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NYC Subway, Bus Services Have Entered 'Death Spiral,' Experts Say (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) warned last week that without a major infusion of cash, [New York City's subway and bus services] will have to drastically cut service or increase fares on the system that carries millions of New Yorkers around the city. The system's financial straits have gotten worse in part because it has fewer riders, and is collecting less money in fares. Expected passenger revenue over a five-year period has dropped by $485 million since July.
"They've entered this death spiral," said Benjamin Kabak, who runs the transit website Second Avenue Sagas. "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." The authority is proposing a fare hike that would take effect in March. One option would raise the basic fare for a ride to $3 from the current $2.75. Another option would leave the base fare the same but increase the cost of monthly passes and eliminate bonuses for riders. They are also proposing $41 million a year in service cuts, mainly increasing the time between trains and buses on some routes. And, if approved, the plan would delay the launch of faster bus routes. The proposed cuts "will still leave the MTA with massive deficits, expected to hit nearly $1 billion a year by 2022," the report says. "To tackle those deficits, officials say they would have to cut service more drastically, or raise fares by an additional 15%."
"They've entered this death spiral," said Benjamin Kabak, who runs the transit website Second Avenue Sagas. "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." The authority is proposing a fare hike that would take effect in March. One option would raise the basic fare for a ride to $3 from the current $2.75. Another option would leave the base fare the same but increase the cost of monthly passes and eliminate bonuses for riders. They are also proposing $41 million a year in service cuts, mainly increasing the time between trains and buses on some routes. And, if approved, the plan would delay the launch of faster bus routes. The proposed cuts "will still leave the MTA with massive deficits, expected to hit nearly $1 billion a year by 2022," the report says. "To tackle those deficits, officials say they would have to cut service more drastically, or raise fares by an additional 15%."
I thought NYC was the city where the rich helped the poor, and where those with a lot of money would donate to causes like this, as well as getting management help to make sure the resources are spent correctly, and frequent audits before things go wrong to make sure you stay ahead.
Or maybe the NYC isn't the utopia it claims to be?
Doesn't work? It carries 5,000,000 people per day. What would happen in NYC if there was no subway or buses? Total collapse.
So raise the fares.
The only thing newsworthy about this is that people think it’s newsworthy.
Take out a loan to make the needed improvements and pay it off when ridership increases.
Increase non-public-transit taxes and fees to push people back to public transit (yuck, but it's an option).
Concede that public transit isn't the be-all end-all and let the chips fall where they may.
Dig a tunnel.
Are the provider companies private?
Transit is infrastructure, so the illusion is in commercial expectations.
Itâ(TM)s a bit disenguous to say that people ARENâ(TM)T riding New York transit. 2017 had 1.73 BILLION subway boardings alone.
The problem comes with ridehailing companies. While there are plenty of criticisms to be had about the medallion system, it did keep more private automobiles off the road and keep more people on transit than Uber or Lyft whose use has been directly correlated with reduced transit use nationwide.
As unpopular as transit is in much of the nation, when you get SO MANY people crunched into the same space, youâ(TM)ve simply got to ensure people donâ(TM)t drive or else the pollution, road risk, and quality of life simply ranks.
"They've entered this death spiral," said Benjamin Kabak, who runs the transit website Second Avenue Sagas. "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."
This is in the most "wealthy" country in the world! Forget the fact that our debt now exceeds the GDP - at 105% of GDP (at least).
In the meantime, our leaders haven't forgotten how to foment [costly] mayhem abroad. Sad!
http://budget.council.nyc/
It is amusing how people read something on the Internet and assume it must be true. Actually I mean "pathetic", not "amusing". Raise the fares. It isn't a big deal. Taxi fares go up all the time.
Is a big liberal cuck!
When it already can actually costs $5.00 or more each way depending on where you are just to commute to work each day at a job that may pay $10/hour, it is already at an unsustainable cost to those who would need or use it most. Raising fairs any more will simply guarantee empty trains and busses.
taking one billion from the military budget and spending it on the public transport.
or would that leave too much of a communist socialist taste in the mouths of most 'muricans?
l0l
If the risk is total collapse then they had better raise funds from somewhere.
The problem is always one of transit not being able to pay for itself. It always seems to need infusions of tax payer money or something to keep it going. If it was economical and a better way to travel then people would be willing to pay market rates (what it costs to operate) in order to use it. Most times they are not. You see it in New York, San Francisco - all over. I'd agree with your premise - Raise the rates. Raise them until it can pay for itself. See if it still works for people. If it does wonderful. It might not though.
$40/ ride should cover costs
Except some people will stop riding
Oh that's why they call it a death spiral
Nonsense. The only problem of public transport is everyone expecting it to be profitable. If it is supposed to retain usability and at least a minimum of attractiveness in terms of both service and price, it just can't be profitable in the long run. To be and stay an affordable and usable means of transportation, it has to be publicly financed, and generously so. It's really that simple.
Reducing its attractiveness further in order to cut losses will just make it even less attractive, as TFA correctly said.
NYC is an utter shithole, so this is funny. I agree, they should raise the fares - maybe double them?
As with any service you have to charge what it takes to operate. You cannot keep rejecting fare increases and expect service to remain viable.
Transit pays for itself by keeping pollution out of your stupid lungs. People are stupid and short sighted. The problem is that automobile infrastructure in the US is subsidized and socialized.
also nice timing with amazon fucking up the city right?
How many city transport systems make a profit?
It is perfectly normal for subways to only get a fraction of their income from ticket sales. And for governments to fund the system from taxes, just like the roads.
What is wrong with the NYC and state governments that they don't want to fund a transport system worthy of a great city?
-Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Odd that the article fails to mention the core economics fundamentals at issue here, such as the stifling burden of union pensions for retired MTA workers. It also fails to note the core management issues, like union contracts prohibiting: a) firing employees for incompetence, or b) initiating merit-based pay increases as an incentive to improve performance. Failing infrastructure is a consequence of incompetent planning, management & maintenance, while failing finances is a consequence of entrenched expenditure largess. The article addresses neither of these concerns.
It also strikes me as peculiar that former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg has recently donated $1.8 billion (!) to Johns Hopkins University—a private university in Baltimore, Maryland and his alma mater—but he has offered no financial assistance to his beloved city's core transportation system. It makes one wonder just how committed he is to fixing his city's financial & governance issues and/or core infrastructure problems. It's almost as if he prefers to leave those problems unaddressed so he can campaign to fix them in his next run for political office, while taking a substantial tax deduction for a donation to a private institution. Or perhaps he's just angling to become President of Johns Hopkins University? Or perhaps I'm just being cynical? *smirk*
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
From the summary:
"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."
The solution to this problem isn't increasing fares or reducing services.
It's identifying (and rectifying) why services have become unreliable to the point people don't want to use them.
Transit 'pays for itself' by making cities like New York possible. Without a transit system, businesses would move out to somewhere that their employees can get to for work .
Oh, wait.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The problem is not "public" services, it is deciding that certain "public" services should be operated as businesses. Expecting public transit services to pay for themselves is as ridiculous as expecting that the highway department should be revenue neutral. Transportation in its many forms is necessary to a healthy economy, the best way to facilitate it is through taxes.
"Expected passenger revenue over a five-year period has dropped by $485 million since July. "
WTH does this even mean?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Maybe he should have said "isn't working"
The system *is* working every day.
The economic frame is different but that's changeable, like the characterization death spiral.
Then some proper management can take over. Short term pain, but you get rid of a lot of corruption and liabilities.
Maybe he should have said "isn't working"? Did you even read the article? Two words: Death Spiral. And like all proper liberals, the proposed solution is to raise taxes. Please work on your reading comprehension skills.
Did you? The proposed solution is to raise fares. Unless you equate that to a tax. They could probably support it with a subsidy or something but the article doesn't mention that. Is it a public service though or a private one? Without mass transit a place like NY will grind to a halt. You think traffic is bad there now? Maybe even make it free funded by a few dollars extra on everyone's tax but that would probably make half of you literally shit a brick and you'd rather watch it fall then complain about the consequences.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
NYC was run well by Rudy Giuliani and then Mike Bloomberg. The city changed for the better dramatically under their management.
Then in 2014 New Yorkers elected Bill "Don't bother me, I'm napping" De Blasio. It's not all De Blasio's fault but he and Governor Andrew "I Inherited this job from my father" Cuomo can't play nice and the MTA is run and funded by Albany.
They were both just re-elected because they are doing such a great job.
We're talking an 8M+ people city (according to Wikipedia), one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, subway operations under one umbrella (MTA) which is under the state/city's control, and still...
The proposed cuts will still leave the MTA with massive deficits, expected to hit nearly $1 billion a year by 2022
Ridiculous! Sounds like "doesn't work" to me... Maybe politics sucked the funds out of infrastructure and/or personnel? Far enough that you simply can't run a profitable operation, or service sucks no matter how hard you try.
Perhaps the MTA should just suspend operations for a couple of days, & see if that changes politician's minds about their support for NYC public transport.
One possible reason for ridership reduction is less millenials are taking the subway. You know, the toxic feminists and twinkletoed cucks that get triggered from the "manspreading" way men sit because its the only comfortable way for men to sit for long periods of time simply because of basic male genital and pelvic biology.
NYC subway-just one more thing millenials are ruining.
It's not public transportation's fault that the MTA has been mismanaged. The region's mass transit system works famously well, but maybe there have been unavoidable cost increases. Or maybe NYC's political choices of late have led to poor governance.
Why would billionaires help out?
They have zero obligation to do that and very little incentive.
Remove the riff raff and you'd probably have a clean and coherent place to live.
In under 10 years your argument will be total bunk. I submit it will take more than 10 years for the NYC subway to collapse.
When transport companies think they should be funded by tax, that's saying they want to charge every people for the service, despite so many not wanting to use it at all. Cars work, because you opt to pay for everything it means to own and run the car, and if you want to try something else - you put your money where your mouth is. Taxation is not the right option. It's a safety net, allowing bad services to get worse, because they've got guaranteed income. Any move in that direction if fundamentally against free market principles that economies should actually be working towards.
If it's broke, then fix it. Realistically. Do you have empty train carriages? Do you have empty busses? If so, then reduce those services until you're at a break-even on the service. Rush hours? All hands on deck! Every train, every carriage, every bus you got. Move those people! Simple.
If busses are old a need replacing, then do it. Don't complain about not having the money - you've had a monopoly on it for decades, and if you don't know your business by now, then perhaps you should hand it to someone else.
If the nature of people travelling is changing, then you have to find a way to compete. Put TV's in your busses. Radio? Free Wifi. Anything! Vending machine on the bus? I don't know. But seriously, compete! Don't complain. Innovate, or die.
