25 ms·

NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

347 points by ricardoreis 8y ago

chmaynard 8y ago
> Critics say it is bad service that is driving people away. One datapoint: I live in Rhode Island. Recently I attended a concert in Brooklyn. The obvious way to travel there was Amtrak to Penn Station and MTA (train or bus) to the final destination. However, I was warned that MTA service is unreliable. I decided to drive. Next time I probably won't go at all.
- dionidium 8y ago
  That's really silly and a sign of how overblown this story has become (in some contexts). You would have been fine. When a system like the NYC Subway gets 20% worse for everyday commuters, that's a really big deal and something those commuters are going to talk about a lot. But a NYC Subway that's 20% worse than it was 10 years ago is still a massive, complex, incredible, useful machine, no matter how much New Yorkers complain about it. And, so, should they complain? Yeah! There's nothing wrong with expecting more from the MTA. But these stories are generating comments like yours here and that's absurd.
  - ricardoreis 8y ago
    A NYC Subway that's 20% worse than it was 10 years ago By what metric?
    - BorgHunter 8y ago
      On-time performance has dropped dramatically in the past ten years. In the following article, look for the graph titled, "On-time performance by line, 2007 to 2017". https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subway-delays-overcrowding.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...
      - ricardoreis 8y ago
        Thanks very much for the link. But eyeballing that chart suggests an average deterioration significantly worse than 20 percent.
    - dionidium 8y ago
      Delays, primarily. Overcrowding, secondarily.
      - ricardoreis 8y ago
        Numbers, please. (That's what "metric" means, btw).
        deleted 8y ago
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        throwaway427 8y ago
        Numbers may not tell the whole story, obviously: https://outline.com/KLsxf3 https://outline.com/KLsxf3
        dionidium 8y ago
        Yes, and it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes of thinking about the issues to realize that most of the commentary on the topic makes very little sense. Experiential measurements aren't so easily calculated, I'd say. Just a few examples: - Would you rather have a train that arrives one minute late every single day, for a 0% on-time record, or a train that arrives on time 3 out of every 5 times and then is 20 minutes late the other two? How many articles on the subway distinguish between the two types of lateness? It matters a lot. - You might read that Atlanta's MARTA, for example, has a better on-time performance record than the NYC Subway. Well, that's great, but it's also got rush-hour scheduled headways of 10 minutes, scheduled off-peak headways of 20 minutes or more, and no service entirely at many stations after 9PM (no trains run at all after 2AM). So something that's "late" in New York City still comes before the scheduled train in Atlanta (when the trains there come at all). [0] - The NYC Subway also has 10 times as many stations as MARTA and 17 times as many miles of track. They say the best camera is the one you have on you. Something like that applies here, too. What's the on-time record for a train that doesn't exist? MARTA is a random comparison, but it's not uncommon for writers of screeds about the subway to offer up comparisons to other systems devoid of any of the kind of context I provide above. So, you know: 1) comparisons are difficult; 2) especially if you want to capture what it's actually like to use transit in the cities you're comparing. All of which is to support my original contention that this story has been decontextualized by surly commuters and the idea that a tourist couldn't rely on the subway to get to a concert is nonsense. [0] https://www.itsmarta.com/railline-schedules.aspx https://www.itsmarta.com/railline-schedules.aspx
    - deleted 8y ago
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- ricardoreis 8y ago
  Apparently the commenter isn't much of a city person, and may have overreacted a bit. But they shouldn't have been downvoted for expressing that sentiment.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  So, I haven't been to New York in a while, but I'm guessing that you were poorly informed. Usually when public transit networks start showing strain, it's during rush hours, when they're handling massive spikes in ridership. To give an example from Chicago: If you're trying to get on the train downtown at 6:00pm, you'll get on the next train, and probably get to sit in a seat. If you try to do it at 5:00pm, you stand a good chance of waiting 30 minutes for a train that you can even physically get on to. When you do, your ride will probably also take 50% longer than the 6pm ride would have. And maybe even 100% longer than a ride at 7pm would have. You naturally get all the complaints from the rush hour riders. And yeah, if your concert were starting at 6 in the evening so that you'd have to brave rush hour traffic, then that would be a problem. But so would driving. If, like most concerts, it was starting a bit later, you'd very likely have experienced smooth service.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    > If you're trying to get on the train downtown at 6:00pm, you'll get on the next train, and probably get to sit in a seat. If you try to do it at 5:00pm, you stand a good chance of waiting 30 minutes for a train that you can even physically get on to. What line are you describing? I take the L every day from downtown around 5 and I can reliably get on the first train and it will arrive in < 10 minutes (and there's a good chance I'll have a seat). If a train takes more than 10 minutes, it will almost certainly be packed full, but it will also almost certainly be followed by another nearly-empty train in ~1-2 minutes.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      The example I had in mind was blue line northbound from Clark & Lake. Which is admittedly the worst scenario that I could think of, and I should have said that. It gets better quickly from there. I used to get on 2 stops further south, and, yeah, at 5 I usually had no problems and a decent chance of getting a seat, too.
      - _asummers 8y ago
        Blue Line north at 5-5:30PM is a nightmare from Clark/Lake. I sometimes have to wait for 4-5 trains before I can get on.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Why not just go to Penn Station planning on taking the train to the final destination, then Uber on the off chance there ends of being a problem with the train? The MTA has problems, but it still usually gets you where you need to go.
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JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Turning things around will require a huge infusion of cash I keep hearing this with zero justification. Why? I’m sceptical of New York’s public agencies asking for lots of cash. I assume there are legitimate projects, but the MTA has been horrible at showing the public this demanded money will be well spent.
- dionidium 8y ago
  Both things can be true. 1) It probably does cost a lot of money to increase headways, run more trains, install positive train control, and otherwise upgrade and maintain tracks; but also 2) the MTA is a bloated, wasteful organization. I have no trouble holding both ideas in my head at once.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Both things can be true I believe both are and will be. But to what degree? If it’s billions on bloat, then we need a cost cutter at the top (in addition to new funding).
    - moate 8y ago
      It's part the MTA, part the city government as a whole, and part the state government. This feels like classic "too many cooks" bureaucracy where everyone knows THEY have the right answer and everyone else at the table is conspiring against their golden plan.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      I started my career working in the transportation sector, and that leaves me skeptical that it can be so simple. I've watched cost cutters at work in government transportation departments. Their MO seems to always be to cut the costs that are easy to cut so they can claim easy wins right away. Unfortunately, the costs that are easy to cut are typically things like skimping on maintenance. This leads to higher costs in the long run, but, hey, that'll take decades to come to fruition, and by then it'll be someone else's problem. In short, the state of American infrastructure today is a result of decades upon decades of mismanagement by the cost cutters. I have a hard time believing they can also be the solution. Maybe find an efficiency maven instead?
JPKab 8y ago
“The subway service and the bus service has become unreliable enough for people to stop using it. If people aren’t using it, there’s less money, and they have to keep raising fares without delivering better service.” I was a daily rider of the DC metro for 8 years. This is exactly what happened there. Reliability plummeted, then ridership, and all the while major fare increases.
- leetrout 8y ago
  I just commented to someone the other day- I loved how clean the metro was but hated the prices for sub-par services. I hate the distance based pricing.
  - umichguy 8y ago
    What's wrong with distance based pricing?
    - francisofascii 8y ago
      Distance based pricing is fine. But can't they make it a little simpler? Increments of $1 would be nice. Instead of $3.85, just make it $4.00.
- plants 8y ago
  If you haven't been back, I think you'd be surprised at the (weekday) reliability of the metro now. The metro is almost always terribly messed up on weekends (with single-tracking and line closings), but they make a damn good effort to get weekday commuters to work on time. I've been living in the DC area for the past two years and it seems like they have really been making the metro a priority. I have a transfer during my commute during rush hour times, and I hardly ever have to wait more than five minutes for either of my trains.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    I second this. I don’t use Metro often, but my wife commutes by Metro almost every day. There was a period of a couple of years where she’d pretty routinely get home an hour or two late because of some huge fuckup with the trains, but recently it’s been very smooth. I think this is connected to the constant weekend problems you mentioned. The trouble before was that they weren’t maintaining the system properly because they didn’t want to cause disruptions. They finally realized that maintenance isn’t actually optional and started doing what it takes to get it done. The system doesn’t have enough capacity to have sections out of service for maintenance without major disruptions, but at least now they happen at a time of their choosing.
danharaj 8y ago
I haven't noticed. In fact, it's been a several weeks since my commute was interrupted severely. I hear the green line is doing pretty badly though.
mdolon 8y ago
The article briefly mentioned competition from ride sharing services but I wonder to what extent it's made an impact. Anecdotally, given how cheap Uber and Lyft are in Manhattan (typically $4-5 for a shared ride), I often find myself opting for that instead of dealing with the hassles of the subway system. Both are unreliable when it comes to timeliness, as ride sharing services often take longer than expected (especially Uber Pool and Lyft Line). And as painful as the subway system can sometimes be, I do appreciate the rich history and incredible performances you'll often come across in subway stations. I'm torn, to be honest.
- andy_wrote 8y ago
  Yeah, I'd be very interested to learn about anything about the sensitivities of ridership to other external variables in general. Looking at the article's linked presentation [1] and the MTA's most recent financial plan [2] it seems like all the hurt is coming from really huge declines in projected revenues - labor costs seem to be growing pretty reasonably but there's basically zero projected growth in fares. If someone can give me a layman's explanation of what "Capital and Other Reimbursements" is, which accounts for about a $500mm decline between 2019 and 20222, I'd be much obliged. So I am curious how sensitive riders are to the increased service problems, how much that makes them switch out, to get some sense as to how much the signal improvements will help solve this problem. Also how much to a fare hike, which seems like the more straightforward answer in a vacuum (i.e. other than taxes or other government infusions). The MTA says in [1] that even "draconian service reductions would have a relatively small impact on the deficit." [1] - http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-Nov-Financial-Plan-2019-2022-Presentation.pdf http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-... [2] - http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-Nov-Financial-Plan-2019-2022-Vol1.pdf http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-...
