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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: 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?