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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

#441

Post by chipotle_coyote »

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.

You're comparing people who pirate media that they'd never have actually bought to... people who take BART trips for free that they've never have taken otherwise? You're going to have to work harder to make this comparison work for me, sorry.

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

#442

Post by geezerjay »

asib wrote: post #408
ReptileMan wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 live…

> I've got two friends, one lives in Wimbledon (far south), the other in Barnet (far north).

That isn't a fair assessment. Metro lines are used to enhance mobility within urban areas. Their goal is to replace cars and 20-30min walks with a 5-10 metro ride with an additional 5min walk. That's why typically subway stations are placed about 500m to 800m apart, and the system's commercial speed is designed to be around 50km/h.

For long commutes, such as going from far north to far south, there is an entirely different system: commuter rail. Their stations are further apart, their commercial speed is higher, and so is the passenger volume.

Just to provide an example, Madrid is served by both rapid transit network (madrid metro) ans a commuter rail system (madrid cercanias). It takes between 30 and 40 minutes to cross Madrid riding the metro network, but the commuter rail takes about 15 or 20 minutes.

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

#443

Post by geezerjay »

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…

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

That's actually not true. Capitalism always works, no matter the problem. However, free markets don't account for externalities, and in some cases supply/demand constraints create unacceptable non-economic problems. Thus, to avoid the effects of non-economical problems then it's preferable to create economic incentives that reflect the non-economic constraints.

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

#444

Post by geezerjay »

stale2002 wrote: post #323
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.

It actually matters quite a bit. If the potato trucks had to pay for the full cost of roads, then they would be incentived to drive that cost down. Aligning incentives is important.

> If the potato trucks had to pay for the full cost of roads, then they would be incentived to drive that cost down.

More realistically, potato prices would go up to reflect operational costs.

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

#445

Post by geezerjay »

rayiner wrote: post #232
pzone wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Tokyo, the rail transit system (including subways) is operated by a network of private companies. These train operators make a net profit from fares and other revenues, and the system is generally well liked by its customers. Even if the idea of privatization makes you cringe, the idea that public transit is inevitably a money pit or loss leader is misguided. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-toky…

The key difference with Tokyo probably isn't privatization, but that the rail operators own the land around the stations, so often get to charge both ends of each trip: the rider and the business the rider travels to.

Sounds like a smart policy: the railway operator is pressured to serve areas where there is actually demand for the service, thus avoiding wasteful spending building non-performing lines, and is pressured to provide quality services to keep real estate prices up.

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

#446

Post by jimnotgym »

zanny wrote: post #291
jimnotgym wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But someone has to pay? Broadly speaking either 1) The businesses pay to get their human resources to work 2) The travellers pay or 3) Central taxation pays So who should pay in New York?

Obviously taxes. Those who benefit most from public transit are those least able to afford it, but making the cost baked in to the wealth of the people can driven even someone with a personal driver to maybe fathom using the tube instead once in a while if its borderline free.

It's not so obvious who you are going to tax. Are you going to do it from income taxes, local property taxes,local business taxes, corporation taxes?

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

#447

Post by selimthegrim »

notSupplied wrote: post #427
jabl wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If by subsidy, you're implying that the transit system is receiving freebies they don't deserve, then I'd have to disagree with you. Transportation hubs create far more value via their impact on nearby real estate values than from the fares they collect. Asia cities correctly capture the value created by public transit by having major retail hubs above or surrounding subway stations, all of which is paying rent to th…

I’ve seen people in Seattle ballyhoo this sort of thing as a subsidy to whoever the transit company would let the real estate to and consolingly they’d rather keep their car

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

#448

Post by repolfx »

ionised wrote: post #439
linuxftw wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect it to break even or turn a profit. It's the most perfect way to gauge it's true economic value. Unfortunately for tax payers, it's only subsidizing otherwise intolerable commuting conditions, and acts as a strong subsidy to downtown property owners.

> It's the most perfect way to gauge it's true economic value. Seems like an incredidibly narrow-minded way to gauge its economic value to me.

Well, why? The OP has asserted that NY transit delivers vast economic benefits that offset its loss making nature. Fine, I can buy that to some extent, but how big exactly are these benefits? How do we know they're actually so big and not in reality quite small?

Well, we could do some one-off studies and hope that Excel is used properly, but why? We already have mechanisms that figure out the value of things and allocate resources appropriately, they're markets. The unviable nature of public transit suggests systematic resource allocation problems, created politically. If there were really such huge beneficial side effects, it wouldn't matter if ticket prices rose a lot, that'd just get priced in to other things like cost of goods near transit stops.

For instance maybe every ride in NY should be 2x or 3x the current price for the costs of the system to be worthwhile, but public transit is usually government owned and politicians aren't willing to bite the bullet on that.

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

#449

Post by repolfx »

cc439 wrote: post #288
zjaffee wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep saying that the street car will be worthless, but I simply don't buy it. It connects all of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the city, where there have been increasing large amounts of effort around economic development within the areas that these places connect, where it will massively increase the value and in turn ability to build real estate along the waterfront, as one of the key determiners of l…

What does a streetcar do that buses (or articulated buses) can't if they're provided the same traffic priority?

Trams run on metal rails because steel has a much lower rolling resistance than rubber, and suffers less wear and tear. So you can carry more people more frequently with less maintenance.

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

#450

Post by selimthegrim »

Endy wrote: post #221
ep103 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the rub for me. If you scroll through this page, there's lot of talk about finances and upgrades without much context or understanding. And there's the usual union bashing, which may or may not be warranted. But this is the first comment that points out that Cuomo owns the MTA, is responsible for maintaining and improving it, and has a long history of looting the MTA's funds for other projects, or forcing the…

And during an interview on NPR yesterday, Cuomo said something along the line of "Well, I don't know if 'The MTA' really exists'." This is not a man who should be in charge of the MTA. And the fact that he and de Blasio are feuding again, just as they did when they were involved with HUD during the Clinton administration, really proves that the MTA troubles and the NYCHA scandal are 100% connected - and it's because…

Is there a link to this interview?
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