Public Transit Policy

Let’s talk about priorities. New Jersey doesn’t have enough money for the ARC Tunnel, but it can find funds for the Xanadu project or road expansion. Nassau County can’t afford the fund Long Island Bus service, but it can fork over significant tax subsidies for a new sports arena. New York City can’t afford more money for student fares or a subway station at 41st St. and 10th Ave., but Bruce Ratner doesn’t have to pay even market value for the rights to develop the area above the Vanderbilt rail yards.

These are the stories I’ve been following closely over the past few years. Along the way, I’ve been accused of focusing too much on the ARC Tunnel, of giving the city or the MTA a pass on the Ratner deal or simply staying the course in Nassau County. Right now, these can be viewed as isolated incidents, but they are part of a larger problem: The political priorities in and around New York City are conspiring against transit progress, and citizens who are supposed to be represented at various levels of government are simply being ignored.

Over at his site, Cap’n Transit has published the following graphic to represent what transit advocates should be fighting for. It is a rather simple circle that distills potential policy preferences to a signal graph. Take a look:

Lately, it seems, nothing has come of this cycle. Whether you believe transit policies should focus on government or societal efficiencies, cleaner air or water or even a blanket mobility for everyone, investment choices haven’t come to represent those myriad choices.

Take, for example, the news from Nassau County last week. Edward Mangano, the Nassau County Executive, has waged a ludicrous war against the MTA. He wants the authority to provide bus service to his constituents, but he doesn’t want to pay. In a process derided as opaque by transit advocates, Mangano has tried to privatize bus service, and he claims the county can spend as little as $2 million a year on a private solution without sacrificing any service. That pie-in-the-sky dream simply will not come to pass.

Meanwhile, last week, Mangano announced a plan to spend $400 million to rebuild the Nassau Coliseum so the Islanders do not jump ship. The County’s official release is available online, and various media outlets covered the story. Essentially, a county to broke to pay for bus service is going to borrow $400 million against future tax revenues to build a sports arena. It is a terrible investment.

By now, the vast majority of urban economists agree that publicly-financed stadiums never live up to their revenue promises, and Nassau County’s deal is no exception. The funding is going to be realized through a sales tax increment financing (STIF) scheme, and as Neil deMause told me last week, these never work out. The county is going to sell bonds and kick back the sales tax collected at the arena to sell the bonds. If enough people spend — a dicey proposition — the bonds will be paid out. However, these deals nearly always suffer a tax shortfall and the revenue collected would otherwise have gone to other projects. It’s not new financing at all; it’s simply reappropriated revenue.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie’s spending plans are leaving commuters high and dry. The New Jersey governor is raising tolls without delivering on the promise to expand cross-Hudson access, and he gave up a few billion dollars in federal funding to do so. It is, in a word, a mess.

Right now, New York is a juncture. Its politicians can continue down a path of ignoring transit problems and solutions in exchange for quick and obvious fixes such as arenas and malls. Else, its leaders can actually lead. Right now, we’re seeing a lot of the former and very little of the latter, and the millions of people who need public transit are going to continue to suffer.

When northeastern politicians gathered at Penn Station on Monday to accept Florida’s high-speed rail dollars, a handful of New Jersey’s representatives to Washington, D.C. made their appearances while New York’s Governor issued a perfunctory station. Conspicuous in his absence and silence was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. For more than six months now, Christie and the federal Department of Transportation have squared off over the New Jersey governor’s decision to torpedo the ARC Tunnel without first searching for a better funding solution. Now, as high speed rail plans inch slowly forward, Christie and his actions have come to represent one side of the great divide.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Lisa Fleisher and Andrew Grossman explore how Christie’s position is representative of one line of political thinking on public infrastructure spending. It is newsworthy, and obviously so, to highlight how the redistribution of Florida’s HSR money intentionally omitted funding for New Jersey Transit projects. They write:

As spending on infrastructure projects becomes increasingly controversial, two camps of public officials have emerged. One is represented by Mr. Christie and some other Republican governors who have turned down federal money for rail projects because they’re worried about their states bearing the burden of cost overruns. The other is represented by the coterie of congressmen and officials from New York and New Jersey who surrounded Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as he declared that he’s willing to open his wallet to “reliable partners” who will also open theirs.

Federal officials were reluctant to fund the Portal Bridge project in part because they were wary of starting another major project with Mr. Christie, whom they viewed as unreliable because of his decision last year to cancel a trans-Hudson rail tunnel that was partially federally funded, according to people familiar with the matter. The calculation was a practical consideration, rather than spiteful or political one, these people said.

