MTA's Budget crisis makes people voice stupid ideas

[MHV9218]

3 hours ago, Gotham Bus Co. said:

I like the Los Angeles County MTA approach, with a board made up of elected officials. I would do something similar here and expand the MTA Board as follows...

• NYC (7 members): all five Borough Presidents + Public Advocate + Chair of City Council Transportation Committee

• Outside NYC (7 members):  County Executives — not appointees but the County Executives themselves

• Co-Chairs: NY State Transportation Commissioner (representing the Governor) + NY City Transportation Commissioner (representing the Mayor)

If we bring the outside NYC down to like, 2, or 3, then I'm with you. The County Executives are often useless and insane (i.e., Ed Mangano), and the MTA's primary operations are really NYC-focused. We make a mistake when we blow the budget on dubiously-necessary LIRR boondoogles like East Side Access.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

17 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

If we bring the outside NYC down to like, 2, or 3, then I'm with you. The County Executives are often useless and insane (i.e., Ed Mangano), and the MTA's primary operations are really NYC-focused. We make a mistake when we blow the budget on dubiously-necessary LIRR boondoogles like East Side Access.

Dubious to you, who lives in subway rich Manhattan. You have a plethora of transit options. Those of us outside of Manhattan don't.

[MHV9218]

24 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Dubious to you, who lives in subway rich Manhattan. You have a plethora of transit options. Those of us outside of Manhattan don't.

C'mon, you're just picking fights for no reason. That has nothing to do with the conversation. We're talking proportionality. We just said that borough presidents (for you in Riverdale, that's Ruben Diaz Jr. of the Bronx; for Staten Island, that's Jimmy Oddo) would have a seat at the table. The question is about why Long Island county executives should have disproportionate say over a primarily NYC-based transit system. 

And if your hill to die on is that East Side Access was the best use of MTA money, please convince me.

Edited November 24, 2020 by MHV9218

[JAzumah]

11 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

The Asian operators tend to already have a large amount of capital with which to buy property, or get it gifted to them at below market rates by their respective government.

The MTA doesn't own that much land. They don't have money to buy land. It's not clear they would be good at developing real estate since they can barely do their primary job right. And the examples we have are not that encouraging.

The MTA can integrate a real estate plan early in the process for some of their new subway extensions. They have a lot of real estate expertise passing through the board. For example, they can upzone around SAS train stations and capture that value. It can happen with a real estate plan. 

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 hour ago, MHV9218 said:

C'mon, you're just picking fights for no reason. That has nothing to do with the conversation. We're talking proportionality. We just said that borough presidents (for you in Riverdale, that's Ruben Diaz Jr. of the Bronx; for Staten Island, that's Jimmy Oddo) would have a seat at the table. The question is about why Long Island county executives should have disproportionate say over a primarily NYC-based transit system. 

And if your hill to die on is that East Side Access was the best use of MTA money, please convince me.

Sure it does. Your attitude historically has been screw everyone outside of Manhattan. When I lived on Staten Island, you had some pretty disgusting things to say about the borough, and I didn't forget it either. Not all of us desire to live in Manhattan, and we all need transportation, not just the people in Manhattan. I'm an outer borough guy, born and raised and proud.

As far as the East Side project goes, it was needed, but it has gone wayyy over budget unfortunately. That's the only issue I have with it. Get the cost down, but it's too late for that.

Edited November 24, 2020 by Via Garibaldi 8

[MHV9218]

3 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Sure it does. Your attitude historically has been screw everyone outside of Manhattan. When I lived on Staten Island, you had some pretty disgusting things to say about the borough, and I didn't forget it either. Not all of us desire to live in Manhattan, and we all need transportation, not just the people in Manhattan. I'm an outer borough guy, born and raised and proud.

As far as the East Side project goes, it was needed, but it has gone wayyy over budget unfortunately. That's the only issue I have with it. Get the cost down, but it's too late for that.

That is such bullshit and you know it. You just make stuff up out of thin air. Must you derail every thread? 

[And just for the record, my feelings about the south edges of Staten Island – the bastion of anti-mask, racist right-wingers who saw fit to reward Dan Donovan for letting Pantaleo off the hook in the Garner non-indictment – are actually independent of how I feel about transit service there. Everybody deserves transit access.]

