4 ms·

Oh how sad. How will we New Yorkers live without the lack of public transportation, NIMBYism gone insane, the complete opposition to building more than 1 housin

by cletus 9y ago

Oh how sad. How will we New Yorkers live without the lack of public transportation, NIMBYism gone insane, the complete opposition to building more than 1 housing unit on 15,000 square feet of land and no housing options for lower and middle income workers within 2 hours of where they work?

KhanMahGretsch 9y ago
We’re catching up on the public-transport front! http://uk.businessinsider.com/public-transit-ranking-cities-nyc-subway-2017-11?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/public-transit-ranking-cities-...
- bpicolo 9y ago
  The BART stops at midnight either way, reliability be damned.
bobthechef 9y ago
Well, to be honest, the MTA is kind of shit. We'll see what Andy Byford can do to elevate it from third world squalor to something functional.
- lloyd-christmas 9y ago
  > the MTA is kind of shit The organization, sure. However, the transportation complaints seem to be more of a publicity stunt than anything^. I've lived in NY for 30+ years, NYC for 10 of that. Excluding a few subsections, public transportation as a whole has barely changed in my 15 years of using it (regarding the numbers, part of my time I did as a commuter from the 'burbs). ^ In regards to taxes. A summary of my comments the last time this came up: NYC residents pay a ton in taxes and get little back. Our state taxes get moved upstate and our federal taxes go to poor states. I really think it's just trying to put pressure on our representatives to be a bit more "selfish" as to what happens with our taxes. Both the MTA and Metro North are owned by the state. One of them has 300k daily riders, the other has 5.5m daily riders. 150k of those MN riders end up in the city everyday, so both groups are using state owned products, one group is potentially using BOTH (I always did when I commuted from Westchester to the financial district). The 4 commuter lines combined (NJTransit, PATH, LIRR, Metro North) have 1/3 the total daily ridership of the subway, but get almost double the amount of subsidies from state coffers.
tzakrajs 9y ago
Right because MTA isn't an old broken down mess (I read too many articles about this and I don't even live near NYC)
- azemetre 9y ago
  It's vastly easier to fix an already established public transit system than implement a new one in the United States. I honestly doubt another subway system will be built in a new city within the next decade, which is pathetic for other reasons.
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  I live in NYC and take the trains and buses everyday. There is a huge gulf between being occasionally inconvenienced and just having no other option. Some people get so obsessed with NYC public transport they completely miss the big picture. Yeah your train may be 10 minutes delayed but at least there is a train. The perfect is the enemy of the good. The messy complexity of real life ( including corrupt politicians) is never going to look like something you dreamed up in sim city.
- geofft 9y ago
  That's just because we have high expectations. Having lived in both the Bay Area and NYC, in NYC we generally expect the MTA to work reliably, frequently, and 24/7, because it usually does. In the Bay Area I had no such expectations: I knew there were trips I just couldn't make by transit in a reasonable fashion, and other trips that I couldn't make quickly. So when the transit systems failed to deliver, I wasn't actually disappointed. For instance, my current commute from voice lessons in the Upper West Side to my apartment in Brooklyn (about 9 miles) is one 30-minute train ride, with a train arriving at least every 5 minutes, plus a 5-minute walk on each side. I'm disappointed when that train doesn't go to Brooklyn on weekends because of construction or something, and I need to make one transfer to another train that also comes within about a minute of me getting to the transfer station. My voice lessons in SF were in Diamond Heights, under 3 miles from my apartment in the Mission. All the commute options involved a bus that comes every half hour, and getting to that bus involved either a transfer from another bus, or walking 15 minutes to take BART one stop. So I would just take a Lyft or a ZipCar, and if the every-half-hour bus wasn't running that day, I wouldn't even notice because I didn't consider it an option. (Sometimes for the return trip I would walk >20 minutes downhill to Glen Park BART, but it's too steep to be a reasonable commute uphill.) And then I moved to Oakland and gave up on going to voice lessons entirely. Both the MTA and the Bay Area transit systems have plenty of room for improvement. The difference is that we think that improvement to the MTA is politically realistic, that covering the city with good, reliable transit is within the realm of possibility because we're so close to being there. That's why we make more noise in NYC. In SF, it didn't feel like there was a point.

