Take a listen to this 17-minute clip from The Brian Lehrer Show. Featuring Gene Russianoff and Transportation Nation editor Andrea Bernstein, the clip features Lehrer grilling his guests on the MTA. Ostensibly designed to explore how transit policy and the MTA shaped the election for governor, the focus was nominally on abolishing the MTA. Who should have control? What should the proper transit management agency be?
In one sense, the clip is infuriating. The callers to Lehrer’s show are angry and uninformed. One caller suggests privatization, seemingly ignoring New York’s subway history. Another calls in outraged over the MTA’s contract with Accenture. She claims the MTA is paying the consulting firm $150 million for “just $25 million in savings” and goes unchallenged when she says that everyone is just making up the idea that the MTA has saved $50 million. In response, Russianoff doesn’t offer up a correction. He just says this shrill attitude in which facts are ignored embodies “the irate sense of the riding public” — a public less interested in reality than outrage.
But on the other hand, Bernstein, Russianoff and Lehrer bring up some very valid points. They never quite get around to answering the questions put forth in the first few minutes of the segment, but during the campaign last week, they didn’t need to determine yet whether or not Cuomo should abolish the MTA. “I think it’s satisfying to riders this image of ripping apart the MTA and shredding it to pieces. The reality is that whoever is the governor already has a tremendous amount of influence. They appoint the chairman and a total of six votes on the board. They have the power of the budget,” Russianoff said. “This kind of change” — placing the MTA under the control of the governor — “It’s just not the change that’s needed.”
It is, for these reporters and commentators, about the trust the public puts or does not put in the authority. “It’s so easy to hate the MTA, but if you look nationally, New York has a great transit system. You can get anywhere. You can go 24 hours a day,” Bernstein said. “Yet people just hate it. It’s so easy to hate. I think the next governor, regardless of who controls or how it’s financed, is going to need to address this.
Lehrer’s show isn’t the first mention of a complete overhaul of the MTA. I explored the authority’s uncertain future yesterday afternoon, and one of the commentators featured in that piece questioned the need for the MTA as currently imagined. “I think the governor’s going to have to recognize that the M.T.A. was designed to solve specific problems back in the ’70s, and it’s done it fairly well, but it’s reached the point where it can no longer afford the programs that it needs to have in place based on the funding sources that it was originally thought to have, so he has to deal with that,” Robert Paaswell said. “He has to deal with the , What should an M.T.A. look like? Do we need this incredibly complex organization?”
The MTA came out of a time of fiscal unrest when the transit system in New York City needed a better managing body to set fare policy. The Triborough Bridge Authority was placed under the purview of the MTA to both oust Robert Moses from power and ensure that toll revenue was funneled back into transit. But the commuter rails were foisted on the MTA as the private entities that owned and operated them slipped into bankruptcy. Layer upon layer, the MTA took on a larger bureaucracy and financially-burdened assets.
Today, we enjoy the illusion of a regional rail system, but we don’t actually have that system. Fare payment modes are different across New York City Transit, the LIRR and Metro-North. Schedules don’t have to be coordinated because Metro-North and the LIRR have different terminals within the city. Employee skillsets are different due to both union work rules and the technical differences between the rail and subway lines. Only the map and the ability to cross-honor fares in the event of an emergency lend an aura of unity to the system.
So then is the MTA defunct? Should Jay Walder, a qualified transit technocrat with a solid background in management consulting, tear it down only to build it back up again but this time leaner and meaner? Russianoff, Bernstein and Lehrer didn’t supply a clear answer, but it’s hard to say the MTA shouldn’t be completely restructured. Unfortunately, it’s tough to do that on the fly while meeting the demands of 8 million daily transit riders, and I certainly don’t have the knowledge or expertise to offer up even a sketch of what the replacement agency would be.
Still, Bernstein’s point is one that bears repeating, and it’s one that Andrew Cuomo, a candidate elusive on transit but who wants to exhaust every internal financial cut before identifying new funding sources for the MTA, should embrace. Regardless of how he exerts his control or finances the authority, Cuomo must restore public confidence in those running the subway system. Only then will it enjoy the political and financial support it needs.