[Via Garibaldi 8]

8 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

That is such bullshit and you know it. You just make stuff up out of thin air. Must you derail every thread? 

[And just for the record, my feelings about the south edges of Staten Island – the bastion of anti-mask, racist right-wingers who saw fit to reward Dan Donovan for letting Pantaleo off the hook in the Garner non-indictment – are actually independent of how I feel about transit service there. Everybody deserves transit access.]

Uh huh. That's why you were talking about getting rid of express bus service because you care so much about outer borough New Yorkers, especially those that are in areas without subways. In any event, my point stands, and it's a major reason I started my group. I am sick of the  being Manhattan centric. The outer boroughs and outskirts of NYC also have needs, so yes, I support a restructuring of the board that has representatives for everyone. I would want at least one rep from each borough, including Staten Island since they have had periods in which they have had no representation on the board, and also one express bus rep. as well. There is representation for Metro-North and LIRR riders, but gaps in certain areas.

 

 

 

Edited November 24, 2020 by Via Garibaldi 8

[GojiMet86]

3 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

That is such bullshit and you know it. You just make stuff up out of thin air. Must you derail every thread? 

[And just for the record, my feelings about the south edges of Staten Island – the bastion of anti-mask, racist right-wingers who saw fit to reward Dan Donovan for letting Pantaleo off the hook in the Garner non-indictment – are actually independent of how I feel about transit service there. Everybody deserves transit access.]

 

This is the same guy who talked shit FOR YEARS about the "dirty stinky" people who ride the subway. He's the same guy who REFUSED to ride the subway and preferred to pay much more for Metro-North WAYYYYY before the current crime and homelessness spike, deBlasio, and COVID came to town.

 

17 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Nat Ford moved on from NYCTA. David Gunn was a favorite of mine and he moved on. The DC Metro design comes from NYCT subways, down to the blue lights and the emergency alarm box setup. Earn your stripes here and move on if your upward progress is blocked. Right before I retired one of my supt. friends introduced me to a new member of the NYCT team. He came over from the LIRR. Told him that I knew about him before we met and he couldn't figure it out. Turns out that brother-in-law was hooked up with a female in his office and she gave me the lowdown on him. It's a small enclosed field when you're talking about mass transit in North America or the UK. Perhaps it's time to incorporate other perspectives into the picture such as Asia.  Just my musings. Carry on.

You're not the only one who has noticed the very narrow visions of North Americans.

His ideas have been giving unneeded flack on the forums here because apparently he doesn't understand New York like New Yorkers, but Alon Levy has been really the only one studying costs of transportation systems around the world. Better yet, he is really starting to quantify the excuberant costs.

 

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/11/18/governance-in-rich-liberal-american-cities/

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/11/08/more-on-consultants-and-design-build/

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/11/08/what-is-the-anglosphere-anyway/

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/11/08/more-on-consultants-and-design-build/

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/05/22/who-is-being-empowered/

 

Here, I'll put this entire article here:

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/06/11/managerialism-and-civil-service/

Quote

 

I have a pretty concrete institutional theory for why the United States, and to some extent the rest of the Anglosphere, lags in infrastructure. It mostly fits the available evidence, but “mostly” and “available” are the operative words, and I don’t want to expound on it too much before doing more interviews to contrast American infrastructure planning with Continental European and democratic Asian examples, to see if there’s basis to what I’m saying.

But one piece of the theory is worth talking about early: the concept of managerialism. The relevance to infrastructure is roughly the following set of propositions that constitute this theory as applied to public policy:

Big outfits should be run by professional managers, who should be trained primarily in management and not in a specific industry; it is acceptable and even desirable for a CEO to bounce between different industries. A successful founder or manager in one field should be presumed capable of quickly acquiring expertise in another field if they move to a new industry.

Domain knowledge is suspect, because the people who hold it are self-interested – in public policy this relates to public choice theory. At best, domain knowledge means you get to work for a manager.

Managers should set up the right incentives to force underlings with domain knowledge to innovate, and do not need to acquire detailed domain knowledge themselves. For example, they should set up objective metrics to evaluate employees by rather than have close enough relationships with the employees to know intuitively who to promote.

