6 ms·

Ring-fenced yearly upkeep budget + years of sustained funding for improvements = great subway system. London Underground in the 1980s was like NYC Subway now -

Ring-fenced yearly upkeep budget + years of sustained funding for improvements = great subway system. London Underground in the 1980s was like NYC Subway now - but after sustained 15-20 years of funding it improved immensely (while passenger levels more than doubled, if not tripled). Of course this could not last - with the current Conservative government Underground is getting less and less money, so starting to defer upgrades... Politicians are incapable of learning.

xvf22 9y ago
The social infrastructure is a bank account paid into by previous governments. They are pilfering it because it's easy and the fallout will probably land on someone else.
rayiner 9y ago
That doesn’t help. The MTA’s problem is decidedly not money. The MTA’s spending on subway is about double per passenger as Transport for London spends on the underground.[1] Having a ring fenced budget wouldn’t do any good as it gets eaten away by inefficiency and waste. What the MTA needs to do is: 1) Disband the union 2) Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times 3) Double fares (Tube fares are 15-100% higher depending on distance; using exchange rates from a few years ago, minimum Tube fare was like $5 versus $2.75 for the NY subway) [1] http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf (page 10) versus http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu.. http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu.... (page II-A). Just look at the Underground versus the subway + the Staten Island Railroad.
- 1jojojo 9y ago
  If MTA's problem is decidedly not money, then why does the MTA need to double its fares?
  - jjoonathan 9y ago
    To keep the poors out, duh.
  - heartbreak 9y ago
    I’m not sure what point the comment was intending to make, but doubling fares may reduce ridership while not necessarily increasing revenue.
  - apostacy 9y ago
    It's complicated. There's different sources of revenue for a system like that. Does Greyhound increase it's fare if the roads need to be repaved? The funding for the tracks and the other parts of the system come from different places, with the farebox only having to partially pay for their upkeep. And there's a lot of politics involved because the rest of the state of NY helps pay for the subway.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    The MTA’s current problems are not the result of underfunding in the past. But overcoming the backlog will require more money in the short term than a well-maintained system would need. Also, raising fares will allow MTA to reduce dependency on the State, which in NY tends to be an unpredictable and unstable funding source. There is no reason for the NYC metro to be cheaper than the London Tube. They should raise fares to what the market will bear, and use the money for expansion or save it for a rainy day.
    - jbooth 9y ago
      "what the market will bear" isn't necessarily appropriate for a public good, though. It might maximize ticket revenue if they priced some people out of taking the train. Doesn't maximize good for the city, or even revenue for the city if some marginal person decides to stay home instead of going to work.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        Maximizing ticket revenue allows the system to offer better service for everyone who uses it. To the extent that people are priced out at the margin, that can be addressed through targeted subsidies (or guaranteed minimum income). In any event, whatever the desirable range may be, having fares that are only about half as much as in the closest comparable city with a well-functioning subway (London), is clearly outside that range.
        dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        >Maximizing ticket revenue allows the system to offer better service for everyone who uses it So only rich people will ride the subway but those who do will have a better experience? > To the extent that people are priced out at the margin, that can be addressed through targeted subsidies (or guaranteed minimum income). Please provide examples of this working in practice. It doesn't seem to work for healthcare, education, etc. The places with "good" healthcare, education, transportation, internet, etc, don't make it expensive and then hand out vouchers to poor people. They make it free or so cheap everyone can afford it.
- robbyt 9y ago
  There's also quite a bit of corruption in the MTA... I've heard multiple first-hand accounts of construction kick-backs, intentional sabotage, and other awful things going on internally at the MTA. The problem isn't money, it's awful leadership and politics.
- apostacy 9y ago