When the NYC Transit system cuts down useless staff like having an operator and a conductor on every train (unlike the rest of the world, who run things just fine with one person per train), then there might be a reason to believe there is some sort of cash crunch there. Until then, it's obvious their solution to every "problem" is to ask for subsidies and not ever consider how they can actually save money.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Wait why is that? Because you say so?
Why should people who don't use it pay for it? Why can't fares just be raised until they cover the costs. If you say because min wage workers can't than afford to get to work. My response is GOOD! That means employers would not be able to hire people for minimum wage; they will have to pay them more. The mistake is thinking that subsidizing things like housing and transport is a beneficent for the poor; its not its corporate welfare in disguise. All its really doing is taking money from the middle class so the very wealthy capital owner class get access to an artificially cheap labor pool.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Problem is less riders, so expected revenue will drop by nearly $500 million.
Government answer... Raise prices!
Only a government idiot thinks the solution to less people using their service is to raise prices and leave it at that. This sounds like a plan for requiring a massive bail out where the politicians will use corruption to grab as much of that bail out money for themselves while letting the Subway rot. Happens all the time, and its become fairly obvious to most people that this is how local government works.
If it was economical and a better way to travel then people would be willing to pay market rates (what it costs to operate) in order to use it. Most times they are not. You see it in New York, San Francisco - all over. I'd agree with your premise - Raise the rates. Raise them until it can pay for itself. See if it still works for people. If it does wonderful. It might not though.
Excellent idea. In the same vein, let's also:
Then we can truly see what is more "economical" and whether people will be "willing to pay market rates". Let's go for it!
Transit is infrastructure, so the illusion is in commercial expectations.
Private companies can do just fine, as long as there is competition and reasonable gov't regulation. Here in Taipei, public transit is pretty awesome. There are multiple private bus companies, but they all use a common price scheme set by the gov't. They have RFID cards which can be used for buses and the MRT, and the card can also function as a cash-storage device, and can be used to buy stuff at any convenience store. With an additional registration process (essentially, they want your email address) the card can also be used to access the local bicycle-sharing program.
On top of that, taxis are ubiquitous and cheap -- again, privately run, but heavily regulated -- with a mix of large fleets and self-employed owner-operators. So even when the buses quit running (around 11pm) you can still get home from the pub at a very reasonable cost. I've never owned a car here, but I even gave up the motorcycle about 8~10 years ago (gave it to one of my employees) because I never used it, and it was always a hassle to find parking. Public transit is just too easy here.
So, no, I don't think that "commercial expectations" necessarily prevent the delivery of excellent service to the public. Nor do I think that gov't regulation is too burdensome on private enterprise.The same half-dozen bus companies have been serving Taipei since I first came here in 1990, and they're all still in business, and seem to be doing just fine, judging by how well they maintain and upgrade their buses.
This battle over funding the NYC subway has been brewing for quite a while, with Mayor DeBlasio and Governor Cuomo each pointing fingers at the other. And it was a big issue in the Dems' gubernatorial primary recently, as Cynthia Nixon accused Cuomo of failing to spend money that was appropriated (or something like that...) I don't know much about the NYC situation, but I'm quite certain that public transit is cool, because I use it every day.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
It doesn't work because the companies that have their employees come to work on it every day don't want to pay taxes.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Can't wait to hear form all the public transit apologists
Well in that case I don't want to disappoint you. In Germany public transport is ubiquitous and works well (even though the trains sometimes do have a problem with punctuality). But it is expensive. My annual ticket to get around my metro area costs almost a thousand dollars. A monthly ticket costs 80$. A single ride, 4$. AFAIK this is pretty expensive on the international scale.
That is not realistic. The problem is that the people who profit control the people who know best how to fix it but they will not allow the taxpayers to hear from those people because they assume the taxpayers will try to take their profits. NY state taxpayers know it is an ecosystem and the subway system is the jewel in the crown of the city. Common sense simply has been thrown out of the process. Thank heaven for Cuomo. He gets it.
I completely support everything you just said.
Well, Gee, Public transit works in lots of other major cities in the world, and works well. In fact in many of the bigger cities in Europe, Japan, and China owning a car is entirely unnecessary (actually a nuisance) due to the excellent public transit.
What seems to be the case in NYC is that the program is not only being mismanaged, but, the fares are too low. The Article says they're considering raising the basic rate by 25 cents, to 3.00. That's ridiculously cheap - and doesn't reflect the actual cost of travel by private vehicle for the same journey which would be at least double that amount.
There's zero reason for a good public transit system to not cost virtually equivalent price to private transit in a large city. In any large city, public transit systems *should* get you to your destination significantly quicker than private vehicles - if it doesn't, the system should be changed so that it does. That makes the cost benefit ratio right.
The MTA is going through some major renovations and repairs at the moment. Some pretty major lines are partially if not majority closed. Getting from Brooklyn to Manhatten is a disaster at the moment. At 30+M riders a year on the L line alone it has a major impact on money coming in. But that's the nature of running a transportation system in NYC. When money investing in goes and revenue is down you fund it with Bonds or whatever until the payoff of the repairs/enhancements kick in.
NYC is still pretty well run as a whole. They'll be just fine.
NYC may be lesson on how not to run a public transit system.
Not all cities suffer like this. London, Montreal, Amsterdam, Paris, and others have world class public transit systems.
New York just sucks
eBay has falling use and they're raising prices.
what can be explained by corruption.
Given a monopoly that millions of people are forced to use every day to get to work just to feed themselves, only seriously corrupt administrators would claim they're losing money.
Seriously.
Nobody's that stupid.
They're stealing.
Transit 'pays for itself' by making cities like New York possible. Without a transit system, businesses would move out to somewhere that their employees can get to for work .
Oh, wait.
That's awful. Imagine millions of NYC dwellers spreading out like a cancer. Can we build a wall or something?
Or maybe NYC's political choices of late have led to poor governance.
Oops, you just closed the thread. The problem is simple corruption, going all the way down to the voters that keep on reelecting their favorite crooks.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why is this comment marked troll?
I am a European left-wing public transportation enthousiast, and I completely agree with the question/premise.
NY has an incredibly high and dense population. The bedrock makes tunneling easy, and the lack of space makes undeground transportation a sensible option. Fares of $2.75 are not ridiculously cheap (e.g. Tokyo fares start at $1.50; London at $3.50; paris $2). So why aren't they making money?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... gives an interesting overview of the profitability of metro systems, expressed in % of cost met by fares (so >100% is profitable, 100% is subsidized). Hong Kong metro, which is not entirely incomparable, somehow is very profitable with mostly cheaper tickets and excellent service. Amsterdam metro, a much smaller place and much more difficult to tunnel, is subsidized but has 88% fare recovery. New York's metro fares cover less than half (47%) of costs.
It's a fair question to ask why that is? Material too old? Too large influence of local politicians to keep unprofitable routes going? Too few people pay the fare?
https://www.ny.com/transportation/subways/
The New York City subway system is one of the most efficient people transports in the entire world. The hot and dingy subway system of the 1970's has been completely renovated into a safe, convenient and comfortable mode of transportation between nearly all areas of New York City. Over 4.3 million people ride the subway system every day; over 1 billion people go through the turnstiles per year! While minor theft and homelessness still abound, the subway is a much better place than was predicted back in the financially troubled days of the city.
Transit pays for itself by keeping pollution out of your stupid lungs.
Also it pays for itself by allowing NYC to function. Traffic is bad enough already. If everyone had to drive to work, it would be a disaster.
Saying that it needs taxpayer money doesn't negate that. There are tons of companies and rich people who benefit from having the capability to bring workers and customers into their locations, and the fact that traffic flows allows them to get shipments in and out. Those rich people and companies should contribute to the transportation infrastructure, but they're not going to willingly, out of the goodness of their heart.
So you have taxes. There's nothing inherently bad about taxes. The fact that public transportation is subsidized by taxes is not a sign that it's not doing a good job, or that it's not 100% worth the money spent on it.
Yeah, it's publictransportation. Public government services shouldn't be profitable. If they're profitable, it means they're overcharging.
If you raise the fares cost for the end user, less people will use it. So you get less money, and to compensate this you further raise fares. At the end of the process, you will struggle trying to sell a tickets costing a few gazilions of dollars to your last passenger. Not a bright move...
The solution is probably investing into more efficient trains. Look at what happened to flight tickets and airline incomes after the introduction of the 787 Dreamliner.
Ridesharing is currently heavily VC subsidised. The current situation won't last beyond Uber's exit strategy, whatever that is.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
That is what we did for transportation in Tampa.
Any reasons that wouldn't fly in NYC?
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
That means employers would not be able to hire people for minimum wage; they will have to pay them more.
HAHAHAHA
No, the response will be for them to ride a bike, walk, or just live closer.
Trying to imagine what the city of New York has as an alternative to public transit and I can't see it.
The Article says they're considering raising the basic rate by 25 cents, to 3.00. That's ridiculously cheap - and doesn't reflect the actual cost of travel by private vehicle for the same journey which would be at least double that amount.
There's zero reason for a good public transit system to not cost virtually equivalent price to private transit in a large city
Uh, no. There's zero reason for a good public transit system to cost any more than it needs to.
Sure, you're correct that the fare is cheaper than owning, insuring, maintaining, and fueling a private vehicle. Duh. That's the whole point of a bus. Cheaper people * miles / dollar. The fact that you think the cost should be nearly equivalent indicates your acceptance of the beauracrat's view. No, it does not need to be a similar cost nor should there be any goal of increasing the cost until it is. This just hands over more power/money to waste into the little bureaucratic fiefdoms that demand it.
The problem in NYC isn't the fares being $0.25 too low, it's all the waste from corruption and mismanagement.
Please, NYU buss drivers drive like they are the king of the road, anyway NYC transit is shit and MTA trains are made 1960 garbage with push and pull suicide setup on track from 1900 with cowboy mentality, slow unreliable and actually never on time, MTA has money to put thousands of CCTV cameras everywhere including very old cars but has no money to fix it's crumbling infrastructure, there is not much difference between third world country infrastructure and MTA, fire all the MTA fat managers and start fresh! reboot the damn MTA system. raising fares again, fuck you MTA!
The term "death spiral" is specific. It refers to a tipping point where your price goes past the optimum on supply/demand, such that raising prices means less overall money once people substitute alternatives, or simply do without.
In this case, people have clearly been doing just that in NYC, as total ridership has been dropping. Raising fares is unlikely to increase that, right? Cutting routes won't increase riders either, right?
It's fine to be skeptical of some internet article, but do read the MTA's own report.
