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Tag Archives: heavy rail

Cuomo & De Blasio Agree to Fix Subway

By | | Transportation
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New York governor Andrew Cuomo and mayor Bill de Blasio, who have been feuding over who was going to pay to fix the subway system, have finally agreed to impose the cost of fixing the subway on people who don’t ride it..

With great fanfare, they released what they call a “10-point plan,” but it really amounts to two points: first, they are going to impose more charges on auto drivers and spend them on the subways; and second, they are going to try to reduce fare evasion.

The other points involve things like redesigning the MTA bureaucracy, auditing the bureaucracy, creating new committees to oversee the bureaucracy, and giving the bureaucracy a mandate to do more planning, in other words, be more bureaucratic. Somehow they think this shuffling of deck chairs is going to make a difference to MTA’s sinking ship. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Disaster

By | | Transportation
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Recent audits of Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transit (HART) by the city of Honolulu and state of Hawaii provide a backroom view of how the rail transit-industrial complex is scalping taxpayers. Honolulu’s rail line, which was originally supposed to cost less than $3 billion, is now expected to cost well over $9 billion, thanks to poor planning and HART essentially letting the foxes (in the form of outside contractors) guard the chicken house (the public purse).

The first of four state audits (summarized here) says that the city hastily signed contracts committing itself to the project before all environmental and financial reviews were completed. The audit doesn’t say so, but the city did this to prevent opponents, who were marshaling legal and political forces against the project, from stopping it. Continue reading →

Blowing Up the MTA

By | | Transportation
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New York governor Andrew Cuomo says he wants to “blow up the MTA.” He is angry because MTA had decided to shut down the L subway line, one of the most heavily used lines in Brooklyn, for 15 months for repairs without telling him that it could have done the repairs while still running the trains, albeit with some delays.

Cuomo claims he went along with the proposed shutdown, which some called “L-mageddon,” until an angry constituent asked him why he hadn’t considered the alternative of keeping the train going on a limited basis. He had replied that he was relying on the experts to tell him what could be done, but the constituent pointed out that the experts said the state couldn’t replace the Tappan Zee Bridge, but he found a way to do so.

So Cuomo went back to the MTA which said yes, it was possible to keep the trains going while doing the repairs. After adopting that plan, Cuomo told the New York Daily News that he wants to “blow up” the MTA for not being accountable to anyone. Continue reading →

BART: The Bay Area Transit Disaster

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Ridership on the $1.2 billion Bay Area Rapid Transit line to San Francisco Airport — which was never very high in the first place — has declined by 10 percent since 2013, which translates to a $4 million annual loss in fare revenues. Ridership on the $500 million BART-funded cable car to the Oakland Airport, which was also well below expectations, declined by 6 percent in the past two years, equal to about $620,000 in lost revenues.

BART blames ride hailing services for the loss in business, claiming that no one could have predicted the rise in such services when the agency planned these lines. Ride hailing is very predictable now (hindsight being 20:20), yet BART is still planning new lines, including an extension to Livermore, a second transbay crossing, and of course the line to downtown San Jose.

To pay for these new lines, as well as reconstruction of existing lines, BART asked voters to approve $3.5 billion in new funding in 2016 — and spent two years and an unknown amount of tax dollars promoting the ballot measure (without actually mentioning the measure) with the slogan “it’s time to rebuild.” It also failed to report these expenditures in a campaign filing statement, for which it was fined a whopping $7,500 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission. As one voter noted, “that’s not a fine; that’s a fantastic investment.” Continue reading →

Subway Ridership Decline Is Accelerating

By | | Transportation
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New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority revealed that August weekend numbers were nearly 9 percent below weekend ridership in August 2017 while weekday ridership dropped 2.5 percent. Since much of New York’s Penn Station was closed in August 2017, leading many riders to find other travel methods to avoid significant delays, the fact that ridership in 2018 was below 2017 shows that the system is in deep trouble. Worse, MTA says that ridership declines appear to be accelerating.

The problem is so bad that 60 Minutes devoted a segment to it yesterday, asking “Why has the New York City subway gone off the rails?” There’s really two possible answers to this question: 1. They haven’t spent the money needed to keep it going; or 2. It simply costs too much to keep it going. The first assumes the money is around but has been squandered on the wrong things (as Republican candidate for governor Marc Molinaro says, “ribbon-cutting projects”) while the second assumes that it is simply impossible to expect taxpayers to pay all of the costs of rehabilitating and maintaining the system.

