7 ms·

I'm confused as to why the US seems to fail or fall so far behind in infrastructure compared to other developed nations. It seems that we throw money at our pro

I'm confused as to why the US seems to fail or fall so far behind in infrastructure compared to other developed nations. It seems that we throw money at our problems but seemingly get nowhere. It's sad because there's many amazing things about this country, but we cannot do basic things like make trains run on time.

nkozyra 9y ago
In almost all cases I think this is a valid critique, but not against the MTA. It's one of the oldest, most complex, largest and among the ten highest daily ridership. To me, it remains an absolute marvel. Of course daily riders do and will forever complain. As someone who riders infrequently and is warned about impending doom, I find myself too often pleasantly surprised.
- jorblumesea 9y ago
  I don't buy it, many international cities have just as big and complex systems. Trains generally run on time in Paris, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing. Seems just about everyone can do it except us. I think it's a valid question to ask, given that there's nothing exceptional about NYC compared to others in its "weight class".
  - eecsninja 9y ago
    +1. I'm tired of hearing people make excuses for the NYC subway system such as age and complexity, seemingly ignorant that there's plenty of large cities in other first-world countries in the 10+ million range that do a much better job. Tokyo was bombed to the ground in WW2 and still manages to do better. I think the actual explanation is that the NYC system was not properly maintained during the postwar period, when America focused on car transit instead. Although plenty of people complain, there is no political will to fix the problem, either at the top or at the bottom. The 24/7 operation and fixed ticket price don't help.
    - jdhn 9y ago
      >Tokyo was bombed to the ground in WW2 and still manages to do better. An argument could be made that that's exactly why it's doing better. Since it got completely destroyed, it could be built from the ground up without the legacy costs that are now plaguing NYC's subway. >fixed ticket price don't help I simply can't see the MTA adopting ticket prices that are based on zones. The outcry would be larger than anything seen to date.
      - eecsninja 9y ago
        > An argument could be made that that's exactly why it's doing better. Since it got completely destroyed, it could be built from the ground up without the legacy costs that are now plaguing NYC's subway. What kind of "legacy costs" are you referring to, which would be higher than the cost to build the system from the ground up? > I simply can't see the MTA adopting ticket prices that are based on zones. The outcry would be larger than anything seen to date. Yes, hence "lack of political will." There are too many people who benefit from some aspect of the inefficient status quo, be it outer borough commuters, late night partiers, or people living next to minor subway stations. Knowing American politics, that's why I am pessimistic that the dysfunctional status quo in the NYC subway will ever change.
        nkozyra 9y ago
        > What kind of "legacy costs" are you referring to, which would be higher than the cost to build the system from the ground up? The costs (direct and cascading) of displacing essentially all riders for some undetermined amount of time? Tokyo had no choice but to do this.
- andromeduck 9y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
- amaccuish 9y ago
  Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing would disagree with you there...
  - Rapzid 9y ago
    Yeah, I just got back from Japan and ended up transiting four of the five busiest train stations in the world(we did not visit Yokohama). My takeaway; the US will "never" have great public transit. Other than bus issues in Kyoto due to the amount of tourists visiting shrines(205, 59, etc) it was.. eye opening. BARTs issues and costs are a joke. NYs reliability is a joke. We are not in the same league. Many countries put us to shame on public transportation.
    - amaccuish 9y ago
      Ye moving to Moscow it's been great how cheap the metro is here, and it's reliable and very rarely packed. London is good but the price of Moscow beats it. I know for the underground, all profit is reinvested, maybe that's the problem in America? Many contractors all wanting their share? At the end of the day you just have to accept that while a good public transport system looks like a big loss on paper, it brings so many benefits. Too often, excuses are made, and nothing gets done, and then the next election cycle, the same decision is made until the problem starts to appear insurmountable.
      - chrischen 9y ago
        There was a report showing that in NY the metro cost several times that of metros in other cities. So it's not just a matter of willing to spend the money, somehow the costs are much more than what they should be.
      - rayiner 9y ago