  > 2) Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times Absolutely not! Overnight service is an essential element of the NYC subway system. It's what makes the subway go from being a convenience to being a utility. Knowing that I can absolutely rely on subway, or at least a shuttle bus, at any time of the night, is a completely different experience than living in a city where I have to plan might night around the train. Even if it very slow at night, I know it will be there. Like a road. Besides, I doubt that shutting down all 400 miles of the network will significantly improve maintenance efficiency. They already severely cut back service to a few trains an hour, and they coordinate with maintenance crews pretty well, and crawl past them at 5mph. And the system is big enough so that they can shut down parts of it. I think the only time the city completely shut down service was during 9/11, but they had partial service again a few hours later, to areas that did not pass through the neighborhood. But I can tell you that proposing we shut down all service after a certain hour is as ludicrous as saying we should close most of our bridges after a certain hour. The subway is not an add-on for NYC like in it is in most cities, it is an essential feature.
  - justicezyx 9y ago
    See, when ever some reasonable proposal is raised, someone with absolutely the strongest push back jumps out. Who defines essential? The cost of overnight running, does it justify the value? The biggest cities in the world does not have overnight sub, and they carry far more people around the city, is that a problem? No, of course not.
    - chimeracoder 9y ago
      > The biggest cities in the world does not have overnight sub, and they carry far more people around the city, is that a problem? No, of course not. I don't think we want to use Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Delhi, Jakarti, Beijing, Mumbai, São Paulo, or Lagos[0] as models for New York City's transit. A casual observer might claim Tokyo is a decent model, except that Tokyo is structurally a radically different city, to the point where the comparison doesn't provide much of value. > The cost of overnight running, does it justify the value? It absolutely does. Shutting down the subway overnight would cripple the entire city. Even though overnight service is limited compared to daytime service, it's an essential part of the city's infrastructure. Moreover, eliminating overnight service isn't actually necessary for providing the improvements that the subway needs, so talking about eliminating overnight service is a red herring. [0] the nine cities in the world, excluding Tokyo, whose metropolitan area is larger than New York City's.
- AndyMcConachie 9y ago
  > 1) Disband the union Yes, because the people who serve us don't deserve to be treated with respect or earn a decent wage. Maybe we could just save all this arguing and simply reinstate slavary. At least then those pesky workers would probably complain less. Or if they did we could just hit them.
  - berbec 9y ago
    Overblown hyperbolic statements don't advance your cause. I believe everyone should have the right to join a union, but the payroll of the MTA is very high with over 21,000 employees making upwards of $100,000 [1] in a recent year. This level of payroll hurts the MTA's ability to fund other priorities. I'm not saying mismanagement and misplaced funding don't contribute too, but that's a lot of 6-figure workers. 1: https://nypost.com/2015/07/16/heres-why-your-subway-fare-keeps-going-up/ https://nypost.com/2015/07/16/heres-why-your-subway-fare-kee...
  - tooltalk 9y ago
    I don't know any modern slavery that pays over $200K/year in total comp, generous pension, health plans. Are you a citizen of Kuwait, Brunei, or perhaps Norway?
- Gracana 9y ago
  I don't like your suggestion that the union should be disbanded. Union workers are safer than non-union workers, and the US needs safety right now. "This is the third consecutive increase in annual workplace fatalities and the first time more than 5,000 fatalities have been recorded by the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) since 2008." https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
  - ameister14 9y ago
    I'm not sure how much you know about the relationship between Unions and city/state government in NY, but an example of the increased costs of such a relationship include the fact that unions outsource the jobs to non-union subcontractors and the city budget is $84 Billion, 10X that of Los Angeles.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Union workers are safer than non-union workers More accurately, unionized working relationships enforce safer working conditions (both by contracting for conditions better than the legal minimums and providing better avenues for addressing situations which don't meet the legal and contractual minimums) than non-unionized relationships.
  - tooltalk 9y ago
    America has been sending a lot of dangerous manufacturing jobs to oversea competitors for decades now. The data likewise show that about 2/3 of all occupational fatalities are caused by transportation incidents ("road incidents") or by "persons or animals," not by unsafe, dangerous working condition we often associate with industrial manufacturing (and already outsourced to poorer nations). I don't see why we need the union today -- especially when the NYC city transportation employees are known to earn more than $100K in wages alone.
- rco8786 9y ago
  > Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times Yea... that's a real bad idea. This city operates 24 hours a day, pretending otherwise is a mistake.
- stepanhruda 9y ago
  jesus christ your suggestions would literally cripple NYC
dazc 9y ago
'.. with the current Conservative government Underground is getting less and less money...' Welcome to the world as seen by most UK residents, who don't live and work in London.

