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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

#381

Post by umichguy »

passthefist wrote: post #251
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

NYC and Chicago were the only two big cities I liked living in from a public transport perspective... Maybe that's why I ended up here in London!

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

#382

Post by free652 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #375
talldan wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Never been to NYC but I think that the MTA rail coverage is way lower especially in the non Manhattan boroughs compared to the London Underground, Overground, DLR and National rail. You could get from any point in London to anypoint for less than an hour only by rail and walking.

Yea, MTA also includes Long Island RR and Metro North. NJ has Path and NJ transit.

NYC isn't circular so going from Bronx to Brooklyn is 30 miles.

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

#383

Post by yesenadam »

anigbrowl wrote: post #257
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.

I wrote a letter to the Sydney Morning herald about 15 years ago saying, OK, starting today, let's make all public transportation free, by not paying for it anymore. All it takes is everyone acting together. They didn't publish my letter. I really shouldn't have given up so easily - I still think it's a good idea. Just need to set a date and get everyone talking about it.

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

#384

Post by umichguy »

leetrout wrote: post #12
JPKab wrote: post #7

“The subway service and the bus service has become unreliable enough for people to stop using it. If people aren’t using it, there’s less money, and they have to keep raising fares without delivering better service.” I was a daily rider of the DC metro for 8 years. This is exactly what happened there. Reliability plummeted, then ridership, and all the while major fare increases.

I just commented to someone the other day- I loved how clean the metro was but hated the prices for sub-par services. I hate the distance based pricing.

What's wrong with distance based pricing?

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

#385

Post by aylmao »

eigenvector wrote: post #379
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.

The business entity that owns the subway being profitable is not the same as the subway being profitable. MTR for instance is a real estate developer as well as a subway operator: "As compensation for the cost of building railway networks, the government grants the MTR Corporation land development rights along its rail lines, stations and depots – an increasingly lucrative business in recent years amid a red-hot prop…

Isn't that part of the problem? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall hearing from someone that the MTA sold a good portion of its real estate and so lost sources of income.

I'm not all knowledgeable in this, so if someone who knows more of its history can chime in please do.

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

#386

Post by culturestate »

chasontherobot wrote: post #377
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…

> $2.75 is roughly the maximum fare in Tokyo You don't know what you are talking about when it comes to Tokyo, mate. 600 yen covers a day pass for the Tokyo Metro only, doesn't cover any JR lines at all. And even then, it is only for the local/regular express trains not commuter express trains. Additionally, Tokyo metro lines mostly only cover, well... the metro area. Not the suburbs or places where a lot of people l…

> You don't know what you are talking about when it comes to Tokyo, mate.

As I said elsewhere, I'm specifically only talking about the Tokyo Metro. I didn't include JR just like I wouldn't include the LIRR when talking about the NYC subway.

> Tokyo metro lines mostly only cover, well... the metro area. Not the suburbs or places where a lot of people live.

The same goes for the NYC subway. If I took the A train from one end to the other (uptown to queens), it's about 45km - only 5km more than going from Wakoshi to Shin-kiba, or riding the Yurakucho line end-to-end.

> 10 HKD goes a lot farther in Hong Kong than the equivalent would in New York.

I don't know how you're coming to this conclusion; Hong Kong is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

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

#387

Post by atq2119 »

dgzl wrote: post #72
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop this unique snowflake claim about NYC :+) It's another huge City. Besides having a horribly mismanaged public transport, it's not unique. Except that it's, you know, the center of the universe of course. ;-)

You're sadly mistaken if you think a New York, one of the largest and busiest cities in human existence, is "just another large City", and that the solution to their transportation woes is to just lock it down and work on it.

Shutting the subway down at night for maintenance and running night buses as a replacement is a pretty straightforward method that other, similarly large cities are using successfully.

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

#388

Post by aylmao »

huehehue wrote: post #97

It's bad. The A/C/J/Z lines still contain R32 cars, which were built 54 years ago, and are 20 years past their service life. These cars were built before the moon landing, have terrible brakes, have terrible air conditioning, and are, generally speaking, sweltering rattly deathtraps. The Second Avenue line is 100 years in the making and has a grand total of...drum roll...3 stations. That opened in 2017. But hey, they…

Not to mention the state of the stations. I don't think they've been maintained or even cleaned in years.

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

#390

Post by tomarr »

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

Misleading as this is just the direct marginal costs, you have to account for the indirect costs. Weather and water obviously play a massive factor in wear, a road would not last 1400x longer if used by 1 car rather than 1 semi.
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