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31 comments
were the words pension or disability mentioned at all?
overtime?
You mentioned regional rail. This should also include NJ Transit and PATH, the various suburban bus authorities (Westchester, Rockland, southwestern CT, etc.) and maybe even Shore Line East. I’m not sure how Amtrak would/could fit into the puzzle, but since they serve this region, perhaps there is a role for it, too.
Abolishing the MTA, or, for that matter, NJT, Amtrak, etc etc, to replace them with ‘profitable’ companies ignores history in another way: It was the 19th & 20th Century private companies that in frenzied financial speculation overbuilt redundant duplicative incompatible lines that left us with transit & railroad systems that cannot be easily integrated or coordinated.
The other problem with privatization is that the weaker lines usually end up being eliminated. Their primary goal is to make a profit and they will run the amount of service that gives them the most profit, and that generally means overcrowded vehicles and fewer lines in a neighborhood.
That would also mean a reduction in hours on most services, as overnight service is very unprofitable. Pretty much, every single service reduction that has ever been proposed would be implemented-and then some.
Of course, the government could run the unprofitable lines, but not every line is always unprofitable-late night service almost always has a high cost per-passenger, and rush hour service is almost always fairly profitable, so you would have the confusion of which agency runs which lines at which times. Once you get to that point, you might as well have the government run the whole system, and use profits from some lines to help subsidize others, which is the current system.
This is not really true in places where privatization did happen. The privatized rail networks of Hong Kong and Tokyo have no trouble running trains until midnight or later at 5-minute intervals. The incremental cost of late-night service is very low – the infrastructure is already there, and if you can efficiently bypass trackwork, then 24-hour service is easy.
The main reason privatizing the MTA would do no good is that the MTA’s problems aren’t really a consequence of public management. The union contracts would still be there: the political hurdles of scrapping them during privatization are identical to the political hurdles of scrapping them without privatization. The managerial incompetence is a general fact about American managers, and the only foreigners who’d be willing to buy the subway are companies with a track record of being even worse than public operators, like Veolia.
With demand pricing, you will fill up the subways at night. $2.50 at rush hour, $0.50 between 12AM and 4AM. Same with highways. Why should a highway be built to just handle 4 hours of traffic out of 24? The other 85% of capacity is wasted into thin air. Force employers to change their hours, either directly by laws targeting large employers or indirectly by making it cost prohibitive to work from 9-5 instead of 7 to 3. The morning rush is bad because of schools and business starting together, but the evening isn’t as bad because schools end at 2 or 3. NYC public high schools stagger schedules so some come at 6 and are let out at 1 and others come at 9:30 and are let out at 5.
Buses can never convert car drivers to PT users, since buses are stuck in the exact same traffic as cars. Dedicated fenced off ROW PT (not SBS) will always create PT use. Paying anyone without a college education $30/hr for a no skill or 1 month on the job training skill job is insane. Which is how the MTA and its construction contractors and unions operate.
Just look at this http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false, and you’ll understand whats going on. Getting a couple greyhounds or school buses to bring labor from the Hudson Valley or PA will make a plague of inflatable rats pop up.
Tokyo, for the record, has no demand pricing. It costs the same to ride the Yamanote Line at midnight as at 8:30 in the morning, when its trains are 2.15 times more crowded than capacity. However, it has very generous unlimited monthly discounts, which act like an off-peak discount. A monthly commuter ticket in Tokyo costs 30 times as much as a single ticket; in New York the corresponding factor is 46.
If this question were posed a few years ago, I’d be all for it. Use a common fare-payment (like the consortium of highway authorities that all use E-ZPass), but otherwise let each piece focus on its technical and geographical area of expertise.
But now we have Jay Walder, who’s committed to improving the current system and has visible taken steps to do so. From Kalikow to Sander to Walder, that’s a lot of changes in a short time. Let’s give him a chance to finish his agenda before we tear down the incomplete re-structure and build it again.
