9 ms·

This would not be the first time that the MTA has willfully deceived the public by maintaining two sets of facts - the private set which reflects the truth and

This would not be the first time that the MTA has willfully deceived the public by maintaining two sets of facts - the private set which reflects the truth and another set of facts that are used in discussion with the public. 15 years ago the MTA was caught maintaining two different sets of books - one internal that showed the agency had a surplus of cash and another set of books for the public which showed the agency as being "cash strapped" and needing to raise fares as a result. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/nyregion/hevesi-says-mta-moved-millions-to-simulate-a-deficit.html http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/nyregion/hevesi-says-mta-m... The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic. It's hard to believe it's capable of producing anything other than it's current broken state.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic How does one realistically reform something like this?
- DiabloD3 9y ago
  You fire everyone. However, if I remember correctly, they're unionized, which is why this hasn't happened yet.
  - geofft 9y ago
    Is management unionized? The article makes it sound like the engineers themselves are frustrated with this system.
    - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      You can't just stop the gravy train by removing management. Bad culture is at all levels.
      - wpietri 9y ago
        Bad culture is at all levels, but management control the factors that turn culture bad. If you'd like to see a fine example of how changing the management and the management philosophy can turn a place around, look at NUMMI. There's a This American Life episode with extensive worker interviews: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      They are not.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Which will never happen. Yet another of China's many advantages: ease of optimization.
    - bsder 9y ago
      As long as you agree with the optimization that the man in charge is implementing. If you don't, well, in China, sucks to be you.
      - mistermann 9y ago
        It depends. You may not enjoy certain micro-optimizations, but to me it seems perfectly possible that even though living in a communist dictatorship has many negatives, the net benefits under a benevolent dictator could easily surpass the drawbacks, especially when compared to a free but largely corrupt Western society where the benefits may not make it outside the top 10%. And this isn't even getting into the longer term prospects of the very real danger of the efficiency and scale of China starting to eat into the core economies of other nations as they move away from simple manufacturing and beginning moving up the value chain, as we are now seeing.
        notriddle 9y ago
        > benevolent dictator First of all, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/nov/19/crazy-bad-beijing-air-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/nov/19/cra... Second of all, and this is probably something that was brought up in your high school civics class, the advantage of a democracy is that the overall quality of a government will be the average of all of the people in it. Speaking metaphorically, you can roll N dice and average the results together; doing this repeatedly, you'll notice that as N goes up, the resulting averages will follow a normal distribution more and more closely. If you have enough dice, you can assume that you'll hit the middle of the curve most of the time, instead of having to worry that you might roll a 1.
        kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
  - burner5692 9y ago
    Doesn't a union make that easier? That's the point of unions.
    - apetresc 9y ago
      A union makes it easier to fire workers? What?
      - burner5692 9y ago
        It makes it easier to collectively fire workers.
  - SolarNet 9y ago
    I don't think it's the workers that are the problem, from the article they sound just as frustrated (and indeed seem to be the source of this article). The management is not in a union. How does firing the workers fix anything?
  - cortesoft 9y ago
    If you fire everyone, wouldn't that stop the trains? I mean, you have to hire new people and get them trained on what to do?
  - vnj23iwe 9y ago
    Fire everyone at Agency A for shitty behavior. Then turn around and realize everyone at Agency B is cooking the books, so fire them. And so on. Then turn around and realize basically every large institution humans have ever built relies on shady, selfish, behavior and stop caring about reforming individuals since thousands of years of policing have done jack and squat to remove the behavior from the species. Seriously, this forum is the worst for overlooking relevant variables (human biology and contemporary culture as a whole) for their trite commentary, usually rooted in nothing more than culturally acceptable bullet points. Hundreds of years of the same sort of thinking. Still happens.
    - avinium 9y ago
      Not saying I disagree with you - but assuming what you say is true, what would you propose?
    - freelunch 9y ago