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    Reducing service, unless you want to do it really painfully, is unlikely to do much in the long run. A good chunk of the costs are employee related (health/pensions) and debt service. The MTA shouldn't default on its bonds, and in NYS you can't constitutionally modify government pensions after they've been given. And the MTA hires as many drivers and buys trains and buses based on peak demand; cutting off-peak is unlikely to do much since you wouldn't be reducing the absolute number of drivers you need. In fact, cutting off-peak services would probably worsen the budget outlook long-term, since the marginal cost of an off-peak service is very low.
nakedrobot2 8y ago
CLOSE THE SUBWAY MIDNIGHT-5AM and fix it Like most other civilized societies who have a functioning and well-maintained metro system. That is really all there is to it!
- WAthrowaway 8y ago
  They are already doing this for several lines. The L wasn't running on weekends at all in November for them to do repairs. NYC is unique in that there are LOTS of people whose working hours fall into that range and they rely on the subway. Just shutting down the whole system is unfeasible.
  - nakedrobot2 8y ago
    Please stop this unique snowflake claim about NYC :+) It's another huge City. Besides having a horribly mismanaged public transport, it's not unique. Except that it's, you know, the center of the universe of course. ;-)
    - taobility 8y ago
      NYC is unique as it's always be the center of the universe, even it's just 8M people live here, and other cities, like Tokyo/Hong Kong/Beijing/Shanghai has more population that it
    - dgzl 8y ago
      You're sadly mistaken if you think a New York, one of the largest and busiest cities in human existence, is "just another large City", and that the solution to their transportation woes is to just lock it down and work on it.
      - Markoff 8y ago
        it's extremely small compared to population of Beijing or shanghai for instance and Beijing shut down subway around 11PM. but yeah people in NY are the only ones working in night, common, you really believe it or you don't have passport?
syntaxing 8y ago
Not surprised. Not only are we lacking in physical infrastructure, but also technological infrastructure. I still don't understand how we do not have stations like in developed Asian countries like Japan or Hong Kong. The trains are "one" unit and the stations are doubled door with people at each station assisting (or ticketing..) you if needed. The train practically drive themselves. The conductor is there for emergency purposes. We didn't even have speed regulator installed until recently (and not all trains have them!) until a bunch of trains kept on crashing because of human error. We spend billions on ONE new station, but we can't invest a couple billion to fix the infrastructure.
- lozaning 8y ago
  Hong Kong and Nanjing subway systems are spectacular. I dont speak or read the language and never once did I get lost because there are super easy to understand signs _everywhere_ and usually an electronic map that indicates the station you just left and the one you're going to, above all the doors to the cars inside. Never once gotten lost, embarrassed i can't say the same for BART.
  - Jedi72 8y ago
    Im an Australian so native English speaker, in NYC for a few days and can not figure out the god damn subway to save my life.
- tootie 8y ago
  Our system is 100 years old and their's aren't.
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    The points made apply equally to London's lines, which are even older. (Some lines aren't yet upgraded to walk-through trains, but they're ordered. Stuff like speed regulators is decades old.)
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Paris and London are older and better.
squozzer 8y ago
The problem seems fixable, but as others have said, people will have to take some lumps. A certain political figure with strong (both bad and good) ties to NYC has harped for a couple of years about a federal infrastructure bill. I think the phrase "third world" was used to describe the problem. No reason why America's Greatest City (tm) could not wring a couple of bil out of the feds to start upgrading their subways. Move back to the first world, you might say. In turn, because we're talking about a transaction, the MTA might also need to move out of a "third world" mentality. We can safely assume some of their payroll is spent on political favors. Maybe this "death spiral" talk will motivate the agency to make a least a token gesture towards good use of their riders dollars. Maybe.
- ascagnel_ 8y ago
  Not to get super political, but the concept of NY/NJ getting any transit infrastructure-related federal funds was nixed late last year in retribution against Sen. Schumer for... something?
exabrial 8y ago
> Drastically cut service or increase fares There's another option: disband the MTA Union, the primary driver of operations costs. They have blocked technology and safety upgrades for decades to keep 'those darn computers and robots from taking jobs from poor workers just trying to make a living'.
- chadlavi 8y ago
  Paying conductors a living wage isn't nearly as expensive to the agency (and the state, and we the taxpayers and riders) as mismanaged and corruptly nepotistic multi-billion dollar contracts for construction.
  - yholio 8y ago
    On the other hand, paying living wages to thousands of unnecessary workers is quite expensive, regardless if they are employees or contractors. Unions work on both goals simultaneously, increasing wages but also providing job security to their base, inserting strong restrictions on who can perform certain labors etc. The more employees, the higher the power of the union, it's not like a competitor could spring up and kill their host. It's not a white/black issue, laborers need protection but should not use a privileged position in the economy to seek a rent at the expense of everybody else.
    - chadlavi 8y ago
      This is an agency that still uses fabric-wrapped wire and vacuum tubes. Those people are far from unnecessary. Though I'm sure the MTA will pay billions more in contracts over the next few years to halfway automate a few small parts of their jobs.
    - sonar_un 8y ago
      The MTA's union has kept unneeded workers employed. One of the main issues is having two people per train employed when almost every other transit system in the world uses only one person per train. On top of this, but actively lobbying against having driverless trains and other cost-saving technologies leaves NYC with the most expensive and antiquated system in the world
mgr86 8y ago
Over the summer The New Yorker had a story on the president of the NYC Transit Authority. Entitled Can Andy Byford Save The Subways[1]? I found it interesting. They had a rather optimistic take, but this article 4 months later makes me think its not going well. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-byford-save-the-subways https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-byfor...
- ajay-d 8y ago
  60 Minutes also profiled Andy recently. They even show a machine (over 100 years old) to move train switches, by manually pulling antique levers. Scary to think how these things operate. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone-off-the-rails-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone...
philwelch 8y ago
The MTA claims that New York City's transit system doesn't have enough funding to keep up with requirements. Critics of the MTA claim that the transit system has more funding than ever, and just isn't keeping up because of some vague inefficiencies or incompetencies. This is the exact same argument that we have when it comes to education, health care, defense, and so forth. Some argue that it's because government spending is inherently inefficient, and while that may be true, that doesn't explain how governments outside of the United States still seem to be a lot more efficient than governments inside the United States, nor does it explain similar phenomena in things like housing. This seems like a very broad problem that is currently beneath the public consciousness. SSC's "Considerations on Cost Disease" (http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...) is the first general discussion I've found of this, though Scott Alexander cites a paywalled Tyler Cowen piece in Bloomberg. (Fair warning: while SSC doesn't mention defense spending as an example of this, the US has a ridiculously high defense budget without actually having the quantity or quality of troops and ships and aircraft that such a budget would imply. If China's defense budget were the same as ours, they would whip our ass in a conventional war.) Whatever the shared root cause or causes are, they need to be addressed. Just giving MTA, Medicare, the Pentagon, universities, etc. more and more money isn't going to be sustainable. And, despite the ramblings of certain conspiratorially-minded folk, I also don't really think this is inflation in disguise, because then you'd also have to explain why there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the costs of e.g. basic groceries. I don't have any answers here; I just don't think we're asking the right questions if we just restrict the discussion to the specific areas where we see this happen.
- tootie 8y ago
  When I see stories like this one I take it with a grain of salt because I'll be the MTA and state legislature are basically just fighting their budget battle in the media. If the MTA makes a big stink in the media, they can swing voters to demand more funding and more restrictions on ride sharing. I'm probably being cynical but maybe not.
  - pzone 8y ago
casual_slacker 8y ago
While looking for more information, I found this article [1] which gives more detail into the costs of the MTA compared to other cities. Regarding operator efficiency: > The number of annual revenue car-miles per subway employee in New York was 14,000 in 2010. In Chicago this number is somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 ... On Tokyo’s Metro, the comparable figure is about 18,500. [1] https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mta-operating-cost-analysis https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mt...
asah 8y ago
serious q: what alternatives exist besides buses and taxi/rideshare? Is walking/scootering a material number of people? If not, why about taxing rideshares to fund the subway?
- MFLoon 8y ago
  Most NYC residents don't have walkable commutes, especially those living in middle or lower income neighborhoods that are generally further from the city center. The city is too large, and not particularly pedestrian friendly in the outer boroughs. FWIW Biking has become more viable in recent years, with a good amount of bike lane coverage even in the outer boroughs, but that's still not viable for the less physically able, and I don't know if it's actually cheaper than public transit once you factor in bike equipment/maintenance costs and increased travel times. Also the weather gets fairly extreme in both the summer and winter. Taxing rideshares sounds like a good idea, though I'm sure Uber would fight like hell against it.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    Uber & others seem to be fine with a general congestion charge although, and actually seem to encourage it.
rhcom2 8y ago
The NYT had a great article on how the subway got in the situation it is in. 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-...
- jseliger 8y ago
