The MTA is a government mandated monopoly. What they need is free enterprise.
I don’t know what you’re talking about but it sure isn’t Nyc
How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
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Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#32The MTA is a government mandated monopoly. What they need is free enterprise.
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Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#33The MTA is a government mandated monopoly. What they need is free enterprise.
Are you suggesting other companies build their own subways? A subway seems like a natural monopoly to me.
The NYC subway system was mostly privately constructed by 3-ish private-ish organizations, and later joined under a state monopoly. You can still see vestigial underground signage that says stuff like "To IRT Lines" or "BMT Lines -->," referring to now-defunct private subway operators.
This is also why the rolling stock and tracking are visibly different from line to line.
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#34I have always said America is a rich 3rd world country. The politicians in NY are no different from Mugabe's Zanu PF in Zimbabwe.
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#35I don’t understand why American governments are so bad at providing public services. Money often isn’t it. The NY subway has an operating budget of $8 billion for about 1.7 billion riders per year ($4.7 per rider per year). The London Tube has an operating budget of (2.2 billion pounds—$3.5 billion pre-Brexit) for 1.4 billion riders ($2.5 per rider). The systems are in extremely similar cities, are almost exactly the…
I honestly don't either. It feels like everything we do costs 10x anywhere else for 10x the time. You would think the cost of building a few light rail lines in a city like Seattle would cost less than a cross-town subway in Japan. In my short life I've never seen America really build anything impressive in transportation - BART, the NYC Subway, the interstate highway system, and most of our airports seem like they were all built from the 40s to the 70s (and some earlier than that).
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here it's either $12 for a total commute of 2+ hrs via metro, or $3 to drive for a total of just over an hour.
wait you paid 3 dollars for an hour of uber? How does that make sense? The minimum wage is way more than that.
Maybe he's saying that he drove himself for $3 in gas (while conveniently ignoring all the other costs of car ownership, not to mention the massive externalities).
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#37DC's system is pretty bad too. this morning I had to choose between a 50 minute commute via metro for $4, or a 20 minute Uber ride for $10. I'm so so glad I got the Uber.
That's a nice option, indeed, and as long as Silicon Valley insists on subsidizing the private transit desires of the upper-middle class, you should definitely take advantage of it.
But 1) you're not really paying full freight here; and 2) $20 per day round-trip is not an affordable commuting option for most Americans, anyway.
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#38The MTA's problems begin and end at a weak senior management unwilling to standup to Cuomo's frivolous micromanagement and a transit union unwilling to modernize.
Politicians should be pushing for serious procurement and labor work rule reforms, otherwise the systemic managerial and operational deficiencies will ensure that the deterioration of service we see now will repeat it self in 5 to 10 years, regardless of how much money or technology is poured into the MTA.
London and Toronto have been able to modernize much of their transit systems in last 5 years and its not because they have more money. Once you fix the top everything else will fall into place.
Look what Andy Byford has been able to do in 4 short years at the TTC. His 5-Year Plan to modernize the TTC focused on transforming corporate culture and updating internal processes, in addition to new equipment. The results of these changes have been overwhelmingly positive with the TTC recently being named best public transit agency in North America and The TR Class of TTC subway cars in May having a MDBF of over 924,000 miles.
If your interested in getting involved with transit activism in NYC I highly suggest you follow @2AvSagas on twitter.
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#39The MTA is a government mandated monopoly. What they need is free enterprise.
Are you suggesting other companies build their own subways? A subway seems like a natural monopoly to me.
You could contract different lines out to different companies. I think Tokyo does this.
At the very least, though, you could contract out the running of the whole system to a company for five years a time and let different companies compete for the contract every five years.
This isn't a panacea, but it can sometimes help if the main problem is corruption-induced inefficiency as it seems to be for most major cities in the US.
Re: How Politics and Bad Decisions Starved New York’s Subways
#40I don’t understand why American governments are so bad at providing public services. Money often isn’t it. The NY subway has an operating budget of $8 billion for about 1.7 billion riders per year ($4.7 per rider per year). The London Tube has an operating budget of (2.2 billion pounds—$3.5 billion pre-Brexit) for 1.4 billion riders ($2.5 per rider). The systems are in extremely similar cities, are almost exactly the…
Uh, mind sharing where you got those numbers? The budget for TfL I see here says a total operational cost of 10.2 billion pounds ( http://content.tfl.gov.uk/transport-for-london-budget-2017-1... )
TfL is way more than just the tube so I’m guessing op used numbers that broke out just the tube.