The recruitment pipeline for the managers should combine a set of institutions producing a single elite (Oxbridge, Ivy League) with a proof-of-pudding system measuring success by earned wealth.

The upshot is that if you don’t trust any of your workers (public choice theory, again) and do trust the managerial elite to be able to run all industries equally, then you can just do whatever you want and blame the inevitable failure on the workers being too stupid or incompetent.

Note that even though this is often an anti-government theory of how to run public-sector agencies, it is as written politically neutral, and even used by leaders on the left. Politicians of all stripes appoint people with the wrong skillset to run public agencies, preferring political appointees (who in both the US and UK come from the same institutions as the private-sector managerial elite) to career professionals. Career professionals may be too politically independent and have long-term plans that are not compatible with self-aggrandizing schemes to build visible infrastructure that a politician can claim full credit for.

Note also that even though the full set of propositions I associate with managerialism comes from the English-speaking world, segments of it can be found elsewhere. France, for example, has a Grande Ecole-educated elite that views itself as omnicompetent. It differs from the Anglo-American model somewhat in that the institution that produces engineering executives (Polytéchnique) are not the same as the one that produces politicians (ENA), and a a lot in that bouncing between industries is narrower, so that SNCF is run by airline executives without experience in railways rather than by industrialists and financiers without experience in transportation.

I make no claim about whether managerialism works in other spheres, like general business. That said, in the fastest-growing high-end segment of the American economy, tech, the business culture is very different: everyone, including management, is expected to know how to code; managers are recruited from among experienced programmers; the culture regards external managers much less than it does coder-founders like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, or Mark Zuckerberg, to the point that most people in tech and tech media regard Microsoft’s stagnation in the 2000s as the fault of the transition from founder Bill Gates to the more managerial Steve Ballmer.

But in the public sector, at least in infrastructure, managerialism has not succeeded. Any of the following reasons may be relevant to the failure of turnaround experts, political appointees, private-sector CEOs, and other non-industry professionals to improve American public transportation.

American business culture assumes that the same methods work regardless of scale. Public transit is scale-dependent, which fries a lot of common private-sector assumptions. Most importantly, starting small is not always possible, especially in trains. Managers who are used to starting small end up deemphasizing the most productive parts of public transportation, like rail operations, in favor of things that can be done incrementally, like bus lanes.

American culture is generally closed to foreign knowledge. It is also pragmatic and anti-theoretical, viewing foreign knowledge as a kind of theory that must be tested at very small scale before being applied widely; one American big-city transit manager denigrated international cost comparisons as “Paris or something.” The difference between managers and industry professionals is that some of the latter understand that public transportation works better in Europe and East Asia and try to learn, whereas managers see nothing to learn in countries with living standards that are (on average) comparable to the US’s or (for senior managers) much lower.

Public transportation has a lot of moving parts that have to be planned together – timetable, infrastructure, equipment, and more broadly also development. Even within operations, there are different departments that affect one another closely, like dispatching and actual operations. This makes typical responses to bad news, like a hiring freeze, atrocious, because an overstaffed agency may have one understaffed department creating too much work for everyone else; only an experienced transportation professional would know to fix the problem department by hiring more people even in a bad economy in order to increase productivity elsewhere.

Infrastructure has very long time horizons. Agency heads have to think on the scale of decades, not quarterly earnings calls with the shareholders.

Competition is destructive. The real competition is cars, and not other modes of public transportation. Competitive private businesses generally understand coordination (“synergy” was a much-mocked buzzword in the 1990s and 2000s), but less deeply than researchers with familiarity with the situation of multimodal public transportation.

What this means is that the penchant of so many American politicians to hire outsiders to the field is not part of the solution to the problem of failing transit agencies, but rather part of the problem. Success comes from hiring people who are experienced in the field, and if the agency bureaucracy seems too inflexible, then hiring from other countries. There’s a reason Andy Byford, a career transportation planner with experience in London and Toronto, was such a hit success in New York – and there’s a reason this success involved developing much greater levels of mutual trust between management and the workers. In contrast, a string of people whose background is in a culture that treats everything as an American business to be turned around with tough management does not produce good results – rather, such leaders create problems that justify their own continued existence, blaming their own failures on the people below them.

