How many times have you heard someone say, “If only our city had a transit system like New York City’s. Then lots of people would ride transit!” Everyone seems to take it for granted that New York’s subway system is wonderful. Even the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, includes the New York subway among his short list of “urban rail success stories.”
Modern transportation.
Flickr photo by PhillipC.
But there is trouble in Gotham City, and not the kind that can be solved by a batman (unless he is a very, very rich batman). In technical terms, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) “is in deep doo doo.” In financial terms, the MTA needs to find $30 billion to rehabilitate its subways over the next five years — and is somewhere around $17 billion short. That’s about $2,000 per New York City resident. Not even Bruce Wayne would be willing to donate $17 billion to the Gotham subway system — especially when it would probably demand another $17 billion or so just a few years later.
