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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, 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.