Everyone from subway riders to politicians would like to believe that the first answer is right. But it is increasingly likely that the second answer is the truth. Continue reading →

MTA Credit Rating Drops

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the credit rating for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority to A. It was two grades higher than that just five months ago. If it falls five more grades, it will be in junk bond territory.

S&P says that it based the downgrade on its assessment of MTA’s preliminary 2019 budget, which calls for spending $32.5 billion on rehabilitation efforts. Although $10 billion of that would come from bond sales, S&P says that MTA lacks the revenues to repay such bonds. If someone doesn’t find a new source of revenues, S&P warns, it will downgrade the agency’s credit rating still further. Lower credit ratings will mean that MTA will have to pay higher interest rates on future debt.

At the end of 2017, MTA’s long-term debt was $38.3 billion, most of which was incurred to address the last maintenance crisis. Since 2017 it has issued about half a billion dollars worth of additional bonds. This doesn’t count another $20 billion in unfunded health-care obligations. Add in $10 billion in planned bond issues for repair and the agency will owe nearly $70 billion. That’s a lot for a system that earns less than $7 billion in annual revenues and spends roughly twice that on operations. Continue reading →

Can New York City Afford Its Subways?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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This is a question the Antiplanner asked almost exactly one year ago, but it comes up again because New York governor Andrew Cuomo and mayor Bill de Blasio are still arguing who should pay to repair the subways. Those subways are contained entirely within New York City. They were built by New York City. They are owned by New York City. Yet New York City mayor Bill de Blasio argues that all of the projected $37 billion cost of restoring the subways to a state of good repair should be paid by the state, not the city.

de Blasio’s reasoning apparently is that, although the city owns the subways, it has leased them to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency that also manages commuter trains and other transit lines that connect New York City with suburbs in Connecticut and New York. de Blasio claims to fear that, if the city gives any money at all to the MTA, it will spend some of that money on transit outside of the city.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo is willing to meet de Blasio halfway, agreeing that the state will pay for half the cost if the city picks up the other half. “We’ve lost a year because the city wouldn’t pay” its share, he says. Comments on the Gothamist article reporting Cuomo’s statement show that New York City residents don’t think much of this argument. Continue reading →

Hoverboards in Subways

By | | Transportation
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Someone suggested that New York City subways be replaced with hoverboards, and the internet went nuts. Or at least some people on the internet went nuts.

The normally pro-transit Atlantic Monthly published an article by Peter Wayner — author of Future Ride: 80 Ways the Self-Driving Car Will Change Everything — suggesting that the projected $19 billion cost of fixing the New York City subway was too much. Instead, he proposed something “radically different”: to tear out the rails and open up the subways to private operators of shared, autonomous vehicles. Instead of full-sized cars, he predicted that the market would lead private companies to use what he called “hoverboards,” by which I think he meant electric scooters and Segway-like vehicles.

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read about the NYC Subway,” responded my friend (frenemy?) Charles Marohn. “Makes Randal O’Toole’s idea to just run buses in the tunnels look reasonable.” Continue reading →

Half a Station Is Worse Than None

By | | Transportation
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The Washington Metro is adding a new station to its rail system, and — surprise! — it is over budget and years behind schedule. Known as Potomac Yard, the station is designed to serve a high-density, mixed-use development that is being built on a former train yard located on the border between Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.

Metro’s solution to the cost issue is, essentially, to build half a station: one that would serve the north half of the Potomac Yard development but not the south half. Metro knew this decision would be controversial because retailers and apartment renters were signing leases in the south half confident in the knowledge that their shops and homes would soon be a few steps away from the a Metro station.

For example, a group called National Industries for the Blind (NIB) agreed to build its world headquarters in Potomac Yard. The group “would not have picked out Potomac Yard town center without knowing Metro would be coming,” said the developer in 2016. Metro is “absolutely vital.” Continue reading →

Qatar Supports the Washington Metro

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The Washington Capitals ice hockey team, which plays its home games in downtown Washington, is in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The games go long enough that spectators can’t reliably take DC’s Metro rail transit home, as the trains stop running at 11:30 pm on Monday through Thursday.

This wasn’t a problem in the first two games of a best four-out-of-seven series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, as those games were played in Tampa. In the third game, Metro persuaded Exelon, which owns the local electric company, to donate $100,000 to keep the trains running for an extra hour.

For last night’s game 6, Metro somehow twisted Uber’s figurative arm into contributing $100,000 to keeping the trains running. It seems strange that Uber would give money to its competitor unless it hopes to get some political favors in exchange. Continue reading →