
NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say - ricardoreis
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/20/new-york-city-subway-bus-death-spiral-mta-fares
======
DoubleGlazing
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 need to break
even or turn a profit. They are there to help make money in other ways. An
efficient reliable transport system should cost the taxpayer money, but they
will get that back in profit elsewhere through a thriving local economy.

~~~
rayiner
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](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 counterparts in other Europe:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html).

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
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.

~~~
eigenvector
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 property market."

[https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/economy/article/2136403/...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-
kong/economy/article/2136403/mtr-corp-announces-64-cent-rise-net-profit-
hk168-billion)

~~~
notSupplied
It's well understood by the locals that the Hong Kong (and possibly other
Asian cities) system reaps most of it's revenue from land rights
around/immediately above the stations. In

In Asia transit hubs are often also retail hubs and the commercial rents
become profit for the public transit system. This makes perfect sense as the
retail value of the nearby land can most obviously be credited to the transit
system.

I'd imagine that the problem with the United States is that this real estate
was sold early on or was never owned by by the transit system allowing the
spillover benefits of transit hubs to be captured by private interests.

~~~
robben1234
Yeah, majority of Hong Kong subway stations has malls on premise. Not sure
it's owned by MTR too, but it's there.

------
whack
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 where even maintaining it is proving
too challenging. When you look at other countries like Singapore, China, Korea
and Japan, it's clear that our political and governmental institutions are
lagging far behind when it comes to _" getting things done"_. I wonder what
this portends for the coming century.

~~~
temp-dude-87844
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 bias of remaining parts makes it look like
people back then had it figured out, and we don't.

Private rail systems in Europe eventually were nationalized during the warring
decades of the 1900s and remained that way longer than in the US, while in the
US the government spun up Amtrak to relieve rail operators from passenger rail
and its rapidly declining revenues, while letting freight railroads go through
waves of mergers until only a handful remained. Soon after Amtrak, the airline
industry was deregulated, and airlines proceeded to copy the idea: rack up
costs, declare bankruptcy, sell, reset.

Truth is, big, ambitious construction projects, and big, ambitious service
networks have always sucked, and the ones that remain went through many cycles
of overruns and disappointment and service reduction before they stuck. Maybe
what ought to worry us isn't that we've lost the magic touch of delivering
ambitious, long-running deliverables (railroads, infrastructure, cities,
government services...) sustainably, but that we never mastered it in the
first place, and the things we have now are the much-recycled husks of former
grand ideas that managed to eke by.

~~~
siculars
I'll take issue with your thesis. I was once standing in Marin county
overlooking the Golden Gate bridge, there I read a plaque describing how the
bridge was built ahead of schedule and under budget - in the 1930s (no
computers!). Behind the Golden gate bridge in the distance you see the Bay
bridge, built with tremendous cost overruns and delays measured in billions of
dollars and many years, respectively.

I'll make the case that, as a nation, we have lost the ability to deliver
civil infrastructure projects on time and on budget, not to mention manage
them once they are operational.

Regarding NYC MTA, I'll share an anecdote. I have a very close friend who
worked on the second avenue Subway line a few years back. He's a civil
engineer by training and was in middle management on this project, employed by
the general contractor awarded this contact. His comment was along the lines
of: "imagine dozens of dump trucks full of hundred dollar bills backing up to
an incinerator and dumping the money. That's what the MTA does. Burn money."
The sentiment was that these public institutions are chuck full of
incompetence with no repercussions for mismanagement or incentive to excel. As
a life long New Yorker, I don't have to work in the tunnels to know that he's
right.

~~~
gamblor956
I take issue with your thesis. Every day, I ride to work on the Metro Expo
line, which was built on time (actually early) and only delayed opening
because a private company couldn't get its shit together and build the rail
cars on time.

I'll make the case that, as a nation, we're doing fine with the ability to
deliver civil infrastructure projects on time and on budget, and to manage
them once they are operational, in those regions where they actually care
about their infrastructure. See, e.g., LA Metro, Denver's metro, Cleveland's
RTA, our utilities grid post-Enron. These are all things done at a scale and
density that have been equaled or exceeded only by authoritarian states.

~~~
jbellis
We're not doing fine.

"New York’s Second Avenue Subway cost $2.6 billion per mile... The approximate
range of underground rail construction costs in continental Europe and Japan
is between $100 million per mile, at the lowest end, and $1 billion at the
highest. Most subway lines cluster in the range of $200 million to $500
million per mile."

[https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-
ex...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-
build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/)

~~~
ubernostrum
I think the point is that while you can find your pet example of an over-
budget project, other people can find examples of projects that didn't have
those problems.

Rushing to post "but what about the Second Avenue Subway" in any thread on
this topic is not useful, since you've provided no evidence that it's
representative enough to generalize to all infrastructure projects in all
cities of all states of the US.

