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New York City’s subway and bus service is already in crisis. It could be getting worse. And more expensive.
Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) warned last week that without a major infusion of cash, they 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 $485m 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.”
Bike-sharing and ride-hailing apps have emerged as alternatives for commuters. Is mass transit finding itself in a valley of death between those who are price-conscious and those who want maximum convenience?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Wednesday November 21 2018, @09:15AM (25 children)
Why is the service unreliable? Because you failed to invest in the network when you had money.
What's the solution to that? To invest in the network, even though you don't have money any more.
No different to the telecoms network, all public transport, public utilities, etc.
Cutting maintenance today to save a penny tomorrow just costs you two pennies the day after when everything goes wrong.
The London Underground has the same problem - antiquated trains and tracks, a network of tunnels that don't have a single passing-place in them so one stuck train brings London to a grinding halt, ever-increasing fares and decreasing reliability of service.
I stopped using public transport, and bear in mind I didn't start driving until my 30's, precisely because of this. Services became unreliable. The second they do that, I can't use them because I *cannot* be unreliable in a professional capacity, and I'm not going to leave for work three hours early to compensate and also maybe not get back until 9/10pm. I analyse my trip, discover the cause of the unreliability and navigate around it. In my case, it was ANY public transport. London buses were slow and unreliable. Tube trains became unreliable. Not much else existed that was affordable. So I stopped using them all.
I now refuse to take a job or even buy a house that relies on public transport. If I can't park a car at both ends, then my travel to work is affected which is too much to risk on a regular basis. If the roads get congested, I can actually drive MILES out of my way and still get to work at a reasonable time... an extra 20 or 30 minutes hardly figures if you know it's happening and modern sat-nav traffic services are very good. So I choose my job on the basis of knowing I have a parking space there. It's literally MILES from any public transport service whatsoever. I choose my house based on having allocated parking, and also being near-but-not-on several major transport routes to provide me an option. I can literally turn left out of my road, and if that's clogged, I just turn right instead. If both are jammed, never happened, I assure you that NOBODY is getting to my workplace anyway.
I literally abandoned public transport because they cut their own nose off to spite their face. I can't be alone in this. They cut services. They made services unreliable. They do maintenance at STUPID times and it overruns (London is often brought to a halt because of overrunning engineering works), and they literally have no way of coping if any one minor item goes wrong on the entire network. One suicide and the whole line comes to a grinding halt and any that it has major connections to. And yet they still won't put up barriers to make it impossible to jump onto the tracks, despite their viability in countries all over the world and even one or two London stations stopping it overnight.
The inter-city train system is even worse and under major review at the moment because it's just so poor. Buses are sitting in the same traffic I am, without any of the freedom, and have to stop every few hundred yards to pick up even more people who crowd onto them, so what's the point? They don't get any advantage from bus lanes, even, and you'd be better off just opening them up as another lane for all traffic. And even the roads - they umm and arr over putting into "another" tunnel across the Thames. Where they are only a handful of crossing points for millions of vehicles. And they can't even put in a decent system for reparation should your train be late... people are paying £10k+ to get into London with an annual ticket, that they can't exercise 20-30% of the time and they get *NOTHING* back, and have to fight for even a tiny pittance back even in the case of major sustained delays and cancellations throughout the year, despite the fault being entirely on the transport system, not the passenger.
All caused by under-investment in transport. All that happens is people like me move further and further from the city, don't even try to commute to jobs inside the city, and eventually all your custom evaporates so you can't AFFORD to invest without some kind of government intervention. Then they get that investment... spend it on air-con trains and electronic systems, and still the basic problems persist.
Don't even get me started on "replacement bus services", or union-initiated industrial action... some Tube workers have worked less than 300 days a year for the last 10 years because of that. And they get paid more than almost any other job - more than emergency services, etc. Wish I could get those kind of holidays from work!
When you give profits to shareholders and staff jollies, the service suffers.
When your service is shit, people go elsewhere.
When people go elsewhere, you no longer have the money to fix anything.
And any bailouts are used to fix the short-term problem, not the long-term.
I find it incredible that a service with millions of customers that it transports THOUSANDS at a time (so one train is being paid THOUSANDS of fares to get to the next station) can't see beyond the end of their nose.
Scrap human drivers.
Invest in the rail network to make it resilient (i.e. alternative routes, even if that means huge diversions, so huge tracts of the city aren't cut off if there's a single incident).
Put in measures to ensure that delays cannot go unpunished. Even the most minor of delays. In Japan, they have apologised twice in the last two years for a train leaving SECONDS EARLY! To be hours late without word would be unthinkable there.
Make it MORE viable for people to use, and they'll use it in preference to anything else.
