NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

The problem with urban transport systems is that no one sees them for what they really are... an expensive thing that drives the economy. There seems to be an obsession in the west with making public transport pay for itself, but the reality is that a few billion invested in better public transport results in a lot more billions being made elsewhere.<p>We need to get away from this idea that public transport systems need to break even or turn a profit. They are there to help make money in other ways. An efficient reliable transport system should cost the taxpayer money, but they will get that back in profit elsewhere through a thriving local economy.

This is a really depressing story to read. I&#x27;ve always believed that a good indicator of a country&#x27;s health, is its ability to tackle complex large-scale projects. Projects that require coordination on multiple fronts: politics, bureaucracy, technical-know-how, civic sacrifice. In the old days when all this infrastructure was built in the first place, we showed our ability to do so. But now, we&#x27;ve gotten to the point where even maintaining it is proving too challenging. When you look at other countries like Singapore, China, Korea and Japan, it&#x27;s clear that our political and governmental institutions are lagging far behind when it comes to <i>&quot;getting things done&quot;</i>. I wonder what this portends for the coming century.

It&#x27;s bad.<p>The A&#x2F;C&#x2F;J&#x2F;Z lines still contain R32 cars, which were built 54 years ago, and are <i>20 years</i> past their service life. These cars were built before the moon landing, have terrible brakes, have terrible air conditioning, and are, generally speaking, sweltering rattly deathtraps.<p>The Second Avenue line is <i>100 years</i> in the making and has a grand total of...drum roll...3 stations. That opened in 2017.<p>But hey, they&#x27;re getting WiFi in the tunnels and installing flatscreen TVs in the stations. Three cheers for more ad space! Personally, I&#x27;d rather have less station closures, less delays, and less stopping-and-waiting-20-minutes because of track congestion.

This has little to do with the MTA Union and everything to do with Blasio resisting committing more money to the MTA unless he was guaranteed by Cuomo that the money would go towards the subways and subway throughput, and not other MTA services. Cuomo Controls the MTA; Not the City, or the City Mayor, that&#x27;s 99% of the problem.<p>Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s planned to add amenities like new lighting and USB ports at nearly three dozen New York City subway stations, Completely side-stepping DeBlasio. In February, Cuomo put the vote forth to The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, (they control the MTA), voted 10-3 vote in favor, to approve 1 billion dollars of contracts to refurbish nine of the thirteen stations.<p>This is all apart of Cuomo&#x27;s Enhanced Station Initiative which is entirely focused on cosmetics.<p>It&#x27;s a shame.

&gt; Drastically cut service or increase fares<p>There&#x27;s another option: disband the MTA Union, the primary driver of operations costs. They have blocked technology and safety upgrades for decades to keep &#x27;those darn computers and robots from taking jobs from poor workers just trying to make a living&#x27;.

Cities like NYC are overcrowded and dysfunctional, but our financial system allows dysfunctional and failing systems to continue to operate up until the point to which they physically collapse and start either entering prolonged periods of obvious mechanical non-function and&#x2F;or killing people in embarrassing numbers.<p>Without all the bailouts, the MTA would have failed decades ago and would have had to have been restructured. Because NYC&#x27;s political priorities have been to conserve past structures and agreements at the expense of the present and the future, you will see performance go down and down to the point to which 1950s performance will look like 1950s science fiction.<p>I don&#x27;t think I would expect anything to change until a major accident kills a large number of people in one day. You should expect the people in charge of the system as it exists today to keep getting millions of dollars as service continues to degrade. But the MTA knows this, so they stop the trains constantly when there is any chance of a collision, so you get the slow motion choke for money that you have had for decades.<p>There&#x27;s a great option if you are not happy with New York City and its governance: leave! NYC is a machine for fleecing young people who want to move there with heads full of movies and TV and rich foreign potentates with more money than sense. It&#x27;s not a great place to live if you want to have a comfortable middle class lifestyle. It might have been that 30+ years ago, but not anymore.