~~~
wutbrodo
It's well known that infrastructure projects in the US overall cost way more
than comparable projects do in most of the rest of the developed world. Here's
just one link, from a cursory Google:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-05-31/the-u-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-05-31/the-
u-s-has-forgotten-how-to-do-infrastructure)

------
huehehue
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're getting WiFi in the tunnels and installing flatscreen TVs in
the stations. Three cheers for more ad space! Personally, I'd rather have less
station closures, less delays, and less stopping-and-waiting-20-minutes
because of track congestion.

~~~
nine_k
Mobile reception and wi-fi on stations, and displays with helpful info and
arrivals / departures are _very_ welcome additions, and likely did not cost a
lot.

Consumer-grade connectivity within tunnels is likely piggy-backed on the
connectivity required for the trains infrastructure. Currently the subway
operates a system from 1930s to control the lights and detect train positions.
It is based on mechanical / magnetic relays, and is prone to break often.

Replacing that with redundant modern electronics and fiber optics wold
increase MTBF dramatically, lowering maintenance costs and wait times. One
thing that the current antiquated system is limiting is train speed. Trains
used to be faster, but were slowed down because of safety reasons. If the new
connectivity allows them to run 30% faster again (or even faster, where the
tracks allow), that would be a _huge_ win.

(Written on a subway train crawling through the ancient tunnels.)

~~~
nemo44x
> Mobile reception and wi-fi on stations, and displays with helpful info and
> arrivals / departures are very welcome additions, and likely did not cost a
> lot.

Installing countdown clocks on only the lettered subway lines cost $209
million. This doesn't include the numbered lines which have had them for about
10 years which also cost hundreds of millions. In all the project took 29
years. [1]

If you want to know how much it cost to install WiFi is was budgeted for $200
million and ended up at around $300 million. [2]

Remember how that healthcare.gov Website cost hundreds of millions and was a
failure? It cost $250 million and came with a $75 million maintenance cost.
And then a small group came in at the end and fixed it for $4 million with
yearly maintenance of $1 million? Well, the MTA has a ton of these projects.

[1]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-
dont-we-know-where-all-the-trains-are/415152/)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/engineering-against-all-
od...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/engineering-against-all-odds/)

~~~
throwaway-10001
> If you want to know how much it cost to install WiFi is was budgeted for
> $200 million and ended up at around $300 million.

Except that none of this money came from the MTA. The complete project was
funded by private entities. Most of the cost was passed through to the four
major wireless carriers. Those carriers continue to pay, on a monthly basis,
for their ability to offer services in the Subway and the MTA receives portion
of that payment. So, from the MTA's perspective, this project generates
revenue. Same goes for a number of similar projects.

------
weatherlight
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 three dozen New York City subway stations, Completely side-
stepping DeBlasio. In February, Cuomo put the vote forth to The board of the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (they control the MTA), voted 10-3 vote
in favor, to approve 1 billion dollars of contracts to refurbish nine of the
thirteen stations.

This is all apart of Cuomo's Enhanced Station Initiative which is entirely
focused on cosmetics.

It's a shame.

~~~
InclinedPlane
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 other way. It's infuriating.

~~~
fhdhehfhzhe
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.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yes, and it was like pulling teeth to get it done, it should have happened
much sooner.

------
exabrial
> 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'.

~~~
chadlavi
Paying conductors a living wage isn't nearly as expensive to the agency (and
the state, and we the taxpayers and riders) as mismanaged and corruptly
nepotistic multi-billion dollar contracts for construction.

~~~
cynicalkane
This is wrong in many ways.

* Unionized workers make very good money in New York.

* Unions are a primary political driver behind those expensive contracts.

* There's more to unions than conductors. Construction and maintenance, for example.

* The unions routinely put up strong opposition to any meaningful expense or quality control. They also strongly oppose any modernization attempts that might threaten their jobs. They've opposed electronic signaling and control for decades. The worse the subways are, the better it is for them.

* Unions are politically untouchable. No matter what the consequences for the public, people are willing to leap to the defense of the noble workingman. Actually, the noble workingman who needs a "living wage" is riding the subways, not maintaining them. The poor and desperate are found among the five million people who ride the subway every day. Transportation is a public good. It shouldn't be beholden to a small group of highly paid laborers.

~~~
joering2
* Unionized workers make very good money in New York.

I didn't believe a friend of mine who only finish college was making $218,000
a year basically for early morning train track cleanups (device to pickup
trash, stay away from 3rd rail), until I saw his bi-weekly paycheck with my
own eyes. He's been doing that for last 5 years and they hire more people to
do the same. What an insult to anyone with MBA, PhD., anyone pretty much who
doesn't work for Union.

~~~
andyburke
Maybe we should form a union?