 

 

[MHV9218]

8 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Uh huh. That's why you were talking about getting rid of express bus service. In any event, my point stands, and it's a major reason I started my group. I am sick of the  being Manhattan centric. The outer boroughs and outskirts of NYC also have needs, so yes, I support a restructuring of the board that has representatives for everyone. I would want at least one rep from each borough, including Staten Island since they have had periods in which they have had no representation on the boars, and also one express bus rep as well. There is representation for Metro-North and LIRR riders, but gaps in certain areas.

Two things.

1) That was exactly Gotham's proposal, which I agreed with.

2) Express bus service is subsidized to the tune of $11.79 per rider. It's far and away the most wasteful expenditure in the MTA's operating network. It's actually even more subsidized than de Blasio's ridiculous NYC ferry network. So yes, if tough budget questions had to be answered, express buses are the first places I would cut. Technically speaking, every dollar poured into the express bus subsidy could be put into developing a more robust and timely bus network in the outer boroughs. Poorer local bus riders in Brooklyn in Queens are actually, to my mind, more deserving of that aid than wealthier express bus riders in Staten Island. But we're not ready for that conversation.

Edited November 24, 2020 by MHV9218
source added

[Via Garibaldi 8]

8 minutes ago, GojiMet86 said:

 

This is the same guy who talked shit FOR YEARS about the "dirty stinky" people who ride the subway. He's the same guy who REFUSED to ride the subway and preferred to pay much more for Metro-North WAYYYYY before the current crime and homelessness spike, deBlasio, and COVID came to town.

 

Please. I have earned the right to travel as I choose. I have used the subway for many years. I don't owe you or anyone else an explanation of how I choose to spend my money.

8 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Two things.

1) That was exactly Gotham's proposal, which I agreed with.

2) Express bus service is subsidized to the tune of $11.79 per rider. It's far and away the most wasteful expenditure in the MTA's operating network. It's actually even more subsidized than de Blasio's ridiculous NYC ferry network. So yes, if tough budget questions had to be answered, express buses are the first places I would cut. Technically speaking, every dollar poured into the express bus subsidy could be put into developing a more robust and timely bus network in the outer boroughs. Poorer local bus riders in Brooklyn in Queens are actually, to my mind, more deserving of that aid than wealthier express bus riders in Staten Island. But we're not ready for that conversation.

2. 30,000 plus express bus riders have a right to rapid transit. We pay taxes. If it wasn't for us wealthier outer borough residents that pay to subsidize plenty of other things, many programs would certainly not be available that are today or they would be with less funding available. You're the type of guy that says yeah tax those with more, but don't think that those same tax payers should get their share of benefits from the taxes they pay. Insanity. Same story with the ferries. You don't want to serve those ferry riders? They pay taxes and tend to be high earners. Don't take our tax dollars then. 

[MHV9218]

6 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Please. I have earned the right to travel as I choose. I have used the subway for many years. I don't owe you or anyone else an explanation of how I choose to spend my money.

2. 30,000 plus express bus riders have a right to rapid transit. We pay taxes. If it wasn't for us wealthier outer borough residents that pay to subsidize plenty of other things, many programs would certainly not be available that are today or they would be with less funding available. You're the type of guy that says yeah tax those with more, but don't think that those same tax payers should get their share of benefits from the taxes they pay. Insanity. Same story with the ferries. You don't want to serve those ferry riders? They pay taxes and tend to be high earners. Don't take our tax dollars then. 

Nobody's disputing your right to public transit. But I will happily dispute the level of subsidy. You actually raise an interesting math question. Are express bus riders so disproportionately funding the NYC tax base that they deserve to be disproportionately subsidized by the MTA? Because by comparison, local bus riders get a raw deal with every extra dollar of express subsidies. Napkin math, I would say that's probably not what's happening – express riders are't rich enough to really make a dent on the tax base. It's the truly rich – millionaires, billionaires – who fund a massive amount of the tax base, and they don't use any forms of public transit at all. So maybe they're the ones missing out! 😉

Edited November 24, 2020 by MHV9218

[GojiMet86]

2 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Please. I have earned the right to travel as I choose. I have used the subway for many years. I don't owe you or anyone else an explanation of how I choose to spend my money.

