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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%."
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
To add this this...
How excessive staffing, little competition, generous contracts and archaic rules dramatically inflate capital costs for transit in New York.
An accountant discovered the discrepancy while reviewing the budget for new train platforms under Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.
The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.
“Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York.
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