Plan is balanced through 2019 using "one-shots," and the deficits for 2020, 2021 and 2022 have increased to $510 million, $816 million and $991 million, respectively
It doesn't look good.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Unless the working population of NYC has dropped, how are these people who used to take the transit getting to work? If your solution is to soak the rich (which literally never works) to pay for the less rich, why not direct your attention to those who are driving into work? Raise parking rates and/or toll fees. DISCOURAGE the alternate behavior.
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
Hehe. Ask Oklahoma. Or Pittsburg.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I've been to Taipei (and Kaohsiung) multiple times. The subway system is nice, but it's awfully easy to ignore that the first line opened in 1996. It's still new by major infrastructure standards. It's not really fair to just compare systems between Taipei and NYC. Public transit is good, important, and does indeed work, but it presents serious challenges to the public's appetite for investment in transit when those systems reach a point where they require massive injections of capital which happens much later in a subway systems lifetime than where Taipei is at.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The public transit will spread the cost around its ridership. Taxis and cars will spread it among its users. If this fair system of rent is collected, then we can let free market decide the cost and the transit systems will become profitable.
Transit companies cannot raise prices to become profitable because the private cars and taxis are taking the roads for free, emitting more pollution per passenger for free. Make them ALL play by the same rule, then we can depend on free markets.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why should people who don't use it pay for it?
Because the alternative is gridlock. If ticket prices rise, other modes of transport become more attractive and get used more. More individual traffic isn't feasible in a densely packed city like New York. Even sprawl cities like Los Angeles learn that you can't add enough lanes to prevent traffic jams and that offering more infrastructure for cars in fact makes the problems worse. Making cars (relatively) more attractive in New York would be an absolute nightmare. So your best option is to subsidize the infrastructure that keeps things moving, for your own benefit. You should realize that people who use the subway also pay for the roads that they never use, and that's a good thing because indirectly they of course also benefit from those roads. Don't be selfish.
/\/\/\ Found the trumptard who has never traveled outside Missouri.
Same here. Toll roads are some of the best pavement I've driven on and really don't cost more than a few cents per mile.
Thank heaven for Cuomo. He gets it.
What in the world are you smoking?
Check your premises.
Wait 'til it gets old and maintenance becomes a real issue. Your public transport system is just about 20 years old, let's talk in another 10 years when trains start to fail and replacements would be required to retain a reliable schedule. Then we'll see whether private businesses are willing to "waste" money on new trains or whether they'll simply accept that some trains will run late. Or never.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can't help but think that it's actually more efficient to use taxes to fund transit. Installing ALL THAT infrastructure to collect tolls is going to be expensive too.
Think about it, tracking a gazillion micropayments has got to be more difficult and costly than taxing people once per year. While it may shift the cost to be more squarely on users, it'll cost society more as a whole. The micropayment system and the administration of it might be so high that even people who "pay more than their share" and subsidize others might end up having MORE money come out of their pocket.
In short, I think it's quite possible that WE net benefit more than the "me"'s who benefit under the micropayment system. Do we really want to screw over society with higher overall costs ("we") to benefit a minority?
And if we do that, for this and many other systems, will the US fail in competition with other societies who do NOT impose such stupid overhead on themselves, effectively wasting resources that could be used productively? (Like our health care system--2x cost for reduced benefit.)
--PeterM
Not to mention reducing vehicle congestion for the people that insist on driving.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why you should pay for it? Because you don't want the through-roads that you use to get home turn into the biggest parking lot on the planet every day and your trip home takes 4 hours instead of 30 minutes.
Because one thing is certain, people who cannot use public transport will instead have to rely on private. And if a town can't afford to maintain public transport, they sure as hell can't afford buying premium land in downtown to pave and make new roads.
Your trip home would take longer. Every single day that you work. How much, well, that's up for debate, but what price would you attach to an hour of your time?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/02/01/manhattan-da-will-no-longer-prosecute-turnstile-jumping-229568
Why won't they? Because over 90% of the perps are non-white, and we don't want to appear racist, now do we?
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-arrests-people-color-fare-beating-stats-article-1.2528320
TL,DR; All progressive ideals lumped together are shit because reality is racist.
Mass transit is for the poors dontcha know?
Living closer is no option since they probably already can barely afford living on the outskirts, so whatever alternative they will find means more traffic on the roads and more congested roads during rush hours.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Expensive? what? my monthly MTA ticket is $300 dollars for a train service that's a joke!
All this hand-wringing to avoid raising fairs to $3.45 and solve the whole problem? They're short on money, but at the same time they have politicians advocating decriminalizing turnstile jumping because it turns out that certain races are more likely to offend than others. This obsession with giving criminals free rides (literally in this case) is bankrupting the fundamental infrastructure that made our century of economic wonder possible. I suspect it's intentional sabotage.
Crime and policies that have curbed an aggressive response from police reduce the attractiveness of public transportation. Then there is also reduced taxi fares through Uber and other such services which makes it much more attractive to take and cheap enough to contend with public transportation.
In the end it all comes down to cost and energy expenditure. Cost is ideally a reflection of the minimum energy it takes to do something and the comparison of your energy expenditure to the cost is whether or not you are willing to spend the money. If $2.75 is not enough money to cover the cost of energy to move the subway around, the market will correct itself. Maybe it should be $5 to cover the cost of a subway ride and the average rider spends 30-45m commuting, whereas an Uber would take them 15m and costs $15 then you lose everyone whose time and energy is worth more than $12.25/h.
That's pretty much everyone so the question then remains, in an era of individualized cheap transportation, is a subway any use? Perhaps shut down the subway and only run busses or vice versa.
Well, perhaps Bezos will make the trains run on time.
Check your premises.
Yes. Because it is corrupt. They are investigated routinely by FBI. Many Swiss bank accounts making quite a few millionaires. Corruption is why it needs money. Also note, it is one of the dirtiest subway systems in the world. It is embarrassing and shameful that one of the richest cities in the richest countries has such a disgusting system. There are second world countries with cleaner and better run systems than NYC.
This. Privatize profits, and socialize the 'externalities'.
Jeesh! Yes, it is. Annual tickets where I am currently cost exactly 365 Euros ("the whole town for an euro a day" is the marketing gag behind it), a fare is 2.20. Don't know about monthly tickets, but they're fairly affordable, too.
What town is this, Munich?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It hasn't been updated as needed.
One example is the current signaling system. It is 60 - 80 years old. It's highly inaccurate compared to more moderns systems, and if it needs to be repaired, parts are difficult/impossible to come by.
That, like so many things, needed money/time for maintenance/upgrades, but it was never allocated. Now the service has gotten so poor due to the lack of maintenance that the cost to be up to date is prohibitive, thus the spiral.
If the MTA were someone with diabetes health risk, we're past "you should cut back on sugar" and now at "well, guess we're amputating your foot"
the rich who own the businesses are already getting subsidised due to being able to pay lower wages to employees who spend less getting to work...
it's all inter-connected, so it would not be "soaking the rich"
why do fuckwits not understand that the rich are taking advantage of everything and not paying their way...
They avoid paying taxe, but then complain because it costs em more for other shit, the rich want only the stuff they want cheap, and fuck evberyone else.
Thats why having the rich pay less tax because they "donate to charity" is fucking stupid, as then only the "stuff they care about" gets sorted (and in the case of a lot of the fuckers, cough president and family cough, they are enriched by it)
You just pay for it.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
Some people are more public than others. Public transport is actually poor people's transportation. The rich will always use another way to get around.
The subway runs ~100 trains and has nearly 1.8B riders every year and is heavily subsidized as well. They collect more than twice in tax-subsidies than fares and have more than $30B in debt. The real price of the subway should thus be ~$6.
The first problem is labor unions:
Average cost per year per unionized worker for the transit system: $140,000 - a lot of people in NYC make a lot less than that.
The second problem is mismanagement:
None of the managers want to challenge the unions and billions of dollars disappear every year without being accounted for
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It's not Munich, but it is a similarly affluent, smaller town in the southwest.
Once H2 gets going in LIC, the amount of revenue will double!
Ok, come to London then. The first, and the oldest (1863), and it works well. Yes, the Tube's a bit cramped by modern standards and they haven't been able to fit things like A/C on some of the lines, but visiting NYC and riding the subway there feels like a step back to the 1970s. Not quite as old, but go to Moscow and see another older system that works even better than London does. I think it's a fallacy claiming that the age of the system is the problem. But it is like software engineering, where if you don't take care of the technical debt in managable chunks as you go along, you end up drowning in broken unmaintainable shit and buggy hard to use product that users hate.
If you are driving an internal combustion engine you are already paying taxes from the moment you start your engine.
If you're in California you're paying 58 cents per gallon in taxes.
No idea how you are going to tax electric cars the same way. Tax electricity even more ?
Sad thing is I can see that happening, it's a pretty good way no one ever has the means to do a startup in their garage ever again.
Seriously, they should just ban private cars from the Island of Manhattan all together. I recently visited NY and having lived in Chicago for years all I have to say is that NYC is not really setup for cars. The buildings are too close together and there is way to much traffic. They are dependent on their mass transit system to function because of this and frankly it sucks. I mean Chicago's CTA system is no spring chicken but the MTA made it look amazing by comparison. If Chicago can get basic maintenance done and keep its system running what is the problem with NYC. It sounds to me like it is mostly corruption which coming from Chicago makes me feel like I'm throwing stones in a glass house but yeah.... But honestly NYC needs to encourage more usage of the public transport system by the upper class. Then they will have skin in the game and maybe the system will actually get the capital it needs to be fixed. Banning cars from Manhattan would do that. It could be sold as an environmental thing (Because it is). Maybe link into that the idea that taxi's that operate in Manhattan must be electric to ease the sell and allow trucks to still be allowed but only with a new licensing fee that helps subsidize the mass transit system.
The summary says ridership is diwn due to unreliable service.
The proposed solution is to raise rates and reduce service.
That does sound very New York, so I suppose it's not surprising. Here in Texas, if we had a problem caused by unreliable service we'd probably do something silly like fixing the service to make it more reliable.
Yeah and if they're so far away, walking and biking wouldn't be an option either.
That's my point. Rather than the employer pay their employees more, they'll just expect their employees to make unreasonable sacrifices.
Because forcing people to use run-down and broken public transportation doesn't fix the problem of a systematic, long-term lack of investment in the transportation infrastructure. What fixes that is more money. Where that money comes from used to be the economic engine of the middle class, but that's pretty much gone. Where did the money go? To the 1%. So if we need money to fix problems, that's where it's going to have to come from.
If the rich had been content to be rich, life would go on as usual. But they weren't content with that. They needed to have it all while everyone else got pretty much nothing. Right now, the top 1% richest people in the US own 35% of the wealth. If you look at the top 5% of the richest people in the US, they have 62% of the wealth in the country. That's absurd. And the bottom 40% of people, the bottom half of what used to be the middle class and the poor, own less than 1% of the wealth in the country.