  When even the NYT is willing to implicitly criticize unions, you know it's gotten bad: Even in the face of the financial crisis and budget shortfalls, the M.T.A. has given concession after concession to its main labor union. Members of the Transport Workers Union got a total of 19 percent in pay raises between 2009 and 2016, compared with 12 percent for the city’s teachers union over the same period. The labor contracts also gave members lifetime spousal health benefits and free rides on the Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. (They already were allowed to ride the subway for free.) Particularly insane: Subway workers, including managers and administrative personnel, now make an average of about $155,000 annually in salary, overtime and benefits, according to a Times analysis of data compiled by the federal Department of Transportation. That is far more than in any other American transit system; the average in cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington is less than $100,000 in total compensation annually.
  - vkou 8y ago
    Smells like bullshit to me. A quick look at glassdoor.com for MTA transit jobs [1], I'm seeing drivers and conductors making ~$22/hour. Presumably this is an entry level rate. Some searching points to a high of ~$30/hour. Project managers and programmers, of course, are making >$100,000 k. I have doubts that they are represented by the union, though. Of course, quietly lumping their salaries in with the blue-collar folks pushes a particular political narrative. It seems that if you really want to trim the fat at the MTA, cut wages for the white-collar, un-unionized workers. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-conductor-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,23.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-conductor-s...
    - adameast9000 8y ago
jimnotgym 8y ago
$2.75 sounds really cheap to my British ears. How far can you go on that?
- deleted 8y ago
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- chadlavi 8y ago
  It's not a zoned system. $2.75 gets you in, then you go wherever you want within the system.
- pseudolus 8y ago
  The NYC system isn't composed of "zones" like the systems in such cities as London and Paris. Essentially, once you pay your $2.75 you're free to travel to any subway station in the system. There's also a bus system with limited transfers.
  - _asummers 8y ago
    DC metro has zones, as an example of a US train system with it.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    Toronto and London have zones. I'd bet the farm that Byford does the same when the MetroCard replacement is fully deployed.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    No zones effectively on the Métro. There are zones in Paris but that’s if you want to go suburban and then you don’t take the Métro. You take RER.
- andywaite 8y ago
  Up to 31 miles: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html
rmason 8y ago
I think what everyone reading this story is missing and that the opportunity. Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion. Once it's proven in New York you could roll it out anywhere in the world.
- antidesitter 8y ago
  You're assuming such a signalling system would be wanted. Do you see the problem?
- MFLoon 8y ago
  >Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion. Is this a satirical comment? It doesn't matter how easily a clever HN reader could devise a new, greenfield signaling system, you can't just build and cutover to a new subway signaling system in one of the world's densest cities, atop an existing subway with over 100 years of accrued legacy signaling technologies. The MTA has tried to modernize it's signaling system twice, and each initiative was a multi-decade, multi billion dollar morass. It's just not a problem that can be solved by throwing a shiny new framework at it - not that many real world problems can be.
rb666 8y ago
It's funny how pathetic America deals with any sort of public service. It's all about me me me.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Well isn't the whole point of public service to serve them in the first place? They are literally entitled to it.
- solidsnack9000 8y ago
  The US had a very different path to modernization than most other developed countries, because it never underwent absolutism. The typical effect of absolutism was to introduce an efficient and effective civil service, as part of the general centralization of authority. Absolutist states were monarchial, militaristic states; the combination of taxation and destruction was hard to endure and eventually they had to transition to something else as a result of revolution or defeat. After either event, though, the civil service stuck around and with it a norm of publicly provided services. The US got off the train at just about the time that absolutism was getting going in Europe -- indeed, because it was getting going in Europe -- and thus retains a decentralized -- not necessarily selfish -- structure and outlook more characteristic of medieval Europe. These "Tudor Institutions" are discussed by Huntington in Political Modernization: America vs. Europe: http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Huntington%20Political%20Modernization%20--America%20vs%20Europe.pdf http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Huntington%20Political%20Mo...
huehehue 8y ago
It's bad. The A/C/J/Z lines still contain R32 cars, which were built 54 years ago, and are 20 years past their service life. These cars were built before the moon landing, have terrible brakes, have terrible air conditioning, and are, generally speaking, sweltering rattly deathtraps. The Second Avenue line is 100 years in the making and has a grand total of...drum roll...3 stations. That opened in 2017. But hey, they're getting WiFi in the tunnels and installing flatscreen TVs in the stations. Three cheers for more ad space! Personally, I'd rather have less station closures, less delays, and less stopping-and-waiting-20-minutes because of track congestion.
- deleted 8y ago
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- jumelles 8y ago
  > WiFi in the tunnels and installing flatscreen TVs ... less station closures, less delays, and less stopping-and-waiting-20-minutes because of track congestion Some of these are much easier fixes than others.
  - huehehue 8y ago
    Fair point. How about a drain/pump system to prevent stations from flooding every time it rains? Or cleaning the tracks more frequently to reduce fires? Or fixing the broken intercoms in the cars, so I can at least be warned about surprise service modifications?
    - pgodzin 8y ago
      To do more cleaning you need more station closures and delays
      - cc439 8y ago
        How hard is it to build a vacuum/sweeper car and run half a dozen of them during the slowest times at night?
- 8y ago
whack 8y ago
This is a really depressing story to read. I've always believed that a good indicator of a country's health, is its ability to tackle complex large-scale projects. Projects that require coordination on multiple fronts: politics, bureaucracy, technical-know-how, civic sacrifice. In the old days when all this infrastructure was built in the first place, we showed our ability to do so. But now, we've gotten to the point where even maintaining it is proving too challenging. When you look at other countries like Singapore, China, Korea and Japan, it's clear that our political and governmental institutions are lagging far behind when it comes to "getting things done". I wonder what this portends for the coming century.
- Retric 8y ago
  These problems are really common with 50+ year old infrastructure. Looks at the NYC subway from 50 or even 70 years ago and it looks about the same as it does now: Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_map#/media/File:Official_New_York_City_Subway_Map_vc.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_map#/medi... 1968: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/irvingtrust-july68.png https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/irvingtr... 1948: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1948.gif https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1... The problem is basic day to day maintenance is really not enough, infrastructure get's increasingly complex and expensive over time. Now compare this with you example city's 70 years ago and it's a rather different situation. Singapore for example did not even start construction on a subway system until 1982.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    Indeed, the problem is that money hasn't been invested in modernisation.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    The subway systems in London and Paris are pretty old but work reasonably well. You have to properly maintain and modernize the system then the age of the original structures doesn't matter as much.
j-c-hewitt 8y ago
Cities like NYC are overcrowded and dysfunctional, but our financial system allows dysfunctional and failing systems to continue to operate up until the point to which they physically collapse and start either entering prolonged periods of obvious mechanical non-function and/or killing people in embarrassing numbers. Without all the bailouts, the MTA would have failed decades ago and would have had to have been restructured. Because NYC's political priorities have been to conserve past structures and agreements at the expense of the present and the future, you will see performance go down and down to the point to which 1950s performance will look like 1950s science fiction. I don't think I would expect anything to change until a major accident kills a large number of people in one day. You should expect the people in charge of the system as it exists today to keep getting millions of dollars as service continues to degrade. But the MTA knows this, so they stop the trains constantly when there is any chance of a collision, so you get the slow motion choke for money that you have had for decades. There's a great option if you are not happy with New York City and its governance: leave! NYC is a machine for fleecing young people who want to move there with heads full of movies and TV and rich foreign potentates with more money than sense. It's not a great place to live if you want to have a comfortable middle class lifestyle. It might have been that 30+ years ago, but not anymore.
- huebomont 8y ago
  "If something's not working well, abandon it" is pretty pathetic advice. There are very clear ways to fix the problem, the only cause for pessimism is whether the people in charge will do the right things.
  - JimboOmega 8y ago
    There are very clear ways to fix the problem Are there, though? You can play armchair city planner all you want, but where is the political, legal, regulatory, etc, environment that allows this "very clear" fix to proceed? Who's to say that even with a big fare increase and a lot of money pushed in, that money won't mysteriously disappear while things don't get any better - as has happened historically? Sometimes an entity DOES need to fail, and fail hard, before it can really be restructured entirely.
notyourday 8y ago
Everything that one needs to understand in order to explain why NYC subway is such a shitshow can be learned by any software engineer that attempted to change a gigantic legacy barely functioning code base of an organization with a single product that relies on this codebase which happened to still have "founders" running a show 12-13 years later: When the company adds "new blood", everything that the new blood proposes gets tossed out for "legacy reasons". Periodically, someone floats a plan for a gigantic multi-year "keep X service but rewrite everything inside it from scratch" software engineering project. Those future "rewrite from scratch" projects are used to justify not making any incremental improvements.
Dowwie 8y ago
Expressed in Millions: Payroll: $5,392 Overtime: 811 Health & Welfare: 2,129 Pension: 1,354 Other Labor: 400 ---------------------- Total Labor: $10,086 Non-Labor: 4,205 Debt Service: 2,692 BTL Adjustments for Expenses: (251) ===================================== Total: $16,732
- GarrisonPrime 8y ago
  Thank you. Not a surprise. Bring on the 'bots!
weatherlight 8y ago
This has little to do with the MTA Union and everything to do with Blasio resisting committing more money to the MTA unless he was guaranteed by Cuomo that the money would go towards the subways and subway throughput, and not other MTA services. Cuomo Controls the MTA; Not the City, or the City Mayor, that's 99% of the problem. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s planned to add amenities like new lighting and USB ports at nearly three dozen New York City subway stations, Completely side-stepping DeBlasio. In February, Cuomo put the vote forth to The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (they control the MTA), voted 10-3 vote in favor, to approve 1 billion dollars of contracts to refurbish nine of the thirteen stations. This is all apart of Cuomo's Enhanced Station Initiative which is entirely focused on cosmetics. It's a shame.
