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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

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.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Are there, though? I live in Manhattan. Love it. The MTA fucking up is still miles ahead of every other American city on their best days in terms of transit and density. Most New Yorkers’ stories of nightmarish delays find parity with the daily commutes Americans across the country put up with as a matter of course.
- passthefist 8y ago
  Yep. Really the only city with a transit system on par with New York/Metro IMO is Chicago. And even then the Manhattan subway system has much better coverage than the L. I prefer living places where I'm not reliant on owning a car, and when I was moving back to the states there were only a handful of metro areas I felt this was possible in without it being inconvenient.
  - umichguy 8y ago
    NYC and Chicago were the only two big cities I liked living in from a public transport perspective... Maybe that's why I ended up here in London!
j-c-hewitt 8y ago
Talking about the politics of it and pointing out the issue, or even joining a straphanger lobbyist group are about as relevant to the real politics involved as playing Sim City 2000 and making your own subway layout. Numerous mayors and governors have tried and failed to fix an issue that is much larger than can be addressed just on the local level. There are also issues with how labor disputes work in the US that can't be addressed purely on the local level. Part of the problem is encompassed in a much larger problem that other unrelated entities have to deal with: dysfunctional impacts of precedents and legislation in US labor law. And indeed, the response that many companies have had to the failure of attempts to reform US labor law has been to just leave the US entirely and/or to just go bankrupt due to failure to work things out with unions partly owing to the widely acknowledged inflexibility of US law in this area. There are many issues like this in which the resolution is really clear on an intellectual level. When it involves screwing the existing stakeholders, it should not be surprising when those stakeholders use all the leverage they have to resist being deprived of what they have. For example: Medicare is broke, it doesn't take 195 space alien IQ to see that you have to implement means testing to make the system fiscally whole, but good luck proposing it because you will be annihilated politically if you do. It does not take having a giant 900 pound brain to see that you have to screw the union and blow up the MTA to fix the system. But good luck doing it. And it makes perfect sense for the average AARP member to send in their contributions to protect their entitlements under the law even if they understood intellectually that the government cannot afford to maintain that entitlement in the future.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Are there, though? I live in Manhattan. Love it. The MTA fucking up is still miles ahead of every other American city on their best days in terms of transit and density. Most New Yorkers’ stories of nightmarish delays find parity with the daily commutes Americans across the country put up with as a matter of course.

passthefist 8y ago
Yep. Really the only city with a transit system on par with New York/Metro IMO is Chicago. And even then the Manhattan subway system has much better coverage than the L. I prefer living places where I'm not reliant on owning a car, and when I was moving back to the states there were only a handful of metro areas I felt this was possible in without it being inconvenient.
- umichguy 8y ago
  NYC and Chicago were the only two big cities I liked living in from a public transport perspective... Maybe that's why I ended up here in London!

j-c-hewitt 8y ago

Talking about the politics of it and pointing out the issue, or even joining a straphanger lobbyist group are about as relevant to the real politics involved as playing Sim City 2000 and making your own subway layout. Numerous mayors and governors have tried and failed to fix an issue that is much larger than can be addressed just on the local level. There are also issues with how labor disputes work in the US that can't be addressed purely on the local level. Part of the problem is encompassed in a much larger problem that other unrelated entities have to deal with: dysfunctional impacts of precedents and legislation in US labor law. And indeed, the response that many companies have had to the failure of attempts to reform US labor law has been to just leave the US entirely and/or to just go bankrupt due to failure to work things out with unions partly owing to the widely acknowledged inflexibility of US law in this area. There are many issues like this in which the resolution is really clear on an intellectual level. When it involves screwing the existing stakeholders, it should not be surprising when those stakeholders use all the leverage they have to resist being deprived of what they have. For example: Medicare is broke, it doesn't take 195 space alien IQ to see that you have to implement means testing to make the system fiscally whole, but good luck proposing it because you will be annihilated politically if you do. It does not take having a giant 900 pound brain to see that you have to screw the union and blow up the MTA to fix the system. But good luck doing it. And it makes perfect sense for the average AARP member to send in their contributions to protect their entitlements under the law even if they understood intellectually that the government cannot afford to maintain that entitlement in the future.