        > I know for the underground, all profit is reinvested, maybe that's the problem in America? Many contractors all wanting their share? At the end of the day you just have to accept that while a good public transport system looks like a big loss on paper, it brings so many benefits. Except the Underground more or less breaks even from fare revenue (Google "farebox recovery"). NYC's MTA does not, and is heavily subsidized by tax dollars.
- gsnedders 9y ago
  Why does the London Underground mostly run to schedule, though, then? Because it's older, arguably as complex (especially the subsurface railway), and not that far below NYC in ridership…
  - ng12 9y ago
    The biggest difference is the Tube doesn't run 24/7. You have a guaranteed maintenance cycle. Also my understanding is that European unions are less corrupt than American ones.
    - gsnedders 9y ago
      Ah, right; I hadn't realised that it was truly 24/7 (versus the ~5 hour gap most of the LU is shut down for). That said, some of the LU lines are now 24 hour from Friday morning till Sunday night.
    - yardie 9y ago
      Why are American unions singled out to be maligned? French unions will kidnap their boss if negotiations breakdown. American strikers have been fired upon by the local police. I get it, you’ve driven a poorly made American car once and it your blaming the union workers who built it. Not the factory managers, not the engineers who design with poor tolerances, not the accountants who choose cheap, poor material. I’ve met unionized school teachers who get fired in June and rehired in August. Why? So the schoolboard won’t have to pay mandatory cost of living increases that the union negotiated for. Better to pay teachers less every year.
  - tim333 9y ago
    London has spent a lot, reflected in "London's monthly travel cost 'most expensive in world'" headlines. This article has a months travel at US$174 in London vs $118 in NY http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39806865 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39806865
    - gsnedders 9y ago
      AFAIK, London also has zero subsidy for all the TfL managed transport, and most of the (mainline) rail services receive no subsidy too.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Ridership remains high because New York is too dense to get around any other way.
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    I've often thought that for dense cities such as New York, and London, a Monorail would be a good solution to add to the public transit system. Picture this: Along most of the major roads fit very tall archways every few hundred feet, and place the Monorail on-top. As long as traffic below can continue unobstructed, then the two can co-exist. Additionally add direct-into-building entrances/exits at the monorail platform height (2nd or 3rd storey (US buildings called the 'ground' floor '1st', right?) ). Monorail can be driver-less, and run on clean[1] energy. It seems a bit of a no-brainer to me. -- [1] For various values of 'clean'.
closeparen 9y ago
Plundering the funds meant for unsexy long-term projects to fund services well in excess of current tax revenue is extremely good politics. Liberals love sexy new infrastructure and services, conservatives love the relatively low taxes, no one really gives a shit how smoothly public transit will be working in 30 years. It's a reassuring signal that American democracy is working as intended: its results truly reflect our values.
- justherefortart 9y ago
  Its results reflect our propaganda, marketing, ignorance, and shortsightedness.
- FortuneSheer 9y ago
  Second avenue subway comes to mind. Was a bit funny seeing ads for it all over the subway while the QoS was plunging. Cuomo was certainly quick to come to NYC for endless photo ops when it opened. That was funny too considering it was behind schedule, over-budget, and significantly downsized from the original plan.
wutbrodo 9y ago
We're drastically less efficient than most other developed countries when it comes to infrastructure development, and AIUI, experts aren't really sure why. The highest confidence hypothesis I've heard is a handwavy reference to how our contracting system is somehow uniquely inefficient and corrupt, but that jusy raises more questions for me.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- walshemj 9y ago
  Also some of its is due to the devolved federal structure - its easier to bribe the lower down you go.
jumelles 9y ago
My understanding is that the MTA is funded by New York State, not NYC, so it's not like the city can just levy its own taxes on businesses or something to fund the subway - though I sure wish they could, and I bet the MTA does too.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Fares, tolls and regional taxes make up the bulk of the budget: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/ http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/
maxerickson 9y ago
I think a contributor is that some people believe that underfunding will somehow address our higher costs. But often the problems are structural and underfunding just erodes efficiency further.
- droidist2 9y ago
  Is it also because if you underfund the MTA they won't become more efficient, they'll just raise fares and reduce services?
fancyfish 9y ago
