NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #59

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 spe…

It’s a very simple story. Health costs increase 15%/yr, and hiring slowed in the 1990s, leading to more overtime, and poor labor negotiations allowed MTA staff to apply overtime to pensions.

When you look at the NY State workforce, more effective negotiation essentially eliminated overtime, and you just don’t see the pension padding that you see with MTA. Most of the state workforce is in the provincial lands upstate and the unions are pretty weak.

Additionally, with trains, legacy regulations allow for systematic abuse of disability. Not sure about subways, but at one point 97% of LIRR retirees were getting more expensive disability pensions.

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

#192

Post by dexterdog » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

mistersquid wrote: post #186

InitialLastName wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is really that the MTA is funded and controlled by the State of New York, while it predominantly serves the City of New York. Since the population (especially the voting population) of the city is Hence why the NYC mayor is so intent on funding worthless streetcars and ferries; they let him get out from under the thumb of the state.

>Since the population (especially the voting population) of the city is I did a quick and dirty check on Google for "new york state population" [0] and " "new york city population" [1] and the percentage I get is 43%. [0] https://imgur.com/a/2zkmdjm [1] https://imgur.com/a/904hwM2 EDIT: As did a few others, I read "<0.5" as "<0.5%".

I read his statement as .5% first as well and then realized that he meant 50% because otherwise there would have to be 1.6B people in NY state to make the number work.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #175

jkaplowitz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The issue is really that the MTA is funded and controlled by the State of New York, while it predominantly serves the City of New York. Since the population (especially the voting population) of the city is Hence why the NYC mayor is so intent on funding worthless streetcars and ferries; they let him get out from under the thumb of the state.

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by int_19h » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

wefarrell wrote: post #88

exabrial wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when conductors aren't needed or necessary. Having a fully autonomous rail system is a much simpler problem than autonomous cars.

Are there any currently in existence?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)

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

#195

Post by tikhonj » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #151

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 ne…

It's also interesting how people don't see public roads in the same way—people don't expect roads to cover their own expenses directly, expect free parking as a human right and bridle at toll roads or gasoline taxes.

People need to see public transport as "roads that don't need cars".

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

#196

Post by puzzle » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:49 PM UTC

chadlavi wrote: post #70

jdhn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can ridership in NYC really plummet? It's not like everybody there has a car that they can take to work.

This claim I found really confusing. The subway has been more crowded the last 5 years than I've ever seen it; that's an anecdote of course, but if you search "NYC subway crowding," you'll see the MTA has been claiming that the subway is more crowded than ever these days. Not sure how they explain that discrepancy. As for the alternative options like Lyft and Uber they mentioned, those are only viable for privileged…

I suspect a lot of the decrease happens at night. Late trains are a bit of a Russian roulette. If you're going from Brooklyn to upper Manhattan, it might be faster and more reliable to share a car with friends or strangers.

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

#197

Post by closetohome » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:50 PM UTC

martinald wrote: post #190

closetohome wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely -- and you can see this even in the article. They talk about raising fares and cutting service, with no acknowledgement that their primary source of income shouldn't be fares, and their primary budget cuts shouldn't come from reduced service. This article from last year does a much better job of covering how things have gotten to the state they're in - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-s…

NYC subway fares are insanely cheap compared to the rest of the (developed) world. $2.75 single for any distance is incredibly low. In London that same fare in rush hour would be anywhere between $4 and $15+ depending on the length of the journey (and NYC has much higher GDP per capita than London, plus the £ is on its arse at the moment). Even Berlin is marginally more expensive, in a much smaller & less economicall…

I've always thought that fares should be more symbolic than a real source of revenue. They should definitely be low enough that even the poorest residents of the city can easily afford to travel on public transportation.

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

#198

Post by iknowstuff » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #134

chadlavi wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim I found really confusing. The subway has been more crowded the last 5 years than I've ever seen it; that's an anecdote of course, but if you search "NYC subway crowding," you'll see the MTA has been claiming that the subway is more crowded than ever these days. Not sure how they explain that discrepancy. As for the alternative options like Lyft and Uber they mentioned, those are only viable for privileged…

And it's just crass to claim that there's a statistically measurable number of fare jumpers. Genuine question: why is that? I'm not familiar with the mechanics of the NYC Metro area, but I'm familiar with SF's BART, which certainly claims to have statistics on this -- about 22,000 fare jumps a day, as compared to around 433,000 trips per weekday, meaning about 5% of riders are freeloaders. (They claim this costs abou…

Ahh those extrapolations. Just like MPAA and their piracy spiel. Multiply 22`000 * 365 days * $3 and you get their $25M. Except a lot of those people simply would never pay the actual fare and the cost of moving additional weight is negligible, so the number is way inflated.

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

#199

Post by r00fus » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:54 PM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #195

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #151

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 ne…

It's also interesting how people don't see public roads in the same way—people don't expect roads to cover their own expenses directly, expect free parking as a human right and bridle at toll roads or gasoline taxes. People need to see public transport as "roads that don't need cars".

One feeds into the petroleum economy and one doesn't. Guess which one is "preferred"?

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

#200

Post by sloreti » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #111

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 restr…

> 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.

NYC had 2245 murders in 1990 and 290 murders last year. Every category of crime has fallen dramatically over that time period. NYC is less affordable today, but it's without a doubt more "comfortable" and livable for all income levels.