40% of our country collectively owns 1% of the wealth of the whole country. I get that you've got yours and fuck everyone else, but you can't squeeze blood from a stone. It's not "soaking the rich" when they're so wealthy they don't know what to do with it, and we literally can't get any more money out of 40% of the population.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The fare are still $2.75 because the people which uses those transportation massively haven't have pay rise compared to inflation for an eternity. If you rise transportation by 25 cents, that's half a dollar a day, that's $12.5 less end of month, assuming 25 days work, and that meas essentially for some of them you tell them you get 1.5% less money per month... Or starve maybe 2 days.
Unless the working population of NYC has dropped, how are these people who used to take the transit getting to work?
I'm sure it's a variety of ways, but I know some people are taking taxis or ubers more often than they used to. I'm not sure what your point is.
Raise parking rates and/or toll fees.
So we can't tax wealthy people at all because that's "soaking the rich", but a great alternative is to make things more expensive for the working class by imposing taxes and fees on their transportation.
That and what follows is what killed your public transit.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Those "riff raff" are the people who clean the streets, collect the garbage, repair the potholes, maintain the electric and water and sewer systems and all the other things that go into keeping a city running. Remove them and you'd end up with a third-world slum piled with garbage and the rotting bodies of everyone who died of cholera.
Median income in NYC is around $59,000. The average salary of an MTA employee is around $90,000. Salaries, benefits, and retirement (the big issue - pensions) sucks up nearly $1.5 billion more than fares bring in. Meaning you start with a $1.5 billion deficit before you even spend a penny on infrastructure, power, ticket printing, etc. Get rid of the gold-plated benefits and pension packages, scale the wages back down to a reasonable level, and you might be able to save the system...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Iâ(TM)m willing to bet they the massive injections of cash for later maintenance that you mention is nothing compared with the cost of building a completely new system.
can take a car. The subway will survive.
As far as I can tell, it's survive long enough for the execs to cash out, unless they can get self-driving cars working. If they can do that, their profitability goes through the roof.
They've got the app, the brand, the user base, and they're already buying fleets of cars and leasing them to drivers. If they can take all the profits going to the drivers for themselves, that's pretty much a license to print money.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Eliminate every single cent of tax funding for all roads, streets, highways and freeways. Make them pay for themselves. Put tolls on every Interstate, and every other freeway and highway. Charge people the minute they pull out of their driveway. No paved road without users paying for it directly. No use of roads at all, unless people are paying for it directly.
The best way to do that is not having tolls on every road (way to expensive to maintain and administer) but to have a much higher gas tax. You drive more? You pay more. Gas price should be at least doubled in the USA.
If everyone switch to an electric car to avoid the gas tax, then at least we will solve the pollution problem and we could then tax by the distance driven.
Ride sharing is also having a substantial impact on the system, especially as the system enters the death spiral. In the past, people may have put up with poor service since there were no good alternatives, but now that ride sharing has significantly improved access to and reduced the price of hiring a private car, people are simply opting out. Unfortunately, this is just going to accelerate the spin downward.
FYI, "60 Minutes" just did a report on that system. The century-old technology shown is awesome; I'd love to be involved in that engineering/repair in another life. And frankly, I don't know what the harm is in using it. As an old firmware guy, I know that computerizing everything will leave it just as prone to faults.
Oh Bull Shit. Seriously. What, you want people riding for free? Who is to pay maintenance to the tracks and cars? Who is to pay for police protection both on the trains and at the stations. You are an idiot. It isn't free, and 25 cents is not an outrageous increase.
Think about it critically. The system generated a lot of money and time for NYC overall, so just because it costs $X per ride doesn't mean that's what the ticket should be. The service should be priced to maximize productivity, i.e. total number of person-hours saved, maybe with a correction for a few factors like health benefits and ability of disabled or elderly people to use the system, etc...
Having the subway system work and work well is worth a fortune to NYC, which has a GDP of $1.33 Trillion USD. It makes the city more productive, it cuts cancer risk by putting fewer cars on the road, it cuts deaths and medical and emergency costs by reducing auto accidents, it saves millions of people a lot of time every day and that time goes back into doing stuff, and it lets people get around town to spend money more easily. Tickets clearly shouldn't be priced based on what it costs per ride.
They consistently give money to the Transit Union members, like two highly paid employees per train (double anywhere else), for example, rather than spending on capital repairs and improvements (and what they do spend, they waste most of it on political patronage).
Until the residents of NYC vote in a different set of people who aren't in the pockets of certain influences (Unions, ecowarriors, etc...), they're never going to have a cost effective Subway.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Should be a federally mandated gas tax (thatâ(TM)s a percentage) and it should be around 15% (more for diesel) with proceeds apportioned to pet-rider usage of local transport.
Funds transport. Incentivizes electric rollout.
Add to that list:
-- A lot of the money we spend via the Pentagon 'effin around in the Middle East is also a barely hidden oil price subsidy. Let's add a Keeping The Middle East Safe For The Nicest Vicious Dictators Tax on our gasoline.
We are robbing our general funds to the tune of trillions of dollars. Public transit is not going to look so crazy when ALL the hidden subsidies are paid overtly, and the price at the pump heads towards $10 a gallon.
NYC is not doing public transportation right. But don't worry, the leftards know how to do it.
Why should people who don't use it pay for it?
Why should I pay to maintain the roads around your home? I don't use them. Yet I do.
If you say because min wage workers can't than afford to get to work. My response is GOOD! That means employers would not be able to hire people for minimum wage
Oh, you sweet summer child.
Or maybe NYC's political choices of late have led to poor governance.
It should be noted that the subway and trains in NYC are a state entity. NYC's government has no official say in how they operate or spend money.
Well, if you only care about confirming your own ideologically pre-ordained conclusion, then discussing reality is not for you, no.
NYC is a tremendous economic engine. The economic health of NYC a city, state, and national asset. Albany likes to tax all those hefty salaries in NYC, yet balks at paying a share for things like public transit, that helps keep the goose laying the golden eggs healthy. Ditto Washington DC.
So why aren't they making money?
Deferred maintenance. NY State has been putting off maintenance work for decades, and they've reached the point where 1) they can't wait any longer, and 2) the maintenance is much more expensive.
Why? The state government controls the trains and subway in NYC. The state's legislature has been quite dysfunctional, because a small group of Democrats decided their non-NYC districts would get more power if they allied with the Republicans. So they did, and went along with their non-NYC Republican friends who arbitrarily decided it was "too much money".
It's getting fixed now because enough Republicans and breakaway Democrats lost their elections so that they can no longer control the legislature. But that means paying for many years of maintenance now.
Does Taiwan have public transit unions? And Democrats who use unions as a money laundering service for their campaign contributions? Do those bus companies you speak so highly of, use union labor?
The answer to this question will indicate the key difference between Taiwan, and New York City (or pretty much every large city in the US).
Isn't it strange how no story I've read, on this, mentioned how much revenue goes towards union benefits and labor?
Until the residents of NYC vote in a different set of people who aren't in the pockets of certain influences (Unions, ecowarriors, etc...), they're never going to have a cost effective Subway.
The subway and trains in NYC are operated by the state. NYC has consistently elected politicians who want to fix the system. But the state legislature has been controlled by non-NYC politicians until recently. They, like you, pretended that it was possible to squeeze blood from a stone and just didn't appropriate the money the MTA asked for.
If NYC was serious about global warming they would fund the MTA and make it the best transit system in the world. It's one of the most direct ways to keep cars off the roads and one of the most efficient ways to get from one place to another.
So next time a politician in NY says they care about climate change, ask them why the hell they aren't fixing the MTA.
I could have fixed the problem with my post, if I had proofread it. Maybe even look at the screen while I'm typing next time.
Yes, you are describing corruption. Personal gain is what the bureaucrats are after. The problem is that the voters don't mind. If they did, they would vote accordingly. Let's cut to chase, the details are frivolous, the fundamentals are everything.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Other cities don't charge a ridiculous 5 dollar rate one way like NYC so there is much less incentive to steal a free ride. Guess what the conductors on trains do.
It is. But the annual rate comes to less than three bucks a day which is cheap if you travel a lot. Even for back and forth to work only it is cheap.
Ridership was increasing annually by 50 million through 2014, then in 2015 it only increased by 11 million, and it has been decreasing at an accelerating rate since. Democrat Bill de Blasio became mayor in 2014. Funny timing huh?
http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts...
Better known as 318230.
With good reason, because they will make them. People are desperate to keep their job, even if it means a net loss to them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The core problem with the MTA like many services in disrepair is apathy. People have accepted crap service, the hard-working people who are employed by the MTA are surrounded by lazy apathetic non-workers, and become demoralized. Individuals become apathetic when they feel powerless to improve a situation.Ti fux that you need to:
a) Give employees self-worth by allowing them to do a better job and to realize that their service is appreciated and important.
b) Have the public reward them for good service. A reward can be as simple as people thanking MTA employees. It is surprising how much of a difference a person thanking someone else makes.
There are MTA internal people who care. You need to empower them.
Imagine for a moment if NYC had a day where the public helped clean MTA stations/trains etc. I bet a pile of employers would support their employees doing that. Apathy is caused when people feel they cannot change something.
The MTA can be fixed. It is NOT unfixable. It can be fixed at a very reasonable cost compared to letting it slowly get worse and worse.
Nonsense. The only problem of public transport is everyone expecting it to be profitable. If it is supposed to retain usability and at least a minimum of attractiveness in terms of both service and price, it just can't be profitable in the long run. To be and stay an affordable and usable means of transportation, it has to be publicly financed, and generously so. It's really that simple.
The challenge is to find a way to do that while also getting good value. It's very easy for all quasi-monopolists to push the consequences ahead of them rather than deliver a better service. Obviously having competing subways doesn't work, so the usual solution is to run some kind of subsidization but try to operate them as a business with a budget and to make the most of what they get. But since it's not "real" profit they typically can't make investment decisions like new lines or subway cars or signal systems on their own because that'll require new subsidies, which means they get some perverse incentives to not spend "their" money on it but rather let it crumble until they get new external funding. It's not trivial making it work well, even the places it does work well...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
NYC is big. Raise bridge tolls in/out of Manhattan, a lot. 'Special' (crunchy peanut butter with ghost pepper as lube) tolls for uber cars. Different rules further out. You can 'tune' the bridge tolls by observing line length, put up signs, tolls _should_ go up 'while they're on line'. Parking is already, more or less, at market rate.
That will raise the cost of uber in the core of NYC substantially. Which will push people back onto the subway and busses.
