Comments on: Toward a fairly-funded transit system

By: A-W

A-W — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:47:09 +0000

You’re right on the money. Politics has been very prominent (no, preeminent) in debates about the subway and bus fare going back to the very beginning. In fact, the 5 cent fare was deemed to be a sacred entitlement for the average subway rider for decades after that fare ceased to be economically viable for adequate subway maintenance. It was a very convenient way for politicians to “serve” the people while papering over the transit system’s rising problems. Meanwhile, middle and upper class people could drive on newly built highways during the Robert Moses era.
Fast forward a century later, and the thinking is the same. The MTA, a quasi-public authority nominally controls the subways, and the people (through their politicians) feel that they are entitled to a cheap fare above all else. Besides, those who don’t ride the stinky, slow subways (and there are plenty of NYC residents who don’t ride the subway regularly) can drive around instead of mingling with the people who ride the subway. Meanwhile, the politicians have no incentive to explain the real cost of running the subway system to the electorate, because this would expose the recent debt financing policy for what it really is. La plus ca change…

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:35:10 +0000

Ariel, let’s compare farebox recovery ratios, a figure that includes capital as well as operating costs. For New York City Transit it’s 36% this year; the subway has a much higher ratio – in 2002 it was 67% – but the MTA doesn’t break NYCT down to subways and buses. For Metro-North it’s 36% as well. For the LIRR it’s 27%. All of those ratios are 4-5 points down from last year. For the New Jersey Transit’s rail operations, it was 67% in 2007, about on a par with what you’d expect for the subway alone.

By: Ariel

Ariel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:28:08 +0000

Let me point out the disparity that exists between suburban and city riders.

Why do suburban commuters get a bigger government subsidy than the city riders who need to use NYC Transit? LIRR riders pay for only 44% of their system while NYC Transit riders pay for 52%!!

The politicians in Albany, who have shot down congestion pricing and bridge tolls because of their effect on the working class, aren’t looking after the poor after all!! Surely suburban commuters are much more likely to be wealthy than the inner-city public transit riders, yet Albany is giving the suburbanites a much bigger subsidy!!

That is just ridiculous and shows once again how Albany can’t govern properly.

By: Boris

Boris — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:05:38 +0000

In your scenario, the rational thing for the city to do would be to raise the tolls dramatically (at least for non-residents) and increase service within the city while making it expensive for MNR, LIRR, and LI Bus to interoperate with NYCT. This will make it worse for everyone except city residents with no need to ever leave the city on public transit.

The best transit systems around the world are all big, regional systems that set moving the maximum number of people for the minimum cost as their main goal. They also play well with private transit systems that supplement the public-owned services. The MTA is none of that.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:39:20 +0000

What about if bridges & tunnels was made part of nyct, and if NYC paid there fair share towards transit even though Bloomberg is against it?

MNR, LIRR, and LI Bus can be seperated and deal with the state.

By: Marc Shepherd

Marc Shepherd — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:20:41 +0000

Easy: it would be a fiscal disaster. The whole reason the MTA was created was so that bridge & tunnel surpluses could be funneled to mass transit. The people who want to break up the MTA don’t seem to realize that.

The transit authority will always need to deal with upstate, as long as it depends on legislative grace for funding. Without the bridge & tunnel surplus and state subsidies, an undiscounted $3 fare would not even come close to breaking even.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:24:53 +0000

If they broke apart the MTA like most people want and raised the metrocard fare to $3 and eliminated ‘most’ of the discounts how would the TA do financially?

At least this would eliminate the upstate vs. city fight because the transit authority wouldn’t have to deal with upstate at all.

By: Rhywun

Rhywun — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:17:36 +0000

In America, transit is something that only poor people take (even when and where that’s no longer true). Thus, there is tremendous pressure to keep the fares artificially low–mostly by means of discounts and especially the single zone fare. (In Hong Kong, the fare ranges from 50 cents to 7 dollars. Their recovery rate is 149%.) Even worse for NYC, the public perception is that all the people in the center are rich and all the people on the outside are poor (even when that’s not true either). Therefore any attempt to charge by distance traveled is politically impossible (much like the congestion fee was). So… we’re going to continue seeing this endless wrangling over recovery ratios, pitting one agency against another or one part of the region against another, and on and on, all because the best tools for solving these endless crises are not politically viable.