We need the MTA, because someday the MTA might actually do that which it was designed to do: actually unify and coordinate the services of all the various operators. I mean – WTF – after almost 40 years we don’t even have a unified fare structure!
Plus: they’ve wasted billions on useless subway projects: 63rd St, Archer Ave, new SF terminal, Fulton Transit Center – not a single one of those projects has increased service by one single train. And isn’t that the bottom line: adding trains so as to reduce overcrowding and increase capacity so as to induce more people to leave their cars and take the train? The only project that makes any sense is SAS. I hope I live long enough to ride a train at least to 96th St.
In addition they’ve also done much to shrink the system. 3rd Ave el in the BX and the Myrtle Ave el in Bklyn – lines that would have still made sense today – were the first to go shortly after the creation of the MTA. And during the city’s flirtation with bankruptcy back in 1977 we came close to pulling down the Jerome and Culver els. In only one instance: the Jamaica Ave el, was an el replaced by a subway. Trouble was, the subway is one stop shorter than the old el (the el went to 168th but the subway only goes to 160th St).
But I still love the MTA. Don’t ask my why. Hope springs eternal. Besides, who else is going to do it? A private company? Check out what happened in the UK with privatization of BR. Not exactly a smashing success.
I’m not going to deny that those projects have cost more than they should have, but isn’t “useless” a bit much?
Has adding a new East River tunnel not increased service along Queens Boulevard at all? Has a more efficient terminal station not increased local IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue service at all?
Passenger flow at Fulton Street was a mess before; it needed to be fixed. Operating capacity isn’t everything.
No – not by a single train in any of the cases mentioned. I worked with MTA – NYCTA for almost 37 years and I can say this beyond a shadow of a doubt. I was actually involved in these projects from time to time over the years. With new SF terminal the same exact service is run on the #1, but with two added trains and crews. So thus it now costs more to run the same service.
By hooking up 63rd to Queens Blvd service was still governed by the capacity of the Queens Blvd line, which did not change. In addition the “G” line was now made a wholly second rate line with that absolutely awful terminal at Court Sq with the extremely long walking transfer to the “E” at 23rd/Ely.
If 63rd had been the beginning of an entirely new line, as was originally proposed in the not-too-well-thought-out schemes from the late ’60s, it might have been a good deal. But by going for the cheapy wind-up to the project with the Queens Blvd connection it became a total bust.
And that “cheapy wind-up the project” only took them something like 14 years to complete? And what was the distance? Something like 1200 feet?
The 63rd Street connector didn’t increase Queens Blvd. service, but it substantially increased Queens Blvd. service to Manhattan, which is where most Queens Blvd. riders are bound, especially when the trains are at their most crowded.
People traveling between the Crosstown line and Queens Blvd. do have to make an extra transfer. But most people on the Crosstown line are also going to Manhattan, and only their transfer to the R was removed – they still have the E, M, L, A, C, and F, and an enclosed connection to the 7 is being wrapped up. The transfer passageway to the E and M isn’t short, but it’s well within the range of transfer lengths found elsewhere in the subway system.
It’s not as good as the original plan, but it essentially doubled direct access to Manhattan from Queens Blvd. local stations, which I think is pretty good. Those people used to have to cram onto the E or F to get to 53rd; now they can stay on the M all the way.
Just because something didn’t work in the past over 50 years ago doesn’t mean that it couldn’t work today. Everything about business and everyday life is different today than when the system was private.
I think that the MTA should be immediately broken up into the TA, LIRR/MNR, B&T’s, and Lond Island bus should be part of the TA.
There should be no more than 3 levels of management for any of the agencies not the 20 levels that we see today with thousands of managers that don’t actually manager anything.
I disagree. While the MTA has done a lousy job thus far it could have been a lot worse. Breaking it up would just exacerbate a not very good situation. The tri-state region needs properly coordinated transit – not a segmented hodge-podge of smaller operators. WIth proper coordination from the top we could have, especially, a proper commuter rail system with through running at GCT & Penn, as they have built in places such as Paris and London. In fact one could argue for a truly super tri-state MTA, combining functions of NJT, MTA & Conn DOT.