Investigate the transit finances and engineering. The organizations are too old, peter principle says almost 100% of people will be operating at their level of incompetence, only the kids might be competent at their jobs. Needs a reboot and technical overhaul. Aren't the subways on some insane 1880 power?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh yes, because those travelling by car are totally paying their own way... there are never any government investments in that infrastructure. That 9/10 of a cent gas tax (being facetious, it's obviously more, but still peanuts), totally pays for everything.
At some point, it becomes self limiting. The MTA has a captive market segment, just based on the capacity of alternatives.
They (MTA) need to price to breakeven at that captive market segment, that will saturate the alternatives, for a little while. That misery will bring them a profit.
That and change their costs, somehow, modernize or start hiring staff in front of home depot, their call. Retire some deadwood, you know it's there by the building full.
Isn't the 'Port Authority' involved? Fuck...I'd rather interfere with Putin's cash cow while in Russia than them. You know they are siphoning off _truckloads_ of cash.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Rather than tracking mileage, why not just charge electric vehicles more for registration. In Illinois electric vehicles have a different license plate. Just charge a higher amount for renewing those plates than for ICE vehicles to make up for the lost gas tax.
How does this affect the farejumpers, if they are no longer prosecuted?
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
Perhaps that 2 Billion in subsidies to Amazon should instead go to the public transport which improves the lives of 5 million citizens a day.
Raise fare, cut unnecessary/underused service and clean up the subway. It is disgusting.
Democrats in action. They ruined Chicago and Detroit, now it's NY's turn.
You mean the people who use mass transit will have to pay for it??? What an outrage!
"Make everything shitty for everyone to force a few people to do what you want."
Yup. You're a leftist.
Raise the rates until they pay for the system.
If employees have to spend more to get to work, the cost of each employee to the employer will go up -- both because of employees successfully demanding that the employer compensate them for transportation costs and because some marginal employees will move out of NYC.
This of course will discourage employers from creating new jobs in NYC -- either using more automation to reduce labor requirements and/or situating new jobs, where possible, outside NYC.
This will then reduce the load on the transportation system so fewer buses/subway runs etc will be needed.
Just let the market work.
If NYC will subsidize housing (Section 8), Food (EBT), Health (Medicare), Utilities (don't know the name), why isn't there a monthly pass for poorer residents? Which could be defined as "a monthly pass at $X or 1% of your take home pay, whichever is less" Or simply "$X, unless you make less than $Y/hr then $Z".
Your ad here. Ask me how!
If you think Toronto's shit, try living in Ottawa (the national capital). It's not uncommon for busses to be up to an hour late a triple stacked.
Because forcing people to use run-down and broken public transportation doesn't fix the problem of a systematic, long-term lack of investment in the transportation infrastructure. What fixes that is more money. Where that money comes from used to be the economic engine of the middle class, but that's pretty much gone. Where did the money go? To the 1%. So if we need money to fix problems, that's where it's going to have to come from.
If the rich had been content to be rich, life would go on as usual. But they weren't content with that. They needed to have it all while everyone else got pretty much nothing. Right now, the top 1% richest people in the US own 35% of the wealth. If you look at the top 5% of the richest people in the US, they have 62% of the wealth in the country. That's absurd. And the bottom 40% of people, the bottom half of what used to be the middle class and the poor, own less than 1% of the wealth in the country.
40% of our country collectively owns 1% of the wealth of the whole country. I get that you've got yours and fuck everyone else, but you can't squeeze blood from a stone. It's not "soaking the rich" when they're so wealthy they don't know what to do with it, and we literally can't get any more money out of 40% of the population.
We are the 99% is a brilliant slogan and a great concept. Too bad the racists couldn't get past the fact that 99% includes white males, Christians, and other groups that liberals just can't stand. I can put aside my differences to work on a 99% that includes many people I disagree with. The 1% thrives by supporting the aggrieved groups that constantly choose to make it all about them instead of working together.
The passengers arrive within in 2 days for Prime members. Sometimes 1 day if you order enough qualifying items.
...But it is like software engineering, where if you don't take care of the technical debt in managable chunks as you go along, you end up drowning in broken unmaintainable shit and buggy hard to use product that users hate.
That explains the California freeways.
Actually, the proposed solution is to raise usage fees, which not a "liberal" idea at all, but a libertarian one. And, it's a pretty good solution - the people that use the service should ultimately bear an appropriate chunk of it's operating costs.
As an aside, you should probably work on your reading comprehension skills before telling others to.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Well, this is what the central planner types love to do: make everything except their chosen way be a huge pain in the ass, cost more, etc.
Because their way is the RIGHT way, and every other way needs to be taxed or regulated out of existence in their minds.
The problem with that is that some people drive a lot more than others. A flat fee per car is not a good idea to pay for roads (or pollution).
Or instead of taxing by distance which would ultimately set off the libertarians that don't want the G-men knowing how many miles they put on a vehicle, etc.; tax the tires.
Everything uses tires, and will until we have antigravity systems. And if you are buying tires with a tread compound that puts extra wear on roads (studded tires if those still exist?) or tires for heavier vehicles that put more wear on roads, tax them at a higher rate.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
There's some areas you could brush up on too.
I guess I'm wondering if they have less riders, then maybe service cuts are in order to reduce unused capacity?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I can put aside my differences to work on a 99% that includes many people I disagree with.
Damn son. You do realize that the line before that you called liberals racists who hate Christians, right?
Pretty hard to take your claim at face value when you are literally doing the thing you're ranting about others doing.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Yes, better spend all that taxpayer money on more weapons.
Yes...20 years from now, after everything is already a clusterfuck.
Between consolidated patent armegeddon, non-existent anti-trust enforcement, and the evaporation of the middle class we have already kissed goodbye to the garage startup.
So, the ticket prices should go up to reflect the increased cost of operation, so then the people using the transport will either stay away, or the employers/retainers will need to adjust to make it worth their effort to travel..
If you just start taxing selected targets to fund it - what has already happened will continue, and that is the 'Other peoples money' problem where operating costs just continue to escalate - which is the real problem here.
If the service would just focus on providing what it is supposed to - transportation as cheaply and efficiently as possible - then they would have little issue.
However, like most similar 'services' they keep adding more and more costs, many of which are actually making customers travel harder, and then they complain about not enough funding.
How much do you actually know about this? Because it sounds like you're just regurgitating the opinions of anarcho-capitalist pundits, who generally have no actual knowledge of how any of these things work, but claim there are inefficiencies and communists hiding in every shadow.
Why should people who don't use it pay for it?
Because you still benefit from it existing. Those people that are NOT taking cars to work are NOT filling the roads, and NOT slowing you down as YOU drive to work.
You still benefit from them being able to take the subway even if you never do yourself.
You don't depend on government to get around? Where is this mystical place where roads spring up out of the ground?
You canâ(TM)t apply the tired,old âoejust pay market rates!â argument to an inflexible need with no competition. You have realize that New Yorkâ(TM)s economy as a whole depends on the service functioning properly. It would be better to subsidize it with taxes rather than give all that money to Bezos.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
In a functioning one-party republic, citizens can still primary out an underperforming governor or state representative.
Yeah, letâ(TM)s also add pay per usage fees on roads for anything over 30kg. Keep it fair.
People and business moving to cities that suck less.
the private cars and taxis are taking the roads for free, emitting more pollution per passenger for free.
The likes of you loves to tell this BS story. But, it is patently false.
Private cars and taxis pay for the roads, perhaps more than anyone else. On top of the taxes that they pay - income, sales, property - they also pay fuel tax, vehicle registration(road tax), licensing, and several other "hidden" taxes. These are taxes that they pay, that cyclists, pedestrians, buses... do not pay.
Roads were built for private vehicles at the expense of private vehicle owners. I may forgive you for thinking otherwise because you may never have owned a vehicle. But, it seems far more likely that you are just furthering a bald faced lie to support your own agenda or biases.
Being profitable makes it easier to set aside funds for capital investment. Some projects run in to the hundreds of millions or even billions, and those are hits that politicians hate. This is how Transport for London operates, or it did until the current mayor got elected on a promise of freezing fares. Then he got caught with a £200-300M budget hit due to a schedule miss (£15B project)
That wiki page says London is at a 107%, and itâ(TM)s older.
It also says:
Maybe time to change the fare structure on the MTA?
Dont have to imagine that. I live in Florida. Land of the NY rejects.
The problem comes with ridehailing companies.
That is bullshit when they handle a tiny fraction of all the traffic.
Have you BEEN to NYC and actually ridden the trains/subways?
I have, a bunch. And in just the short time I have visited I got a major taste of what you poor NYC bastards have to go through every day.
A train from NJ (the airport there is sadly vastly better than LaGuardia) had us waiting about 30 minutes, stopped in a tunnel, no reason given. Just hanging out in a dark, very filth (but then being in NYC I repeat myself), tunnel.
Many times subways were on crazy schedules, did not come with any regularity. I took to just walking anywhere pithing 15 blocks, as it was usually faster (or at least predictable).
Plus of course they have Penn Station, the station where commuters go in but they don't come out.
So no, "ride sharing companies" are not the problem - as the article states, the whole system is now so unreliable it has pushed people into using ride airing, or literally any other means of transport.
If I had a lot of money I would be heading to NYC and starting a dirigible company, based on all the open roofs they have there.
On a side note though, still would way rather travel to NYC than SF. At this point I will not set foot in SF again until they have regained sanity and some measure of sanitation. As dirty as NYC is, still way cleaner than SF.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Owners of private motor vehicles pay minimal registration and use fees and get unlimited use of the roads and free on-street parking.
I don't think that qualifies as motor vehicle use "paying for itself", do you?
All its really doing is taking money from the middle class so the very wealthy capital owner class get access to an artificially cheap labor pool. ... well, in my country not public funded. ...
There are people who use public transport for other things than going to work.
E.g. into the swimming pool, oh that is probably public funded, too.
E.g. to go to school or university, oops that is probably public funded, too.
E.g. to go to the pub and drink some beer and get home again
E.g. to go to the cinema and home again
E.g. to visit a doctor
E.g. to buy groceries
Do you really want me to pay 5 times $5 to a "profitable" pubic transport just because I do my daily activities?
Sorry: it must really suck to have grown up in a country with your retarded mindset. No wonder the US is on the decline, you don't even make good music anymore, sigh.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Article says they're considering raising the basic rate by 25 cents, to 3.00. That's ridiculously cheap
That is not ridiculous cheap, that is ridiculous expensive.
In Paris a single trip is EUR 1.20. That is roughly $1.50. And you can go from one end of the city to the other.
There's zero reason for a good public transit system to not cost virtually equivalent price to private transit in a large city.