I'm throwing darts at the wall here, but I think part of the problem is our sprawl and geographic size/car culture. In the typical US city you have the wealthier suburbanites living in separate towns/counties than the city they work in. This segregates the local funding because no one wants to pay for someone else's projects. And state funding doesn't benefit you as directly (e.g. state highway projects) and probably suffers the same problem. Public transit doesn't get funded because it only works in dense urban areas and the wealthier folks drive anyway. European and Asian countries with the better public transit systems seem to be smaller geographically and connect cities to cities with federal funding. To illustrate we've got the Bos-Wash corridor connected via Amtrak but there would be backlash if we tried to fund a super awesome high speed rail there with federal funds because nobody else outside that area would benefit. For comparison the size of Japan is basically our Eastern Seaboard or California and the UK would be the Northeast Corridor.
- closeparen 9y ago
  The personal car took over America for a reason: it's the fastest and most pleasant way to get around. Cities only start to seriously entertain public transit when they hit car culture's scaling limits. New York passed those long ago, so the more interesting question is why they can't maintain what they already have. Unlike a typical American city, Manhattan is richer and more expensive than its outlying bedroom communities, and transit access is a premium feature of luxury real estate rather than a handout to the destitute. I don't think your explanation works in this case.
  - bsder 9y ago
    > The personal car took over America for a reason: it's the fastest and most pleasant way to get around. The personal car took over America because the auto companies waged a campaign to dismantle the transit systems that American cities already had. "Car culture" and "suburbs" are only something that started in the 1950's after the Eisenhower Interstate System got built. And ridesharing is showing that people will give up a personal car if there is an alternative.
    - 9y ago
seattle_spring 9y ago
Most transit projects are funded at a state level, but the townies outside of cities vote down every initiative because they "don't want to pay fer those gal-dern city slickers and their fancy jerbs." They're blissfully unaware that the city folk subsidize their entire existence through taxes. At least, that's how it works here in Washington State.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  People don't talk like that and you're misrepresenting their viewpoints.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - seattle_spring 9y ago
    Why don't you enlighten us on what their viewpoints are?
    - squiggleblaz 9y ago
      The reason their existence is subsidised by the city is because the city is implementing policies that benefit the city and not the country. Consequently the relative inequality is entrenched. The country people see that and think, "Well whatever they're axin fer that I can stop - I'll stop that. Maybe then I'll have some influence." They probably don't see it with quite the same analysis as I've put here, but it's much closer to what's really happening than your rendition. It's probably necessary that in any developed economy, the cities will do better. But over the last several decades, it seems the problem to any complaint has been "let's just reduce business taxes and increase free trade", which is obviously aggravating to the people who are hurt by those policies. The policies proposed by the left have usually been "let's try to increase the lot of the absolute worst off without affecting the top of the middle", which of course squeezes the people in the middle and makes it easier for them to fall into the worst off category. Moreover it's kinda obvious to everyone that the left is using the resources that traditionally have gone to middle to help the worst off (instead of taking some of the top's excess). So there isn't a clearly pro-systematic way of getting better short of complaint and preventing things. And you get a culture of "us against them, black against white, city against country", rather than "all for one and one for all". It takes just a moment to look back at everything that's happened over the last couple of decades and realise that this analysis is accessible to the distressed, fair to them, and accounts for the data. [ed: they're -> their in first sentence]
dmode 9y ago
I may be totally wrong, but I believe that the core of the problem is that a lot of infrastructure here is funded by local and regional governments. And they simply don't have the massive funds and resources of a Federal government, which leads to always have to raise funds for a project through a measure and then having to cut corners. Many other nations fund infrastructure projects centrally and that leads to more efficiency.
- FortuneSheer 9y ago
  True in general, but the NYC subway has its own set of unique problems so I would exempt your comment as the cause. Now it could be if the unique issues that are causing problems with the NYC subway were not present, it would still be a disaster due to the problems laid out in your comment.