~~~
jtolmar
Can you imagine the bargaining power that tech workers would have if they
unionized? Our industry relies on tech workers for training and hiring, so
hiring scabs during a strike would be basically impossible.

------
j-c-hewitt
Cities like NYC are overcrowded and dysfunctional, but our financial system
allows dysfunctional and failing systems to continue to operate up until the
point to which they physically collapse and start either entering prolonged
periods of obvious mechanical non-function and/or killing people in
embarrassing numbers.

Without all the bailouts, the MTA would have failed decades ago and would have
had to have been restructured. Because NYC's political priorities have been to
conserve past structures and agreements at the expense of the present and the
future, you will see performance go down and down to the point to which 1950s
performance will look like 1950s science fiction.

I don't think I would expect anything to change until a major accident kills a
large number of people in one day. You should expect the people in charge of
the system as it exists today to keep getting millions of dollars as service
continues to degrade. But the MTA knows this, so they stop the trains
constantly when there is any chance of a collision, so you get the slow motion
choke for money that you have had for decades.

There's a great option if you are not happy with New York City and its
governance: leave! NYC is a machine for fleecing young people who want to move
there with heads full of movies and TV and rich foreign potentates with more
money than sense. It's not a great place to live if you want to have a
comfortable middle class lifestyle. It might have been that 30+ years ago, but
not anymore.

~~~
untog
> NYC is a machine for fleecing young people who want to move there with heads
> full of movies and TV and rich foreign potentates with more money than
> sense.

Eh, I'm actually not so sure about that. Salaries in NYC are a lot higher than
in other parts of the country, so provided you're doing well (say you're in
tech, perhaps!) you're not being fleeced at all.

I am a little more optimistic than you are that the subway may one day be
fixed. Unfortunately its fate rests in the hands of New York State, not the
city, and many in NYS government couldn't care less about fixing it (Cuomo,
here's looking at you). But it feels as though we're reaching a breaking point
where citizens will demand change without anyone needing to die.

~~~
ep103
He means move to a commutable distance away : )

~~~
untog
Better not go to New Jersey, those NJ Transit tunnels aren't up to much
either!

~~~
Endy
No, but the PATH is pretty reliable and buses work - especially the Spanish
bus. Every time I hear people complaining about the train into NYC I ask them
why they don't either come to Passaic, Union City, or Hoboken and take an
easier and faster (and often, less expensive!) alternative in.

------
Dowwie
Expressed in Millions:

    
    
        Payroll: $5,392
        Overtime: 811
        Health & Welfare: 2,129
        Pension: 1,354
        Other Labor: 400
        ----------------------
        Total Labor: $10,086
    
        Non-Labor: 4,205
        Debt Service: 2,692
        BTL Adjustments for Expenses: (251)
        =====================================
        Total: $16,732

------
JPKab
“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.

~~~
plants
If you haven't been back, I think you'd be surprised at the (weekday)
reliability of the metro now. The metro is almost always terribly messed up on
weekends (with single-tracking and line closings), but they make a damn good
effort to get weekday commuters to work on time. I've been living in the DC
area for the past two years and it seems like they have really been making the
metro a priority. I have a transfer during my commute during rush hour times,
and I hardly ever have to wait more than five minutes for either of my trains.

~~~
mikeash
I second this. I don’t use Metro often, but my wife commutes by Metro almost
every day. There was a period of a couple of years where she’d pretty
routinely get home an hour or two late because of some huge fuckup with the
trains, but recently it’s been very smooth.

I think this is connected to the constant weekend problems you mentioned. The
trouble before was that they weren’t maintaining the system properly because
they didn’t want to cause disruptions. They finally realized that maintenance
isn’t actually optional and started doing what it takes to get it done. The
system doesn’t have enough capacity to have sections out of service for
maintenance without major disruptions, but at least now they happen at a time
of their choosing.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _Turning things around will require a huge infusion of cash_

I keep hearing this with zero justification. Why? I’m sceptical of New York’s
public agencies asking for lots of cash. I assume there are legitimate
projects, but the MTA has been horrible at showing the public this demanded
money will be well spent.

~~~
linuxftw
> I keep hearing this with zero justification. Why?

I'm confident officials have neglected long term maintenance costs when
planning and building all the various infrastructure of major cities. The
modus operandi is always underfund the project, get people to rely on it (or
at least make the case of not just throwing away the first $x when all you
need is $y to complete it), beg for more funding.

Maybe the problem is NYC is an overpopulated crap-hole and there's no amount
of money to fix it. Plenty of other real estate in the US that businesses and
people can move to. NYC is obviously past carrying capacity if we have to
resort to boring holes into bedrock to shuttle people around like rodents.

