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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

#401

Post by lsc »

briandear wrote: post #372
haberman wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The price is included. Potatoes are sold and the proceeds taxed. Those taxes go to pay for roads. If we didn’t have to fix roads, taxes could be lower, resulting in higher profits for the potato farmer.

So in your model, road wear is priced into the costs of all goods, no? That's one way to do it, but the problem is that then a single potato logistics company has no incentive to use a (presumably more expensive) transport method that causes less road wear, because the benefits are spread evenly across everyone, and costs are borne entirely by the switching company, so nobody would switch. (unless you made some rule forcing everyone to switch, which is another way to do it)

If road taxes are directly tied to the things causing wear, then every company causing that wear has an incentive to find a transport method that causes less wear (assuming that the additional cost of that transport method is lower than the cost of the road wear - that's why some people argue that using markets is better than using rules; if you've properly priced the market, the market will balance between road and rail based on cost.)

That's why it's important to make sure that all externalities are directly tied into the cost of whatever is creating those externalities.

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

#402

Post by nappy »

exabrial wrote: post #55

> Drastically cut service or increase fares There's another option: disband the MTA Union, the primary driver of operations costs. They have blocked technology and safety upgrades for decades to keep 'those darn computers and robots from taking jobs from poor workers just trying to make a living'.

"disband" a union without considering the consequences or alternative ways of ameliorating a problem is unfortunately what I've come to expect on highly up-voted, top-level comment here when it comes to matters of public policy. This is a more complicated issue than you presume.

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

#403

Post by foldr »

cascom wrote: post #307
foldr wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone should have medical + pension + medical in retirement. How did America get to a place where healthcare and pensions are regarded as perks?

That’s a nice sentiment - in that case we should all work in the public sector and and get those things...oh yeah....

I'm just surprised that people would propose to solve a problem by taking those things away from people.

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

#405

Post by mrsuprawsm »

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.

This been attempted in quite a few places: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/15/i-leave-the-c...

> 'in 2017 there were 99 fare-free public transport networks around the world: 57 in Europe, 27 in North America, 11 in South America, 3 in China and one in Australia. Many are smaller than Dunkirk and offer free transit limited to certain times, routes and people.'

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

#406

Post by ricardoreis »

dionidium wrote: post #300
ricardoreis wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine - non-quantitative (a.k.a. "gut") reasoning is a valid and useful cognitive tool (in certain contexts), in fact. If I was to give a "gut" estimate for the overall deterioration of the subway service in recent years, though -- I'd peg it at closer to 30 or 40 percent than merely 20.

A NYC Subway that’s 40% worse than it was 10 years ago is still by far the best transit system in North America. Now, look, that doesn’t mean it’s good that it’s declined so much, but context and perspective remain useful.

A NYC Subway that’s 40% worse than it was 10 years ago is still by far the best transit system in North America.

But compared to just about any major city in Europe... seriously, it's almost a joke.

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

#407

Post by jabl »

prostoalex wrote: post #329
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…

> There seems to be an obsession in the west with making public transport pay for itself Not a crazy idea considering how some systems operate in the East - Tokyo, Osaka and Hong Kong systems not only pay for themselves, but churn out profits along the way. Singapore’s MRT is designed to operate at break-even. The trick is to allow the transportation authority to own and manage its own real estate. This way when a ne…

> The trick is to allow the transportation authority to own and manage its own real estate.

Well, that seems like a pretty major subsidy. So if a new line or station is built, the government uses eminent domain (or equivalent) to buy the land, and gives it to the transport authority?

I mean, it might be better in that it lets the transport authority operate without being dependent on government handouts that can vary wildly from year to year due to local politics.

> The US model seems to reward random real estate developers who just happened to own the land near the future station.

The government should apply some form of land value taxation to (partially) fix this. Would fix a lot of other problems too, but I digress.

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

#408

Post by asib »

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.

> You could get from any point in London to anypoint for less than an hour only by rail and walking.

Whilst in general I agree with the sentiment of your comment, this is not true. Lots of residential areas in Greater London will have ~20 min walk to nearest tube or overground, and if you're going across the city, the train part of your journey can definitely be > 40 min.

As an example, I've got two friends, one lives in Wimbledon (far south), the other in Barnet (far north). It takes quite a bit longer than an hour for one to get to the other's house.

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

#410

Post by adrianN »

Retric wrote: post #123
whack wrote: post #99

This is a really depressing story to read. I've always believed that a good indicator of a country's health, is its ability to tackle complex large-scale projects. Projects that require coordination on multiple fronts: politics, bureaucracy, technical-know-how, civic sacrifice. In the old days when all this infrastructure was built in the first place, we showed our ability to do so. But now, we've gotten to the point…

These problems are really common with 50+ year old infrastructure. Looks at the NYC subway from 50 or even 70 years ago and it looks about the same as it does now: Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_map#/medi... 1968: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/irvingtr... 1948: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1... The problem is basic day to day maintenance is…

The subway systems in London and Paris are pretty old but work reasonably well. You have to properly maintain and modernize the system then the age of the original structures doesn't matter as much.
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