- ep103 8y ago
  This is the rub for me. If you scroll through this page, there's lot of talk about finances and upgrades without much context or understanding. And there's the usual union bashing, which may or may not be warranted. But this is the first comment that points out that Cuomo owns the MTA, is responsible for maintaining and improving it, and has a long history of looting the MTA's funds for other projects, or forcing them to spend money on cosmetic changes (does no one remember his big announcement last year that he was going to take 200 million from the MTA to force them to make NYC bridge lights multi-colored? Really?). Service was fine before this man got elected, and plummeted afterward. It might be that Cuomo's not to blame, any more than any other possible cause. I don't know, I'm not an expert. But you know what I never hear? Any form of leadership or direction that makes it sound like his people are trying to fix this issue. Which again, means in some sense, Cuomo is still to blame. We don't have reliable transit, and Cuomo's answer is: "Maybe we can get a very controversial new tax passed to pay for it?" From the guy who has a habit of stealing funds from the MTA? Deblasio's condition for more funding was that Cuomo had to promise it will go to the subway and not another one of Cuomo's upstate pet projects... and Cuomo said no. Until we have a governor who cares, I don't have much hope here. It just doesn't appear to be a priority for him. He declared a state of emergency, and promptly followed up with no headline making changes. Unless I missed something (pls link me! : ) He did, however, name a bridge after his father. Maybe the ceremony would have been better if the bridge sparkled in more colors.
nova22033 8y ago
This is one of the best articles on why the NYC subway is such a mess https://www.businessinsider.com/second-avenue-subway-cost-nyc-infrastructure-2016-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/second-avenue-subway-cost-ny...
Markoff 8y ago
solution it's pretty simple, hike the fare like in comparable cities, shut down subway in night like in comparable cities, remove unlimited ticket and replace it with time/zone limited like in comparable cities. you can't eat cake and have it
stevespang 8y ago
LET BEZOS and AMAZON PAY FOR IT !!!
DoubleGlazing 8y ago
The problem with urban transport systems is that no one sees them for what they really are... an expensive thing that drives the economy. There seems to be an obsession in the west with making public transport pay for itself, but the reality is that a few billion invested in better public transport results in a lot more billions being made elsewhere. We need to get away from this idea that public transport systems need to break even or turn a profit. They are there to help make money in other ways. An efficient reliable transport system should cost the taxpayer money, but they will get that back in profit elsewhere through a thriving local economy.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  Right? The economics of fare enforcement are a great illustration of this. It's probably more efficient to just abolish fare collection altogether.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    I wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning herald about 15 years ago saying, OK, starting today, let's make all public transportation free, by not paying for it anymore. All it takes is everyone acting together. They didn't publish my letter. I really shouldn't have given up so easily - I still think it's a good idea. Just need to set a date and get everyone talking about it.
  - mrsuprawsm 8y ago
    This been attempted in quite a few places: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/15/i-leave-the-car-at-home-how-free-buses-are-revolutionising-one-french-city https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/15/i-leave-the-c... > 'in 2017 there were 99 fare-free public transport networks around the world: 57 in Europe, 27 in North America, 11 in South America, 3 in China and one in Australia. Many are smaller than Dunkirk and offer free transit limited to certain times, routes and people.'
- jkaplowitz 8y ago
  The ideas you're saying are quite common in the West, as you say, but that's not the attitude in NYC. Everyone realizes it's worth funding and fixing. The disputes are about the who, what, how, and paid by whom.
samfisher83 8y ago
You can pretty much get anywhere on the ny subway system and it's pretty cheap. Bay area public transport is more expensive and it doesn't even go everywhere.
skadamat 8y ago
For people here who are interested in transit, I highly recommend Jarrett Walker's book "Human Transit". He really focuses the conversation around a few ideas that almost everyone can agree on (and uses them to focus & have productive conversations in transit agencies) https://humantransit.org/ https://humantransit.org/ Last night I watched his talk "Transit Truths" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc - which also summarizes the ideas in his book well.
chasing 8y ago
I'd rather see an increase in progressive taxes for individuals and companies in NYC rather than a fare hike. I, at least, heavily depend on public transportation in NYC and would be more than happy to pay more to the MTA in taxes if it meant cleaner, more efficient, and more reliable service.
sashavingardt2 8y ago
A ride in NYC is crazy cheap compared to other parts of the world. I live in Europe (grew up in NYC) and a single ride costs $4.50 where I am. But the public transport is clean, well-maintained and safe.
RileyJames 8y ago
You can market a 2.75 to $3 fare increase on the convenience of not receiving change. It’s nearly insignificant. But I agree with the lead comment. Public transport should be seen as an enabler, and should be made free, or affordable, in order to maximise the benefits. We spend how much on roads? All from tax payers, and some people don’t own a car. Yet the idea of paying for public transport out of taxes seems to grate some people.
williesleg 8y ago
Thanks Andrew Cuomo.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
"The system’s financial straits have gotten worse in part because it has fewer riders, and is collecting less money in fares." If there are less riders to serves doesn't logic dictate service levels be adjusted to fit market conditions? Given that this might be the key fact in the whoke article, the article should have detailed why rider volume is down.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Why would it dictate that? Choosier consumers with more options require you to step up your game to compete. The point of the death spiral is that ridership is down due to reliability issues, which will get worse due to less fare revenue, driving ridership down further.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Why? Why not? If you need to move 1000 people to a given destination over an hour, and you run every 15 mins, and 1000 drops to 800, then approx every 20 mins will do. But that's not drop in service (as it will be spun). That's just a common sense response to the needs of the market. The problem is, any elected official who champions such common sense won't get elected / re-elected. Simply because it will be sold to the public as a drop in service. This why public programs always grow and too rarely never re-adjust (smaller) when appropriate. Note: The article did __not__ say why ridership is down. It mentioned the reliability issue but doesn't name it as the sole reason. For all we know more people are walking because the need the exercise. Or perhaps those at the bottom of the economic ladder can't afford to ride. Obviously, the former is good news. Healthcare is expensive. Obesity is a real issue. Obviously, the latter is bad news. And few elected officials what to be the ones to say they haven't been doing what they said they were doing. Or perhaps tourism is down? Which again, is not a feather in any politician's cap. Anecdotally, I live in Central NJ. To take the train to NYC I have to pay approx $10 to park. That makes the round trip approx $40. In my mind, at $40 p/p p/trip, that's coming up on $50, opposed to a (psychological) shade over $25. The article makes no mention of possible external factors.
InclinedPlane 8y ago
New York City's walkability and public transit are easily one of its greatest, most important, and most valuable features. It's a shame that there's been such a revolt against local taxation over the last 30-40 years. Our big cities are the lifeblood of our modern technological economy. And yet we are under-investing in them drastically. But it's absolutely an affordable problem, we have the money we just balk at talking on the responsibilities properly, we want to pretend that if we temporize and half-ass our way there the problems (not just transit but housing and opioids and so forth) will just take care of themselves or spontaneously disappear. That is an immature and unrealistic stance. We need to govern ourselves, we need to take care of and maintain our own cities and our own people. If we continue to fail to do so it won't just be public transit in one city in a death spiral, it'll be the whole entire country headed the way of a failed state. And it'll happen a lot sooner and a lot faster than you might expect.
cat199 8y ago
"experts" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... "Span 2003b. "No one sought an answer to Quinby’s most penetrating question (referring to the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act), "Who Is Behind This Campaign To Separate The Obviously Economical Combination Of Electric Railway And Its Power Plant?"
0max 8y ago
Vox has a great piece on how the NYC MTA got to its current state of affairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLMODzYX7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLMODzYX7U
olingern 8y ago
I lived in NYC for five years and the decline in metro service was significant between 2016-2018. From most reports, it was due to faulty switches or expiring subway cars. Fast forward to living in Tokyo, the difference is night and day (except for the rush hour crowdedness). Maintenance is done every night (somewhere) and all lines shut down between 12 and 1 am. It's super inconvenient, and this is where I applaud NYC for allowing me to get home every late night I spent out. I would hope there's some middle-ground in there, though. The MTA is looking at this in such a primitive manner, though. I know (from my time there) that track work is not efficient. It looked to be a lot of sit and wait until something is ready. Tokyo metro workers are _always_ doing something. It's almost if they have clear defined goals that they must accomplish before their day starts.
anon2775 8y ago
This is clickbait based on old news. The MTA hired an unconventional transportation turn-around guru. It's going to take time to make things better.
gurumeditations 8y ago
Why don’t they just pave the tunnels and put autonomous buses in?
_pmf_ 8y ago
Amazon Cuomo will fix it.
- umichguy 8y ago
  I think if Amazon pitches in with some funds and help them out with logistics software planning for increased efficiency, they will go a long way in buying some goodwill from the NY public. It's great publicity while helping out the city citizens. Put all that ML and AI expertise to some public use.
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amai 8y ago
The list of cities that offer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport is growing. Maybe this is the model for the future!
Dowwie 8y ago
Curious whether Uber or Lyft riders will change their behaviors as the toll on public transit becomes more salient..
mymythisisthis 8y ago
The cost of a single trip has always been the cost a pizza slice. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-the-price-of-a-slice.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-the-p...
barfingclouds 8y ago
The New York subway system is riddled with inefficiencies, corruption, and terrible maintenance. You’ve gotta call it for what it is. Their bull shit has caught up to them. I feel nothing less than contempt for the people behind it.
rajacombinator 8y ago
Is this really a funding problem or is it an employee quality problem ...