~~~
codyb
Jesus dude, what??

NYC's fantastic. It's one of the safest major metropolitan areas in the world
filled with a tremendous variety of culture. It's the most diverse place on
the planet with only London even being at a comparable level.

And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not
only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers.
Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get
around the entire city 24 hours a day.

They get people to work during odd shifts, and allow those without so much to
reach the same places those with so much can.

What a weird, haughty, better than thou comment.

~~~
linuxftw
> And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off?
> Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great
> equalizers.

I don't have contempt for people riding the subway, I have contempt for the
organization that perpetrates that fraud on society.

> Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get
> around the entire city 24 hours a day.

At what cost? As it turns out, at great cost. Misallocation of capital: making
it easier to commute into downtown areas via rail only induces rail demand and
increases cost of housing. If end users were forced to pay actual costs of
transportation, businesses wouldn't be able to afford keeping down town
offices and would move towards worker populations, otherwise they would have
to pay higher wages to maintain their labor force. Subsidizing transportation
is nothing but subsidizing corporate labor.

If you think NYC is fantastic, that doesn't make my opinion any less valid.

~~~
digitaltrees
Your analysis is exactly backwards base on history. One of the main drives to
create corporate campuses outside of cities was to prevent competing firms
from recruiting employees. Same goes for creating company restaurants and dry
cleaning etc. keep employees on your campus and a way from competition. When
they work downtown and walk out into the community they bump into people
randomly and those unexpected connections can create new relationships.

~~~
linuxftw
I don't think this is accurate whatsoever. I think the main driver of these
decisions is real estate. It's simply much cheaper to build a low-rise complex
on lots of acreage than it is to obtain the same square footage downtown.

However, if a corporation can reallocate labor capital into real estate, IMO
what happens in the NYC area, that's what they'll do.

------
casual_slacker
While looking for more information, I found this article [1] which gives more
detail into the costs of the MTA compared to other cities. Regarding operator
efficiency:

> The number of annual revenue car-miles per subway employee in New York was
> 14,000 in 2010. In Chicago this number is somewhere between 14,000 and
> 16,000 ... On Tokyo’s Metro, the comparable figure is about 18,500.

[1] [https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-
mt...](https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16455880/new-york-subway-mta-
operating-cost-analysis)

------
olingern
I lived in NYC for five years and the decline in metro service was significant
between 2016-2018. From most reports, it was due to faulty switches or
expiring subway cars.

Fast forward to living in Tokyo, the difference is night and day (except for
the rush hour crowdedness). Maintenance is done every night (somewhere) and
all lines shut down between 12 and 1 am. It's super inconvenient, and this is
where I applaud NYC for allowing me to get home every late night I spent out.
I would hope there's some middle-ground in there, though.

The MTA is looking at this in such a primitive manner, though. I know (from my
time there) that track work is not efficient. It looked to be a lot of sit and
wait until something is ready. Tokyo metro workers are _always_ doing
something. It's almost if they have clear defined goals that they must
accomplish before their day starts.

------
syntaxing
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 emergency purposes. We didn't even have
speed regulator installed until recently (and not all trains have them!) until
a bunch of trains kept on crashing because of human error. We spend billions
on ONE new station, but we can't invest a couple billion to fix the
infrastructure.

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

~~~
Symbiote
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.)

------
rhcom2
The NYT had a great article on how the subway got in the situation it is in.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-
system-failure-delays.html)

~~~
jseliger
When even the NYT is willing to implicitly criticize unions, you know it's
gotten bad:

 _Even in the face of the financial crisis and budget shortfalls, the M.T.A.
has given concession after concession to its main labor union.

Members of the Transport Workers Union got a total of 19 percent in pay raises
between 2009 and 2016, compared with 12 percent for the city’s teachers union
over the same period.

The labor contracts also gave members lifetime spousal health benefits and
free rides on the Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road. (They already
were allowed to ride the subway for free.)_

Particularly insane:

 _Subway workers, including managers and administrative personnel, now make an
average of about $155,000 annually in salary, overtime and benefits, according
to a Times analysis of data compiled by the federal Department of
Transportation. That is far more than in any other American transit system;
the average in cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington is less
than $100,000 in total compensation annually._