nkozyra 9y ago

In almost all cases I think this is a valid critique, but not against the MTA. It's one of the oldest, most complex, largest and among the ten highest daily ridership. To me, it remains an absolute marvel. Of course daily riders do and will forever complain. As someone who riders infrequently and is warned about impending doom, I find myself too often pleasantly surprised.

jorblumesea 9y ago
I don't buy it, many international cities have just as big and complex systems. Trains generally run on time in Paris, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing. Seems just about everyone can do it except us. I think it's a valid question to ask, given that there's nothing exceptional about NYC compared to others in its "weight class".
- eecsninja 9y ago
  +1. I'm tired of hearing people make excuses for the NYC subway system such as age and complexity, seemingly ignorant that there's plenty of large cities in other first-world countries in the 10+ million range that do a much better job. Tokyo was bombed to the ground in WW2 and still manages to do better. I think the actual explanation is that the NYC system was not properly maintained during the postwar period, when America focused on car transit instead. Although plenty of people complain, there is no political will to fix the problem, either at the top or at the bottom. The 24/7 operation and fixed ticket price don't help.
  - jdhn 9y ago
    >Tokyo was bombed to the ground in WW2 and still manages to do better. An argument could be made that that's exactly why it's doing better. Since it got completely destroyed, it could be built from the ground up without the legacy costs that are now plaguing NYC's subway. >fixed ticket price don't help I simply can't see the MTA adopting ticket prices that are based on zones. The outcry would be larger than anything seen to date.
    - eecsninja 9y ago
      > An argument could be made that that's exactly why it's doing better. Since it got completely destroyed, it could be built from the ground up without the legacy costs that are now plaguing NYC's subway. What kind of "legacy costs" are you referring to, which would be higher than the cost to build the system from the ground up? > I simply can't see the MTA adopting ticket prices that are based on zones. The outcry would be larger than anything seen to date. Yes, hence "lack of political will." There are too many people who benefit from some aspect of the inefficient status quo, be it outer borough commuters, late night partiers, or people living next to minor subway stations. Knowing American politics, that's why I am pessimistic that the dysfunctional status quo in the NYC subway will ever change.
      - nkozyra 9y ago
        > What kind of "legacy costs" are you referring to, which would be higher than the cost to build the system from the ground up? The costs (direct and cascading) of displacing essentially all riders for some undetermined amount of time? Tokyo had no choice but to do this.
andromeduck 9y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
amaccuish 9y ago
Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing would disagree with you there...
- Rapzid 9y ago
  Yeah, I just got back from Japan and ended up transiting four of the five busiest train stations in the world(we did not visit Yokohama). My takeaway; the US will "never" have great public transit. Other than bus issues in Kyoto due to the amount of tourists visiting shrines(205, 59, etc) it was.. eye opening. BARTs issues and costs are a joke. NYs reliability is a joke. We are not in the same league. Many countries put us to shame on public transportation.
  - amaccuish 9y ago
    Ye moving to Moscow it's been great how cheap the metro is here, and it's reliable and very rarely packed. London is good but the price of Moscow beats it. I know for the underground, all profit is reinvested, maybe that's the problem in America? Many contractors all wanting their share? At the end of the day you just have to accept that while a good public transport system looks like a big loss on paper, it brings so many benefits. Too often, excuses are made, and nothing gets done, and then the next election cycle, the same decision is made until the problem starts to appear insurmountable.
    - chrischen 9y ago
      There was a report showing that in NY the metro cost several times that of metros in other cities. So it's not just a matter of willing to spend the money, somehow the costs are much more than what they should be.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      > I know for the underground, all profit is reinvested, maybe that's the problem in America? Many contractors all wanting their share? At the end of the day you just have to accept that while a good public transport system looks like a big loss on paper, it brings so many benefits. Except the Underground more or less breaks even from fare revenue (Google "farebox recovery"). NYC's MTA does not, and is heavily subsidized by tax dollars.
gsnedders 9y ago
Why does the London Underground mostly run to schedule, though, then? Because it's older, arguably as complex (especially the subsurface railway), and not that far below NYC in ridership…
- ng12 9y ago
  The biggest difference is the Tube doesn't run 24/7. You have a guaranteed maintenance cycle. Also my understanding is that European unions are less corrupt than American ones.
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    Ah, right; I hadn't realised that it was truly 24/7 (versus the ~5 hour gap most of the LU is shut down for). That said, some of the LU lines are now 24 hour from Friday morning till Sunday night.
  - yardie 9y ago
    Why are American unions singled out to be maligned? French unions will kidnap their boss if negotiations breakdown. American strikers have been fired upon by the local police. I get it, you’ve driven a poorly made American car once and it your blaming the union workers who built it. Not the factory managers, not the engineers who design with poor tolerances, not the accountants who choose cheap, poor material. I’ve met unionized school teachers who get fired in June and rehired in August. Why? So the schoolboard won’t have to pay mandatory cost of living increases that the union negotiated for. Better to pay teachers less every year.
- tim333 9y ago
  London has spent a lot, reflected in "London's monthly travel cost 'most expensive in world'" headlines. This article has a months travel at US$174 in London vs $118 in NY http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39806865 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-39806865
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    AFAIK, London also has zero subsidy for all the TfL managed transport, and most of the (mainline) rail services receive no subsidy too.
closeparen 9y ago
Ridership remains high because New York is too dense to get around any other way.
- Jaruzel 9y ago
  I've often thought that for dense cities such as New York, and London, a Monorail would be a good solution to add to the public transit system. Picture this: Along most of the major roads fit very tall archways every few hundred feet, and place the Monorail on-top. As long as traffic below can continue unobstructed, then the two can co-exist. Additionally add direct-into-building entrances/exits at the monorail platform height (2nd or 3rd storey (US buildings called the 'ground' floor '1st', right?) ). Monorail can be driver-less, and run on clean[1] energy. It seems a bit of a no-brainer to me. -- [1] For various values of 'clean'.