Expressed in Millions:<p><pre><code> Payroll: $5,392 Overtime: 811 Health &amp; Welfare: 2,129 Pension: 1,354 Other Labor: 400 ---------------------- Total Labor: $10,086 Non-Labor: 4,205 Debt Service: 2,692 BTL Adjustments for Expenses: (251) ===================================== Total: $16,732</code></pre>

“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.”<p>I was a daily rider of the DC metro for 8 years. This is exactly what happened there. Reliability plummeted, then ridership, and all the while major fare increases.

&gt; <i>Turning things around will require a huge infusion of cash</i><p>I keep hearing this with zero justification. Why? I’m sceptical of New York’s public agencies asking for lots of cash. I assume there are legitimate projects, but the MTA has been horrible at showing the public this demanded money will be well spent.

While looking for more information, I found this article [1] which gives more detail into the costs of the MTA compared to other cities. Regarding operator efficiency:<p>&gt; The number of annual revenue car-miles per subway employee in New York was 14,000 in 2010. In Chicago this number is somewhere between 14,000 and 16,000 ... On Tokyo’s Metro, the comparable figure is about 18,500.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ny.curbed.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;13&#x2F;16455880&#x2F;new-york-subway-mta-operating-cost-analysis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ny.curbed.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;13&#x2F;16455880&#x2F;new-york-subway-mt...</a>

I lived in NYC for five years and the decline in metro service was significant between 2016-2018. From most reports, it was due to faulty switches or expiring subway cars.<p>Fast forward to living in Tokyo, the difference is night and day (except for the rush hour crowdedness). Maintenance is done every night (somewhere) and all lines shut down between 12 and 1 am. It&#x27;s super inconvenient, and this is where I applaud NYC for allowing me to get home every late night I spent out. I would hope there&#x27;s some middle-ground in there, though.<p>The MTA is looking at this in such a primitive manner, though. I know (from my time there) that track work is not efficient. It looked to be a lot of sit and wait until something is ready. Tokyo metro workers are _always_ doing something. It&#x27;s almost if they have clear defined goals that they must accomplish before their day starts.

Not surprised. Not only are we lacking in physical infrastructure, but also technological infrastructure. I still don&#x27;t understand how we do not have stations like in developed Asian countries like Japan or Hong Kong. The trains are &quot;one&quot; unit and the stations are doubled door with people at each station assisting (or ticketing..) you if needed. The train practically drive themselves. The conductor is there for emergency purposes. We didn&#x27;t even have speed regulator installed until recently (and not all trains have them!) until a bunch of trains kept on crashing because of human error. We spend billions on ONE new station, but we can&#x27;t invest a couple billion to fix the infrastructure.

The NYT had a great article on how the subway got in the situation it is in.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;18&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;11&#x2F;18&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;new-york-subway-...</a>

The article briefly mentioned competition from ride sharing services but I wonder to what extent it&#x27;s made an impact.<p>Anecdotally, given how cheap Uber and Lyft are in Manhattan (typically $4-5 for a shared ride), I often find myself opting for that instead of dealing with the hassles of the subway system. Both are unreliable when it comes to timeliness, as ride sharing services often take longer than expected (especially Uber Pool and Lyft Line). And as painful as the subway system can sometimes be, I do appreciate the rich history and incredible performances you&#x27;ll often come across in subway stations. I&#x27;m torn, to be honest.

Over the summer The New Yorker had a story on the president of the NYC Transit Authority. Entitled Can Andy Byford Save The Subways[1]? I found it interesting. They had a rather optimistic take, but this article 4 months later makes me think its not going well.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;09&#x2F;can-andy-byford-save-the-subways" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;09&#x2F;can-andy-byfor...</a>

You can market a 2.75 to $3 fare increase on the convenience of not receiving change.<p>It’s nearly insignificant.<p>But I agree with the lead comment. Public transport should be seen as an enabler, and should be made free, or affordable, in order to maximise the benefits.<p>We spend how much on roads? All from tax payers, and some people don’t own a car. Yet the idea of paying for public transport out of taxes seems to grate some people.

A ride in NYC is crazy cheap compared to other parts of the world. I live in Europe (grew up in NYC) and a single ride costs $4.50 where I am. But the public transport is clean, well-maintained and safe.