347 points by ricardoreis 8y ago

> Critics say it is bad service that is driving people away. One datapoint: I live in Rhode Island. Recently I attended a concert in Brooklyn. The obvious way to travel there was Amtrak to Penn Station and MTA (train or bus) to the final destination. However, I was warned that MTA service is unreliable. I decided to drive. Next time I probably won't go at all.

dionidium 8y ago
That's really silly and a sign of how overblown this story has become (in some contexts). You would have been fine. When a system like the NYC Subway gets 20% worse for everyday commuters, that's a really big deal and something those commuters are going to talk about a lot. But a NYC Subway that's 20% worse than it was 10 years ago is still a massive, complex, incredible, useful machine, no matter how much New Yorkers complain about it. And, so, should they complain? Yeah! There's nothing wrong with expecting more from the MTA. But these stories are generating comments like yours here and that's absurd.
- ricardoreis 8y ago
  A NYC Subway that's 20% worse than it was 10 years ago By what metric?
  - BorgHunter 8y ago
    On-time performance has dropped dramatically in the past ten years. In the following article, look for the graph titled, "On-time performance by line, 2007 to 2017". https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subway-delays-overcrowding.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...
    - ricardoreis 8y ago
      Thanks very much for the link. But eyeballing that chart suggests an average deterioration significantly worse than 20 percent.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    Delays, primarily. Overcrowding, secondarily.
    - ricardoreis 8y ago
      Numbers, please. (That's what "metric" means, btw).
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway427 8y ago
        Numbers may not tell the whole story, obviously: https://outline.com/KLsxf3 https://outline.com/KLsxf3
        dionidium 8y ago
        Yes, and it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes of thinking about the issues to realize that most of the commentary on the topic makes very little sense. Experiential measurements aren't so easily calculated, I'd say. Just a few examples: - Would you rather have a train that arrives one minute late every single day, for a 0% on-time record, or a train that arrives on time 3 out of every 5 times and then is 20 minutes late the other two? How many articles on the subway distinguish between the two types of lateness? It matters a lot. - You might read that Atlanta's MARTA, for example, has a better on-time performance record than the NYC Subway. Well, that's great, but it's also got rush-hour scheduled headways of 10 minutes, scheduled off-peak headways of 20 minutes or more, and no service entirely at many stations after 9PM (no trains run at all after 2AM). So something that's "late" in New York City still comes before the scheduled train in Atlanta (when the trains there come at all). [0] - The NYC Subway also has 10 times as many stations as MARTA and 17 times as many miles of track. They say the best camera is the one you have on you. Something like that applies here, too. What's the on-time record for a train that doesn't exist? MARTA is a random comparison, but it's not uncommon for writers of screeds about the subway to offer up comparisons to other systems devoid of any of the kind of context I provide above. So, you know: 1) comparisons are difficult; 2) especially if you want to capture what it's actually like to use transit in the cities you're comparing. All of which is to support my original contention that this story has been decontextualized by surly commuters and the idea that a tourist couldn't rely on the subway to get to a concert is nonsense. [0] https://www.itsmarta.com/railline-schedules.aspx https://www.itsmarta.com/railline-schedules.aspx
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
ricardoreis 8y ago
Apparently the commenter isn't much of a city person, and may have overreacted a bit. But they shouldn't have been downvoted for expressing that sentiment.
bunderbunder 8y ago
So, I haven't been to New York in a while, but I'm guessing that you were poorly informed. Usually when public transit networks start showing strain, it's during rush hours, when they're handling massive spikes in ridership. To give an example from Chicago: If you're trying to get on the train downtown at 6:00pm, you'll get on the next train, and probably get to sit in a seat. If you try to do it at 5:00pm, you stand a good chance of waiting 30 minutes for a train that you can even physically get on to. When you do, your ride will probably also take 50% longer than the 6pm ride would have. And maybe even 100% longer than a ride at 7pm would have. You naturally get all the complaints from the rush hour riders. And yeah, if your concert were starting at 6 in the evening so that you'd have to brave rush hour traffic, then that would be a problem. But so would driving. If, like most concerts, it was starting a bit later, you'd very likely have experienced smooth service.
- weberc2 8y ago
  > If you're trying to get on the train downtown at 6:00pm, you'll get on the next train, and probably get to sit in a seat. If you try to do it at 5:00pm, you stand a good chance of waiting 30 minutes for a train that you can even physically get on to. What line are you describing? I take the L every day from downtown around 5 and I can reliably get on the first train and it will arrive in < 10 minutes (and there's a good chance I'll have a seat). If a train takes more than 10 minutes, it will almost certainly be packed full, but it will also almost certainly be followed by another nearly-empty train in ~1-2 minutes.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    The example I had in mind was blue line northbound from Clark & Lake. Which is admittedly the worst scenario that I could think of, and I should have said that. It gets better quickly from there. I used to get on 2 stops further south, and, yeah, at 5 I usually had no problems and a decent chance of getting a seat, too.
    - _asummers 8y ago
      Blue Line north at 5-5:30PM is a nightmare from Clark/Lake. I sometimes have to wait for 4-5 trains before I can get on.
umanwizard 8y ago
Why not just go to Penn Station planning on taking the train to the final destination, then Uber on the off chance there ends of being a problem with the train? The MTA has problems, but it still usually gets you where you need to go.

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JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Turning things around will require a huge infusion of cash I keep hearing this with zero justification. Why? I’m sceptical of New York’s public agencies asking for lots of cash. I assume there are legitimate projects, but the MTA has been horrible at showing the public this demanded money will be well spent.

dionidium 8y ago
Both things can be true. 1) It probably does cost a lot of money to increase headways, run more trains, install positive train control, and otherwise upgrade and maintain tracks; but also 2) the MTA is a bloated, wasteful organization. I have no trouble holding both ideas in my head at once.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Both things can be true I believe both are and will be. But to what degree? If it’s billions on bloat, then we need a cost cutter at the top (in addition to new funding).
  - moate 8y ago
    It's part the MTA, part the city government as a whole, and part the state government. This feels like classic "too many cooks" bureaucracy where everyone knows THEY have the right answer and everyone else at the table is conspiring against their golden plan.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    I started my career working in the transportation sector, and that leaves me skeptical that it can be so simple. I've watched cost cutters at work in government transportation departments. Their MO seems to always be to cut the costs that are easy to cut so they can claim easy wins right away. Unfortunately, the costs that are easy to cut are typically things like skimping on maintenance. This leads to higher costs in the long run, but, hey, that'll take decades to come to fruition, and by then it'll be someone else's problem. In short, the state of American infrastructure today is a result of decades upon decades of mismanagement by the cost cutters. I have a hard time believing they can also be the solution. Maybe find an efficiency maven instead?

JPKab 8y ago

“The subway service and the bus service has become unreliable enough for people to stop using it. If people aren’t using it, there’s less money, and they have to keep raising fares without delivering better service.” I was a daily rider of the DC metro for 8 years. This is exactly what happened there. Reliability plummeted, then ridership, and all the while major fare increases.

leetrout 8y ago
I just commented to someone the other day- I loved how clean the metro was but hated the prices for sub-par services. I hate the distance based pricing.
- umichguy 8y ago
  What's wrong with distance based pricing?
  - francisofascii 8y ago
    Distance based pricing is fine. But can't they make it a little simpler? Increments of $1 would be nice. Instead of $3.85, just make it $4.00.
plants 8y ago
If you haven't been back, I think you'd be surprised at the (weekday) reliability of the metro now. The metro is almost always terribly messed up on weekends (with single-tracking and line closings), but they make a damn good effort to get weekday commuters to work on time. I've been living in the DC area for the past two years and it seems like they have really been making the metro a priority. I have a transfer during my commute during rush hour times, and I hardly ever have to wait more than five minutes for either of my trains.
- mikeash 8y ago
  I second this. I don’t use Metro often, but my wife commutes by Metro almost every day. There was a period of a couple of years where she’d pretty routinely get home an hour or two late because of some huge fuckup with the trains, but recently it’s been very smooth. I think this is connected to the constant weekend problems you mentioned. The trouble before was that they weren’t maintaining the system properly because they didn’t want to cause disruptions. They finally realized that maintenance isn’t actually optional and started doing what it takes to get it done. The system doesn’t have enough capacity to have sections out of service for maintenance without major disruptions, but at least now they happen at a time of their choosing.

danharaj 8y ago

I haven't noticed. In fact, it's been a several weeks since my commute was interrupted severely. I hear the green line is doing pretty badly though.

mdolon 8y ago

The article briefly mentioned competition from ride sharing services but I wonder to what extent it's made an impact. Anecdotally, given how cheap Uber and Lyft are in Manhattan (typically $4-5 for a shared ride), I often find myself opting for that instead of dealing with the hassles of the subway system. Both are unreliable when it comes to timeliness, as ride sharing services often take longer than expected (especially Uber Pool and Lyft Line). And as painful as the subway system can sometimes be, I do appreciate the rich history and incredible performances you'll often come across in subway stations. I'm torn, to be honest.

andy_wrote 8y ago
Yeah, I'd be very interested to learn about anything about the sensitivities of ridership to other external variables in general. Looking at the article's linked presentation [1] and the MTA's most recent financial plan [2] it seems like all the hurt is coming from really huge declines in projected revenues - labor costs seem to be growing pretty reasonably but there's basically zero projected growth in fares. If someone can give me a layman's explanation of what "Capital and Other Reimbursements" is, which accounts for about a $500mm decline between 2019 and 20222, I'd be much obliged. So I am curious how sensitive riders are to the increased service problems, how much that makes them switch out, to get some sense as to how much the signal improvements will help solve this problem. Also how much to a fare hike, which seems like the more straightforward answer in a vacuum (i.e. other than taxes or other government infusions). The MTA says in [1] that even "draconian service reductions would have a relatively small impact on the deficit." [1] - http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-Nov-Financial-Plan-2019-2022-Presentation.pdf http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-... [2] - http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-Nov-Financial-Plan-2019-2022-Vol1.pdf http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-...
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Reducing service, unless you want to do it really painfully, is unlikely to do much in the long run. A good chunk of the costs are employee related (health/pensions) and debt service. The MTA shouldn't default on its bonds, and in NYS you can't constitutionally modify government pensions after they've been given. And the MTA hires as many drivers and buys trains and buses based on peak demand; cutting off-peak is unlikely to do much since you wouldn't be reducing the absolute number of drivers you need. In fact, cutting off-peak services would probably worsen the budget outlook long-term, since the marginal cost of an off-peak service is very low.

nakedrobot2 8y ago

CLOSE THE SUBWAY MIDNIGHT-5AM and fix it Like most other civilized societies who have a functioning and well-maintained metro system. That is really all there is to it!