A mass transit system should not be difficult to make money on. But it involves you actually BOTHERING to care for, and expand, and improve it. Not just take the fares, throw people off at the station and run away.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @09:34AM (9 children)
You have identified a lot of problems. But what about the one I find most obvious, maybe people should not fucking live in such a dense manner? Maybe all the jobs should not be concentrated in such a tiny area, creatign the insanity that is 2 hour one way commute.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 21 2018, @10:55AM (6 children)
I grew up in a town of 25,000 in the American West. The nearest "city" was Spokane, Washington, 5.5 hours drive away. The nearest shopping mall (this was in the pre-Internet days) was 2.5 hours drive away. The town had one decent grocery store, and one down-market one. If you wanted foods that the good grocery store didn't have, you were out of luck. If we wanted to do significant shopping, we had to drive a long time to get to the store. That sucked in the summer because of the endless streams of motor homes and logging trucks clogging the roads; it sucked in the winter because of the snow and ice in the mountain passes. But it was quiet, and if you liked to hunt, fish, hike, canoe, what-have-you it was all right there outside your front door.
Now I live in Brooklyn, NY, where I've been for 20 years. Any good or service I can possibly dream of is within a 5 block radius and 5 minutes' walk. On a nice weekend I can strike off in a random direction and stumble into holiday celebrations from three different rich, ancient cultures. If I want to watch a professional basketball or hockey game, it's a 20 minute walk to the Barclays Center. Any kind of music or other performing art, it's a 22 minute walk to the Brooklyn Academy of Music a block or two past that.
In other words, the virtue of living in the country is you're not surrounded by all those people. The virtue of living in the city is you are surrounded by all those people. The virtue of living in the suburbs, well, no such quality has yet been reported.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:22AM (3 children)
You get your tomatoes vine-ripened and tasty, fresh from your own veggie patch.
You can still go to a concert or game with a 45min-1h drive (or about the same time a train if you picked the suburb well).
You no longer hear the bed of your neighbour squeaking and banging in the wall that separate your apartments when they have sex (even if you may still hear the orgasm if she's a screamer and he's not premature).
You get fined by the local council if you neglect to mow yout lawn in the frontyard for long, so you may just as well do it and smell the fresh cut grass (using an electric mover helps). Besides, it good to know you could say "Now, get off of my lawn", literally, if so you want.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @03:47PM (1 child)
I think I would be more successful growing my own vegetables in the city. In the suburbs, deer and other pests would eat them up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @08:53PM
Only if you fail to protect them. I don't have that issue.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 22 2018, @01:08AM
You can have all of the big-city perks closeby without having to deal with the big-city noise and big-city minorities, your kids can go to school without being beaten up and dragged down by the village idiots, and suburb city code outlaws the use of noisy portable basketball hoops people are oofing and yelling over outside while you're trying to have a nice quiet dinner with your family.
Suburbs are every bit as American as the Old West. Now, HOA's are a whole other story, but at least they prevent the Mexican Mafia families down the street from painting their houses obnoxious pastel colors* and putting stone lions* in their front yards.
* True story. I've seen it on multiple occasions and in multiple towns, in fact.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @12:51PM
I live hours away from the nearest city. I live in the age of the internet, any good or service I can possibly dream of is delivered to my door. Usually in two days, but I've received things in a few hours when I really needed them in a hurry. I don't even put on my shoes or shirt.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday November 21 2018, @01:32PM
If you live in the burbs its a 20 minute drive to the basketball court instead of a walk. Sportsball is very boomer and to some extent cities are boomer playgrounds, so theres not much to do if you're not a boomer or the traditional drunken college student.
In the burbs you spend time with your kids attending schools that don't suck. I'm a 20 minute drive from a world class urban museum, but I only go every couple years because frankly I have a life and the kids are always doing something, so I spent last Sunday at my daughter's school's bowling tournament rather than a museum. I think I got the better deal.
In the burbs your wife or daughter can walk around the block, just like the city, but without being robbed and raped.
Its overall pretty nice other than the seemingly infinite demand from people escaping the city making prices crazy high. There's plenty of really cheap places to live in the city where people will pay anything and do anything to escape. Burbs not so much, thats an aspiration not an escape.
Note that I'm also 20 minutes away from local, county and state parks, and closer to national parks.
Basically imagine the urban experience except you drive and there's no crime mixed with being minutes away from the rural experience.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 21 2018, @02:45PM (1 child)
I think the government should create a well funded group with a fixed 20 year goal, to study a way to develop some kind of communications system that would enable people to work remotely.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:51PM
The answer will obviously to put the work messages on top of the SLS, enabling super-high-speed communication once to maybe twice a year.
Most of the weight carried by each launch will be the required postage stamps.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:10AM (1 child)
The trouble with driving everywhere in the metropolis is, first, parking, second, traffic, third, tolls, and fourth, potholes & construction. My friend drives everywhere in NYC. He grew up in the city in the 70's when crime was rampant and will not enter public transportation out of learned fear of the system. But he spends his entire life sitting in traffic and hunting for parking spots. I can walk from point A to point B faster than he can drive.
Keep in mind, that's with >70% of New Yorkers not owning a car and taking mass transit. Imagine if there was no mass transit. Nobody would move. Actually, we don't have to imagine, since there was a time before mass transit in NYC; in the era of the horse and carriage and omnibus (a double decker wagon pulled by a big team of horses) it took 3.5 hours to get from the Lower East Side to Midtown. That's how many people swarmed in the streets. Within a couple months of the first subway opening all the omnibus companies went out of business, so dramatic was the improvement in travel times.