A spokesman for Mr. Christie said the governor is committed to rail projects. “The governor has been pretty clear that he recognizes the need for infrastructure investment and particularly increased trans-Hudson rail capacity,” a spokesman for Mr. Christie, Kevin Roberts, said. “That being said, the governor was obviously clear when it came to the [trans-Hudson tunnel] project specifically that it wasn’t an equitable deal for New Jersey.”

Whether or not the deal was an equitable one for New Jersey is still a point of contention. Proponents allege that the ARC Tunnel, despite potential cost overruns, would have led to markedly faster commutes and a corresponding increase in property values throughout the Garden State. They also claim that Gov. Christie did not attempt to figure out how to keep cost overruns from spiraling out of control. The DOT assessment issued last year said costs could have ranged from $1-$5 billion over budget, and while Christie has latched onto the higher figure, he didn’t even try to address the overruns while the project was still largely an idea on paper.

Opponents, though, see the federal government as cutting a good deal and then running away. Dangling federal dollars but no promises of future funding partnerships, the feds can convince states to shoulder the burden for expensive infrastructure upgrades. It’s a valid concern, but we haven’t seen those concerns play out in real life. Will the feds leave states high and dry or will Washington representatives find a way to forge better funding partnerships?

Ultimately, though, the words of Frank Lautenberg, a Senator from New Jersey who is embroiled in the battle over $271 million in ARC funding, ring true. “We learned something in New Jersey,” he said on Monday. “We learned that if you reject federal money, you gain nothing. You gain nothing. And you pay a heck of a price for it.”

With the news this week that the Mayor’s plan to allow livery cab drivers to pick up passengers in Outer Borough was to be torpedoed by the taxi industry, Michael Bloomberg suffered yet another political defeat of a transit promise made during his 2009 campaign. Since he won election to a third team as the city’s chief executive, his tenure has been marred by marked failure in the transportation and transit arena. Despite the fact that millions of New Yorkers rely on subways, buses and taxis to get around the city every day, Bloomberg has not been able to fulfill his transit policy promises, and it appears as though his team is now subtly turning their backs on these badly needed improvements.

Bloomberg’s first major defeat wasn’t even that. As part of the centerpiece of his 33-point transit policy plan, Bloomberg called upon the MTA to provide free crosstown buses for everyone. Not 48 hours after securing election, the Mayor seemed to backtrack on the idea, and it has all been downhill since then.

While preparing this post, I went digging for the Mayor’s proposal, and I was shocked to find that it’s not available online any longer. His reelection site had posted it online right here in 2009, and it came with a companion PDF document that used to be available right here. Both of those links have long since been reassigned, and it is as though Bloomberg and his team are trying to erase their lofty promises from existence. I’ve tried to piece together the major components from my coverage and old articles in The Times and on Streetsblog.

It appears that Bloomberg’s proposal broke down in neat little buckets. The first concerned subway upgrades that were already in progress and out of his control. These included the expansion of the countdown clock program and a comprehensive bus-tracking program as well as F express service and a host of other quasi-populist desires the mayor cannot control.

But other transit areas were well within his purview. He proposed an expansion of the dollar van program as well as better taxi service for those beyond east of Manhattan or north of 96th St. He wanted to pilot either light rail lines or streetcars along the Brooklyn waterfront, and he wanted to usher in the expansion of bus rapid transit routes throughout the five boroughs.

What has happened to nearly every single one of those proposals has been failure. That taxi program we know is on the rocks. The group ride/dollar van program died a quiet death because the city seemingly wasn’t interested in learning how to make it work. NYC DOT has determined that streetcars for Red Hook will be too expensive and underutilized without up-zoning the area. The 34th St. Transitway — what should have been the city’s shining BRT moment — has been toned down in the face of NIMYBism and local opposition. Other ideas — an Adopt-a-Station plan to keep the subways cleaner — went nowhere.

For now, Bloomberg still has a few irons in the fire. He’s working on a plan to improve ferry service, and DOT and the MTA are still working on Select Bus Service routes. But the list of New York City transit improvements that have fallen by the way side during the first 16 months of Bloomberg’s third team have grown steadily.