closeparen 9y ago

Plundering the funds meant for unsexy long-term projects to fund services well in excess of current tax revenue is extremely good politics. Liberals love sexy new infrastructure and services, conservatives love the relatively low taxes, no one really gives a shit how smoothly public transit will be working in 30 years. It's a reassuring signal that American democracy is working as intended: its results truly reflect our values.

justherefortart 9y ago
Its results reflect our propaganda, marketing, ignorance, and shortsightedness.
FortuneSheer 9y ago
Second avenue subway comes to mind. Was a bit funny seeing ads for it all over the subway while the QoS was plunging. Cuomo was certainly quick to come to NYC for endless photo ops when it opened. That was funny too considering it was behind schedule, over-budget, and significantly downsized from the original plan.

wutbrodo 9y ago

We're drastically less efficient than most other developed countries when it comes to infrastructure development, and AIUI, experts aren't really sure why. The highest confidence hypothesis I've heard is a handwavy reference to how our contracting system is somehow uniquely inefficient and corrupt, but that jusy raises more questions for me.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
walshemj 9y ago
Also some of its is due to the devolved federal structure - its easier to bribe the lower down you go.

jumelles 9y ago

My understanding is that the MTA is funded by New York State, not NYC, so it's not like the city can just levy its own taxes on businesses or something to fund the subway - though I sure wish they could, and I bet the MTA does too.

maxerickson 9y ago
Fares, tolls and regional taxes make up the bulk of the budget: http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/ http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/

maxerickson 9y ago

I think a contributor is that some people believe that underfunding will somehow address our higher costs. But often the problems are structural and underfunding just erodes efficiency further.

droidist2 9y ago
Is it also because if you underfund the MTA they won't become more efficient, they'll just raise fares and reduce services?

