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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%."
Can't wait to hear form all the public transit apologists. While they try and explain why it does not work even in one of the most densely populated cities on the planet.
Face folks "public" anything basically means tragedy of the commons is coming. The reality is the proletariat really is icky.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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?
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.
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/
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
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.
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.
"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.
Then some proper management can take over. Short term pain, but you get rid of a lot of corruption and liabilities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Trying to imagine what the city of New York has as an alternative to public transit and I can't see it.
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
Thank heaven for Cuomo. He gets it.
What in the world are you smoking?
Check your premises.
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
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?
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.
let me shit in your mouth.
You just pay for it.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
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
Once H2 gets going in LIC, the amount of revenue will double!
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.
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.
That and what follows is what killed your public transit.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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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!
can take a car. The subway will survive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How does this affect the farejumpers, if they are no longer prosecuted?
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
Raise fare, cut unnecessary/underused service and clean up the subway. It is disgusting.
Why are there fewer riders? Because of blacks and the safety issues that go with increased black ridership. This is a significant point for women who pay a 'pink tax' to take alternate forms of transportation to ensure safety while traveling. The media won't say this directly, so they say it indirectly using the term 'safety': https://www.wired.com/story/ny...
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!
You don't depend on government to get around? Where is this mystical place where roads spring up out of the ground?
In a functioning one-party republic, citizens can still primary out an underperforming governor or state representative.
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.
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
How much of the rider decline is due car/bike/scooter sharing? If it is significant, sounds like the transportation issue is already solved.
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.
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.
But let's decriminalize fare evasion because it's "racist" that only n1gggers do it.