You are an idiot. There are hundreds of reasons.
For starters: an empty train has nearly the exact same costs as a full train. Public transport is like the basic grid costs for electricity. It does not matter if you draw power or not, you pay the basic fee, because you are connected. That is usually a relatively cheap fee. In some countries there is even a small amount of power included in that fee, enough to run a fridge e.g.
I really don't get why idiots like you think that every aspect of life, like "walking" from A to B, by using a public transport train, needs to yield a profit for someone else.
I live in a world where 90% of the things that people take for granted, are "at cost". No one makes a profit. I have water for as close to zero as economically possible, schools and universities cost nothing, usually bus to school costs nothing, depending on city public transport is cheap (my town is probably the most expensive in Germany, suckers!), we have a working and fast railway system (cheaper than using a car, but people complain because they never actually check how much they spent using a car), I can go into a public funded swimming pool and don't pay a fortune, or go into the Sauna.
Western Europe - with short breaks - lives like this since greek and roman ages. But I see: you are happy that you don't have to pay $20 to visit a swimming pool for 2h because: you never go there. I pay like $10,000 taxes every year. And: I for funk sake don't care if they use it to pay a teacher or a swimming supervisour in a school I'm long to old to visit or a swimming pool (we actually call it a Bath!) which I only frequent once a year.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
How much of the rider decline is due car/bike/scooter sharing? If it is significant, sounds like the transportation issue is already solved.
The great equalizers of wealth are war, disaster, and plague. Stability breeds concentration of wealth. Things haven't been horrible for most people in a while.
Not liberals - Progressives. Progressives are racists who hate Christians. Duh, everyone knows that.
Yup. There are hardly any real startups in Surveillance Valley. 99% of so called "startups" are just business units of the venture capital cabal that owns the Valley.
Nooooooooooo! Jeff Bezos absolutely NEEDS a bigger super-yacht. It's all about PRIORITIES here people! Look at you mooches, demanding public support for "public transport". What are you, a bunch of deplorables?
Free (tax funded) subway service could potentially cut a lot of cost from the MTA.
Fire (or reassign to something actually productive) all the workers engaged in watching for fare jumpers, chasing fare jumpers, maintaining fare gates, maintaining the Metrocard computers and networks, etc.
I say potentially, because of course that will not happen. NYC government is notoriously corrupt to the bone. The MTA is a cash cow for highly placed embezzlers, a patronage engine for local politicians, a make-work jobs program, and a public transport system... in that order of priority.
You've obviously never ridden the Subway in midtown at rush hour.
Hint: the fanciest limo gets just as stuck in traffic as everyone else. The Subway, on the other hand, does NOT get stuck in traffic.
New York State is one of the very very few political entities that is even more corrupt than New York City.
And heavier vehicles (semis, trucks, etc) damage roads much more than lighter vehicles.
I also live in an expensive German city, and pay about 40,000 Euros in income taxes (plus at least another 15K in VAT on purchases) - so, your 10K in taxes feels like a joke to me.
I'm not suggesting that public transport "needs to yield a profit", only that it is totally acceptable that it might cost nearly as much as private transport - why shouldn't it, you are being transported the same distance (the same "work" is being done). I am also not suggesting that it *should* cost as much, only that it is acceptable that it *could* cost as much. In fact, I expect economies of scale would result in a lower cost - but, that is a separate issue.
You're totally deluded if you think your water, schools and swimming pools are operating at cost - these are very heavily tax payer subsidized services - remember who pays those taxes - you and I do (and apparently I pay a lot more than you)
I didn't say it should, I said it was acceptable if it did.
Public transport - when done well, like in some major cities around the world - is simply a better (as in quicker, more convenient) mode of transport than private, so there's no reason that the cost of that "service" not reflect its true value.
If the value - as captured by the cost of an individual operating his own vehicle for the same journey - is X, then why shouldn't the same journey via public transport be approx. X ? Of course, I expect it to be less, possibly significantly less, but, it seems like the market is capturing the value by way of the price of an individual's private journey, and I can't see a valid reason for that value not being reflected in the price of a ticket on public transit, especially if the public transit systems costs are justifiably similar.
with NYC but the problem may be bigger in political terms than you might think.
New York city has long been held out as a shining example of left-leaning governance working. People who do not live there are often told that all our cities should have the mass transit systems that NYC has. It turns out, however, that the very big government Democrat politicians who run New York cannot make those systems work and properly maintain them without raising fees and taxes to levels that even Democrat voters will not accept.
This problem should be seen as the political dynamite it is by the left wingers who have a nearly religious belief in government-run mass transit. If your side's best-known politicians in one of the richest and most-taxed cities in the nation cannot make this stuff work, then you have a big problem. In stead of NYC being a shinig example all progressives can point to in any debate on glimate change and mass transit, NYC is a dark example that all right wingers can point to as concrete proof that this stuff is ultimately unworkable.
The founder of the USA were very clever; they set up a system where each state can be a laboratory where many ideas are tried without damaging the entire nation, and ideas that proved worthy in some states could then be embraced by others. In this case, there seems to be a laboratory fire in New York. Oh, and having the anchor at CNN as a liberal democrat brother of the liberal democrat governor of New York can help keep this stuff out of the mainstream media, but that sort of propaganda in place of journalism will not hold things at bay forever.
Government is screwing up, so you want to ......... TAKE MORE FREEDOM FROM INDIVIDUALS and make them even MORE hostage to that government?????
What's needed here is far MORE freedom and competition. The single biggest problem with big government is that it does not have to compete with anybody and therefor has ZERO incentive to perform well. The more that individuals are dependent upon that government, the more they become virtual hostages to bad government services.
As a good compromise, NYC *could* separate the bus system and the subway system and put the two into unrelated hands with neither being allowed to be unionized (since if they are unionized they will immediately get behind the same politicians and begin scratching each other's backs and supporting each other's strikes) and then put in place a steep incentives plan to wildly reward the employees of whichever service is hauling the most passangers and keeping them happiest (measured by user surveys). In other words: INTRODUCE COMPETITION and in a form where the workers have a positive stake.
Gas price should be at least doubled in the USA.
Great then it can go from paying a tiny fraction of the cost of a road to a small fraction of the cost of a road.
I agree though, the USA needs to get away from its subsidised fuel cost. The damage being done by addiction to burning as much gasoline as possible is not remotely reflected in the tax applied to it in America.
Add to that list: -- A lot of the money we spend via the Pentagon 'effin around in the Middle East is also a barely hidden oil price subsidy. Let's add a Keeping The Middle East Safe For The Nicest Vicious Dictators Tax on our gasoline.
Excellent point, I forgot about that.
The best way to do that is not having tolls on every road (way to expensive to maintain and administer) but to have a much higher gas tax. You drive more? You pay more. Gas price should be at least doubled in the USA.
I'm not arguing with the benefit of a gas tax here, just trying to point out that people tend to complain about subsidies for public transit without realizing how much subsidizing of private transit there is.
Btw a gas tax isn't a perfect way of getting "drive more, pay more" - I can theoretically drive a subcompact that gets 60 mpg a lot more than an SUV or light truck that gets 15 mpg and still pay less in gas (and gas tax). Of course a truck is doing more damage to the road than a subcompact, so the question is what is the correct price per ton of vehicle or whatever if we want to be completely "fair".
Why are you projecting racism?
Where did you get the time machine? Does everybody in 1998 dress like you?
Inefficiencies and crony capitalists.
Also, we're doing away with 'tax exempt' license plates on busses and municipal vehicles? Correct?
Also a pro-rated battery disposal and rare-earth mine taling disposal tax. I think we can afford to be forward thinking.
Who, pray tell, is burning as much fuel as possible? Is there some club of enthusiasts we should be made aware of? Or are you just spinning up ludicrous BS?
So we can't tax wealthy people at all because that's "soaking the rich", but a great alternative is to make things more expensive for the working class by imposing taxes and fees on their transportation.
So, "the rich" is the guy who owns the business or who has his assets registered in a place that NYC can tax. Business owner simply adds a few cents to the cost of whatever it is his business does, and while most of the assets people shrug their shoulders and pay up, some of them move their assets away from the taxing authority...so the net difference is the same. Taxing the rich has literally never been the panacea solution to raising revenue long term because its those same rich people who can take advantage of tax loopholes, shelters and havens. Those folks are the ones whose assets that count (aka: "the ones you wanna tax") are fairly mobile and if it gets too onerous, those mobile assets...move.
I should have perhaps explained that better the first time around.
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
Every dollar spent 'on the pentagon' is going to well-paid workers in defense industry production. I know it makes the left furious to acknowledge this, but Daddy Warbucks just skims a small fraction off the top.
Bezos makes the people running Walmart look like pikers. And yet the shrill condescension of so many towards Walmart, who have no problem keeping up their Prime subscription from Amazon. Is it because Bezos buffers them from the unclean deplorables by requiring the delivery dude to regularly change into a fresh uniform?
Because forcing people to use run-down and broken public transportation doesn't fix the problem of a systematic, long-term lack of investment in the transportation infrastructure. What fixes that is more money. Where that money comes from used to be the economic engine of the middle class, but that's pretty much gone. Where did the money go? To the 1%. So if we need money to fix problems, that's where it's going to have to come from.
If the rich had been content to be rich, life would go on as usual. But they weren't content with that. They needed to have it all while everyone else got pretty much nothing. Right now, the top 1% richest people in the US own 35% of the wealth. If you look at the top 5% of the richest people in the US, they have 62% of the wealth in the country. That's absurd. And the bottom 40% of people, the bottom half of what used to be the middle class and the poor, own less than 1% of the wealth in the country.
40% of our country collectively owns 1% of the wealth of the whole country. I get that you've got yours and fuck everyone else, but you can't squeeze blood from a stone. It's not "soaking the rich" when they're so wealthy they don't know what to do with it, and we literally can't get any more money out of 40% of the population.
That's all very eloquent but you won't solve your problem when your solution is "tax the rich". That's California's recipe for success and people are fleeing that state in droves BECAUSE of those policies but while Cali has been getting all that kind of press lately, New York is right there along with them: https://www.bizjournals.com/ne...
You cannot tax yourself to prosperity. It doesn't work, has never worked and won't ever work even though you have an entirely valid point of who holds all the wealth. Those with the wealth leave when someone tries to take too much of it. Cali and NY are stark evidence of it.
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
What about a good stiff shoe tax for pedestrians? They shouldn't pay their fair share?
Merchandise, not passengers. You don't need to travel except for recreationally.
Revenue should be allowed to drop if there are fewer passengers. That's just how it works when fewer busses and subway cars are running.
Because the choice is one or the other. Right.
Thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts.
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
Can we afford to import all the additional shoe leather from Argentina?