New York City&#x27;s walkability and public transit are easily one of its greatest, most important, and most valuable features. It&#x27;s a shame that there&#x27;s been such a revolt against local taxation over the last 30-40 years. Our big cities are the lifeblood of our modern technological economy. And yet we are under-investing in them drastically. But it&#x27;s absolutely an affordable problem, we have the money we just balk at talking on the responsibilities properly, we want to pretend that if we temporize and half-ass our way there the problems (not just transit but housing and opioids and so forth) will just take care of themselves or spontaneously disappear. That is an immature and unrealistic stance. We need to govern ourselves, we need to take care of and maintain our own cities and our own people. If we continue to fail to do so it won&#x27;t just be public transit in one city in a death spiral, it&#x27;ll be the whole entire country headed the way of a failed state. And it&#x27;ll happen a lot sooner and a lot faster than you might expect.

The MTA claims that New York City&#x27;s transit system doesn&#x27;t have enough funding to keep up with requirements. Critics of the MTA claim that the transit system has more funding than ever, and just isn&#x27;t keeping up because of some vague inefficiencies or incompetencies.<p>This is the exact same argument that we have when it comes to education, health care, defense, and so forth. Some argue that it&#x27;s because government spending is inherently inefficient, and while that may be true, that doesn&#x27;t explain how governments outside of the United States still seem to be a lot more efficient than governments inside the United States, nor does it explain similar phenomena in things like housing.<p>This seems like a very broad problem that is currently beneath the public consciousness. SSC&#x27;s &quot;Considerations on Cost Disease&quot; (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;09&#x2F;considerations-on-cost-disease&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;slatestarcodex.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;02&#x2F;09&#x2F;considerations-on-cost-...</a>) is the first general discussion I&#x27;ve found of this, though Scott Alexander cites a paywalled Tyler Cowen piece in Bloomberg.<p>(Fair warning: while SSC doesn&#x27;t mention defense spending as an example of this, the US has a ridiculously high defense budget without actually having the quantity or quality of troops and ships and aircraft that such a budget would imply. If China&#x27;s defense budget were the same as ours, they would <i>whip our ass</i> in a conventional war.)<p>Whatever the shared root cause or causes are, they need to be addressed. Just giving MTA, Medicare, the Pentagon, universities, etc. more and more money isn&#x27;t going to be sustainable. And, despite the ramblings of certain conspiratorially-minded folk, I also don&#x27;t really think this is inflation in disguise, because then you&#x27;d also have to explain why there hasn&#x27;t been a corresponding increase in the costs of e.g. basic groceries.<p>I don&#x27;t have any answers here; I just don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re asking the right questions if we just restrict the discussion to the specific areas where we see this happen.

I haven&#x27;t noticed. In fact, it&#x27;s been a several weeks since my commute was interrupted severely. I hear the green line is doing pretty badly though.

$2.75 sounds really cheap to my British ears. How far can you go on that?

For people here who are interested in transit, I highly recommend Jarrett Walker&#x27;s book &quot;Human Transit&quot;. He really focuses the conversation around a few ideas that almost everyone can agree on (and uses them to focus &amp; have productive conversations in transit agencies) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;humantransit.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;humantransit.org&#x2F;</a><p>Last night I watched his talk &quot;Transit Truths&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=k5AHJA2-lAc</a> - which also summarizes the ideas in his book well.

&quot;experts&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;General_Motors_streetcar_consp...</a><p>&quot;Span 2003b. &quot;No one sought an answer to Quinby’s most penetrating question (referring to the 1935 Public Utility Holding Company Act), &quot;Who Is Behind This Campaign To Separate The Obviously Economical Combination Of Electric Railway And Its Power Plant?&quot;

&quot;The system’s financial straits have gotten worse in part because it has fewer riders, and is collecting less money in fares.&quot;<p>If there are less riders to serves doesn&#x27;t logic dictate service levels be adjusted to fit market conditions?<p>Given that this might be the key fact in the whoke article, the article should have detailed why rider volume is down.