Breaking it up would just create more bureaucracy.
Plus you need people with some railroad operating experience at the top – not just political hacks.
With proper planning and coordination we could have had:
LIRR East Side access going into the existing GCT (which has oodles of unused capacity), instead of this wholly new LIRR only deep level GCT, which is roughly doubling the price of the project.
The long sought after track connection between GCT & Penn, making possible through routing and creating a truly regional rail system.
And if only NJT had put the ARC tunnel into the existing Penn Sta instead of into that ludicrously deep level 34 St station they, too, could have cut the cost of the project by half. And they would have created much needed redundancy at the choke point of the NE Corridor (i.e. the two track Hudson River crossing) and put the icing on the cake of a European style regional rail network.
The real problem, ultimately, is not the MTA but the scheister politicians in Albany who raid its cash box and appoint their bum-sucking cronies to its top management positions.
The reason they put the ARC station deep underground was due to the NIMBY issues that would’ve arrived with putting it in the existing station, plus the disruption it would cause with railyard operations.
Of course, all that is moot now.
Maybe the reason there is no ideal MTA organizational structure floating around is because it’s not simple. This is all about political constituencies and money, and hardly at all about systems analysis and maximizing operating efficiencies. If transportation policy was about efficiency, our city, state and country would look radically different. Um, start anywhere, why 2nd Ave subway instead of real BRT at a fraction of the cost. Why? Because political establishment finds it easier to spend untold billions than take four lanes of the 11-12 on First and Second Avenue. Etc, etc.
why 2nd Ave subway instead of real BRT at a fraction of the cost. Why?
For a fraction of the cost, you get a fraction of the service. I understand your overall point, but I don’t think 2nd/1st Ave. BRT is the right comparison. It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to produce a BRT service that can do what a subway line can do.
I don’t think you’re taking into account the huge number of passengers involved. The NYC subway carries 4.5 million passengers every weekday. The #7 line alone carries over 400,000 passengers every weekday. The Lex and Queens Blvd lines carry about the same or more. The first segment of the SAS, 63rd to 96 St, is projected to carry around 200,000 passengers a day. There’s no way any sort of BRT is going to handle those type of numbers. Remember, a full length B Div subway train can carry in excess of 2,000 passengers.
Also BRT is as good as enforcement to keep the lanes clear is. And in NYC enforcement to keep the BRT lanes clear of unauthorized vehicles is completely and utterly abysmal if not to say totally non-existant. The NYPD just doesn’t give a shit. In fact NYPD patrol cars are some of the worst offenders, as is well documented in frequent photos posted at NY Streetsblog.
Also there’s the simple speed factor. There’s no way a bus, even in a properly cleared BRT lane, is going to in any way approach the speed of a subway train.
Get the useless MTA Police to patrol the bus lanes. There is no crime on the “rich and privileged” commuter rail system. MTA Police is a pure pork job. They take 20 minutes to respond to a drunk bum beating someone up. The bum was too drunk to escape in the 20 minutes the train was stopped at the station with the doors open while waiting for the MTA Police to show up.
Because outside the imaginations of Jaime Lerner’s consultants and hucksters, arterial BRT doesn’t work too well in developed countries. The costs are 1.5-2 orders of magnitude higher than in Curitiba, as befits countries rich enough that technology costs are trivial and labor costs aren’t. The costs of BRT tend to be around one half those of LRT in developed countries. Sometimes it justifies the lower ridership, and sometimes it doesn’t. In any case, when you need to move 400,000 people a day, nothing on the street surface works.