Why a weight requirement? A head tax is more equitable.
Perhaps New York needs to pressure wash out some of the barnacles, bureaucrats, and featherbedders out of the works. Any really old ' public works' is bound to have built up a crust that needs flushing.
Union bosses travel in good old Detroit Iron. You won't catch them on the subway.
Let me guess. They drive the operating costs up?
California?!? The 5th biggest economy in the world by comparison to countries? The ones who normally operate on a surplus and have a lower debt ratio than most other states; forget comparing to countries. One of 50 states but contributes 20% of the US economy. The one that contributes 35% more to the US budget than the next state!
Yeah, buddy I think you are probably talking about some other state.
I see you used a dogwhistle, 'sprawl.'
You don't. Unless you're paying the county tax out here. And why would you?
I don't work anywhere that has subways as an alternative way to get there. In fact, I travel about 3 miles to work, on the other side of a Midwest small town.
At least a few of those 'five times' activities are not daily activities. So tone down your multiplication. Simpler arithmetic will reduce the shrillness of your message.
Uber's exit strategy is the demographic data they will eventually sell or lease when things settle out and the mining costs rise.
Eventually Uber runs out of people stupid enough to use their services to 'share their car' with strangers.
Taxes? Where do these magic 'tax dollars' come from?
Do govt. bureaucrats get to skim some off?
You keep talking about this "you can't tax the rich" stuff but you can. Most economies, including ours, do just that. We carve out some exceptions to alter investments but in general as a human population we tax the rich. Not as much as we used to but we still do.
Your statements aren't supported by reality nor economic theory. Example, NYC has a income tax. The rate goes up slightly as you earn more. Nearly 4% on 500k+ earners.
I see you're trying to avoid the argument by invoking partisanship. When even cities which were built around the car find that they can't keep up with demand for car infrastructure and that adding to it in fact causes bigger problems, what do you think more traffic in New York will do?
Oh well. Sounds like a problem located within state boundaries. It's sure a good thing no Federal dollars at all are needed. We outsiders can watch. Shoot entertaining documentaries and charge admission if you want us to pay.
We have the Internet now. You don't need to live in a metropolis any longer to immerse yourself in mass culture. Your crowded diseased cities are obsolete.
I certainly don't depend on NY City or State government. I thought you were one of those people who emphasized the differences in forms of government. (Left/right and all that)
I have read these kinds of articles for years. Finally instead of just laughing at how incredibly stupid they are I thought I might just respond.
If you want to measure the revenue of a public transportation system simply halt it's operations for one year. Measure the the relative increase or decrease of economic activity in the effected area, eg. the city limits. If you find, after one year, that commercial economic activity has increased, you can then argue that public transportation is a "cost" to the community. If on the other hand, you see a marked down turn in commercial activity, due to customers not being able to reach said businesses, and employees not being able to commute to their places of employment, you can count said economic losses as the profit, the value-add, of the public transportation system.
Death spiral. Give me a break. Poor New York, poor MTA. Look at the millions fleeing NYC, the city is failing, the sky is falling and death is nigh!. The very idea that a public transportation system should be turning a profit according to quarterly accounting practices is so brain dead that a collective ouch of agony of trillions of still functioning brain cells scream out in vain. An accounting practice that does not take into account the timeline of that which it means to measure, is beyond meaningless.
Public transportation systems effectively have a lifetime of in-perpetuum, particularly if they are not so spectacularly mismanaged as to threaten the viability of the community. The revenue of a public transportation systems *is* the tax the base of the community.
In the absence of the said systems the community, as such, would not exist, and yes -roads, sidewalks, bike paths, and highways are all part of public transportation systems. Failure to use the tax base of a community to maintain and improve the existing public transportation systems, and investing said moneys in expanding available transportation options is simply malfeasance-mismanagement. It reflects in no way on the utility of said public transportation systems, but rather how incredibly short-sighted and dumb their elected leadership is.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Not only the truck is doing more damage to the road, but also much more to the environment. One of the best thing that could happen to the world would be for the USA to trade its large SUV for compact cars.
It's cheap compared to what it costs in DC. It's all relative.
Yes. But so what? Is a well-paying job that drains the nation's coffers to dubious ends somehow better than a blue-collar job keeping a subway track in running condition?
The topic on hand is whether public transit is net economically beneficial. We must consider the full and complete costs of keeping passenger cars running on the roads, in order to come to a meaningful conclusion.
Why some might be politically motivated to hide costs is really necessary.
Given the relative spaciousness of the motor vehicle roadways and the shrinking (or in many cases absent) pedestrian walkways, I'd say that your comparison is rather lopsided.
But consistent with automobile lobbyists it avoids noting that even the driver of a motor vehicle must become a pedestrian at minimum when approaching or exiting the vehicle.
Yes. Amazon wins by not having smelly, lardy, googly-eyed weirdos greeting me.
Sure. Fewer riders -> poorer service -> fewer riders -> (until the total collapse of public transit).
Did you even consider that there are now fewer riders because of poorer service? Subway lines regularly go out of service lately so that maintenance crews can try to catch up to the work that's been delayed for decades. Half-hour commutes can turn into one or two hour commutes when that happens.
The correct answer is to improve service and regain the business of the commuters who have basically given up trying to deal with the current poor service. And yes, that will take an infusion of tax dollars to accomplish.
Interesting although I don't know that your belief in MTA being a "patronage engine" is correct; I think it may simply be that the current status is a historical artifact.
But your proposal to eliminate fares would definitely speed up bus transit. Currently buses stall at the stops for as much as several minutes while passengers dutifully single-file through the narrow entry door and pause to feed their metrocard or their coins (yes, some still pay with coins) into the fare box.
"Select" (yes, they call them that officially) buses use ticket vending machines at the bus stops and require passengers to use them to prepay the fare; this permits entry via both the front and rear doors. But it's a terrible solution. Imagine getting to the bus stop just as the bus arrives and frantically trying to buy your ticket in time to board before the bus leaves. Then imagine that several other people are in the same situation right alongside you.
In the limit as the number of heads (passengers) approaches a large number, the transport becomes public transit.
So perhaps you meant to suggest a reverse head tax: highest for a single occupant of a motor vehicle and decreasing as the number of occupants increases. Sort of like HOV lanes.
"This train is being held by Supervision due to train traffic up ahead."
And there's a drawbridge along the subway (actually elevated in that section) line I use that occasionally causes trains to wait for a ship to pass or for the bridge to become "unstuck" after being raised.
But returning to the woes of those who travel by car - not only fancy limos, but ambulances and fire trucks are often stuck in traffic thanks to the city's refusal to dedicate a lane to emergency vehicles exclusively and at all times. How many lives and how much property is lost as a result?
You cannot tax yourself to prosperity.
Nope. Not at all. On this we agree. But we can't be prosperous if the bulk of the money that would be available to fuel the economy is tied up in the hands of the top 5% of the population.
How we get to prosperity is essentially "the velocity of money". The faster money changes hands, the better the economy.
So how do we pull this money back, and inject it back into the economy? I'll give you a hint - it starts with a T.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Partisanship?
Clearly the solution is to spread out, and not concentrate in dense cities. Cities are important marketplaces, and density there is a positive attribute. They are not practical for general purpose dwelling spaces. Residential housing should be moved out, and only market-function occupations kept in the city. This can be done by simply letting market forces play. There will be less traffic as a result.
No, I don't mean high density public housing along mass transit corridors. That's what people who use the 'sprawl' dogwhistle usually campaign for.
There are so many possibilities when freedom and not prescriptiveness is embraced. I like ideas like transport pods. People detest giving up their personal space for mass transit.
One solution would be for lower-speed 'pods' to transport people from their dwellings to transit hubs. There, the local undercarriage is disconnected and the pods go on high speed rail carriages. People could buy as luxurious or as cheap a 'pod' as they wish, and they could be high denstiy stacked in the central city after being disconnected from the rail carriage. This is just an example. Humanity is creative, when their options are not prescribed by 'social planners' and bureaucrats.
The truly rich and even the mildly affluent often get into the car in their garage and get out of it in a parking garage where there's an elevator or a skyway to their office.
I am a strong advocate for pedestrians. The concept of 'jaywalking' should be abolished in cities. I live in a fairly crappy area of the country where the car is 'king' and it's risky to even take the dog on a walk directly from my house. We drive to a parkway and walk starting from there. Cars are stinking noisy things when I'm walking adjacent to roadways.
Best hurry home, then, because the smelly, lardy googly-eyed weirdo from Amazon left a package on your doorstep. Or do they have entry access to your building/house?
But let's decriminalize fare evasion because it's "racist" that only n1gggers do it.
How does Amazon prevent your sister from greeting you?
The NYC subway carries commuters from outside the city center, just like you want. I don't think a rational argument can be made for a science fiction solution when the real world alternative to a working subway system right now is that people will use cars and end up with the biggest traffic jam known to mankind.
NYC is half the population of the State. Their predominant party controls 2/3 of the State government. You're telling me NYC has no influence on what NY State government does? That the same Party bosses who give favors to the Transit Union are only a State Government phenomenon and who the voters in NYC vote for in State government doesn't influence that? What incentive do rural NYers have to vote for corrupt politicians at the State level whose corruption is focused on ensuring jobs and cash for NYC Unions?
Go ahead, pull the other leg now...
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The NYC conductors sit there and open and close the doors. You know, what the train operator also does in every other part of the world. They don't have anything to do with fare enforcement, that's the NYPD. It's a sinecure, a make-work job for the purpose of having more Transit Union members on the payroll.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Transit 'pays for itself' by making cities like New York possible. Without a transit system, businesses would move out to somewhere that their employees can get to for work .
Oh, wait.
Thank you for clarifying exactly why 95% of the rest of the country didn't replicate the stupidity that is New York.
The best way to do that is not having tolls on every road (way to expensive to maintain and administer) but to have a much higher gas tax. You drive more? You pay more. Gas price should be at least doubled in the USA.
If everyone switch to an electric car to avoid the gas tax, then at least we will solve the pollution problem and we could then tax by the distance driven.
So your solution to the pollution problem is gas at $8/gallon AND $40,000+ electric cars?
Great fucking plan you got there. Speaking of pollution, I wouldn't do any more research on what we burn to create that electricity demand...
Who, pray tell, is burning as much fuel as possible?
Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the fuel economy numbers for the average new car sold in the USA being material for stand up comedians around the world.
Or are you just spinning up ludicrous BS?
Wait. Were you serious? I thought the USA's reputation for oil addicition was known even in the USA. I never said you were the worst at it mind you, the Saudis and a few of the countries your president affectionately labelled as shitholes can do this even better. But face it the new car sales figures reflected this perfectly over the past 15 years where there were actual swings in the cost of oil / gasoline end products. The American market has shown it will buy as inefficient gas guzzler of a car as it can financially bear.