The cost of a single trip has always been the cost a pizza slice. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2002&#x2F;01&#x2F;12&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;nyc-beware-the-price-of-a-slice.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2002&#x2F;01&#x2F;12&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;nyc-beware-the-p...</a>

I&#x27;d rather see an increase in progressive taxes for individuals and companies in NYC rather than a fare hike.<p>I, at least, heavily depend on public transportation in NYC and would be more than happy to pay more to the MTA in taxes if it meant cleaner, more efficient, and more reliable service.

This is one of the best articles on why the NYC subway is such a mess<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;second-avenue-subway-cost-nyc-infrastructure-2016-12" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;second-avenue-subway-cost-ny...</a>

The list of cities that offer <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Free_public_transport" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Free_public_transport</a> is growing. Maybe this is the model for the future!

The New York subway system is riddled with inefficiencies, corruption, and terrible maintenance. You’ve gotta call it for what it is. Their bull shit has caught up to them. I feel nothing less than contempt for the people behind it.

Vox has a great piece on how the NYC MTA got to its current state of affairs <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=COLMODzYX7U" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=COLMODzYX7U</a>

Everything that one needs to understand in order to explain why NYC subway is such a shitshow can be learned by any software engineer that attempted to change a gigantic legacy barely functioning code base of an organization with a single product that relies on this codebase which happened to still have &quot;founders&quot; running a show 12-13 years later:<p>When the company adds &quot;new blood&quot;, everything that the new blood proposes gets tossed out for &quot;legacy reasons&quot;. Periodically, someone floats a plan for a gigantic multi-year &quot;keep X service but rewrite everything inside it from scratch&quot; software engineering project. Those future &quot;rewrite from scratch&quot; projects are used to justify not making any incremental improvements.

You can pretty much get anywhere on the ny subway system and it&#x27;s pretty cheap. Bay area public transport is more expensive and it doesn&#x27;t even go everywhere.

Curious whether Uber or Lyft riders will change their behaviors as the toll on public transit becomes more salient..

It&#x27;s funny how pathetic America deals with any sort of public service. It&#x27;s all about me me me.

solution it&#x27;s pretty simple, hike the fare like in comparable cities, shut down subway in night like in comparable cities, remove unlimited ticket and replace it with time&#x2F;zone limited like in comparable cities. you can&#x27;t eat cake and have it

Is this really a funding problem or is it an employee quality problem ...

serious q: what alternatives exist besides buses and taxi&#x2F;rideshare? Is walking&#x2F;scootering a material number of people? If not, why about taxing rideshares to fund the subway?

Why don’t they just pave the tunnels and put autonomous buses in?

This is clickbait based on old news. The MTA hired an unconventional transportation turn-around guru. It&#x27;s going to take time to make things better.

Amazon Cuomo will fix it.

CLOSE THE SUBWAY MIDNIGHT-5AM and fix it<p>Like most other civilized societies who have a <i>functioning and well-maintained</i> metro system.<p>That is really all there is to it!

I think what everyone reading this story is missing and that the opportunity.<p>Betting someone clever on HN could invent a new signalling system for far less than $40 billion, perhaps $4 billion.<p>Once it&#x27;s proven in New York you could roll it out anywhere in the world.

&gt; Critics say it is bad service that is driving people away.<p>One datapoint: I live in Rhode Island. Recently I attended a concert in Brooklyn. The obvious way to travel there was Amtrak to Penn Station and MTA (train or bus) to the final destination. However, I was warned that MTA service is unreliable. I decided to drive. Next time I probably won&#x27;t go at all.

The problem seems fixable, but as others have said, people will have to take some lumps.<p>A certain political figure with strong (both bad and good) ties to NYC has harped for a couple of years about a federal infrastructure bill. I think the phrase &quot;third world&quot; was used to describe the problem.<p>No reason why America&#x27;s Greatest City (tm) could not wring a couple of bil out of the feds to start upgrading their subways. Move back to the first world, you might say.<p>In turn, because we&#x27;re talking about a transaction, the MTA might also need to move out of a &quot;third world&quot; mentality. We can safely assume some of their payroll is spent on political favors. Maybe this &quot;death spiral&quot; talk will motivate the agency to make a least a token gesture towards good use of their riders dollars.<p>Maybe.