      So why does Tokyo’s system work so much better? They’re humans too, but apparently their transit system works much better.
      - lmm 9y ago
        I don't know, but Japanese companies are notorious for never firing people, so it's very unlikely to be because they "fired everyone" as DiabloD3 was suggesting.
      - Symmetry 9y ago
        They're privatized.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      It seems like you're saying "it's impossible to achieve perfection, therefore you should never even try to improve."
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"How does one realistically reform something like this?" Slowly and methodically. For starters: Create legislation that prevents construction firms from making campaign contribution and MTA employees from taking jobs as political consultants. This is probably the largest source of corruption, graft and waste.[1] The MTA's Board of Directors is predominantly controlled by the Governor of the state. The Board of Directors has long been a political dumping ground. Residents - the people who depend on the train have almost no say. Residents should have representation on the board of directors even if its a only a handful of rotating seats. Having people on the board who actually use and depend on the train would provide an instant feedback loop. I think you also need to implement a rotating independent oversight committee whom the MTA must be beholden too. One that is democratically elected. The oversight committee should have real teeth though perhaps with veto ability in certain instances. And yes as someone else mentioned you probably need to fire a whole bunch of people. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
  - bobthepanda 9y ago
    The main issue is that the MTA and its predecessors have always been dependent on one person (now the Governor, formerly the Mayor). The actual board members have no credibility and no accountability, hence why we are here today. The MTA would be much better off if the appointed representative of the county was replaced with the actual elected executive of said county (so county executives, borough presidents, mayor/council speaker/what have you, etc.)
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      It's never been "entirely" dependent of one person, although the majority control seems to be the Governor. Either through his direct 5 seat appointments or indirectly through the 7 other non-NYC seats. I don't believe it was ever under Mayoral control. The current governance structure came under then Gvernor Nelson Rockefeller. But anyway Nassau, Suffolk, Westcheste, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties each get to appoint a board member. That's nearly a third of the 17 total seats. Beside Wescheter and Nassau counties none of those counties even border any one of the 5 boroughs. That's 5 votes by people who most assuredly do not ride the subway to work and maybe not at all. As such it's hard to believe they would ever have NYC residents best interests at heart.
- credit_guy 9y ago
  IANAL, but keeping double books should land you in prison, as simple as that.
- tomohawk 9y ago
  Incentives work. Figuring out the correct incentives to achieve good results is hard. Keeping ahead of the people who will game them is hard. This requires competent management, which is obviously lacking. Fire the incompetent managers and fire the political leadership who appointed them (term limits might help here). Since there are credible allegations of crime, is there an inspector general? There should be. If not, bring in the fraud squad and investigate the hell out of them. They'll leave.
throwaway_80bf3 9y ago
About 8 years ago there were a few house ads in the cars that were effectively gaslighting riders. It was one of the craziest things I'd ever seen as a consumer -- borderline antagonistic. The agency, and the workers to some extent, can be pugilistic when criticized. http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/176/files/2010/03/fare_ad.jpg http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/176/files/2010/03/f...
- sushisource 9y ago
  For those of us who aren't familiar with the price history what's the lie here?
  - biggc 9y ago
    They're comparing a single-ride fare to a monthly-pass fare. A single ride fare cost $2.00 in 2008[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_transit_fares#Fare_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_transit_fares#Fa...
  - ryankupyn 9y ago
    The MTA is comparing single-ride fares with "effective" cost per ride of a then-$81 30 day pass, which they amortize over around 70 rides, which is a bit high for the average person in my experience (though not ridiculous). It might be more accurate to compare the single-ride fare then with the single-ride fare at the time the photo was taken, which was either $2.00 or $2.25 (the price changed in 2009, I think).
    - megy 9y ago
      Did they have multi-day passes back then? It might be reasonable to compare the cheapest options available then.
      - bogomipz 9y ago
        They did not. You actually bought metal subway tokens that you dropped into a coin slot on the turnstile. See: https://untappedcities.com/2011/07/06/subway-tokens-a-dose-of-nostalgia/ https://untappedcities.com/2011/07/06/subway-tokens-a-dose-o...