fancyfish 9y ago

I'm throwing darts at the wall here, but I think part of the problem is our sprawl and geographic size/car culture. In the typical US city you have the wealthier suburbanites living in separate towns/counties than the city they work in. This segregates the local funding because no one wants to pay for someone else's projects. And state funding doesn't benefit you as directly (e.g. state highway projects) and probably suffers the same problem. Public transit doesn't get funded because it only works in dense urban areas and the wealthier folks drive anyway. European and Asian countries with the better public transit systems seem to be smaller geographically and connect cities to cities with federal funding. To illustrate we've got the Bos-Wash corridor connected via Amtrak but there would be backlash if we tried to fund a super awesome high speed rail there with federal funds because nobody else outside that area would benefit. For comparison the size of Japan is basically our Eastern Seaboard or California and the UK would be the Northeast Corridor.

closeparen 9y ago
The personal car took over America for a reason: it's the fastest and most pleasant way to get around. Cities only start to seriously entertain public transit when they hit car culture's scaling limits. New York passed those long ago, so the more interesting question is why they can't maintain what they already have. Unlike a typical American city, Manhattan is richer and more expensive than its outlying bedroom communities, and transit access is a premium feature of luxury real estate rather than a handout to the destitute. I don't think your explanation works in this case.
- bsder 9y ago
  > The personal car took over America for a reason: it's the fastest and most pleasant way to get around. The personal car took over America because the auto companies waged a campaign to dismantle the transit systems that American cities already had. "Car culture" and "suburbs" are only something that started in the 1950's after the Eisenhower Interstate System got built. And ridesharing is showing that people will give up a personal car if there is an alternative.
  - 9y ago

seattle_spring 9y ago

Most transit projects are funded at a state level, but the townies outside of cities vote down every initiative because they "don't want to pay fer those gal-dern city slickers and their fancy jerbs." They're blissfully unaware that the city folk subsidize their entire existence through taxes. At least, that's how it works here in Washington State.

oh_sigh 9y ago
People don't talk like that and you're misrepresenting their viewpoints.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- seattle_spring 9y ago
  Why don't you enlighten us on what their viewpoints are?
  - squiggleblaz 9y ago
    The reason their existence is subsidised by the city is because the city is implementing policies that benefit the city and not the country. Consequently the relative inequality is entrenched. The country people see that and think, "Well whatever they're axin fer that I can stop - I'll stop that. Maybe then I'll have some influence." They probably don't see it with quite the same analysis as I've put here, but it's much closer to what's really happening than your rendition. It's probably necessary that in any developed economy, the cities will do better. But over the last several decades, it seems the problem to any complaint has been "let's just reduce business taxes and increase free trade", which is obviously aggravating to the people who are hurt by those policies. The policies proposed by the left have usually been "let's try to increase the lot of the absolute worst off without affecting the top of the middle", which of course squeezes the people in the middle and makes it easier for them to fall into the worst off category. Moreover it's kinda obvious to everyone that the left is using the resources that traditionally have gone to middle to help the worst off (instead of taking some of the top's excess). So there isn't a clearly pro-systematic way of getting better short of complaint and preventing things. And you get a culture of "us against them, black against white, city against country", rather than "all for one and one for all". It takes just a moment to look back at everything that's happened over the last couple of decades and realise that this analysis is accessible to the distressed, fair to them, and accounts for the data. [ed: they're -> their in first sentence]

dmode 9y ago

I may be totally wrong, but I believe that the core of the problem is that a lot of infrastructure here is funded by local and regional governments. And they simply don't have the massive funds and resources of a Federal government, which leads to always have to raise funds for a project through a measure and then having to cut corners. Many other nations fund infrastructure projects centrally and that leads to more efficiency.

FortuneSheer 9y ago
True in general, but the NYC subway has its own set of unique problems so I would exempt your comment as the cause. Now it could be if the unique issues that are causing problems with the NYC subway were not present, it would still be a disaster due to the problems laid out in your comment.