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

#331

Post by joejerryronnie » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:04 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #272

gameswithgo wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Al…

I believe you’ve just justified my french fry habit!

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

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Post by martinald » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:06 AM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #298

martinald wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you seriously asking why public transit should be affordable for poor people? I guess they should just buy a car instead, right? Or live in Manhattan and walk to work?

No, not at all. It is a very blunt tool to say fares should be cheap so that poor people can afford them.

There are much better ways to do this, eg offer discounted trip cards to people on certain social security programs (Medicaid eligibility comes to mind). Price differentiation 101. This should be funded out of social security budgets, not transport budgets IMO.

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

#333

Post by fhdhehfhzhe » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:10 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #310

weatherlight wrote: post #139

This has little to do with the MTA Union and everything to do with Blasio resisting committing more money to the MTA unless he was guaranteed by Cuomo that the money would go towards the subways and subway throughput, and not other MTA services. Cuomo Controls the MTA; Not the City, or the City Mayor, that's 99% of the problem. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s planned to add amenities like new lighting and USB ports at nearly…

Seattle has kind of a similar problem. They can't just raise local taxes to pay for local transit. So instead the state has to decide on most Seattle transit projects (and their funding), and of course all of the conservatives east of the mountains bridle at the idea of their money being spent on those big city liberals instead of locally even though the balance of tax revenues and spending means money flows the othe…

Except for that $53 billion dollar light rail extension that was voted for and is funded by tax payers in the three counties it runs in.

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

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Post by eecsninja » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:13 AM UTC

aburd wrote: post #327

culturestate wrote: post #240

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. Europe isn't the only "developed world," mate. My morning commute in Hong Kong (which is roughly the same distance as Brooklyn to the LES or, say, King's Cross to Paddington) costs around $0.50. I can go all the way to mainland China for ~$3.00. $2.75 is roughly the maximum fare in Tok…

The maximum fare in Tokyo is nowhere near 2.75 USD. It's kind of a moot point because there is no such thing, lol. But for example the fare from Nippori to Kichijoji, which are both comfortably in Tokyo, is almost 5 USD.

Not exactly a valid comparison. Nippori to Kichijoji requires a change of systems (JR to Keio), and therefore multiple fares -- it would be like MTA+LIRR or MTA+PATH in NYC.

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

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Post by martinald » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

yholio wrote: post #290

martinald wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the conclusion from this sub-thread is that the London subway is insanely expensive compared to most of the rest of the world. There might be local reasons that afford it such price gouging power, like the lack of any reasonable transport alternative and the nature of London's road infrastructure, congestion and parking fees etc. A fee increase to that level in other cities might have the opposite effect of r…

The other way to look at it is that it is a high quality reliable product that can charge a "premium" so to speak. While people in London complain, all lines will have CBTC in the next couple of years (the vast majority already do), running at 30-36trains per hour per direction across rush hour depending on the line. It is very rare for there to be major service issues on more than one or two lines at a time, comparing that to service status in NYC which often has dozens of lines with various issues.

My point really is that "even" £8 isn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things. And that money going into the system allows it to work well.

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

#336

Post by Nav_Panel » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

adrianratnapala wrote: post #154

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…

> 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... Only our sepia-colored glasses and the survival bias of remaining parts makes it look like people back then had it figured out, and we don't. This is true, but only part of the story. The private railroads (and indeed much internet infrastruc…

In NYC specifically, the problem was the city government introduced price caps that made the privately owned lines unprofitable, then refused to raise them. So, of course the trains went out of business. It was set to 5 cents in 1904 and remained there for over 40 years. Not even the lowest hanging fruit could survive such a thing.

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

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Post by ams6110 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:15 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #296

tikhonj wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Well businesses and truckers/lorries should pay more to use the roads. They cause the most damage.

And they do pay more. Many thousands of dollars more.

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

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Post by ams6110 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:16 AM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #246

tikhonj wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Semis do pay more. They pay many thousands of dollars in road and fuel mileage taxes. Not sure it's 1400x more, but they do pay much more than cars.

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

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Post by philwelch » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:18 AM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #280

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…

That might explain cost disease in the public sector, but I don’t know if it’s sufficient to explain cost disease in housing, higher education, or the privatized parts of the health care industry. Unless you want to punt and blame bad government for all those things, which isn't an indefensible position. For example, in health care, the US is very efficient in fields like LASIK (which isn't covered by most public or private insurance) and has occasional counterexamples to cost disease like the Oklahoma City Surgery Center (http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/27/what-happens-when-doctors-... -- warning: libertarian bias).

Still, it’s a very fascinating phenomenon. The US is culturally and constitutionally more robust against tyrannical government, but at the expense of undermining the possibility for effective government. This really gets at the root of some of the discussion about American exceptionalism, too.

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

#340

Post by talldan » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 4:31 AM UTC

ReptileMan wrote: post #325

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorting that wikipedia table by recovery ratio, I see most of the profitable ones are in East Asia and distance based: Osaka (OMTB) 137%, Hong Kong MTR 124%, Osaka (Hankyu Railway) 123%, Tokyo Metro 119%, London Underground 107%, Singapore (SMRT) 101%, Taipei Metro 100%. Clearly it is possible to have profitable subways, so I don't think we should drop profitability as a goal.

Yeah, but they offer extensive coverage and are reliable - also somewhat expensive. To get such thing for NY - you need to drill a lot more tunnels and fast and make sure trains run on time.

I don't think you need to drill tunnels. That hasn't happened (much) in London, yet there's been a marked improvement in the core service over the last 20 years.

London's network is older and has smaller tunnels. It also only has single tunnels in each direction (so if a train breaks down the whole line stops).

The difference is that the network has had steady investment under single management for a prolonged period. Londoners have suffered through closures for engineering work, but ageing systems have been upgraded and gradually the benefit is being felt.