WAthrowaway 8y ago
They are already doing this for several lines. The L wasn't running on weekends at all in November for them to do repairs. NYC is unique in that there are LOTS of people whose working hours fall into that range and they rely on the subway. Just shutting down the whole system is unfeasible.
- nakedrobot2 8y ago
  Please stop this unique snowflake claim about NYC :+) It's another huge City. Besides having a horribly mismanaged public transport, it's not unique. Except that it's, you know, the center of the universe of course. ;-)
  - taobility 8y ago
    NYC is unique as it's always be the center of the universe, even it's just 8M people live here, and other cities, like Tokyo/Hong Kong/Beijing/Shanghai has more population that it
  - dgzl 8y ago
    You're sadly mistaken if you think a New York, one of the largest and busiest cities in human existence, is "just another large City", and that the solution to their transportation woes is to just lock it down and work on it.
    - Markoff 8y ago
      it's extremely small compared to population of Beijing or shanghai for instance and Beijing shut down subway around 11PM. but yeah people in NY are the only ones working in night, common, you really believe it or you don't have passport?

syntaxing 8y ago

Not surprised. Not only are we lacking in physical infrastructure, but also technological infrastructure. I still don't understand how we do not have stations like in developed Asian countries like Japan or Hong Kong. The trains are "one" unit and the stations are doubled door with people at each station assisting (or ticketing..) you if needed. The train practically drive themselves. The conductor is there for emergency purposes. We didn't even have speed regulator installed until recently (and not all trains have them!) until a bunch of trains kept on crashing because of human error. We spend billions on ONE new station, but we can't invest a couple billion to fix the infrastructure.

lozaning 8y ago
Hong Kong and Nanjing subway systems are spectacular. I dont speak or read the language and never once did I get lost because there are super easy to understand signs _everywhere_ and usually an electronic map that indicates the station you just left and the one you're going to, above all the doors to the cars inside. Never once gotten lost, embarrassed i can't say the same for BART.
- Jedi72 8y ago
  Im an Australian so native English speaker, in NYC for a few days and can not figure out the god damn subway to save my life.
tootie 8y ago
Our system is 100 years old and their's aren't.
- Symbiote 8y ago
  The points made apply equally to London's lines, which are even older. (Some lines aren't yet upgraded to walk-through trains, but they're ordered. Stuff like speed regulators is decades old.)
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Paris and London are older and better.

squozzer 8y ago

The problem seems fixable, but as others have said, people will have to take some lumps. A certain political figure with strong (both bad and good) ties to NYC has harped for a couple of years about a federal infrastructure bill. I think the phrase "third world" was used to describe the problem. No reason why America's Greatest City (tm) could not wring a couple of bil out of the feds to start upgrading their subways. Move back to the first world, you might say. In turn, because we're talking about a transaction, the MTA might also need to move out of a "third world" mentality. We can safely assume some of their payroll is spent on political favors. Maybe this "death spiral" talk will motivate the agency to make a least a token gesture towards good use of their riders dollars. Maybe.

ascagnel_ 8y ago
Not to get super political, but the concept of NY/NJ getting any transit infrastructure-related federal funds was nixed late last year in retribution against Sen. Schumer for... something?

exabrial 8y ago

> Drastically cut service or increase fares There's another option: disband the MTA Union, the primary driver of operations costs. They have blocked technology and safety upgrades for decades to keep 'those darn computers and robots from taking jobs from poor workers just trying to make a living'.

chadlavi 8y ago
Paying conductors a living wage isn't nearly as expensive to the agency (and the state, and we the taxpayers and riders) as mismanaged and corruptly nepotistic multi-billion dollar contracts for construction.
- yholio 8y ago
  On the other hand, paying living wages to thousands of unnecessary workers is quite expensive, regardless if they are employees or contractors. Unions work on both goals simultaneously, increasing wages but also providing job security to their base, inserting strong restrictions on who can perform certain labors etc. The more employees, the higher the power of the union, it's not like a competitor could spring up and kill their host. It's not a white/black issue, laborers need protection but should not use a privileged position in the economy to seek a rent at the expense of everybody else.
  - chadlavi 8y ago
    This is an agency that still uses fabric-wrapped wire and vacuum tubes. Those people are far from unnecessary. Though I'm sure the MTA will pay billions more in contracts over the next few years to halfway automate a few small parts of their jobs.
  - sonar_un 8y ago
    The MTA's union has kept unneeded workers employed. One of the main issues is having two people per train employed when almost every other transit system in the world uses only one person per train. On top of this, but actively lobbying against having driverless trains and other cost-saving technologies leaves NYC with the most expensive and antiquated system in the world

mgr86 8y ago

Over the summer The New Yorker had a story on the president of the NYC Transit Authority. Entitled Can Andy Byford Save The Subways[1]? I found it interesting. They had a rather optimistic take, but this article 4 months later makes me think its not going well. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-byford-save-the-subways https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-byfor...

ajay-d 8y ago
60 Minutes also profiled Andy recently. They even show a machine (over 100 years old) to move train switches, by manually pulling antique levers. Scary to think how these things operate. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone-off-the-rails-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone...

philwelch 8y ago

The MTA claims that New York City's transit system doesn't have enough funding to keep up with requirements. Critics of the MTA claim that the transit system has more funding than ever, and just isn't keeping up because of some vague inefficiencies or incompetencies. This is the exact same argument that we have when it comes to education, health care, defense, and so forth. Some argue that it's because government spending is inherently inefficient, and while that may be true, that doesn't explain how governments outside of the United States still seem to be a lot more efficient than governments inside the United States, nor does it explain similar phenomena in things like housing. This seems like a very broad problem that is currently beneath the public consciousness. SSC's "Considerations on Cost Disease" (http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...) is the first general discussion I've found of this, though Scott Alexander cites a paywalled Tyler Cowen piece in Bloomberg. (Fair warning: while SSC doesn't mention defense spending as an example of this, the US has a ridiculously high defense budget without actually having the quantity or quality of troops and ships and aircraft that such a budget would imply. If China's defense budget were the same as ours, they would whip our ass in a conventional war.) Whatever the shared root cause or causes are, they need to be addressed. Just giving MTA, Medicare, the Pentagon, universities, etc. more and more money isn't going to be sustainable. And, despite the ramblings of certain conspiratorially-minded folk, I also don't really think this is inflation in disguise, because then you'd also have to explain why there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the costs of e.g. basic groceries. I don't have any answers here; I just don't think we're asking the right questions if we just restrict the discussion to the specific areas where we see this happen.

tootie 8y ago
When I see stories like this one I take it with a grain of salt because I'll be the MTA and state legislature are basically just fighting their budget battle in the media. If the MTA makes a big stink in the media, they can swing voters to demand more funding and more restrictions on ride sharing. I'm probably being cynical but maybe not.
- pzone 8y ago

casual_slacker 8y ago

While looking for more information, I found this article [1] which gives more detail into the costs of the MTA compared to other cities. Regarding operator efficiency: > The number of annual revenue car-miles per subway employee in New York was 14,000 in 2010. In Chicago this number is somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 ... On Tokyo’s Metro, the comparable figure is about 18,500. [1] https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mta-operating-cost-analysis https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mt...

asah 8y ago

serious q: what alternatives exist besides buses and taxi/rideshare? Is walking/scootering a material number of people? If not, why about taxing rideshares to fund the subway?