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic How does one realistically reform something like this?

DiabloD3 9y ago
You fire everyone. However, if I remember correctly, they're unionized, which is why this hasn't happened yet.
- geofft 9y ago
  Is management unionized? The article makes it sound like the engineers themselves are frustrated with this system.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    You can't just stop the gravy train by removing management. Bad culture is at all levels.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      Bad culture is at all levels, but management control the factors that turn culture bad. If you'd like to see a fine example of how changing the management and the management philosophy can turn a place around, look at NUMMI. There's a This American Life episode with extensive worker interviews: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    They are not.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Which will never happen. Yet another of China's many advantages: ease of optimization.
  - bsder 9y ago
    As long as you agree with the optimization that the man in charge is implementing. If you don't, well, in China, sucks to be you.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      It depends. You may not enjoy certain micro-optimizations, but to me it seems perfectly possible that even though living in a communist dictatorship has many negatives, the net benefits under a benevolent dictator could easily surpass the drawbacks, especially when compared to a free but largely corrupt Western society where the benefits may not make it outside the top 10%. And this isn't even getting into the longer term prospects of the very real danger of the efficiency and scale of China starting to eat into the core economies of other nations as they move away from simple manufacturing and beginning moving up the value chain, as we are now seeing.
      - notriddle 9y ago
        > benevolent dictator First of all, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/nov/19/crazy-bad-beijing-air-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/nov/19/cra... Second of all, and this is probably something that was brought up in your high school civics class, the advantage of a democracy is that the overall quality of a government will be the average of all of the people in it. Speaking metaphorically, you can roll N dice and average the results together; doing this repeatedly, you'll notice that as N goes up, the resulting averages will follow a normal distribution more and more closely. If you have enough dice, you can assume that you'll hit the middle of the curve most of the time, instead of having to worry that you might roll a 1.
      - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
- burner5692 9y ago
  Doesn't a union make that easier? That's the point of unions.
  - apetresc 9y ago
    A union makes it easier to fire workers? What?
    - burner5692 9y ago
      It makes it easier to collectively fire workers.
- SolarNet 9y ago
  I don't think it's the workers that are the problem, from the article they sound just as frustrated (and indeed seem to be the source of this article). The management is not in a union. How does firing the workers fix anything?
- cortesoft 9y ago
  If you fire everyone, wouldn't that stop the trains? I mean, you have to hire new people and get them trained on what to do?
- vnj23iwe 9y ago
  Fire everyone at Agency A for shitty behavior. Then turn around and realize everyone at Agency B is cooking the books, so fire them. And so on. Then turn around and realize basically every large institution humans have ever built relies on shady, selfish, behavior and stop caring about reforming individuals since thousands of years of policing have done jack and squat to remove the behavior from the species. Seriously, this forum is the worst for overlooking relevant variables (human biology and contemporary culture as a whole) for their trite commentary, usually rooted in nothing more than culturally acceptable bullet points. Hundreds of years of the same sort of thinking. Still happens.
  - avinium 9y ago
    Not saying I disagree with you - but assuming what you say is true, what would you propose?
  - freelunch 9y ago
    So why does Tokyo’s system work so much better? They’re humans too, but apparently their transit system works much better.
    - lmm 9y ago
      I don't know, but Japanese companies are notorious for never firing people, so it's very unlikely to be because they "fired everyone" as DiabloD3 was suggesting.
    - Symmetry 9y ago
      They're privatized.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    It seems like you're saying "it's impossible to achieve perfection, therefore you should never even try to improve."
bogomipz 9y ago
>"How does one realistically reform something like this?" Slowly and methodically. For starters: Create legislation that prevents construction firms from making campaign contribution and MTA employees from taking jobs as political consultants. This is probably the largest source of corruption, graft and waste.[1] The MTA's Board of Directors is predominantly controlled by the Governor of the state. The Board of Directors has long been a political dumping ground. Residents - the people who depend on the train have almost no say. Residents should have representation on the board of directors even if its a only a handful of rotating seats. Having people on the board who actually use and depend on the train would provide an instant feedback loop. I think you also need to implement a rotating independent oversight committee whom the MTA must be beholden too. One that is democratically elected. The oversight committee should have real teeth though perhaps with veto ability in certain instances. And yes as someone else mentioned you probably need to fire a whole bunch of people. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
- bobthepanda 9y ago
  The main issue is that the MTA and its predecessors have always been dependent on one person (now the Governor, formerly the Mayor). The actual board members have no credibility and no accountability, hence why we are here today. The MTA would be much better off if the appointed representative of the county was replaced with the actual elected executive of said county (so county executives, borough presidents, mayor/council speaker/what have you, etc.)
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    It's never been "entirely" dependent of one person, although the majority control seems to be the Governor. Either through his direct 5 seat appointments or indirectly through the 7 other non-NYC seats. I don't believe it was ever under Mayoral control. The current governance structure came under then Gvernor Nelson Rockefeller. But anyway Nassau, Suffolk, Westcheste, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties each get to appoint a board member. That's nearly a third of the 17 total seats. Beside Wescheter and Nassau counties none of those counties even border any one of the 5 boroughs. That's 5 votes by people who most assuredly do not ride the subway to work and maybe not at all. As such it's hard to believe they would ever have NYC residents best interests at heart.
credit_guy 9y ago
IANAL, but keeping double books should land you in prison, as simple as that.
tomohawk 9y ago
Incentives work. Figuring out the correct incentives to achieve good results is hard. Keeping ahead of the people who will game them is hard. This requires competent management, which is obviously lacking. Fire the incompetent managers and fire the political leadership who appointed them (term limits might help here). Since there are credible allegations of crime, is there an inspector general? There should be. If not, bring in the fraud squad and investigate the hell out of them. They'll leave.

throwaway_80bf3 9y ago

About 8 years ago there were a few house ads in the cars that were effectively gaslighting riders. It was one of the craziest things I'd ever seen as a consumer -- borderline antagonistic. The agency, and the workers to some extent, can be pugilistic when criticized. http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/176/files/2010/03/fare_ad.jpg http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/176/files/2010/03/f...

sushisource 9y ago
For those of us who aren't familiar with the price history what's the lie here?
- biggc 9y ago
  They're comparing a single-ride fare to a monthly-pass fare. A single ride fare cost $2.00 in 2008[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_transit_fares#Fare_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_transit_fares#Fa...
- ryankupyn 9y ago
  The MTA is comparing single-ride fares with "effective" cost per ride of a then-$81 30 day pass, which they amortize over around 70 rides, which is a bit high for the average person in my experience (though not ridiculous). It might be more accurate to compare the single-ride fare then with the single-ride fare at the time the photo was taken, which was either $2.00 or $2.25 (the price changed in 2009, I think).
  - megy 9y ago
    Did they have multi-day passes back then? It might be reasonable to compare the cheapest options available then.
    - bogomipz 9y ago
      They did not. You actually bought metal subway tokens that you dropped into a coin slot on the turnstile. See: https://untappedcities.com/2011/07/06/subway-tokens-a-dose-of-nostalgia/ https://untappedcities.com/2011/07/06/subway-tokens-a-dose-o...