 

But you do realize the hypocrisy in calling subway riders a bunch of dirty disgusting shits, only to complain about Staten Island being called disgusting?

 

Quote

2. 30,000 plus express bus riders have a right to rapid transit. We pay taxes. If it wasn't for us wealthier outer borough residents that pay to subsidize plenty of other things, many programs would certainly not be available that are today or they would be with less funding available. You're the type of guy that says yeah tax those with more, but don't think that those same tax payers should get their share of benefits from the taxes they pay. Insanity. Same story with the ferries. You don't want to serve those ferry riders? They pay taxes and tend to be high earners. Don't take our tax dollars then. 

 

The ferries are still a big f**king waste by this dipshit DiBlasio.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

9 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Nobody's disputing your right to public transit. But I will happily dispute the level of subsidy. You actually raise an interesting math question. Are express bus riders so disproportionately funding the NYC tax base that they deserve to be disproportionately subsidized by the MTA? Because by comparison, local bus riders get a raw deal with every extra dollar of express subsidies. Napkin math, I would say that's probably not what's happening – express riders are't rich enough to really make a dent on the tax base. It's the truly rich – millionaires, billionaires – who fund a massive amount of the tax base, and they don't use any forms of public transit at all. So maybe they're the ones missing out! 😉

Yes, we deserve every penny we get. Why? Because there hasn't been any subway expansion in the outer boroughs in DECADES. Meanwhile, there is money for the subway expansion in Manhattan (of course), so if you take such issue with the subsidy, the cost to build subways outside of Manhattan would be far far higher.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 minute ago, GojiMet86 said:

 

But you do realize the hypocrisy in calling subway riders a bunch of dirty disgusting shits, only to complain about Staten Island being called disgusting?

 

What hypocrisy? I've been riding the subways for over twenty years. I have earned the right to criticize it being filthy. It's called calling a spade a spade. There are pigs everywhere, just fewer of them on the express buses, but they exist everywhere. I use the subway rarely these days because I either take express buses, Metro-North or travel via car or Uber, but I have used the subway I believe twice in the last few months, and the subways have been clean and the riders civilized. That's not always the case.

[MHV9218]

6 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yes, we deserve every penny we get. Why? Because there hasn't been any subway expansion in the outer boroughs in DECADES. Meanwhile, there is money for the subway expansion in Manhattan (of course), so if you take such issue with the subsidy, the cost to build subways outside of Manhattan would be far far higher.

Good point, the lack of subway access in the outer boroughs is terrible. More reason to better fund and expand the crumbling local bus network. If only we weren't drastically over-subsidizing the express bus network. 

[JAzumah]

I think Alon Levy makes a lot of good points. We don't see eye to eye on private sector transit, but his work on cost drivers in American public transit infrastructure amounts to "no good reason" and that doesn't make transit agencies happy. There isn't a good reason why American infrastructure cost so much more than even London and Paris. In addition, the managerial issue is a profound issue. People who are masters of the transit craft do often look at themselves and say "How can we do what we are doing better?" without thinking that the way of the past was wrong. People who are not masters of the craft assume that changing something is an admission of some sort of failure and that leads to stagnation.

[GojiMet86]

Just now, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Yes, we deserve every penny we get. Why? Because there hasn't been any subway expansion in the outer boroughs in DECADES. Meanwhile, there is money for the subway expansion in Manhattan (of course), so if you take such issue with the subsidy, the cost to build subways outside of Manhattan would be far far higher.

 

Obviously this won't happen, but...

If in ten years, the city miraculously decided to build a subway from say, Midtown to Staten Island via Bayonne, or extend the  to Rosedale (as was planned in the '80s) or build a line to Whitestone...

Then those good outer borough residents should have no problem whatsover,......right?

There shouldn't be mass protests by them about how these lines would be bringing the unwanted elements,......right?

I shouldn't be seeing Queen Nicole bitch about the city encroaching on SI,......right?

 

Just now, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

What hypocrisy? I've been riding the subways for over twenty years. I have earned the right to criticize it being filthy. It's called calling a spade a spade. There are pigs everywhere, just fewer of them on the express buses, but they exist everywhere. I use the subway rarely these days because I either take express buses, Metro-North or travel via car or Uber, but I have used the subway I believe twice in the last few months, and the subways have been clean and the riders civilized. That's not always the case.

