[delackner]

While automation sounds elegant, it has nothing to do with the problems or solutions here. The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids.

Many modern subway systems have similarly huge networks with far higher traffic than NYC but manage to maintain low failure rates and CLEAN tracks simply because they value and prioritize maintenance and quality of service. Some are private, some are public.

It truly baffles me why NYC and actually the SF BART both fail so utterly to even attempt to provide quality service.

[concerned_user]

I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car, dislike of mass transit in any form (except planes) and as a result mass transit is meh and makes people even more miserable.

[CaptainZapp]

  I live in Europe and to me it seems that its a general American mentality of everybody having a car

New York is different. Car ownership is extremely low and the subway is a vital part of the city's transportation infrastructure.

The problem seems more attitude wise. We want great infrastrure while paying low taxes. This contradiction, of course, isn't really solvable as can be seen in the generally pretty rotten state of infrastructure in the US.

[twobyfour]

Of course, part of the problem is that our subway system is run not by the city but by a state government dominated by car culture types. And heck, even our current mayor gets driven around in a black SUV all day and didn't know when questioned last week that less than half of New York households own cars.

[betterunix2]

If the MTA provided service to more than the NYC metro region, this would be less of a problem. Half the population the state is paying for a system they never use, so they are understandably upset. If the MTA operated commuter systems around Albany, Buffalo, and other towns and cities in New York, people would be less apt to cut their budget.

[maxerickson]

State funds are not a major portion of the budget:

http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding/

(the Petroleum tax and State & Local operating assistance combined are less than 10%)

[betterunix2]

The MMTOA is 10% on its own, so I am not sure I see your point.

[dsfyu404ed]

In a state like NYC where you have one large population center that overwhelms the rest of the state the only time that the dominant population center does not get its way is when its way is so abhorrent to the rest of the state that they are unified against it and even that doesn't happen often.

NY safe is a great example how far the influence of NYC goes in state government and it wound up getting done despite practically the entire rest of the state being opposed to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Green-Star-Map-05-Feb-14....

NYC blaming NY for it's problems is an incredibly out of touch with reality attitude. If something NYC wants isn't getting done at the state level it's probably because NYC's goals do not line up with those of its own elected representation, not because the rest of the state is standing in your way.

[twobyfour]

Actually, it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the state.

The city proper (served by the subway) represents about 20% of the population.

The metro area including parts of Connecticut and NJ (not represented in NY State gov't) is about 20M people. Even if they were all in state, that's still a bit under half the state's total population. And the metro area outside the city proper is still heavily dominated by car culture.

NY State also has several other much smaller but still significant population centers, including Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo. These areas are not served by the MTA and are also automobile-centric, despite having been founded and initially become boom towns in part due to the Erie Canal (that is, before the railroad dominated shipping and travel, let alone cars).

Some things the city gets its way about, especially when its interests align with those of its suburbs or the smaller urban centers of the state. When it comes to non-car-centric transportation initiatives, however, it generally doesn't.

[martinald]

I think one of the core issues is the very heavy unionisation of the staff, much more extreme than anywhere else.

Apparently union labor rates are 3-5x more expensive in transit than Europe. Considering how labor heavy it is to do repair work on old subway lines it means you need an insane budget to do any more work. And guess what, as soon as the budget gets raised the union notice and want a larger slice.

So many examples of this. Another is the way NY subway cars have 3 staff minimum. Whereas London, Paris, Berlin have one. Assume they make 3x the money and you need 3x more than other cities and you have a 10x cost increase in operational labor costs. Plus the complexity of ensuring you always have 3 people there with no sickness etc, as if you lose one you can't run the train at all.

It's really insane and will take a mayor with serious backbone to fight.

[captainmuon]

I'm generally very pro-union, but I've found unions in the US are a bit... strange.