xvf22 9y ago

The social infrastructure is a bank account paid into by previous governments. They are pilfering it because it's easy and the fallout will probably land on someone else.

rayiner 9y ago

That doesn’t help. The MTA’s problem is decidedly not money. The MTA’s spending on subway is about double per passenger as Transport for London spends on the underground.[1] Having a ring fenced budget wouldn’t do any good as it gets eaten away by inefficiency and waste. What the MTA needs to do is: 1) Disband the union 2) Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times 3) Double fares (Tube fares are 15-100% higher depending on distance; using exchange rates from a few years ago, minimum Tube fare was like $5 versus $2.75 for the NY subway) [1] http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf (page 10) versus http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu.. http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu.... (page II-A). Just look at the Underground versus the subway + the Staten Island Railroad.

1jojojo 9y ago
If MTA's problem is decidedly not money, then why does the MTA need to double its fares?
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  To keep the poors out, duh.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  I’m not sure what point the comment was intending to make, but doubling fares may reduce ridership while not necessarily increasing revenue.
- apostacy 9y ago
  It's complicated. There's different sources of revenue for a system like that. Does Greyhound increase it's fare if the roads need to be repaved? The funding for the tracks and the other parts of the system come from different places, with the farebox only having to partially pay for their upkeep. And there's a lot of politics involved because the rest of the state of NY helps pay for the subway.
- rayiner 9y ago
  The MTA’s current problems are not the result of underfunding in the past. But overcoming the backlog will require more money in the short term than a well-maintained system would need. Also, raising fares will allow MTA to reduce dependency on the State, which in NY tends to be an unpredictable and unstable funding source. There is no reason for the NYC metro to be cheaper than the London Tube. They should raise fares to what the market will bear, and use the money for expansion or save it for a rainy day.
  - jbooth 9y ago
    "what the market will bear" isn't necessarily appropriate for a public good, though. It might maximize ticket revenue if they priced some people out of taking the train. Doesn't maximize good for the city, or even revenue for the city if some marginal person decides to stay home instead of going to work.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      Maximizing ticket revenue allows the system to offer better service for everyone who uses it. To the extent that people are priced out at the margin, that can be addressed through targeted subsidies (or guaranteed minimum income). In any event, whatever the desirable range may be, having fares that are only about half as much as in the closest comparable city with a well-functioning subway (London), is clearly outside that range.
      - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
        >Maximizing ticket revenue allows the system to offer better service for everyone who uses it So only rich people will ride the subway but those who do will have a better experience? > To the extent that people are priced out at the margin, that can be addressed through targeted subsidies (or guaranteed minimum income). Please provide examples of this working in practice. It doesn't seem to work for healthcare, education, etc. The places with "good" healthcare, education, transportation, internet, etc, don't make it expensive and then hand out vouchers to poor people. They make it free or so cheap everyone can afford it.
robbyt 9y ago
There's also quite a bit of corruption in the MTA... I've heard multiple first-hand accounts of construction kick-backs, intentional sabotage, and other awful things going on internally at the MTA. The problem isn't money, it's awful leadership and politics.
apostacy 9y ago
> 2) Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times Absolutely not! Overnight service is an essential element of the NYC subway system. It's what makes the subway go from being a convenience to being a utility. Knowing that I can absolutely rely on subway, or at least a shuttle bus, at any time of the night, is a completely different experience than living in a city where I have to plan might night around the train. Even if it very slow at night, I know it will be there. Like a road. Besides, I doubt that shutting down all 400 miles of the network will significantly improve maintenance efficiency. They already severely cut back service to a few trains an hour, and they coordinate with maintenance crews pretty well, and crawl past them at 5mph. And the system is big enough so that they can shut down parts of it. I think the only time the city completely shut down service was during 9/11, but they had partial service again a few hours later, to areas that did not pass through the neighborhood. But I can tell you that proposing we shut down all service after a certain hour is as ludicrous as saying we should close most of our bridges after a certain hour. The subway is not an add-on for NYC like in it is in most cities, it is an essential feature.