See, I'm saying you're calling ALL subway riders dirty, not just the trains and conditions themselves.

Conditions, that's something anyone can call out. I see that all the time in the SI Advocacy group. I've seen how shitty (literally) the subway can be.

But you never call express riders as a whole dirty,......right?

[Via Garibaldi 8]

4 minutes ago, GojiMet86 said:

 

1. Obviously this won't happen, but...

If in ten years, the city miraculously decided to build a subway from say, Midtown to Staten Island via Bayonne, or extend the  to Rosedale (as was planned in the '80s) or build a line to Whitestone...

Then those good outer borough residents should have no problem whatsover,......right?

There shouldn't be mass protests by them about how these lines would be bringing the unwanted elements,......right?

I shouldn't be seeing Queen Nicole bitch about the city encroaching on SI,......right?

 

2. See, I'm saying you're calling ALL subway riders dirty, not just the trains and conditions themselves.

Conditions, that's something anyone can call out. I see that all the time in the SI Advocacy group. I've seen how shitty (literally) the subway can be.

But you never call express riders as a whole dirty,......right?

1. The City had its chance to expand subway access in the outer boroughs. As far as I'm concerned, that ship has sailed. These neighborhoods are established and would be drastically changed with subways, not to mention overdeveloped without the infrastructure to handle it. Just look at Staten Island with the overdevelopment. Streets were not made for the kind of traffic we see out there, and a lot of other places are the same way. Whitestone, Riverdale, Neponsit, Dyker Heights. These were areas developed to be similar to the suburbs, so it's suburban like living in NYC. 

2. Like I said, I call a spade a spade. I've seen people piss right on the  train in the middle of rush hour. Never saw that on an express bus before, and the guy was not mentally ill or homeless. Just a disgusting pig. I don't see tons of subway bashing in the SI express bus groups I'm in. Plenty of Staten Islanders take the subway from the express bus. Hell I did it for years when I worked in Chelsea. Took the express bus in and transferred to the  train.

[MHV9218]

"We need express buses with their wasteful subsidy because we have no subways in the outer boroughs"

"Don't build subways in the outer boroughs because it would change the character of the neighborhood"

Okay.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

5 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

"We need express buses with their wasteful subsidy because we have no subways in the outer boroughs"

"Don't build subways in the outer boroughs because it would change the character of the neighborhood"

Okay.

Nothing was stopping them years ago from building them. I'm not the one complaining about running express buses. You are, so they either run the express buses, or spend more and build subways, which they aren't going to do, so express buses it is.

[bobtehpanda]

2 hours ago, JAzumah said:

The MTA can integrate a real estate plan early in the process for some of their new subway extensions. They have a lot of real estate expertise passing through the board. For example, they can upzone around SAS train stations and capture that value. It can happen with a real estate plan. 

The board does not manage day to day operations, so their expertise there would be fairly limited, and the MTA payscale does not approach anything competitive for the real estate industry.

To develop land, they have to own it, and to own it, they have to buy it, and to buy it, they need money, but they don't have any. This might work better in Long Island and Westchester where they own massive parking lots next to stations, but the MTA does not own land like that in New York City itself, at least not land that needs to have an expensive deck built over it.

Western tax-based value capture has never fully paid for an extension, and if you want to see how the MTA f**ked that up all you have to do is go to 42nd and 10th.

Edited November 24, 2020 by bobtehpanda

[checkmatechamp13]

2 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

Two things.

1) That was exactly Gotham's proposal, which I agreed with.

2) Express bus service is subsidized to the tune of $11.79 per rider. It's far and away the most wasteful expenditure in the MTA's operating network. It's actually even more subsidized than de Blasio's ridiculous NYC ferry network. So yes, if tough budget questions had to be answered, express buses are the first places I would cut. Technically speaking, every dollar poured into the express bus subsidy could be put into developing a more robust and timely bus network in the outer boroughs. Poorer local bus riders in Brooklyn in Queens are actually, to my mind, more deserving of that aid than wealthier express bus riders in Staten Island. But we're not ready for that conversation.

Percentage-wise, the express buses are more efficient (the fare is $4 higher than the ferry and the subsidy is $1 higher than the ferry). By that logic, we shouldn't be subsidizing the outer portions of Metro-North and LIRR.

