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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

#271

Post by Symbiote »

tootie wrote: post #91
syntaxing wrote: post #26

Not surprised. Not only are we lacking in physical infrastructure, but also technological infrastructure. I still don't understand how we do not have stations like in developed Asian countries like Japan or Hong Kong. The trains are "one" unit and the stations are doubled door with people at each station assisting (or ticketing..) you if needed. The train practically drive themselves. The conductor is there for emerg…

Our system is 100 years old and their's aren't.

The points made apply equally to London's lines, which are even older.

(Some lines aren't yet upgraded to walk-through trains, but they're ordered. Stuff like speed regulators is decades old.)

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

#272

Post by haberman »

gameswithgo wrote: post #265
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

it is my potatoes in the trucks. I can pay the road tax, or more for potato. doesn't matter.

To me it matters a lot. Capitalism only works when the true costs of things are accurately reflected in their prices.

If the road maintenance cost of transporting the potatoes is priced into the potatoes, then the potato company might opt to transport the potatoes in a different (cheaper) way.

But if the road maintenance costs appear free or near-free to the potato company, they have no incentive to care about it. Also it makes drivers who don't eat potatoes subsidize the potato consumers.

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

#273

Post by throwaway2048 »

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.

Thats hardly a gold standard anyone should be aiming for.

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

#274

Post by 8note »

avip wrote: post #267
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…

2.30$ CAD in Vancouver for 1.5h, you can easily cross the entire "city" on that price-tag.

Why is city in quotes?

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

#275

Post by ghettoimp »

gameswithgo wrote: post #265
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

it is my potatoes in the trucks. I can pay the road tax, or more for potato. doesn't matter.

Hrmn. Maybe.

Then again, if everyone in my apartment complex splits a water bill, there's not much incentive for me to use less water.

If it's truly the heavy vehicles ruining the road, and so we somehow charge the much more, then perhaps measures will be taken to address that cost...

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

#276

Post by hkai »

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…

I am not sure why you intend it to make a loss, even though I agree with you on benefits to the economy.

Once a public transit system is convenient and is used by a large percentage of the population, let's say 30-90%, then it will surely be profitable except if it's grossly mismanaged.

Incidental tip: buy stocks of Hong Kong public transit companies, they're doing amazing.

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

#277

Post by foldr »

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/Docklands_Light_Railway

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

#278

Post by chiefalchemist »

"The system’s financial straits have gotten worse in part because it has fewer riders, and is collecting less money in fares."

If there are less riders to serves doesn't logic dictate service levels be adjusted to fit market conditions?

Given that this might be the key fact in the whoke article, the article should have detailed why rider volume is down.

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

#279

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

The article should have mentioned this, as well as why rider volume is down.

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

#280

Post by solidsnack9000 »

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…

The United States had a different path to development than most other developed countries. How different, is a theme developed in an essay by Samuel Huntington from the 1960s: Political Modernization: America vs. Europe. In a nutshell: the US never underwent a period of state centralization, like that associated with the age of absolutism in Europe.

This is good in some ways — effective bureaucracies got their start as support for monarchial ambition, in an era of unprecedented government expenditure and military devastation — but it means the US never developed a strong, effective state, either bureaucratically or socially. The US retains many of what Huntington calls “Tudor Institutions” — institutions like a powerful court system that can effectively determine public policy, a decentralized approach to military forces (including the right to bear arms), and the sometimes handicapping balance of power among the different branches of government and the states. When absolutism collapsed in absolutist countries, all the decentralized institutions had been cleared away; but the bureaucracies survived, and with them a strong civil service tradition (modeled on military service), a notional trust in government, and a wide variety of effective and efficient public agencies.

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