The rest of the world is no different, we just have far more expensive gasoline.
you and I do (and apparently I pay a lot more than you) ;D wow, that was easy.
Then apparently you earn a lot more than I do
I did not say that swimming pools operate at cost. I said: they are public funded.
Water plants operate at cost. They are not public funded.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
some of them move their assets away from the taxing authority...
Easier said than done. For a lot of businesses, if you move your business out of the city, you lose both your customers and your workforce.
take advantage of tax loopholes, shelters and havens.
So close the loopholes.
I'm a bit tired of this thing that anti-tax people do where they think they're being really clever. "I'm so smart because I know that when you tax people, that might have bad unintended consequences." Sorry, no, we all know that it can have bad unintended consequences. Further, either way you will have bad unintended consequences. That doesn't mean that you're correct or that you're clever.
There's the attitude that, "We can't tax rich people because they'll just pout and take their ball and go home." Like all rich people are such a bunch of stupid crybabies that they can't handle contributing to society. Like, "Sure, I'm making $10 million, but I would be making $12 million if you hadn't raised taxes, so I'm just going to shut down my business and fire everyone, and then I won't pay any taxes." I mean, sure, there might be some morons that are so stupid that they'll cut off their nose to spite their face, but that will leave a big market open for someone else to fill, and we'll get other new rich business owners willing to fill it.
They are not Atlas, and we shouldn't be afraid of them shrugging. There are no shortage of people willing to start businesses to make money. We don't need to jump through quite so many hoops to keep rich people happy.
So you don't think that maybe the reduced ridership numbers might have anything to do with the service quality, especially after stating the gross mismanagement of the system and what problems result? Hey, we have $X budget for maintenance of rolling stock, stations, and rails, and $Y in needed maintenance on an annual basis, where Y > X... let's just wait for more money to magically appear someday way in the future after we've all retired on our gold-plated public pensions that are also an unfunded liability and the problem compounds itself into a practically unsolvable one without a Federal bailout!
Sounds like government bureaucracy at it's finest.
So how do we pull this money back, and inject it back into the economy? I'll give you a hint - it starts with a T.
Your hint has been tried and it doesn't work. I'm sorry but the evidence is pretty settled on this. Taking money from someone who has it and giving it to the government supposedly on behalf of the poor who you wish to help isn't the answer. The government's involvement in the transfer of money from those who have it to those who don't is right out there on par with loan sharks for effectiveness. The government does indeed excel in big projects...but they don't really do that anymore (despite our desperate infrastructure needs) but paying for an existing subway system whose ridership is more than adequate to pay for itself IF that system is run efficiently and is subject to strict oversight isn't something the government can do well...because the very subject of the conversation is how they're in such a mess as it is now.
That same cry for "this tax goes directly to that project" means that those who run that project now have zero incentive to actually run that project with any passing notion of efficiency. If they fall short, the taxes cover it and when that becomes a chronic problem...oh well...raise those taxes!
Your hint is indeed a hint...just not the correct answer to the question is all.
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
This isn't about that. You say they don't do it...except they do. People are leaving high tax places like New York and California precisely because of the direct and indirect effects of a high taxation society. Your mental musings are simply false in the face of actual evidence.
Sorry but that question has been asked and answered and is pretty settled. You have only to look at a business like Amazon and why they're relocating their headquarters from Seattle. The reason they give, quite plainly, is Seattle's high taxes and anti-business environment. Period. Do you think they do that on a whim? Do you have any idea how disrupting that will be to their business operations when it happens? If you have even a clue as to how big a pain in the ass that is, then you should also come to the conclusion that the drivers for that move must be pretty damn powerful as well.
The example you quoted is something out of the 1970's. American factory-based industrial manufacturing was killed off by NAFTA and a raft of other, government hatched idea. Our economy is now much more of a service based one. Insurance, banking, education, etc. Those are the big industries now...and they're much more mobile than your example suggests. Business isn't nearly so hostage to a physical location as you like to believe.
Make the environment so inhospitable and those rich people and those wealthy companies DO pick up their ball and they WILL move.
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
Pushing people back to using the MTA by making the alternatives more expensive is ... well fucking stupid as all hell. Ridership is down because the MTA is increasingly unreliable, late, broken, or they simply are doing so much (extremely slow, expensive) construction that commuting by subway is literally impossible.
The MTA has several core issues (mainly, the amount of money the waste/embezzle) which need to be resolved before the rider experience can be 'fixed'. While some of the problems vs. ridership seem like chicken and egg issues, it's all riding on top of the fundamental problem of the MTA's complete fiscal irresponsibility and lack of any real oversight.
Bridges and tunnels are already expensive for commuters and cash-cows for the MTA.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
The MTA is a cash cow for highly placed embezzlers, a patronage engine for local politicians, a make-work jobs program, and a public transport system... in that order of priority.
QFT.
The MTA, between bridge tolls, and bus/train/subway fares already makes sufficient money to sustain itself. They also get a metric fuck-ton of $ provided by taxes on top of that. Where all the $ goes is exactly as you said...it's cash cow for the rich and a trickle-down for those in the patronage game. They're horribly inefficient by design. How else can you justify 25 people getting overtime + weekend differential so two people can do actual, hands-on work on a track switch? This isn't the exception, this is the norm. Having literal dozens of people standing around doing nothing while earning ridiculous overtime happens nonstop 365 days a year...and that's just the tip of the iceberg obvious/visible example.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Their predominant party controls 2/3 of the State government
Some of the non-NYC Democrats decided they'd have more power by allying with the Republicans, resulting in a Republican-controlled state senate despite the Democratic majority.
You're telling me NYC has no influence on what NY State government does?
Well, those breakaway Democrats don't retain their power by doing what NYC wants......
What incentive do rural NYers have to vote for corrupt politicians at the State level whose corruption is focused on ensuring jobs and cash for NYC Unions?
Declaring "this costs too much, so there must be massive corruption!!" is not the same as that actually being true.
So what's the answer?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
It took me literally 2 minutes to find some recent quotes from the famously right-wing NY Times:
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The thing to remember about stories in newspapers is the story is always coming from someone. There are a lot of people in NY who hate the transit unions.
For example:
hundreds of mechanic positions have been cut because there is not enough money to pay them — even though the average total compensation for subway managers has grown to well over $200,000 a year.
Left unsaid is what the total compensation for a subway manager should be. Also "total compensation" is a lovely way to inflate the cost, since most readers will think "salary" and ignore that "total compensation" also includes health insurance, pension and other benefits.
This quote is also a lovely example of arbitrarily deciding it costs too much, which is the point I was making.
Also, to have the political corruption implied in the quotes, there would have to be a hell of a lot more transit union employees than there are. Can't make a machine when you don't have enough votes to install the machine candidate.
That being said, Cuomo is a corrupt shitbag. But you need to look towards his business deals instead of unions for that.
There is a solution to the problem that I think would work better than simply jacking up taxes. We are still living, for the most part, with the core tenets of supply side economics that Reagan and his Congress brought in coming on 40 years ago. In general theory, supply side economics should work and work quite well but, as we all know, all it has done is make the rich way richer, corporations way bigger and more powerful while the American worker, whose wages were supposed to rise right along with the economy, has been left holding the proverbial bag. Wages have fairly stagnated over the course of Reaganomics...and that is the problem.
For those that aren't familiar with the way that economic model works, there are 4 main beliefs:
- Reduce government control of the economy and let business do what business does (basically, reduce/remove regulations)
- Reduce taxes, namely the capital gains and income taxes (let the people keep more of their money and they’ll invest it in business)
- Use the federal reserve to control inflation (this is done by controlling the money supply via the setting of lending rates to banks)
- Reduce the increase in government spending (spending increases but not as much as it had been doing)
The idea was to take the leash off business and in return the economy would grow, jobs would be created, profits and the GDP would increase, federal revenues would increase right along with them and workers would benefit via better jobs and higher wages. All those happened...except that last one. And despite the cases of apoplexy it’ll cause some folks when I say this: supply side/trickle down/Reaganomics just plain works. This truly isn’t up for debate. However, it can be made to work better by fixing that last part (workers wages would rise).
The whole issue is that while the government opened the business/money floodgates at the top of the pipe, nothing more ended up trickling down at the bottom of the pipe than had been before the plan was put into motion. Fabulous wealth was generated (that much is obvious) but it didn’t get shared with those at the middle and bottom of the ladder.
I propose a law wherein if a company (any size) realizes an operating profit (after all expenses including wages/benefits) then a portion of that profit gets distributed to the employees in the form of a profit sharing payment. The portion wouldn’t need to be cripplingly large either.
By way of example, let’s look at two companies: ExxonMobil and Walmart. In 2017, ExxonMobil made $40.6B in profits and had 69,600 employees. If you took just 1% of that profit (meaning 99% stayed with the company) and equally distributed it to every one of their employees in the form of profit sharing, it comes out to $5833 per employee. Just one frickin’ percent equates to an additional $5800 per employee. Naturally, 2% is twice that and so on. But how about Walmart? In 2017 they had around 1.5 million employees and enjoyed a profit of $124.6B. Take the same numbers we did for ExxonMobil and Walmart pays out a 1% profit sharing check of just $830. However, of those 1.5 million employees, the vast majority are part time and some adjustments need to be made to the formula. However, when the Bush tax refunds went out back in 2009 at $300 per taxpayer, it helped to stabilize the economy and inject cash flow into a sluggish market. Using that as a measuring stick, Walmart would need to pay out just 5% of their profits back to their employees or roughly $4150 per personand they still keep 95%.
This idea has a number of attractive features. For one, we’re not using the federal government via the IRS to tax those corporations so that the government can redistribute it (read: mismanage and waste it) via social services. In this case, work (having a job) pays off. It’s a direct transaction between the employer and employee and removes the inefficient middle man. If, for tax purposes, the employer wishes to
Social Media Handywoman at Texas Boys Balloo
Sorry, but what it "should" be is not left unsaid. It's easy enough to compare to other large cities in the U.S. and adjust for COL. The later quote:
It wasn't stated that the Transit Union was the _only_ source of corruption for Democratic politicians in NY like Cuomo. They don't have to be large enough to elect him themselves, they're just one of a multitude of groups which are part of the patronage system in NY.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Lol, people are moving out of nyc and la because it's too expensive to live there... And it's not because of an extra $100 transit pass.
The cost of a house in those cities are astronomical thanks to the"free market". The cost of a condo there are literally 5x more than average.
To just say a $5000 \ year tax is making people leave in droves is hilarious to me when that is literally 5% of just having shelter there.