Over at Market Urbanism earlier this week, Stephen Smith noted these mounting failures, and something he said struck a chord. Noting that transit reform advocates have been focused almost exclusively on defending bike lanes, it’s quite possible that we’ve lost sight of how people get around. Bike lanes should be a key part of the city’s transportation infrastructure, but tens of thousands stood to benefit instantly from the 34th St. Transitway.

Simply put, the city needs these transit improvements that haven’t gained traction, and the mayor must find a way to usher them through. Not doing so is a failure of leadership. With another two and a half years to go, Bloomberg is running out of proposals to let fall by the wayside, and already, New York’s commuters are worse off.

By allowing motorists to ride for free across a select group of bridge is costing the city nearly $1 billion in annual revenues, the city’s Independent Budget Office said recently. The IBO has released its annual report of city budget options, and one of their recommendations includes tolling the East River bridges to generate revenue. Although the IBO is issuing this proposal with an eye toward the city’s depleted coffers, I have long supported a plan to toll the bridges in an attempt to generate revenue for transit.

In its report, the IBO runs the numbers. By tolling the East River bridges at $9.60 per round trip — rates comparable to those levied on drivers crossing through the Brooklyn-Battery and Queens-Midtown Tunnels — the city would generate $690 million in revenue. By placing a $4.40 round-trip fare on the eight Harlem River spans would lead to an additional $280 million.

“On all of the tolled bridges, buses would be exempt from payment. IBO’s revenue estimates assume that trucks pay the same tolls as automobiles,” the report says. “If trucks paid more, as they do on bridges and tunnels that are currently tolled, there would be a corresponding increase in total revenue. IBO estimates that exempting all city residents from tolls would reduce revenue by more than half, to $440 million.

In its report, the IBO runs through the pros and cons, and the arguments are near and dear to our hearts:

Proponents might argue that the tolls would provide a stable revenue source for the operating and capital budgets of the city Department of Transportation. Many proponents could argue that it is appropriate to charge a user fee to drivers to compensate the city for the expense of maintaining the bridges, rather than paying for it out of general taxes borne by bridge users and nonusers alike. Transportation advocates argue that, although tolls represent an additional expense for drivers, they can make drivers better off by guaranteeing that roads, bridges, tunnels, and highways receive adequate funding.

Some transportation advocacy groups have promoted tolls not only to generate revenue, but also as a tool to reduce traffic congestion and encourage greater transit use. Peak- load pricing (higher fares at rush hours than at nonrush hours) is an option that could further this goal. If more drivers switch to public transit, people who continue to drive would benefit from reduced congestion and shorter travel times. A portion of the toll revenue could potentially be used to support improved public transportation alternatives. Finally, proponents might note that city residents or businesses could be charged at a lower rate than nonresidents to address local concerns.

Opponents might argue that motorists who drive to Manhattan already pay steep parking fees, and that many drivers who use the free bridges to pass through Manhattan already pay tolls on other bridges and tunnels. Many toll opponents may believe that it is particularly unfair to charge motorists to travel between Manhattan and the other boroughs. These opponents draw a parallel with transit pricing policy. With the advent of free MetroCard transfers between buses and subways, and the elimination of the fare on the Staten Island Ferry, most transit riders pay the same fare to travel between Manhattan and the other boroughs as they do to travel within each borough. Tolls on the East River and Harlem River bridges would make travel to and from Manhattan more expensive than travel within a borough.

In addition, because most automobile trips between Manhattan and the other boroughs are made by residents of the latter, inhabitants of Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx would be more adversely affected by tolls than residents of Manhattan. An additional concern might be the effect on small businesses. Finally, opponents might argue that even with E-ZPass technology, tolling could lead to traffic backups on local streets and increased air pollution.

The report seems particularly relevant today after my recent discussion on distance-based fares. While I do not advocate for a zone system for New York’s subways, tolling the bridges would generate revenue for transportation projects and user fees for upkeep while discouraging unnecessary car trips. As those who drive into Manhattan’s Central Business District are significantly wealthier than those who do not, these tolls wouldn’t penalize those who cannot afford it. The money should go, in part, toward boosting public transit, and the city would be better off for it.

Meanwhile, as Streetsblog noted in its coverage of the report, the IBO proposed a number of other transportation-related initiatives: “Other transportation-related suggestions in the report include making private school students pay for yellow bus service and MetroCards ($37 million), restoring the fare on the Staten Island Ferry ($4.8 million) and replacing late-night Staten Island Ferry service with buses ($3.7 million).” Those all seem rather sensible to me.