MFLoon 8y ago
Most NYC residents don't have walkable commutes, especially those living in middle or lower income neighborhoods that are generally further from the city center. The city is too large, and not particularly pedestrian friendly in the outer boroughs. FWIW Biking has become more viable in recent years, with a good amount of bike lane coverage even in the outer boroughs, but that's still not viable for the less physically able, and I don't know if it's actually cheaper than public transit once you factor in bike equipment/maintenance costs and increased travel times. Also the weather gets fairly extreme in both the summer and winter. Taxing rideshares sounds like a good idea, though I'm sure Uber would fight like hell against it.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Uber & others seem to be fine with a general congestion charge although, and actually seem to encourage it.

rhcom2 8y ago

The NYT had a great article on how the subway got in the situation it is in. 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-...

jseliger 8y ago
When even the NYT is willing to implicitly criticize unions, you know it's gotten bad: Even in the face of the financial crisis and budget shortfalls, the M.T.A. has given concession after concession to its main labor union. Members of the Transport Workers Union got a total of 19 percent in pay raises between 2009 and 2016, compared with 12 percent for the city’s teachers union over the same period. The labor contracts also gave members lifetime spousal health benefits and free rides on the Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. (They already were allowed to ride the subway for free.) Particularly insane: Subway workers, including managers and administrative personnel, now make an average of about $155,000 annually in salary, overtime and benefits, according to a Times analysis of data compiled by the federal Department of Transportation. That is far more than in any other American transit system; the average in cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington is less than $100,000 in total compensation annually.
- vkou 8y ago
  Smells like bullshit to me. A quick look at glassdoor.com for MTA transit jobs [1], I'm seeing drivers and conductors making ~$22/hour. Presumably this is an entry level rate. Some searching points to a high of ~$30/hour. Project managers and programmers, of course, are making >$100,000 k. I have doubts that they are represented by the union, though. Of course, quietly lumping their salaries in with the blue-collar folks pushes a particular political narrative. It seems that if you really want to trim the fat at the MTA, cut wages for the white-collar, un-unionized workers. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-conductor-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM615_KO14,23.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/new-york-city-conductor-s...
  - adameast9000 8y ago

jimnotgym 8y ago

$2.75 sounds really cheap to my British ears. How far can you go on that?

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chadlavi 8y ago
It's not a zoned system. $2.75 gets you in, then you go wherever you want within the system.
pseudolus 8y ago
The NYC system isn't composed of "zones" like the systems in such cities as London and Paris. Essentially, once you pay your $2.75 you're free to travel to any subway station in the system. There's also a bus system with limited transfers.
- _asummers 8y ago
  DC metro has zones, as an example of a US train system with it.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Toronto and London have zones. I'd bet the farm that Byford does the same when the MetroCard replacement is fully deployed.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  No zones effectively on the Métro. There are zones in Paris but that’s if you want to go suburban and then you don’t take the Métro. You take RER.
andywaite 8y ago
Up to 31 miles: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html

rmason 8y ago

I think what everyone reading this story is missing and that the opportunity. Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion. Once it's proven in New York you could roll it out anywhere in the world.

antidesitter 8y ago
You're assuming such a signalling system would be wanted. Do you see the problem?
MFLoon 8y ago
>Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion. Is this a satirical comment? It doesn't matter how easily a clever HN reader could devise a new, greenfield signaling system, you can't just build and cutover to a new subway signaling system in one of the world's densest cities, atop an existing subway with over 100 years of accrued legacy signaling technologies. The MTA has tried to modernize it's signaling system twice, and each initiative was a multi-decade, multi billion dollar morass. It's just not a problem that can be solved by throwing a shiny new framework at it - not that many real world problems can be.

rb666 8y ago

It's funny how pathetic America deals with any sort of public service. It's all about me me me.

Nasrudith 8y ago
Well isn't the whole point of public service to serve them in the first place? They are literally entitled to it.
solidsnack9000 8y ago
The US had a very different path to modernization than most other developed countries, because it never underwent absolutism. The typical effect of absolutism was to introduce an efficient and effective civil service, as part of the general centralization of authority. Absolutist states were monarchial, militaristic states; the combination of taxation and destruction was hard to endure and eventually they had to transition to something else as a result of revolution or defeat. After either event, though, the civil service stuck around and with it a norm of publicly provided services. The US got off the train at just about the time that absolutism was getting going in Europe -- indeed, because it was getting going in Europe -- and thus retains a decentralized -- not necessarily selfish -- structure and outlook more characteristic of medieval Europe. These "Tudor Institutions" are discussed by Huntington in Political Modernization: America vs. Europe: http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Huntington%20Political%20Modernization%20--America%20vs%20Europe.pdf http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Huntington%20Political%20Mo...

huehehue 8y ago

It's bad. The A/C/J/Z lines still contain R32 cars, which were built 54 years ago, and are 20 years past their service life. These cars were built before the moon landing, have terrible brakes, have terrible air conditioning, and are, generally speaking, sweltering rattly deathtraps. The Second Avenue line is 100 years in the making and has a grand total of...drum roll...3 stations. That opened in 2017. But hey, they're getting WiFi in the tunnels and installing flatscreen TVs in the stations. Three cheers for more ad space! Personally, I'd rather have less station closures, less delays, and less stopping-and-waiting-20-minutes because of track congestion.

deleted 8y ago
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jumelles 8y ago
> WiFi in the tunnels and installing flatscreen TVs ... less station closures, less delays, and less stopping-and-waiting-20-minutes because of track congestion Some of these are much easier fixes than others.
- huehehue 8y ago
  Fair point. How about a drain/pump system to prevent stations from flooding every time it rains? Or cleaning the tracks more frequently to reduce fires? Or fixing the broken intercoms in the cars, so I can at least be warned about surprise service modifications?
  - pgodzin 8y ago
    To do more cleaning you need more station closures and delays
    - cc439 8y ago
      How hard is it to build a vacuum/sweeper car and run half a dozen of them during the slowest times at night?
8y ago

whack 8y ago

This is a really depressing story to read. I've always believed that a good indicator of a country's health, is its ability to tackle complex large-scale projects. Projects that require coordination on multiple fronts: politics, bureaucracy, technical-know-how, civic sacrifice. In the old days when all this infrastructure was built in the first place, we showed our ability to do so. But now, we've gotten to the point where even maintaining it is proving too challenging. When you look at other countries like Singapore, China, Korea and Japan, it's clear that our political and governmental institutions are lagging far behind when it comes to "getting things done". I wonder what this portends for the coming century.

Retric 8y ago
These problems are really common with 50+ year old infrastructure. Looks at the NYC subway from 50 or even 70 years ago and it looks about the same as it does now: Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_map#/media/File:Official_New_York_City_Subway_Map_vc.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_map#/medi... 1968: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/irvingtrust-july68.png https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/irvingtr... 1948: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1948.gif https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1... The problem is basic day to day maintenance is really not enough, infrastructure get's increasingly complex and expensive over time. Now compare this with you example city's 70 years ago and it's a rather different situation. Singapore for example did not even start construction on a subway system until 1982.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  Indeed, the problem is that money hasn't been invested in modernisation.
- adrianN 8y ago
  The subway systems in London and Paris are pretty old but work reasonably well. You have to properly maintain and modernize the system then the age of the original structures doesn't matter as much.

j-c-hewitt 8y ago

Cities like NYC are overcrowded and dysfunctional, but our financial system allows dysfunctional and failing systems to continue to operate up until the point to which they physically collapse and start either entering prolonged periods of obvious mechanical non-function and/or killing people in embarrassing numbers. Without all the bailouts, the MTA would have failed decades ago and would have had to have been restructured. Because NYC's political priorities have been to conserve past structures and agreements at the expense of the present and the future, you will see performance go down and down to the point to which 1950s performance will look like 1950s science fiction. I don't think I would expect anything to change until a major accident kills a large number of people in one day. You should expect the people in charge of the system as it exists today to keep getting millions of dollars as service continues to degrade. But the MTA knows this, so they stop the trains constantly when there is any chance of a collision, so you get the slow motion choke for money that you have had for decades. There's a great option if you are not happy with New York City and its governance: leave! NYC is a machine for fleecing young people who want to move there with heads full of movies and TV and rich foreign potentates with more money than sense. It's not a great place to live if you want to have a comfortable middle class lifestyle. It might have been that 30+ years ago, but not anymore.

huebomont 8y ago
"If something's not working well, abandon it" is pretty pathetic advice. There are very clear ways to fix the problem, the only cause for pessimism is whether the people in charge will do the right things.
- JimboOmega 8y ago
  There are very clear ways to fix the problem Are there, though? You can play armchair city planner all you want, but where is the political, legal, regulatory, etc, environment that allows this "very clear" fix to proceed? Who's to say that even with a big fare increase and a lot of money pushed in, that money won't mysteriously disappear while things don't get any better - as has happened historically? Sometimes an entity DOES need to fail, and fail hard, before it can really be restructured entirely.

notyourday 8y ago

Everything that one needs to understand in order to explain why NYC subway is such a shitshow can be learned by any software engineer that attempted to change a gigantic legacy barely functioning code base of an organization with a single product that relies on this codebase which happened to still have "founders" running a show 12-13 years later: When the company adds "new blood", everything that the new blood proposes gets tossed out for "legacy reasons". Periodically, someone floats a plan for a gigantic multi-year "keep X service but rewrite everything inside it from scratch" software engineering project. Those future "rewrite from scratch" projects are used to justify not making any incremental improvements.