~~~
stefan_
The article is 90% on the political mismanagement, but you instead focus on
the workers with little influence making $150k in NYC, much of which is from
working overtime well past 40 hours in a mostly mindless job.

~~~
rayiner
The MTA spends over $10 billion per year on labor, much of it redundant (
_e.g._ two drivers per car): [http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-
spending](http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-spending).

People say "oh, but diverting tax dollars from MTA, etc." The NYT pegs that at
about $1.5 billion _over two decades_ (since Pataki).
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-
system-failure-delays.html). That's $75 million per year, a drop in the bucket
in comparison. About enough to build a mile of subway line.

------
mdolon
The article briefly mentioned competition from ride sharing services but I
wonder to what extent it's made an impact.

Anecdotally, given how cheap Uber and Lyft are in Manhattan (typically $4-5
for a shared ride), I often find myself opting for that instead of dealing
with the hassles of the subway system. Both are unreliable when it comes to
timeliness, as ride sharing services often take longer than expected
(especially Uber Pool and Lyft Line). And as painful as the subway system can
sometimes be, I do appreciate the rich history and incredible performances
you'll often come across in subway stations. I'm torn, to be honest.

~~~
andy_wrote
Yeah, I'd be very interested to learn about anything about the sensitivities
of ridership to other external variables in general.

Looking at the article's linked presentation [1] and the MTA's most recent
financial plan [2] it seems like all the hurt is coming from really huge
declines in projected revenues - labor costs seem to be growing pretty
reasonably but there's basically zero projected growth in fares. If someone
can give me a layman's explanation of what "Capital and Other Reimbursements"
is, which accounts for about a $500mm decline between 2019 and 20222, I'd be
much obliged.

So I am curious how sensitive riders are to the increased service problems,
how much that makes them switch out, to get some sense as to how much the
signal improvements will help solve this problem. Also how much to a fare
hike, which seems like the more straightforward answer in a vacuum (i.e. other
than taxes or other government infusions). The MTA says in [1] that even
"draconian service reductions would have a relatively small impact on the
deficit."

[1] - [http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-
Budget-...](http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-Nov-
Financial-Plan-2019-2022-Presentation.pdf) [2] -
[http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-
Budget-...](http://web.mta.info/news/pdf/MTA-2019-Final-Proposed-Budget-Nov-
Financial-Plan-2019-2022-Vol1.pdf)

~~~
bobthepanda
Reducing service, unless you want to do it really painfully, is unlikely to do
much in the long run. A good chunk of the costs are employee related
(health/pensions) and debt service. The MTA shouldn't default on its bonds,
and in NYS you can't constitutionally modify government pensions after they've
been given. And the MTA hires as many drivers and buys trains and buses based
on peak demand; cutting off-peak is unlikely to do much since you wouldn't be
reducing the absolute number of drivers you need.

In fact, cutting off-peak services would probably worsen the budget outlook
long-term, since the marginal cost of an off-peak service is very low.

------
mgr86
Over the summer The New Yorker had a story on the president of the NYC Transit
Authority. Entitled Can Andy Byford Save The Subways[1]? I found it
interesting. They had a rather optimistic take, but this article 4 months
later makes me think its not going well.

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-
byfor...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-byford-save-
the-subways)

~~~
ajay-d
60 Minutes also profiled Andy recently. They even show a machine (over 100
years old) to move train switches, by manually pulling antique levers. Scary
to think how these things operate.

[1] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-
gone...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone-off-the-
rails-60-minutes/)

------
RileyJames
You can market a 2.75 to $3 fare increase on the convenience of not receiving
change.

It’s nearly insignificant.

But I agree with the lead comment. Public transport should be seen as an
enabler, and should be made free, or affordable, in order to maximise the
benefits.

We spend how much on roads? All from tax payers, and some people don’t own a
car. Yet the idea of paying for public transport out of taxes seems to grate
some people.

------
sashavingardt2
A ride in NYC is crazy cheap compared to other parts of the world. I live in
Europe (grew up in NYC) and a single ride costs $4.50 where I am. But the
public transport is clean, well-maintained and safe.

------
InclinedPlane
New York City's walkability and public transit are easily one of its greatest,
most important, and most valuable features. It's a shame that there's been
such a revolt against local taxation over the last 30-40 years. Our big cities
are the lifeblood of our modern technological economy. And yet we are under-
investing in them drastically. But it's absolutely an affordable problem, we
have the money we just balk at talking on the responsibilities properly, we
want to pretend that if we temporize and half-ass our way there the problems
(not just transit but housing and opioids and so forth) will just take care of
themselves or spontaneously disappear. That is an immature and unrealistic
stance. We need to govern ourselves, we need to take care of and maintain our
own cities and our own people. If we continue to fail to do so it won't just
be public transit in one city in a death spiral, it'll be the whole entire
country headed the way of a failed state. And it'll happen a lot sooner and a
lot faster than you might expect.

------
philwelch
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
spending is inherently inefficient, and while that may be true, that doesn't
explain how governments outside of the United States still seem to be a lot
more efficient than governments inside the United States, nor does it explain
similar phenomena in things like housing.