My point is that the MTA organizationally is an inherently political creature. I don’t have the motivation to get into the endless BRT v subway argument, but real BRT, with physically separated ROW, actual boarding platforms and train style vehicles can carry a lot of people: 40k passengers/peak hr on Bogota BRT lanes for instance. Anyway it’s misleading to compare BRT capacity with subway capacity on the same street. Much better is to compare peak-hour ride capacity with the same funding. With Second Aves budget you could build real BRT on 1st, 2nd and 5th, including overpasses at major intersections — with tons of money to spare. What’s the point? The point is that the process is inherently political, and the scope of projects and the structure of agencies like the MTA are defined by politics before wonks and engineers enter the equation.
Bogota has insanely wide streets for Transmilenio, which gets to hog four lanes plus station platform space. The only street in New York that’s wide enough for that is QB, where they built an el and then a subway instead.
The cost argument is spurious. Curitiba and Bogota’s BRT systems cost less than the subway does in New York, but that’s because they’re in Curitiba and Bogota, not because they’re BRT. Madrid’s subway costs less than light rail does in North Jersey, but that doesn’t mean subways are cheaper than light rail.
Oh I can see the residents of the East Side of Manhattan going along with dedicated bus lanes – better still with overpasses at the major intersections – and on 5th Ave to boot. WTF, why not just rebuild the 2nd & 3rd Ave els. They should not have been torn down in the first place (between the two lines they were carrying about 300,000 to 400,000 passengers a day), at least not until a replacement subway was up and running – as was done with the 9th Ave (replaced by the 8th Ave subway), the 6th Ave el and subway and the Fulton St el and subway.
PS: do the math on 2nd Ave BRT: given the capacity of an artic bus (about 150 passengers crush loaded) as compared to a six minute headway of full length B Div subway trains (which is what will be run on the initial segment with the “Q” extended from 57/7) – that’s 10 trains x 2,000 = 20,000 passengers per hour. You’ll need 133 artic buses per hour in each direction to match the subway capacity in the peak period. With the full line up and running with a proposed 3 minute combined headway between the “Q” and the “T” you’re up to 40,000 passengers per hour, or 266 artic buses per hour in each direction. And what of the air pollution from all those buses?
When you’re dealing with a city with the density of NYC, with the density of the East Side of Manhattan heavy rail rapid transit is fully justified.
The other thing I hate about BRT: it keeps the ball in the highway and automotive industries’ court. That’s why the asphalt, tire, petroleum and automotive industries have lobbied so heavily for BRT over light or heavy rail.
And if the Second and Third Avenue Els were not torn down with the Second Avenue Subway promised but not delivered, you never would have had all that development which just added to the strain the Lex was already feeling. The entire density of the east side and along Water Street was different.
I agree with your basic point, but calculating using crush loads is disingenuous. No transit line carries true crush loads over an entire hour, nor should any transit line carry true crush loads over an entire hour.
I suspect the root problem really isn’t with the MTA, or even the politicians, but with the electorate. Most people in this state just don’t see mass transit as vital, and many see it as leeching off their tax dollars. In that kind of environment most politicians will be apathetic at best.
I don’t know if I fully agree but you certainly have a point. Of course, everyone sees new baseball stadiums as vital. That’s why you never heard the City once say, should we support the new Yankee Stadium (which was just rebuilt only 30 years ago) or the new Citifield (which was only 40 years old.) It was always both are essential.
But when it comes to funding something for mass transit, the first question is which project should we fund, as if we only need one. Just imagine if our subway stations were rebuilt every 30 years. We can’t even get them painted that often.
everyone sees new baseball stadiums as vital.
Politicians see new baseball stadiums as vital, but no urban or sports economist does. I also know, through my other blogging life, thousands of fans who don’t think a new stadium was all that vital either.
But politically, stadiums enjoy far more political support than most infrastructure projects, roads or transit. Mostly that has to do with access and money.
I thought the reason behind the frequent rebuilding of stadiums is so they can be redesigned to maximize profits by increasing the number of luxury seating areas and other amenities for the upper class. It certainly isn’t to help your average fan. For that reason, I am opposed to public subsidies through whatever means to support rebuilding of major league stadiums. If the owners want bigger profits, fine, let them foot the entire bill. I just don’t see this as the public good, as mass transit is. Your last point is oh so true.
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