This map shows New York City's Community Boards shaded by median household income. Click to enlarge.

As the MTA has struggled to find money, its fare policies have increasingly come under the microscope. Without substantial state support, the only way the MTA can close its budget gaps is through fare hikes or restructuring the way we pay. The current flat fare is a solution that serves to equalize the amount everyone pays to ride the subway. While discounted unlimited ride cards give some folks a benefit, the base fare is the same from Inwood to the Rockaways.

Across the world, different subway systems treat fares different. We have to travel no further than Washington, D.C., to find distance-based fares, and London’s Underground is famous for its fare zones. In D.C., the further one needs to travel, the more the ride will cost. In London, the further away one gets from the central business district, the more one must travel. If a straphanger’s ride doesn’t enter Zone 1 but crosses multiple zones, the fares go up accordingly.

Recently on SAS, as I discussed how high the fares could go, those who comment on the site wondered about a zone-based fare system. Our system’s turnstiles can be configured for swipes upon exit, and the fare system could be reconfigured for zones or distance. (The comment thread begins right here and continues on for a bit.)

Now, my objections to zone-based fares cover a few topics. First, while distance- or zone-based fare systems are in place elsewhere, they seem prevalent in systems that cross city limits. The London Underground extends well beyond the City of London, and in fact, the local governmental unit that makes up the City is all in Zone 1. In D.C, however, distance-based fares pay no attention to city boundaries.

But because so many people — 5 million per day — use the subway system to get to work and because the city would not exist as a major economic hub without the subway, a distance or zone system seems inherently unfair to me. It penalizes people because there isn’t enough space on the island of Manhattan for all of us.

My second complaint involves the map at the top of this post. Using the Furman Center’s 2009 State of the City report, I color-coded community board district by median annual income. Perhaps I could have used colors that were more contrasting, but in general, the darker the shade, the richer the community board. As a baseline, the two South Bronx communities in light pink have median annual incomes below $20,000 while the Upper East and West Sides are above $100,000.

If you were to overlay a subway map on top of this socioeconomic representation of the city, it becomes tougher to justify a zone fare. Suddenly, the richest folks in the city are the ones who are closest to work and can most afford to pay higher. In Brooklyn, the poorest residents down in the Coney Island area live furthest away, and in Queens, Astoria and its neighbors to the south are richer than those from Flushing who are further away from the city.

Only in the Bronx would a distance-based fare make sense because incomes rise as we head north, but even then, the folks in the South Bronx make around 18 percent of what those who live in the East and West 80s in Manhattan do. If the subway is supposed to be a public good that allows for people of any income bracket to get to their jobs in a cost-efficient way, New York’s socioeconomics seem to make a zone- or distance-based fare highly problematic.

Ultimately, I don’t think zone-based fares are the answer for New York City. Once upon a time, when richer folk left the urban core for the supposed comforts of the suburban sprawl, a zone system might have made sense. But in today’s New York, those who can least afford to pay would be forced to hand over more dollars under a zone fare regime while the city’s wealthiest don’t. Unless the MTA were to create a convoluted fare system that pits intraborough Manhattan travel against interborough travel, we’ll be stuck, for better or worse, with a flat fare system.

These subway seats were clearly designed for people skinnier than most New Yorkers. (Photo by flickr user dysolution)

Whenever I find myself on a 1980s-era subway car, I always marvel at the width of the bucket seats. I’m the right size for my height, and I’m in good shape, if I do say so myself. But no matter what, I can’t squeeze myself into the confines of a bucket seat. A part of me — my arm, my jacket, my hip — will spill out over the edge of my designated seat, and someone will either be unable to sit next to me or find themselves uncomfortably squished.

This drama repeats itself millions of times throughout the city on a daily basis. Folks larger than I am find a space with three bucket seats capable of seating just one, and those annoying two-seaters on the R68s end up with one person and half a seat remaining. In the winter, when bulky layers and bigger coats add to our heft, the situation worsens. And forget buses. Those don’t have enough leg room or customer space for even the Kate Mosses among us.

For certain modes of transportation, space determinations are made at the governmental level. The MTA decides how crowded, in terms of pure numbers, a subway car can be before it is deemed to be full. Right now, those load guidelines dictate that a train car is full when every seat is taken and 25 percent of the passengers are standing. But just how much space should one person take up?