This seems like a very broad problem that is currently beneath the public
consciousness. SSC's "Considerations on Cost Disease"
([http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-
cost-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-
disease/)) is the first general discussion I've found of this, though Scott
Alexander cites a paywalled Tyler Cowen piece in Bloomberg.

(Fair warning: while SSC doesn't mention defense spending as an example of
this, the US has a ridiculously high defense budget without actually having
the quantity or quality of troops and ships and aircraft that such a budget
would imply. If China's defense budget were the same as ours, they would _whip
our ass_ in a conventional war.)

Whatever the shared root cause or causes are, they need to be addressed. Just
giving MTA, Medicare, the Pentagon, universities, etc. more and more money
isn't going to be sustainable. And, despite the ramblings of certain
conspiratorially-minded folk, I also don't really think this is inflation in
disguise, because then you'd also have to explain why there hasn't been a
corresponding increase in the costs of e.g. basic groceries.

I don't have any answers here; I just don't think we're asking the right
questions if we just restrict the discussion to the specific areas where we
see this happen.

~~~
solidsnack9000
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.

~~~
philwelch
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-...](http://reason.com/blog/2017/01/27/what-happens-when-doctors-only-
take-cash) \-- 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.

~~~
solidsnack9000
Regarding _That might explain cost disease in the public sector, but I don’t
know if it’s sufficient..._ and what follows, it's worth considering that the
US struggles to get the private and public part right, when a strong
institution is needed.

When we get more government in the US, we usually don't get a powerful and
effective public institution, responsible for delivering a service directly to
the people, staffed with dedicated public servants. Instead, we generally get
a tangle of regulation and a large private industrial complex.

A major exception to this -- though they are becoming less so -- are the
various branches of the military. They overlap with one another and thus come
into conflict; but all soldiers are dedicated public servants.

Immediately adjacent to the military is the US arsenal system, or military
industrial complex, a web of not-really-competing companies that the DoD tries
to manage via complex and demanding contracts.

------
danharaj
I haven't noticed. In fact, it's been a several weeks since my commute was
interrupted severely. I hear the green line is doing pretty badly though.

------
jimnotgym
$2.75 sounds really cheap to my British ears. How far can you go on that?

~~~
pseudolus
The NYC system isn't composed of "zones" like the systems in such cities as
London and Paris. Essentially, once you pay your $2.75 you're free to travel
to any subway station in the system. There's also a bus system with limited
transfers.

~~~
_asummers
DC metro has zones, as an example of a US train system with it.

------
skadamat
For people here who are interested in transit, I highly recommend Jarrett
Walker's book "Human Transit". He really focuses the conversation around a few
ideas that almost everyone can agree on (and uses them to focus & have
productive conversations in transit agencies)
[https://humantransit.org/](https://humantransit.org/)

Last night I watched his talk "Transit Truths" \-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc)
\- which also summarizes the ideas in his book well.

------
cat199
"experts"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

"Span 2003b. "No one sought an answer to Quinby’s most penetrating question
(referring to the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act), "Who Is Behind
This Campaign To Separate The Obviously Economical Combination Of Electric
Railway And Its Power Plant?"

------
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.

~~~
closeparen
Why would it dictate that? Choosier consumers with more options require you to
step up your game to compete. The point of the death spiral is that ridership
is down due to reliability issues, which will get worse due to less fare
revenue, driving ridership down further.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Why? Why not? If you need to move 1000 people to a given destination over an
hour, and you run every 15 mins, and 1000 drops to 800, then approx every 20
mins will do.

But that's not drop in service (as it will be spun). That's just a common
sense response to the needs of the market.

The problem is, any elected official who champions such common sense won't get
elected / re-elected. Simply because it will be sold to the public as a drop
in service. This why public programs always grow and too rarely never re-
adjust (smaller) when appropriate.

Note: The article did __not__ say why ridership is down. It mentioned the
reliability issue but doesn't name it as the sole reason. For all we know more
people are walking because the need the exercise. Or perhaps those at the
bottom of the economic ladder can't afford to ride.

Obviously, the former is good news. Healthcare is expensive. Obesity is a real
issue.

Obviously, the latter is bad news. And few elected officials what to be the
ones to say they haven't been doing what they said they were doing.

Or perhaps tourism is down? Which again, is not a feather in any politician's
cap.

Anecdotally, I live in Central NJ. To take the train to NYC I have to pay
approx $10 to park. That makes the round trip approx $40. In my mind, at $40
p/p p/trip, that's coming up on $50, opposed to a (psychological) shade over
$25.

The article makes no mention of possible external factors.