2 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

Good point, the lack of subway access in the outer boroughs is terrible. More reason to better fund and expand the crumbling local bus network. If only we weren't drastically over-subsidizing the express bus network. 

Better local bus service would be wonderful out here, but there is still a need for good express bus service. That's like telling NJT to cut all of its PABT routes back to Newark, Secaucus, or Hoboken, and telling everyone to take the PATH or commuter rail into NYC from there.  The express bus easily saves 30-45 minutes compared to a ferry-based or train-based alternative, depending on the exact neighborhood you're coming from. (Granted, if you had a better local bus system feeding into the  that would help, but it's not a complete solution. The SIM1C is still quicker from Lower Manhattan compared to the  to the S79). 

Edited November 24, 2020 by checkmatechamp13

[MHV9218]

1 hour ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

Percentage-wise, the express buses are more efficient (the fare is $4 higher than the ferry and the subsidy is $1 higher than the ferry). By that logic, we shouldn't be subsidizing the outer portions of Metro-North and LIRR.

Better local bus service would be wonderful out here, but there is still a need for good express bus service. That's like telling NJT to cut all of its PABT routes back to Newark, Secaucus, or Hoboken, and telling everyone to take the PATH or commuter rail into NYC from there.  The express bus easily saves 30-45 minutes compared to a ferry-based or train-based alternative, depending on the exact neighborhood you're coming from. (Granted, if you had a better local bus system feeding into the  that would help, but it's not a complete solution. The SIM1C is still quicker from Lower Manhattan compared to the  to the S79). 

I don't entirely disagree with you, but if you were really evaluating on a need-vs-need basis, you would have to make purely quantitative judgments about subsidized vs. unsubsidized routes. If push came to shove, I'd worry more about providing service in the poorest neighborhoods than the wealthiest. Subsidies for SI express service would be lower priority than maintaining frequencies in eastern Brooklyn and the South Bronx. And naturally, the entire ferry system would be cut in a hurry. But hopefully we don't have to face all of these questions. 

[checkmatechamp13]

9 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

C'mon, you're just picking fights for no reason. That has nothing to do with the conversation. We're talking proportionality. We just said that borough presidents (for you in Riverdale, that's Ruben Diaz Jr. of the Bronx; for Staten Island, that's Jimmy Oddo) would have a seat at the table. The question is about why Long Island county executives should have disproportionate say over a primarily NYC-based transit system. 

I think the general issue of proportionality could be addressed the opposite way: Leave all the county executives (which would be the equivalent of a NYC borough president) on the board and then add one person per borough. (So you end up with 12 in the city and 7 in the suburbs as opposed to 7 in the city and 2-3 in the suburbs).

The other question is what to do with the Connecticut counties in the MTA service area? (Fairfield and New Haven). Or do you toss them in and then bump it up to 3 representatives per borough? (So you have 17 from the city and 9 in the suburbs)

Anyway, as far as express bus service goes, you can't make generalizations. As a whole, yes the system is less efficient than the local bus system. But offhand, on the weekends the SIM1C and BxM7 run just as efficiently as a typical local route. (The high ridership combined with relatively little deadheading leads to a low cost per passenger)

Are there low ridership express routes that should be cut (whether entirely or at certain times of the day)? Sure, absolutely. Are there some that could be reasonably efficient at a reduced frequency (especially given the COVID-related ridership losses)? Again, absolutely. But to just blindly say "Express bus service should always be a lower priority than local bus service" is disingenuous. (And like I said there are inefficiencies in terms of practices like excess deadheading that push the cost beyond what it needs to be, and that applies to the local bus side as well. There is zero reason for peak direction deadheading. To say that they can't find anything to pair those runs up with is BS)

[Trainmaster5]

While we endlessly debate the here and now it seems that many people overlook the obvious or are too young to know. FACT.... the  was not created to run the NYCT bus and subway network. It was created for the benefit of suburbanites. Kinda hard to kick the suburbs to the curb if you look at it that way. The fiscal crisis in NYC is the reason the  is in the picture at all. IIRC NYC still owns the subway system. If I'm mistaken I can be corrected. No hard feelings either way. Carry on.