Right now, for safety standards, the Federal Transit Administration establishes space guidelines for buses, and as The Times recently reported, those could change soon. Michael Cooper reported last week:

Bus riders are currently estimated to weigh a mere 150 pounds when federal regulators test new buses. But that is about to change, if the Federal Transit Administration gets its way: the agency issued a proposal this month to increase the assumed average weight of bus passengers to 175 pounds so that its tests will “better reflect the actual loads that buses are already carrying in service today.”

Exactly why the estimated weight of travelers should differ slightly depending on whether they go by land, sea or air — calling to mind those scales in planetariums which show that Earthlings weigh less on Mercury, but more on Jupiter — is one of those mysteries that are sometimes puzzled over by close readers of The Federal Register. But the trend line here is as clear as the nation’s widening waistlines: Americans are getting heavier, and federal safety regulators must take that into account.

Federal officials said that they believe the current 150-pound standard for bus passengers comes from a national health survey dating to the “Mad Men” era…The transit agency is proposing another change for its bus tests: it wants to assume standing straphangers take up 1.75 square feet of floor space, up from the current 1.5 square feet “to acknowledge the expanding girth of the average passenger.”

Even the 175-pound figure is a bit generous. As Cooper notes, “the mean average weight is now 194.7 pounds for men and 164.7 pounds for women.” Most of us would be cramped on a bus in which the assumed average weight is only a handful of pounds more than my own.

Also laughable are the current standards. According to the feds, they’ve been in place since the early 1970s and are based on numbers from the early 1960s. No wonder everyone seems cramped.

On the subways, under the purview of the MTA, the obvious solution involves bench seating, and the new rolling stock certainly incorporates that idea. What we lose in seating space due to those who take up more than their fair share, we gain in comfort. Buses, though, have a long way to go, and while allocating 1.75 square feet of floor space to a bus rider instead of the current 1.5 square-foot standard would improve conditions, the bucket seats remain uncomfortable for everyone.

As gas prices rise and public transportation usage climbs upward, transit agencies are finding themselves struggling under increasing costs. That’s a sentence that was true two years ago and still rings true today, but the federal government isn’t doing much about it. Sure, the feds fork over billions for capital expansion plans, but operating support has been hard to come by.

Last week, transit agencies again went hat in hand to Washington to ask for operating support, and again, Washington rebuffed their advances. Melanie Trottman of the Wall Street Journal was on hand to report on these goings-on and more:

Officials from more than 30 public transit systems came to Washington this week to tell Congress that most of them don’t have the money to keep up with demand as rising gas prices boost ridership. But a key House Republican said Tuesday that transit systems needed to streamline their operations, and not count on Congress for more money…

President Barack Obama’s 2012 budget requested $22.4 billion for public transit, more than double the amount he sought for fiscal 2010. A separate proposal would pump $119 billion into public transportation programs over six years as part of a $556 billion highway, transit and rail infrastructure bill.

But the fate of both proposals is uncertain. The last multiyear highway and transit bill expired in 2009. Since then, Congress has passed seven extensions to continue funding, but the heads of many transit systems say their plans for growth and upkeep have already been stymied by funding uncertainty.

The key House Republican is none other than House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica. During the hearings, he said of transit agencies, “They’re going to have to be much more creative and look at consolidation of some of their operations.”

The American Public Transportation Association, though, wants to see action from DC before it’s too late. APTA looks at rising gas prices and notes how the increase in fuel costs lead to more transit trips. If gas tops $4 per gallon, transit agencies would see an additional 670 million trips a year. As Trottman notes, “When gas prices rose in 2007 and topped $4 in mid-2008, 85% of transit agencies reported experiencing capacity constraints on parts of their systems, APTA said.”

The problem is two-fold. On the one hand, politicians hate to invest in operating costs because it’s not sexy. It’s not something they can show to the press or constituents as a firm commitment to transit. They can’t take people into the headquarters of a transit agency to show a well-funded system as they can to, say, a pit underneath the Sunnyside Yards.

On the other hand, the nation dialogue has focused almost exclusively on cutting costs. Politicians are putting pressure on municipalities and local government institutions to trim, trim, trim and cut, cut, cut. The federal government and the Republican-dominated House, in particular, is not going to be too forthcoming with extra dollars for operating costs right now.

And so transit agencies will go forward with their economic crises. If gas rises and voters head to buses and trains, systems will find themselves at capacity, and politicians may begin to hear from constituents about inadequate public transit. It will take creative leadership to solve this problem, and right now, we’ve seen little willingness to head down that path. Costs will grow while subsidies and support do not.