------
mymythisisthis
The cost of a single trip has always been the cost a pizza slice.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-
the-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-the-price-of-
a-slice.html)

------
chasing
I'd rather see an increase in progressive taxes for individuals and companies
in NYC rather than a fare hike.

I, at least, heavily depend on public transportation in NYC and would be more
than happy to pay more to the MTA in taxes if it meant cleaner, more
efficient, and more reliable service.

------
nova22033
This is one of the best articles on why the NYC subway is such a mess

[https://www.businessinsider.com/second-avenue-subway-cost-
ny...](https://www.businessinsider.com/second-avenue-subway-cost-nyc-
infrastructure-2016-12)

------
amai
The list of cities that offer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport)
is growing. Maybe this is the model for the future!

------
barfingclouds
The New York subway system is riddled with inefficiencies, corruption, and
terrible maintenance. You’ve gotta call it for what it is. Their bull shit has
caught up to them. I feel nothing less than contempt for the people behind it.

------
0max
Vox has a great piece on how the NYC MTA got to its current state of affairs
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLMODzYX7U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COLMODzYX7U)

------
notyourday
Everything that one needs to understand in order to explain why NYC subway is
such a shitshow can be learned by any software engineer that attempted to
change a gigantic legacy barely functioning code base of an organization with
a single product that relies on this codebase which happened to still have
"founders" running a show 12-13 years later:

When the company adds "new blood", everything that the new blood proposes gets
tossed out for "legacy reasons". Periodically, someone floats a plan for a
gigantic multi-year "keep X service but rewrite everything inside it from
scratch" software engineering project. Those future "rewrite from scratch"
projects are used to justify not making any incremental improvements.

------
samfisher83
You can pretty much get anywhere on the ny subway system and it's pretty
cheap. Bay area public transport is more expensive and it doesn't even go
everywhere.

------
Dowwie
Curious whether Uber or Lyft riders will change their behaviors as the toll on
public transit becomes more salient..

------
rb666
It's funny how pathetic America deals with any sort of public service. It's
all about me me me.

~~~
solidsnack9000
The US had a very different path to modernization than most other developed
countries, because it never underwent absolutism.

The typical effect of absolutism was to introduce an efficient and effective
civil service, as part of the general centralization of authority. Absolutist
states were monarchial, militaristic states; the combination of taxation and
destruction was hard to endure and eventually they had to transition to
something else as a result of revolution or defeat. After either event,
though, the civil service stuck around and with it a norm of publicly provided
services.

The US got off the train at just about the time that absolutism was getting
going in Europe -- indeed, because it was getting going in Europe -- and thus
retains a decentralized -- not necessarily selfish -- structure and outlook
more characteristic of medieval Europe. These "Tudor Institutions" are
discussed by Huntington in _Political Modernization: America vs. Europe_ :
[http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Huntington%20Political%20Mo...](http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Huntington%20Political%20Modernization%20
--America%20vs%20Europe.pdf)

------
Markoff
solution it's pretty simple, hike the fare like in comparable cities, shut
down subway in night like in comparable cities, remove unlimited ticket and
replace it with time/zone limited like in comparable cities. you can't eat
cake and have it

------
rajacombinator
Is this really a funding problem or is it an employee quality problem ...

------
asah
serious q: what alternatives exist besides buses and taxi/rideshare? Is
walking/scootering a material number of people? If not, why about taxing
rideshares to fund the subway?

~~~
MFLoon
Most NYC residents don't have walkable commutes, especially those living in
middle or lower income neighborhoods that are generally further from the city
center. The city is too large, and not particularly pedestrian friendly in the
outer boroughs.

FWIW Biking has become more viable in recent years, with a good amount of bike
lane coverage even in the outer boroughs, but that's still not viable for the
less physically able, and I don't know if it's actually cheaper than public
transit once you factor in bike equipment/maintenance costs and increased
travel times. Also the weather gets fairly extreme in both the summer and
winter.

Taxing rideshares sounds like a good idea, though I'm sure Uber would fight
like hell against it.

~~~
woolvalley
Uber & others seem to be fine with a general congestion charge although, and
actually seem to encourage it.

------
gurumeditations
Why don’t they just pave the tunnels and put autonomous buses in?

------
anon2775
This is clickbait based on old news. The MTA hired an unconventional
transportation turn-around guru. It's going to take time to make things
better.

------
_pmf_
Amazon Cuomo will fix it.

~~~
umichguy
I think if Amazon pitches in with some funds and help them out with logistics
software planning for increased efficiency, they will go a long way in buying
some goodwill from the NY public. It's great publicity while helping out the
city citizens.

Put all that ML and AI expertise to some public use.

------
nakedrobot2
CLOSE THE SUBWAY MIDNIGHT-5AM and fix it

Like most other civilized societies who have a _functioning and well-
maintained_ metro system.