Dowwie 8y ago

Expressed in Millions: Payroll: $5,392 Overtime: 811 Health & Welfare: 2,129 Pension: 1,354 Other Labor: 400 ---------------------- Total Labor: $10,086 Non-Labor: 4,205 Debt Service: 2,692 BTL Adjustments for Expenses: (251) ===================================== Total: $16,732

GarrisonPrime 8y ago
Thank you. Not a surprise. Bring on the 'bots!

weatherlight 8y ago

This has little to do with the MTA Union and everything to do with Blasio resisting committing more money to the MTA unless he was guaranteed by Cuomo that the money would go towards the subways and subway throughput, and not other MTA services. Cuomo Controls the MTA; Not the City, or the City Mayor, that's 99% of the problem. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s planned to add amenities like new lighting and USB ports at nearly three dozen New York City subway stations, Completely side-stepping DeBlasio. In February, Cuomo put the vote forth to The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (they control the MTA), voted 10-3 vote in favor, to approve 1 billion dollars of contracts to refurbish nine of the thirteen stations. This is all apart of Cuomo's Enhanced Station Initiative which is entirely focused on cosmetics. It's a shame.

ep103 8y ago
This is the rub for me. If you scroll through this page, there's lot of talk about finances and upgrades without much context or understanding. And there's the usual union bashing, which may or may not be warranted. But this is the first comment that points out that Cuomo owns the MTA, is responsible for maintaining and improving it, and has a long history of looting the MTA's funds for other projects, or forcing them to spend money on cosmetic changes (does no one remember his big announcement last year that he was going to take 200 million from the MTA to force them to make NYC bridge lights multi-colored? Really?). Service was fine before this man got elected, and plummeted afterward. It might be that Cuomo's not to blame, any more than any other possible cause. I don't know, I'm not an expert. But you know what I never hear? Any form of leadership or direction that makes it sound like his people are trying to fix this issue. Which again, means in some sense, Cuomo is still to blame. We don't have reliable transit, and Cuomo's answer is: "Maybe we can get a very controversial new tax passed to pay for it?" From the guy who has a habit of stealing funds from the MTA? Deblasio's condition for more funding was that Cuomo had to promise it will go to the subway and not another one of Cuomo's upstate pet projects... and Cuomo said no. Until we have a governor who cares, I don't have much hope here. It just doesn't appear to be a priority for him. He declared a state of emergency, and promptly followed up with no headline making changes. Unless I missed something (pls link me! : ) He did, however, name a bridge after his father. Maybe the ceremony would have been better if the bridge sparkled in more colors.

nova22033 8y ago

This is one of the best articles on why the NYC subway is such a mess https://www.businessinsider.com/second-avenue-subway-cost-nyc-infrastructure-2016-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/second-avenue-subway-cost-ny...

Markoff 8y ago

solution it's pretty simple, hike the fare like in comparable cities, shut down subway in night like in comparable cities, remove unlimited ticket and replace it with time/zone limited like in comparable cities. you can't eat cake and have it

stevespang 8y ago

LET BEZOS and AMAZON PAY FOR IT !!!

DoubleGlazing 8y ago

The problem with urban transport systems is that no one sees them for what they really are... an expensive thing that drives the economy. There seems to be an obsession in the west with making public transport pay for itself, but the reality is that a few billion invested in better public transport results in a lot more billions being made elsewhere. We need to get away from this idea that public transport systems need to break even or turn a profit. They are there to help make money in other ways. An efficient reliable transport system should cost the taxpayer money, but they will get that back in profit elsewhere through a thriving local economy.

anigbrowl 8y ago
Right? The economics of fare enforcement are a great illustration of this. It's probably more efficient to just abolish fare collection altogether.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  I wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning herald about 15 years ago saying, OK, starting today, let's make all public transportation free, by not paying for it anymore. All it takes is everyone acting together. They didn't publish my letter. I really shouldn't have given up so easily - I still think it's a good idea. Just need to set a date and get everyone talking about it.
- mrsuprawsm 8y ago
  This been attempted in quite a few places: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/15/i-leave-the-car-at-home-how-free-buses-are-revolutionising-one-french-city https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/15/i-leave-the-c... > 'in 2017 there were 99 fare-free public transport networks around the world: 57 in Europe, 27 in North America, 11 in South America, 3 in China and one in Australia. Many are smaller than Dunkirk and offer free transit limited to certain times, routes and people.'
jkaplowitz 8y ago
The ideas you're saying are quite common in the West, as you say, but that's not the attitude in NYC. Everyone realizes it's worth funding and fixing. The disputes are about the who, what, how, and paid by whom.

samfisher83 8y ago

You can pretty much get anywhere on the ny subway system and it's pretty cheap. Bay area public transport is more expensive and it doesn't even go everywhere.

skadamat 8y ago

For people here who are interested in transit, I highly recommend Jarrett Walker's book "Human Transit". He really focuses the conversation around a few ideas that almost everyone can agree on (and uses them to focus & have productive conversations in transit agencies) https://humantransit.org/ https://humantransit.org/ Last night I watched his talk "Transit Truths" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc - which also summarizes the ideas in his book well.

chasing 8y ago

I'd rather see an increase in progressive taxes for individuals and companies in NYC rather than a fare hike. I, at least, heavily depend on public transportation in NYC and would be more than happy to pay more to the MTA in taxes if it meant cleaner, more efficient, and more reliable service.

sashavingardt2 8y ago

A ride in NYC is crazy cheap compared to other parts of the world. I live in Europe (grew up in NYC) and a single ride costs $4.50 where I am. But the public transport is clean, well-maintained and safe.

RileyJames 8y ago

You can market a 2.75 to $3 fare increase on the convenience of not receiving change. It’s nearly insignificant. But I agree with the lead comment. Public transport should be seen as an enabler, and should be made free, or affordable, in order to maximise the benefits. We spend how much on roads? All from tax payers, and some people don’t own a car. Yet the idea of paying for public transport out of taxes seems to grate some people.

williesleg 8y ago

Thanks Andrew Cuomo.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

"The system’s financial straits have gotten worse in part because it has fewer riders, and is collecting less money in fares." If there are less riders to serves doesn't logic dictate service levels be adjusted to fit market conditions? Given that this might be the key fact in the whoke article, the article should have detailed why rider volume is down.

closeparen 8y ago
Why would it dictate that? Choosier consumers with more options require you to step up your game to compete. The point of the death spiral is that ridership is down due to reliability issues, which will get worse due to less fare revenue, driving ridership down further.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Why? Why not? If you need to move 1000 people to a given destination over an hour, and you run every 15 mins, and 1000 drops to 800, then approx every 20 mins will do. But that's not drop in service (as it will be spun). That's just a common sense response to the needs of the market. The problem is, any elected official who champions such common sense won't get elected / re-elected. Simply because it will be sold to the public as a drop in service. This why public programs always grow and too rarely never re-adjust (smaller) when appropriate. Note: The article did __not__ say why ridership is down. It mentioned the reliability issue but doesn't name it as the sole reason. For all we know more people are walking because the need the exercise. Or perhaps those at the bottom of the economic ladder can't afford to ride. Obviously, the former is good news. Healthcare is expensive. Obesity is a real issue. Obviously, the latter is bad news. And few elected officials what to be the ones to say they haven't been doing what they said they were doing. Or perhaps tourism is down? Which again, is not a feather in any politician's cap. Anecdotally, I live in Central NJ. To take the train to NYC I have to pay approx $10 to park. That makes the round trip approx $40. In my mind, at $40 p/p p/trip, that's coming up on $50, opposed to a (psychological) shade over $25. The article makes no mention of possible external factors.

InclinedPlane 8y ago

New York City's walkability and public transit are easily one of its greatest, most important, and most valuable features. It's a shame that there's been such a revolt against local taxation over the last 30-40 years. Our big cities are the lifeblood of our modern technological economy. And yet we are under-investing in them drastically. But it's absolutely an affordable problem, we have the money we just balk at talking on the responsibilities properly, we want to pretend that if we temporize and half-ass our way there the problems (not just transit but housing and opioids and so forth) will just take care of themselves or spontaneously disappear. That is an immature and unrealistic stance. We need to govern ourselves, we need to take care of and maintain our own cities and our own people. If we continue to fail to do so it won't just be public transit in one city in a death spiral, it'll be the whole entire country headed the way of a failed state. And it'll happen a lot sooner and a lot faster than you might expect.

cat199 8y ago

"experts" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... "Span 2003b. "No one sought an answer to Quinby’s most penetrating question (referring to the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act), "Who Is Behind This Campaign To Separate The Obviously Economical Combination Of Electric Railway And Its Power Plant?"

0max 8y ago

Vox has a great piece on how the NYC MTA got to its current state of affairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLMODzYX7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLMODzYX7U

olingern 8y ago

I lived in NYC for five years and the decline in metro service was significant between 2016-2018. From most reports, it was due to faulty switches or expiring subway cars. Fast forward to living in Tokyo, the difference is night and day (except for the rush hour crowdedness). Maintenance is done every night (somewhere) and all lines shut down between 12 and 1 am. It's super inconvenient, and this is where I applaud NYC for allowing me to get home every late night I spent out. I would hope there's some middle-ground in there, though. The MTA is looking at this in such a primitive manner, though. I know (from my time there) that track work is not efficient. It looked to be a lot of sit and wait until something is ready. Tokyo metro workers are _always_ doing something. It's almost if they have clear defined goals that they must accomplish before their day starts.

anon2775 8y ago

This is clickbait based on old news. The MTA hired an unconventional transportation turn-around guru. It's going to take time to make things better.

gurumeditations 8y ago

Why don’t they just pave the tunnels and put autonomous buses in?

_pmf_ 8y ago

Amazon Cuomo will fix it.

umichguy 8y ago
I think if Amazon pitches in with some funds and help them out with logistics software planning for increased efficiency, they will go a long way in buying some goodwill from the NY public. It's great publicity while helping out the city citizens. Put all that ML and AI expertise to some public use.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

amai 8y ago

The list of cities that offer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport is growing. Maybe this is the model for the future!

Dowwie 8y ago

Curious whether Uber or Lyft riders will change their behaviors as the toll on public transit becomes more salient..

mymythisisthis 8y ago

The cost of a single trip has always been the cost a pizza slice. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-the-price-of-a-slice.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-the-p...

barfingclouds 8y ago

The New York subway system is riddled with inefficiencies, corruption, and terrible maintenance. You’ve gotta call it for what it is. Their bull shit has caught up to them. I feel nothing less than contempt for the people behind it.

rajacombinator 8y ago

Is this really a funding problem or is it an employee quality problem ...