The new developments of bike sharing, protected bike lanes, and ride-hailing apps, though, seem like they're moving things in the other direction, though. Mass transit works because it can move huge volumes of people, but it also needs huge volumes of people to break even. If riders opt for bikes because they're cheaper or Uber because it's point-to-point and less expensive than yellow cabs, then mass transit goes into the red.
There's an added wrinkle, also, in that the rise of the Internet and plays like Amazon means local stores have gone belly up while deliveries have grown. Those deliveries are made by big trucks that double-park and block the traffic, so the bikes and Ubers can't get through.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:58PM
The subway being empty because of people use cars or bikes is a problem that NY will solve automatically in the next few weeks.
Last few months: sure, you can walk, ride, or rideshare
Next week: Ain't the subway the best invention during and after cold snaps and snowstorms?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:45AM (3 children)
How many days does the average worker work in the UK? Five days per week, 52 weeks per year, makes about 260 work days. Subtract vacation time, sick time, and maybe a couple days you just don't feel like working. For me, that's 15 day's vacation time, six day's paid holiday, two day's personal time, and almost no sick time in a decade. My surgery should maybe be counted, but I was given short term disability for that, making it an "excused" absence of about seven weeks.
Yes, I know that SOME people work a whole lot more. I spent most of my life working 6 or 7 days a week. But, I'm asking about typical workers. I know from experience that most of the time, commuting on a Saturday or Sunday is more pleasant by orders of magnitude. The roads are relatively empty, and I presume the trains and busses are also uncrowded.
If I'm just not understanding what you're saying - please elaborate.
(Score: 1) by Wodan on Wednesday November 21 2018, @01:56PM
I think I have a fairly normal UK job, it's weekdays only with 26 days off over the year as well as 8 bank holidays, so that's another 34 days not worked for about 224 work days total.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:07PM (1 child)
You're counting individuals.
I'm saying that, out of a supposed 365 day a year service, only 300 days don't have ONE entire category of staff officially on strike.
Literally they get 65 days off JUST TO STRIKE in a given year. Maybe not an individual (if they aren't scheduled to work on that particular day) but as a workforce.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:46PM
Oh-kay - that's clear now. Thanks!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @11:53AM (4 children)
If you have a long-term job, buy a house within walking distance. It takes a *very* significant event to alter the length of my daily commute, and I get mild exercise too.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday November 21 2018, @12:00PM
What's that, precious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Apparition on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:15PM
That doesn't work when all of the houses and condominiums within four miles of your work start at $600,000 due to gentrification.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Wednesday November 21 2018, @04:18PM (1 child)
Ahahahahahahhaa!
I have a long-term job, in a well-paying position, in a good industry.
I can afford to rent a one-bed flat (barely) anywhere with 10 miles of it, which can mean a 30-minute commute.
A bank will mortgage me for an amount that buys a 1-bed flat in a commuter suburb.
Walking distance of my workplace (because it's such a well-paying place) is LITERALLY in the millions for a house, nearly twice my income a month just for rent (I know, I moved last year).
You are privileged to be able to work anywhere close to where you live, but more privileged to be able to live anywhere near where you work.
I can draw you a map if you like of where all our employees live - our HR software does that for us. Pretty much, the average is 10-20 miles away. That's not within the realm of walking unless you fancy a 2+ hour commute at marathon-runner speeds.
I can't buy a house with any degree of worth or sensibility (i.e. not literally in the middle of a ghetto) within 100 miles of my workplace.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @05:42PM
Celebrate your predicament, behold the buttplug of multiculturalism [twitter.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday November 21 2018, @12:26PM (1 child)
While I agree with what you're saying, the NY subway system hasn't had any significant new work done on it since something like the 1940s. There have been endless plans and attempts to revamp it, but none of them have gone anywhere. So it's easy enough to suggest simple measures to try and fix it, but before you can even begin with any of those you'd need to spend billions of dollars (that's not a typo, billions) on fixing the system up to a point where you can then start making changes to modernise it. The death spiral issue isn't so far-fetched, decades and decades of "deferred maintenance", or more accurately "letting the infrastructure rot while performing just enough patching to prevent it breaking completely" have now reached the point where you can't ignore the problems any more. They're really screwed, they can't do much to modernise it without first catching up on decades of lack of maintenance, but the cost and time involved of doing that, just to get them to the starting gate for actual upgrades, is prohibitive. There is no solution, or at least none that's palatable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 22 2018, @09:43AM
The subway was privately built. The government put a price cap on fares, then didn't change it while 40 years of inflation happened. The companies were forced into bankruptcy and thus the government took control.
So your point that it "hasn't had any significant new work done on it since something like the 1940s" checks out with that change. Yeah, socialism!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 21 2018, @02:46PM
Incentivize people to work remotely and not in the city. India can teach us a lesson: poop in the streets.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday November 22 2018, @06:22AM
I commute from suburbia to a big city downtown because I like being downtown when I'm not in the office
But I'm planning to hire three engineers with the proceeds of my Indiegogo campaign. To stay downtown would require my new employees to pay usurious housing prices or to face a long commute every work day. So I will ask them whether they would prefer to work in suburbia.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]