I think union membersip is more widespread in western Europe than in the US, but I feel they could even be a bit more powerful here. They can barely keep the power balance in most industries, and have to fight long for modest raises (compensating inflation at best). Even when the economy is prosperous like in Germany, it seems they can't get many concessions.

But still there is some power balance between unions and employers, and this balance is considered the normal system how wages are negotiated in many fields.

In the US, unions seem a bit like rackets. For example, some places are only allowed to hire union members (per deal with the union). Woah, I wouldn't think this is allowed in Europe. Instead of painfully negotiating a 1% raise over a couple of years (by hinting at the possibility of announcing a warning strike), they seem to dictate ridiculous policies to make a few people rich.

Can someone explain this difference? Is it just anti-union propaganda that makes them look bad in the US? Or did they kill off the European style unions a long time ago and just left the rackets?

[rayiner]

In the US, everything is war. Businesses went to war with the unions, and the unions that are left are the ones that won the war in their industries.

[crdoconnor]

>Can someone explain this difference? Is it just anti-union propaganda that makes them look bad in the US?

Nobody does propaganda quite as well as Americans.

[betterunix2]

"NY subway cars have 3 staff minimum"

Actually, it is a 2 person crew for full-length trains and a single person for half-length trains.

"It's really insane and will take a mayor with serious backbone to fight."

The MTA is a state agency and the mayor has almost no say in contract negotiations.

[tpm]

Public transport unions are very strong in Europe, because their strikes can be very effective. However, strong unions can be a good thing - and if they are not, possibly there are more faults within the system. Maybe the labor rates are so high, because health insurance is expensive, schools are expensive, things like that, which are mostly provided by the state and cheaper in Europe?

[ubernostrum]

Unions are far more widespread and far stronger in Europe than they are anywhere in the US. By your logic, then, transit maintenance in Europe should cost unbelievable amounts of money.

(there are plenty of well-documented reasons why NYC comes up short on money for its transit system, and "unions are the devil" is an insufficient explanation for them)

[rayiner]

American unions are different. People from Germany have come to visit me in Maryland and remarked on road construction sites and how many guys that are just standing around. Here, you'll have multiple guys just standing directing traffic. In Germany, they put up some cones and a signal light.

[ameister14]

Do labor unions have an extremely combative relationship with business in Europe, and have they been traditionally associated with city/state corruption and criminal families? If not, I'd say there are cultural differences here that can't be simply explained by 'unions are big'

[AznHisoka]

New York has one of the highest state tax rates, 2nd to only California. It is absurdly high given the quality of public transportation. They cant have it both ways.

[diogenescynic]

A good example of this issue would be the escalators in BART. BART installed these shitty escalators 30 years ago that don’t work well outside and are prone to breaking down, plus homeless defecate on them... Instead of replacing the escalators that constantly break (or installing a bathroom... they’ve all been closed since 9/11...) they just keep fixing the escalators over and over and over again. It’s a penny wise, pound foolish mentality. We refuse to make long term investments in our infrastructure and just use bandaid solutions that end up costing much more.

Oh and the person in charge of selecting the escalators for BART was eventually hired by the escalator company. It’s a perfect example of everything wrong with public goods in America.

[lovemenot]

This reply seems to be a good illustration of the attitude described by its parent. The word they is telling.

I live in a city with one of the most cost-effective public transport systems. People in Tokyo tend to think of the railways as an extension of themself / their home / their city. Whereas I imagine most Americans tend to look at such systems from an external perspective: hence "they".

[AznHisoka]

... If my subway was cost-effective, timely, and orderly, I certainly would find it easy to consider it an extension of myself.

So there's nothing special about the Japanese (or bad about New Yorkers)

[chrischen]

I would add that SF is even more different in that nobody owns cars and the transit network isn’t rxtensive enough for one to rely on it for all parts of the city. So people end up taking uber and lyft everywhere.

[santaclaus]

> SF is even more different in that nobody owns cars

70% of SF households own a car, so still a majority by a long shot [1].

[1] http://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-v...

