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

theguardian.com

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

#241

Post by seizethecheese »

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".

Roads have a marginal cost near zero.

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

#242

Post by RileyJames »

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.

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

#243

Post by jessaustin »

joering2 wrote: post #204
cynicalkane wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong in many ways. * Unionized workers make very good money in New York. * Unions are a primary political driver behind those expensive contracts. * There's more to unions than conductors. Construction and maintenance, for example. * The unions routinely put up strong opposition to any meaningful expense or quality control. They also strongly oppose any modernization attempts that might threaten their jobs.…

* Unionized workers make very good money in New York. I didn't believe a friend of mine who only finish college was making $218,000 a year basically for early morning train track cleanups (device to pickup trash, stay away from 3rd rail), until I saw his bi-weekly paycheck with my own eyes. He's been doing that for last 5 years and they hire more people to do the same. What an insult to anyone with MBA, PhD., anyone…

To whom does you friend have to pay kickbacks, and how much are those?

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

#244

Post by gamblor956 »

siculars wrote: post #180
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with this sentiment, but it's worth pointing out that nearly all transportation projects from the "old days" around the world were done by private companies, and often met a swift end in bankruptcy. Creditors lost a lot, but the assets were then picked up by others, and refined through years of trial and error into endeavors of modest profitability. Only our sepia-colored glasses and the survival bia…

I'll take issue with your thesis. I was once standing in Marin county overlooking the Golden Gate bridge, there I read a plaque describing how the bridge was built ahead of schedule and under budget - in the 1930s (no computers!). Behind the Golden gate bridge in the distance you see the Bay bridge, built with tremendous cost overruns and delays measured in billions of dollars and many years, respectively. I'll make…

I take issue with your thesis. Every day, I ride to work on the Metro Expo line, which was built on time (actually early) and only delayed opening because a private company couldn't get its shit together and build the rail cars on time.

I'll make the case that, as a nation, we're doing fine with the ability to deliver civil infrastructure projects on time and on budget, and to manage them once they are operational, in those regions where they actually care about their infrastructure. See, e.g., LA Metro, Denver's metro, Cleveland's RTA, our utilities grid post-Enron. These are all things done at a scale and density that have been equaled or exceeded only by authoritarian states.

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

#246

Post by ProfessorLayton »

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".

Except that most of the wear and tear on our roads isn't caused by people's cars. People pay much more than their fair share of road maintenance via gas taxes etc than the industries that cause the most damage to the roads.

Semis cause 1,400x more wear than cars [1].

[1] https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf

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

#247

Post by jimnotgym »

zanny wrote: post #160
jimnotgym wrote: post #73

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

Public transit shouldn't be expensive. It shouldn't pretty much ever run outside the red. The whole point of it is to incentivize its use and promote efficient means of travel. The only reason to charge at all is to disincentivize unnecessary consumption of it. If you are doing city planning you want as many people on the Subway as you can get. It enables greater density at ground level and is much cheaper to maintai…

But someone has to pay? Broadly speaking either

1) The businesses pay to get their human resources to work

2) The travellers pay or

3) Central taxation pays

So who should pay in New York?

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

#248

Post by TuringNYC »

vkou wrote: post #225
adameast9000 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base salaries probably give an especially incomplete picture of total compensation for union workers, where overtime pay can be 4x your base, and benefits are nearly "cop from the 50s" insane.

If you're doing surprise holiday night-shift overtime, you should probably be getting paid 3x your base rate. Comparing the annual salary of someone who clocks in their 9-5, and goes home on Thanksgiving and Christmas, compared to someone who is doing 60 hours a week, twenty of them from 3 am to 9 am, on Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday... Is comparing apples to oranges. [1] But it sure drives the outrage! Look, and be…

>> [1] Most salaried employees don't do unpaid overtime, period.

At least half of tech workers I know do unpaid overtime. Almost all are on at-will contracts where they can be laid off anytime and I know almost none who have lifetime-final-year salary pension plans.

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

#249

Post by rayiner »

stefan_ wrote: post #108
jseliger wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 contra…

The article is 90% on the political mismanagement, but you instead focus on the workers with little influence making $150k in NYC, much of which is from working overtime well past 40 hours in a mostly mindless job.

The MTA spends over $10 billion per year on labor, much of it redundant (e.g. two drivers per car): http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-spending.

People say "oh, but diverting tax dollars from MTA, etc." The NYT pegs that at about $1.5 billion over two decades (since Pataki). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-.... That's $75 million per year, a drop in the bucket in comparison. About enough to build a mile of subway line.

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

#250

Post by cascom »

stefan_ wrote: post #171
cascom wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Employee costs are 60% of the expenses for the MTA [1] and employees are making $30/hr + generous pension and medical benefits[2], I'm not sure how you can possibly justify your position. That being said, paying union construction workers $1k/day (!) to do nothing is pretty egregious as well [3] [1] http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-... [2] https://www.empirecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/201…

What are you saying, employee costs are the majority of expense for just about any business. It's the whole point of the economy .

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