by cletus 9y ago

KhanMahGretsch 9y ago

We’re catching up on the public-transport front! http://uk.businessinsider.com/public-transit-ranking-cities-nyc-subway-2017-11?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/public-transit-ranking-cities-...

bpicolo 9y ago
The BART stops at midnight either way, reliability be damned.

bobthechef 9y ago

Well, to be honest, the MTA is kind of shit. We'll see what Andy Byford can do to elevate it from third world squalor to something functional.

lloyd-christmas 9y ago
> the MTA is kind of shit The organization, sure. However, the transportation complaints seem to be more of a publicity stunt than anything^. I've lived in NY for 30+ years, NYC for 10 of that. Excluding a few subsections, public transportation as a whole has barely changed in my 15 years of using it (regarding the numbers, part of my time I did as a commuter from the 'burbs). ^ In regards to taxes. A summary of my comments the last time this came up: NYC residents pay a ton in taxes and get little back. Our state taxes get moved upstate and our federal taxes go to poor states. I really think it's just trying to put pressure on our representatives to be a bit more "selfish" as to what happens with our taxes. Both the MTA and Metro North are owned by the state. One of them has 300k daily riders, the other has 5.5m daily riders. 150k of those MN riders end up in the city everyday, so both groups are using state owned products, one group is potentially using BOTH (I always did when I commuted from Westchester to the financial district). The 4 commuter lines combined (NJTransit, PATH, LIRR, Metro North) have 1/3 the total daily ridership of the subway, but get almost double the amount of subsidies from state coffers.

tzakrajs 9y ago

Right because MTA isn't an old broken down mess (I read too many articles about this and I don't even live near NYC)

azemetre 9y ago
It's vastly easier to fix an already established public transit system than implement a new one in the United States. I honestly doubt another subway system will be built in a new city within the next decade, which is pathetic for other reasons.
verylittlemeat 9y ago
I live in NYC and take the trains and buses everyday. There is a huge gulf between being occasionally inconvenienced and just having no other option. Some people get so obsessed with NYC public transport they completely miss the big picture. Yeah your train may be 10 minutes delayed but at least there is a train. The perfect is the enemy of the good. The messy complexity of real life ( including corrupt politicians) is never going to look like something you dreamed up in sim city.
geofft 9y ago
That's just because we have high expectations. Having lived in both the Bay Area and NYC, in NYC we generally expect the MTA to work reliably, frequently, and 24/7, because it usually does. In the Bay Area I had no such expectations: I knew there were trips I just couldn't make by transit in a reasonable fashion, and other trips that I couldn't make quickly. So when the transit systems failed to deliver, I wasn't actually disappointed. For instance, my current commute from voice lessons in the Upper West Side to my apartment in Brooklyn (about 9 miles) is one 30-minute train ride, with a train arriving at least every 5 minutes, plus a 5-minute walk on each side. I'm disappointed when that train doesn't go to Brooklyn on weekends because of construction or something, and I need to make one transfer to another train that also comes within about a minute of me getting to the transfer station. My voice lessons in SF were in Diamond Heights, under 3 miles from my apartment in the Mission. All the commute options involved a bus that comes every half hour, and getting to that bus involved either a transfer from another bus, or walking 15 minutes to take BART one stop. So I would just take a Lyft or a ZipCar, and if the every-half-hour bus wasn't running that day, I wouldn't even notice because I didn't consider it an option. (Sometimes for the return trip I would walk >20 minutes downhill to Glen Park BART, but it's too steep to be a reasonable commute uphill.) And then I moved to Oakland and gave up on going to voice lessons entirely. Both the MTA and the Bay Area transit systems have plenty of room for improvement. The difference is that we think that improvement to the MTA is politically realistic, that covering the city with good, reliable transit is within the realm of possibility because we're so close to being there. That's why we make more noise in NYC. In SF, it didn't feel like there was a point.