I think slide 7 also paints an interesting picture - +50% ridership in last 20 years, -8% capital capital investment years MTA-wide over 20 years in constant do

I think slide 7 also paints an interesting picture - +50% ridership in last 20 years, -8% capital capital investment years MTA-wide over 20 years in constant dollars. I can't put an exact date on it, but somewhere around 2010/2012 it started feeling like the transit system was getting consistently worse, year over year. Mostly in terms of delays, headways, etc. I have some cousins in the industry, and one of the problems they point to aside from work rules is that city/state agencies have basically no expertise in house for infrastructure. This is despite the fact that there has been a steady stream of some amount of work for decades. That means everything from project design, planning, management, accounting... literally everything is outsourced. All the MTA does is essentially ask for designs & bids, picks one, and then bleeds money to contractors.