5 ms·

Except it's on fire really frequently—track fires caused by garbage are a fairly common cause of NYC subway delays. NYC is also riddled with inefficiency and c

by osdiab 8y ago

Except it's on fire really frequently—track fires caused by garbage are a fairly common cause of NYC subway delays. NYC is also riddled with inefficiency and corruption that bloats the price of everything they build, which create and exacerbate those budget constraints. Costs per mile of new track and maintenance are consistently an order of magnitude or more higher in NYC than in other parts of the world, with higher rates of encountering problems; this may be partially due to the complexity of building there, but given that fantastically busy and complex cities throughout the world don't have these same problems, I'm much quicker to blame it on the political and economic system (which, tangentially, is why I think stuff like Musk's Boring Company are targeting the wrong issue when it comes to urban development, unless he's just trying to use that as a trojan horse for municipal influence). It's odd to see that such an extravagantly lucrative city can't seem to put together the money to maintain a core part of its infrastructure, that much much much poorer cities are able to achieve in other parts of the world.

astrodust 8y ago
It's about motivation. NYC already has a subway and while it desperately needs upgrades, fixes, and expansion, doing anything is unbelievably complex. You've got to be really, really motivated to cut through all that. In "poorer cities" they can just get things done because they don't have the same layers of process. Building a subway line in Nigeria is trivial compared to dealing with the multitude of parties, all of which have significant political clout, that is Manhattan.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > It's about motivation. NYC already has a subway and while it desperately needs upgrades, fixes, and expansion, doing anything is unbelievably complex. You've got to be really, really motivated to cut through all that. It's not that it's "complex"; it's that you would literally have to take on the entire political machine of both political parties in New York, along with the TWU itself[0], in order to push for the meaningful investments that the transit system needs. [0] The MTA and TWU literally spent the last several months actively campaigning for politicians who would block the plans for upgrading the transit infrastructure. Welcome to New York!
  - astrodust 8y ago
    > ...it's that you would literally have to take on the entire political machine of both political parties in New York... That sounds pretty complex to me. There's a considerable number of moving parts there all of which inter-relate in intractably complicated ways.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > There's a considerable number of moving parts there all of which inter-relate in intractably complicated ways. I guess by that view, all (stable) corruption is inherently complex. Which I guess isn't wrong, but I'd prefer to call a spade a spade: the problem is rampant corruption that is essentially impossible to address.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        I'm just saying if it was easy to address it'd have been addressed, but it isn't, so that's why the situation is what it is.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> It's odd to see that such an extravagantly lucrative city can't seem to put together the money to maintain a core part of its infrastructure, that much much much poorer cities are able to achieve in other parts of the world. It's really not odd at all once you understand just how pervasive the corruption inside New York government is. Unfortunately, New York exists as a democracy in name only. The party leadership wields full control over elections (and therefore the state government), which means that voters have literally no electoral option for pushing for change. That's why the MTA and TWU are able to get away with corruption and outright fraud that would be astonishingly illegal anywhere else in the country.

by osdiab 8y ago

astrodust 8y ago

It's about motivation. NYC already has a subway and while it desperately needs upgrades, fixes, and expansion, doing anything is unbelievably complex. You've got to be really, really motivated to cut through all that. In "poorer cities" they can just get things done because they don't have the same layers of process. Building a subway line in Nigeria is trivial compared to dealing with the multitude of parties, all of which have significant political clout, that is Manhattan.

chimeracoder 8y ago
> It's about motivation. NYC already has a subway and while it desperately needs upgrades, fixes, and expansion, doing anything is unbelievably complex. You've got to be really, really motivated to cut through all that. It's not that it's "complex"; it's that you would literally have to take on the entire political machine of both political parties in New York, along with the TWU itself[0], in order to push for the meaningful investments that the transit system needs. [0] The MTA and TWU literally spent the last several months actively campaigning for politicians who would block the plans for upgrading the transit infrastructure. Welcome to New York!
- astrodust 8y ago
  > ...it's that you would literally have to take on the entire political machine of both political parties in New York... That sounds pretty complex to me. There's a considerable number of moving parts there all of which inter-relate in intractably complicated ways.
  - chimeracoder 8y ago
    > There's a considerable number of moving parts there all of which inter-relate in intractably complicated ways. I guess by that view, all (stable) corruption is inherently complex. Which I guess isn't wrong, but I'd prefer to call a spade a spade: the problem is rampant corruption that is essentially impossible to address.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      I'm just saying if it was easy to address it'd have been addressed, but it isn't, so that's why the situation is what it is.

chimeracoder 8y ago

> It's odd to see that such an extravagantly lucrative city can't seem to put together the money to maintain a core part of its infrastructure, that much much much poorer cities are able to achieve in other parts of the world. It's really not odd at all once you understand just how pervasive the corruption inside New York government is. Unfortunately, New York exists as a democracy in name only. The party leadership wields full control over elections (and therefore the state government), which means that voters have literally no electoral option for pushing for change. That's why the MTA and TWU are able to get away with corruption and outright fraud that would be astonishingly illegal anywhere else in the country.