New York City’s Only Hope

Back in 2010, when the Federal Transit Administration admitted that the transit industry had a $78 billion maintenance backlog, America’s largest transit system seemed to be in the best shape of those with legacy (older than 40 years) rail lines. Having undergone its own crisis in the 1970s, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority appeared to be adequately funded and was not suffering the huge problems faced by transit agencies in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington.

No more. While Boston, Chicago, and Washington transit systems are worse than ever (and Philadelphia’s is only slightly better off), New York’s subways seem poised to catch up. According to Streetsblog, between November, 2012 and November, 2016, weekday subway delays grew by 322 percent.

To be fair, one month (November) is probably not a long enough period to measure a trend. Comparing MTA’s February 2012 and 2017 performance reports, the subway’s on-time record fell from 85.4 percent in 2011 to 66.8 percent in 2016. Part of the cause is an increasing failure rate of MTA’s rolling stock, which grew from one failure every 172,700 miles in 2011 to one every 112,200 miles in 2016. Both of those numbers indicate serious problems. On top of this, most of the subway system’s escalators and elevators are also out of service.

Naturally, this being America, everyone’s first response to the crisis is to blame it on someone else. Mayor de Blasio, whose city owns the subway system, blames Governor Cuomo because the governor appoints six of the fourteen agency board members. Cuomo, of course, blames de Blasio, since the city has failed to raise the funds needed to keep the system going. It won’t be long before they reach a consensus and blame it all on Trump.

It would be more accurate to blame Congress, which has spent tens of billions of dollars helping cities like Dallas and Salt Lake build their own rail systems while spending almost nothing helping cities like New York keep their systems in a state of good repair. As the Antiplanner noted two years ago, if federal transit dollars were distributed based on ridership rather than on the ability of local transit agencies to plan insanely expensive new transit lines, New York City would be getting half a billion dollars a year more than it actually gets.

The Antiplanner is more inclined, however, to blame subway riders themselves. They protest every proposed fare hike, then gripe when the subways don’t work. Counting just operating costs, fares covered 60 percent of 2015 costs, but when maintenance costs are added, fares covered only 45 percent–and that’s when maintenance was inadequate.
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Part of the problem is the way bureaucracies work: no matter how much money they have, they always need more, either because they spend it in the wrong places or they spend too lavishly on the things they ought to fund at a lower cost. But part of the problem is that rail transit is just a lot more expensive than anyone wants to believe.

New York is the one city in America that probably can’t survive in its current form without rail transit. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else should subsidize it, whether that everyone else is federal taxpayers or state taxpayers.

We know that private transit operators tend to spend 33 to 50 percent less, per vehicle mile, than public agencies. If privatization of the New York subway could reduce costs by a third to a half, the new owner would need to raise fares by 50 to 60 percent to make the system profitable. That sounds pretty drastic, but it’s a lot less drastic than tearing down all those Manhattan skyscrapers because employees can’t reach them to go to work each day.

The alternative to privatization is to find someone to tax, such as people who take taxis in Manhattan, people who drive their cars into Manhattan, or people who don’t come to Manhattan at all (meaning federal or state taxpayers). None of these taxes are fair, and as MTA should have learned by now, relying on them is eventually going to be a losing game.

Of course, Democrats such as de Blasio and Cuomo will never support privatization. But somebody ought to, because in the long run it may be New York City’s only hope.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

7 Responses to New York City’s Only Hope

  1. Henry Porter says:

    “It would be more accurate to blame Congress, which has spent tens of billions of dollars helping cities like Dallas and Salt Lake build their own rail systems while spending almost nothing helping cities like New York keep their systems in a state of good repair.”

    Congress has no more business spending federal money to keep New York’s system in good repair than it does spending federal money to build systems in Dallas or Salt Lake City.

    This redistribution of wealth, from federal taxpayers (“people who don’t come to Manhattan at all”) to cities that can well afford to make it on their own, is insane! Like all federal boondoggles, the costs are dispersed among a large group and benefits are concentrated among a small group.

    For federal taxpayers who live outside New York, the benefit-to-cost ratio of their involuntary subsidies to the New York transit system is exactly zero.

  2. Sketter says:

    This has to be the first article I have ever read that states the rest of the country’s tax payers and even Upstate New York Citizens SUBSIDIZE New York City. Every piece of literature, data and research out there clearly states that NYC is a net DONOR in taxes to the state ( $4 -$6 billion by the Rockefeller Institute) and to the country as a whole.

  3. prk166 says:


    This has to be the first article I have ever read that states the rest of the country’s tax payers and even Upstate New York Citizens SUBSIDIZE New York City.
    ” ~Sketter

    No where in Mr. O’Tooles blog post does he say any sort of thing.

  4. Sketter says:

    “No where in Mr. O’Tooles blog post does he say any sort of thing.”
    -prk166

    New York is the one city in America that probably can’t survive in its current form without rail transit. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else should SUBSIDIZE it, whether that everyone else is FEDERAL TAXPAYERS (US citizens) or STATE TAXPAYERS (Upstate New York citizens).

  5. Henry Porter says:

    I say it is right and just that New York Cityers pay their share of New York State and the USA but they should not be taxed to build high speed rail in California. And San Franciscans should pay to run San Francisco, California and the USA but they should not be taxed to run buses in NYC. Do you understand the difference?

    A subsidy exists when a group is forced to pay for something that does not benefit them and that is totally out of their control.

  6. Sandy Teal says:

    Taxes of international banking activity and global corporation headquarters is not meaningfully considered a tax paid by “NYC residents” but rather are taxes on the whole country. Once you take that away there is not much of a story that NYC is subsidizing other parts of the country.

  7. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    No more. While Boston, Chicago, and Washington transit systems are worse than ever (and Philadelphia’s is only slightly better off), New York’s subways seem poised to catch up. According to Streetsblog, between November, 2012 and November, 2016, weekday subway delays grew by 322 percent.

    Any idea how much of this is due to the significant damage inflicted on New York’s transit infrastructure by Superstorm Sandy?

    Naturally, this being America, everyone’s first response to the crisis is to blame it on someone else. Mayor de Blasio, whose city owns the subway system, blames Governor Cuomo because the governor appoints six of the fourteen agency board members.

    I must respectfully disagree with the ownership part.

    New York’s MTA is a state agency (and it provides transit service well beyond New York City in the form of the Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Railroad). So the ultimate responsibility for the MTA empire of transit (and toll crossings that fund a significant part of the costs of providing the MTA’s transit services) belongs with Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    The MTA’s Web site says (emphasis added):

    A public-benefit corporation chartered by the New York State Legislature in 1968, the MTA is governed by a 17-member Board. Members are nominated by the Governor, with four recommended by New York City’s mayor and one each by the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties. (Members representing the latter four cast one collective vote.) All Board members are confirmed by the New York State Senate.

    The Antiplanner also wrote:

    We know that private transit operators tend to spend 33 to 50 percent less, per vehicle mile, than public agencies. If privatization of the New York subway could reduce costs by a third to a half, the new owner would need to raise fares by 50 to 60 percent to make the system profitable. That sounds pretty drastic, but it’s a lot less drastic than tearing down all those Manhattan skyscrapers because employees can’t reach them to go to work each day.

    We could perhaps start by looking at what happened with MTA Long Island Bus, which was taken-away from the MTA in 2011 after a funding dispute between the MTA and Nassau County, N.Y. and is now run by a private contractor under the name Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE or NICE Bus for short).

    For background, here is an op-ed from the New York Times from 2011.

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