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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

#251

Post by passthefist »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #157
JimboOmega wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.

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

#252

Post by o0-0o »

rayiner wrote: post #227
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…

Nobody expects the NYC subway to "break even or even turn a profit." The subway historically recovers less than 50% of its operating expenditures from fares, compared to 70% for Berlin, 88% for Amsterdam, and over 100% in Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio . MTA is broke because it costs several times as much for MTA to do anything compared to its counterpart…

Fare jumpers, bums, filth, lax schedules, ignorant employees, 24 hour schedules, pay the same fare whether going ine or 100 stops. Eliminate one of these at a time and Boom! Problem solved.

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

#253

Post by deminature »

eric_h wrote: post #178
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.

> Hence why the NYC mayor is so intent on funding worthless streetcars and ferries I'm assuming you're using the "worthless" adjective only for the streetcars - I use the NYC Ferry regularly (a stop opened near my apt last year) and it's way better than the subway. I have to walk a bit further on the other side, but it's still way more comfortable.

Streetcars aren't even necessarily worthless. They're called trams in Australia and Sydney has recently rolled out a network after seeing how heavily utilized they are in Melbourne, and how convenient they are for short-distance travel. Pretty much everyone who works in the city has a tram trip somewhere in their commute. Provided the tracks run past places people need to go, there's no reason they need to be worthless.

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

#254

Post by martinald »

closetohome wrote: post #197
martinald wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? Transport for London is close, if not past, covering operational (and some, but not all, very significant capital) expenditure from fares, property and advertising revenue. MTR in Hong Kong also is profitable, as I believe many Japanese networks are.

Being run entirely from fares means you are not at the whim of politicians for subsidies and grants that can change overnight with an election, which makes it very hard to think longer term.

I think this is what NYC should be aiming for - operationally covering its own operational costs from fares, advertising and property revenues with then state/federal grants for larger capital projects.

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

#255

Post by TheSoftwareGuy »

dwaltrip wrote: post #226
Zhenya wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that provides people (the illusion of) liberty through movement.

Cars and roads have plenty of problems, sure, but I have no idea what you mean by this "illusion of freedom".

He's likely referring to how (some) people enjoy driving because of the sense of freedom & control it gives them. But he is asserting that this is just an illusion.

Honestly, I feel the same way, since most time I spend driving I spend sitting in traffic or something.

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

#256

Post by vkou »

TuringNYC wrote: post #248
vkou wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1. That overtime is usually rare. Half of all tech workers don't have to be at work for every night shift, through holidays, and weekends. The buses, on the other hand, have to keep running, even after 5 PM on a Friday rolls around.

1.1. Even if you're an auxiliary on-call, you only need to work if something comes up. You don't need to be physically working, all through the night.

1.2. If you're constantly crunching, every week, you need to find another job, or demand non-meaningless equity, or higher wages, then your tech-worker peers, who do their 9-5. Most mature tech companies are full of people who do their 9-5. They employ hundreds of thousands of tech workers.

2. Tech workers are a tiny subset of the working population.

2.1. They also have much higher on-paper compensation then their similarly-trained peers in other fields (Bachelor's degree, and 0-5 years work experience), and even despite the occasional overtime, much higher hourly rates.

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

#257

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

Right? The economics of fare enforcement are a great illustration of this. It's probably more efficient to just abolish fare collection altogether.

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

#258

Post by lwf »

iknowstuff wrote: post #198
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They wouldn't pay the full fare anyways? Would they... take cheaper transportation?

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

#259

Post by martinald »

BeeOnRope wrote: post #210
martinald wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not insanely cheap compared to the rest of the developed world. Paris metro costs 1.90 Euros or more likely 1.49 if you buy books of 10 tickets or whatever. I've been to plenty of developed world cities where the cost is under $3.

Paris has a zonal system though that goes up past €10, which NYC doesn't do. I'm not saying that 'central zone' fares aren't ~$3 in many cities, it's very odd to only have one zone and the fare be that low.

Keep in mind the distances that the subway does (and has express service on) make it similar to the RER in Paris more than the metro.

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

#260

Post by brianwawok »

yongjik wrote: post #233
elhudy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People might see roads different from public transportation because they are directly affected by poor Management on the part of public transportation companies. If your bus is always late, you can't sit on the subway because the seat is soaked in piss, and there is no customer support for the $100 card you just purchased which isn't working, you might become disinclined to defend the exorbitant costs of public trans…

At the same time, I've yet to see an American complaining that the government is spending too much money on roads because it's riddled with potholes.

I would be in favor of many country roads returning to gravel, and the savings used to make more bike and foot paths.
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