU protecting its own interests as a corporate entity.

andreasklinger 9y ago

Non-NYC-er here: > The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids Do they have the time and budget horizon to do long-term planning ? To me it seems like SF and NY subways are underfunded

rayiner 9y ago
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf Transport for London budgeted 2.26 billion pounds for the London Underground in 2016. Even at peak exchange rates from 2014, that's $3.8 billion. The MTA spent $8.18 billion on the subway in 2017. The London Underground handles about 5 million rides per day, versus a bit under 6 million per day for the NYC subway. So the NYC MTA spends 120% more to serve about 20% more subway riders.
alexanderstears 9y ago
They're underfunded for the level of management and expectations for reliable service. As another comment noted, the MTA uses 120% of London's transportation budget to serve 20% more riders. Superior management could improve the service without additional expenditures but it would probably involve breaking the gravy train for political factions like unions and politicians' friends.
chimeracoder 9y ago
> > The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids The management culture you're referring to stems from the TWU, which actively fights efforts to impose long-term planning and solutions, in favor of quick, short-term responses that pad their bills. The government doesn't push back against these, because (for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article), New York city and state government are not really accountable to their own constituents. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the mayor of New York hasn't ridden public transit regularly in decades and doesn't even know basic transit ridership facts[0]. The former Speaker of the NYS Assembly (who was convicted for corruption a few years ago) was one of the strongest advocates for cutting the bus service that his own district was entirely dependent on[1]. Because of said corruption, he was essentially untouchable, so there was no democratic avenue for holding him accountable. Corruption in NYS is widespread; it's the most corrupt state in the country[2], and it's no surprise that this corruption impacts the public transit infrastructure. [0] https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/943158489064624128 https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/943158489064624128 [1] His district has essentially no subway coverage [2] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/elaine-phillips/new-york-has-been-most-corrupt-state-decades/ http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...