- justicezyx 9y ago
  See, when ever some reasonable proposal is raised, someone with absolutely the strongest push back jumps out. Who defines essential? The cost of overnight running, does it justify the value? The biggest cities in the world does not have overnight sub, and they carry far more people around the city, is that a problem? No, of course not.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > The biggest cities in the world does not have overnight sub, and they carry far more people around the city, is that a problem? No, of course not. I don't think we want to use Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Delhi, Jakarti, Beijing, Mumbai, São Paulo, or Lagos[0] as models for New York City's transit. A casual observer might claim Tokyo is a decent model, except that Tokyo is structurally a radically different city, to the point where the comparison doesn't provide much of value. > The cost of overnight running, does it justify the value? It absolutely does. Shutting down the subway overnight would cripple the entire city. Even though overnight service is limited compared to daytime service, it's an essential part of the city's infrastructure. Moreover, eliminating overnight service isn't actually necessary for providing the improvements that the subway needs, so talking about eliminating overnight service is a red herring. [0] the nine cities in the world, excluding Tokyo, whose metropolitan area is larger than New York City's.
AndyMcConachie 9y ago
> 1) Disband the union Yes, because the people who serve us don't deserve to be treated with respect or earn a decent wage. Maybe we could just save all this arguing and simply reinstate slavary. At least then those pesky workers would probably complain less. Or if they did we could just hit them.
- berbec 9y ago
  Overblown hyperbolic statements don't advance your cause. I believe everyone should have the right to join a union, but the payroll of the MTA is very high with over 21,000 employees making upwards of $100,000 [1] in a recent year. This level of payroll hurts the MTA's ability to fund other priorities. I'm not saying mismanagement and misplaced funding don't contribute too, but that's a lot of 6-figure workers. 1: https://nypost.com/2015/07/16/heres-why-your-subway-fare-keeps-going-up/ https://nypost.com/2015/07/16/heres-why-your-subway-fare-kee...
- tooltalk 9y ago
  I don't know any modern slavery that pays over $200K/year in total comp, generous pension, health plans. Are you a citizen of Kuwait, Brunei, or perhaps Norway?
Gracana 9y ago
I don't like your suggestion that the union should be disbanded. Union workers are safer than non-union workers, and the US needs safety right now. "This is the third consecutive increase in annual workplace fatalities and the first time more than 5,000 fatalities have been recorded by the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) since 2008." https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
- ameister14 9y ago
  I'm not sure how much you know about the relationship between Unions and city/state government in NY, but an example of the increased costs of such a relationship include the fact that unions outsource the jobs to non-union subcontractors and the city budget is $84 Billion, 10X that of Los Angeles.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Union workers are safer than non-union workers More accurately, unionized working relationships enforce safer working conditions (both by contracting for conditions better than the legal minimums and providing better avenues for addressing situations which don't meet the legal and contractual minimums) than non-unionized relationships.
- tooltalk 9y ago
  America has been sending a lot of dangerous manufacturing jobs to oversea competitors for decades now. The data likewise show that about 2/3 of all occupational fatalities are caused by transportation incidents ("road incidents") or by "persons or animals," not by unsafe, dangerous working condition we often associate with industrial manufacturing (and already outsourced to poorer nations). I don't see why we need the union today -- especially when the NYC city transportation employees are known to earn more than $100K in wages alone.
rco8786 9y ago
> Cut service overnight to increase maintenance times Yea... that's a real bad idea. This city operates 24 hours a day, pretending otherwise is a mistake.
stepanhruda 9y ago
jesus christ your suggestions would literally cripple NYC

dazc 9y ago

'.. with the current Conservative government Underground is getting less and less money...' Welcome to the world as seen by most UK residents, who don't live and work in London.