That is really all there is to it!

~~~
codyb
That really hurts most a lot of poor people who work odd hours.

Then suddenly they have to find a way home or two work that will be much more
expensive and eat into their earnings.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but "that's really all there is to it" will
affect very negatively hundreds of thousands of people in NYC.

~~~
taobility
To serve much better for 99.9% commuters or serve poorly for 100% commuters,
isn't that a easier decision?

~~~
natestemen
i dont think it's really that simple. even it was i don't think the decision
is that easy anyway.

it's important to think about who your decisions affect, even if they may be a
minority (which is bigger than 0.1%). why is it okay to put more burden on the
people who already have the most burden as it is?

~~~
taobility
NYC is the only city which has such requirement and have to provide subway to
support them? How many other cities provide same 24/7 subway transit? why the
other cities don't provide such service? The other cities don't have people
work so late? How does those people commute?

------
rmason
I think what everyone reading this story is missing and that the opportunity.

Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less
than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion.

Once it's proven in New York you could roll it out anywhere in the world.

~~~
MFLoon
>Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far
less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion.

Is this a satirical comment? It doesn't matter how easily a clever HN reader
could devise a new, greenfield signaling system, you can't just build and
cutover to a new subway signaling system in one of the world's densest cities,
atop an existing subway with over 100 years of accrued legacy signaling
technologies. The MTA has tried to modernize it's signaling system twice, and
each initiative was a multi-decade, multi billion dollar morass. It's just not
a problem that can be solved by throwing a shiny new framework at it - not
that many real world problems can be.

------
chmaynard
> Critics say it is bad service that is driving people away.

One datapoint: I live in Rhode Island. Recently I attended a concert in
Brooklyn. The obvious way to travel there was Amtrak to Penn Station and MTA
(train or bus) to the final destination. However, I was warned that MTA
service is unreliable. I decided to drive. Next time I probably won't go at
all.

~~~
bunderbunder
So, I haven't been to New York in a while, but I'm guessing that you were
poorly informed.

Usually when public transit networks start showing strain, it's during rush
hours, when they're handling _massive_ spikes in ridership. To give an example
from Chicago: If you're trying to get on the train downtown at 6:00pm, you'll
get on the next train, and probably get to sit in a seat. If you try to do it
at 5:00pm, you stand a good chance of waiting 30 minutes for a train that you
can even physically get on to. When you do, your ride will probably also take
50% longer than the 6pm ride would have. And maybe even 100% longer than a
ride at 7pm would have.

You naturally get all the complaints from the rush hour riders. And yeah, if
your concert were starting at 6 in the evening so that you'd have to brave
rush hour traffic, then that would be a problem. But so would driving.

If, like most concerts, it was starting a bit later, you'd very likely have
experienced smooth service.

~~~
weberc2
> If you're trying to get on the train downtown at 6:00pm, you'll get on the
> next train, and probably get to sit in a seat. If you try to do it at
> 5:00pm, you stand a good chance of waiting 30 minutes for a train that you
> can even physically get on to.

What line are you describing? I take the L every day from downtown around 5
and I can reliably get on the first train and it will arrive in < 10 minutes
(and there's a good chance I'll have a seat). If a train takes more than 10
minutes, it will almost certainly be packed full, but it will also almost
certainly be followed by another nearly-empty train in ~1-2 minutes.

~~~
bunderbunder
The example I had in mind was blue line northbound from Clark & Lake.

Which is admittedly the worst scenario that I could think of, and I should
have said that. It gets better quickly from there. I used to get on 2 stops
further south, and, yeah, at 5 I usually had no problems and a decent chance
of getting a seat, too.

~~~
_asummers
Blue Line north at 5-5:30PM is a nightmare from Clark/Lake. I sometimes have
to wait for 4-5 trains before I can get on.

------
squozzer
The problem seems fixable, but as others have said, people will have to take
some lumps.

A certain political figure with strong (both bad and good) ties to NYC has
harped for a couple of years about a federal infrastructure bill. I think the
phrase "third world" was used to describe the problem.

No reason why America's Greatest City (tm) could not wring a couple of bil out
of the feds to start upgrading their subways. Move back to the first world,
you might say.

In turn, because we're talking about a transaction, the MTA might also need to
move out of a "third world" mentality. We can safely assume some of their
payroll is spent on political favors. Maybe this "death spiral" talk will
motivate the agency to make a least a token gesture towards good use of their
riders dollars.

Maybe.

~~~
ascagnel_
Not to get super political, but the concept of NY/NJ getting any transit
infrastructure-related federal funds was nixed late last year in retribution
against Sen. Schumer for... something?