[kurthr]

Many of those households have more than one person in them (2.3 by the 2010 census) so I'm not sure it's a majority.

http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/counties/SanFranciscoCounty....

40% drive alone, while a bare majority 51% use a car, bus or van for transport (including carpools).

It's so popular, nobody does it anymore.

[jernoble]

Interesting. At 1.10 cars per household, and 2.26 people per household, about 47% of SF residents own cars. (Though subtracting out the under-18 population means 55% of driving-age residents own a car.) Also, given there must be some people who own more than one, the actual percentage is probably lower. Still, that's a lower number than I imagined.

[bhousel]

SF also has like 1/10 the population of NYC.

[djsumdog]

> So people end up taking uber and lyft everywhere.

People also cycle a lot. Most Caltrain services almost always have two bike cars.

[tooltalk]

Red herring. It doesnt cost arms and legs to maintain what we have, and last I checked, infrastructure is a small fraction of our federal/state budget.

We get crappy subway and infrastructure b/c of the efficient public sector workers and unions.

[Ma8ee]

It's part of the general "Starve the beast" policy. Underfund everything public so its miserable to have to rely on. Then use that as proof that everything government is bad.

[rayiner]

MTA spends 60% more of operating costs per mile of track than the London Tube system: https://www.google.com/amp/s/ny.curbed.com/platform/amp/2017.... MTA also gets far more ofnits budget from the government (40%) than the Tube (25%).

[ameister14]

New York City operates on an 84 billion dollar budget. The beast is not starving.

[dazc]

But a lot of mass transit infrastructure in Europe is just as bad, if not worse. Save a few 'showpiece' systems.

For example, in Spain we high speed rail between major cities which is great but regional and local rail is terrible.

[andreasklinger]

Non-NYC-er here:

> The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids

Do they have the time and budget horizon to do long-term planning ?

To me it seems like SF and NY subways are underfunded

[rayiner]

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-mayors-budget-2017-18.pdf

Transport for London budgeted 2.26 billion pounds for the London Underground in 2016. Even at peak exchange rates from 2014, that's $3.8 billion. The MTA spent $8.18 billion on the subway in 2017. The London Underground handles about 5 million rides per day, versus a bit under 6 million per day for the NYC subway. So the NYC MTA spends 120% more to serve about 20% more subway riders.

[chimeracoder]

> > The core problem with the NYC subway system is a management culture that does not value long term problem solving, instead preferring quick fixes and short term band aids

The management culture you're referring to stems from the TWU, which actively fights efforts to impose long-term planning and solutions, in favor of quick, short-term responses that pad their bills.

The government doesn't push back against these, because (for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article), New York city and state government are not really accountable to their own constituents. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the mayor of New York hasn't ridden public transit regularly in decades and doesn't even know basic transit ridership facts[0].

The former Speaker of the NYS Assembly (who was convicted for corruption a few years ago) was one of the strongest advocates for cutting the bus service that his own district was entirely dependent on[1]. Because of said corruption, he was essentially untouchable, so there was no democratic avenue for holding him accountable.

Corruption in NYS is widespread; it's the most corrupt state in the country[2], and it's no surprise that this corruption impacts the public transit infrastructure.

[0] https://twitter.com/2AvSagas/status/943158489064624128

[1] His district has essentially no subway coverage

[2] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...

[wdn]

The biggest problem here is MTA is government run. Return the subway to the private sector. Get rid of the union.

The union took the city hostage many times. Enough is enough.

[chimeracoder]

> The biggest problem here is MTA is government run. Return the subway to the private sector. Get rid of the union.

You're going to get downvoted for this because there's a very strong pro-union contingent on Hacker News, and most people reading Hacker News aren't from New York.

That said, it's true that many of the problems that New York transit faces stem from the extreme incompetence and greed of the TWU. It's not even about protecting their members' interests; it's about the TWU protecting its own interests as a corporate entity.