While reading about the subway situation I was treated to an ad for apartments starting near $4 million in one of the new high-rises on 57th St. The MTA has no money, the subways are terrible, some people are suggesting recreational marijuana taxes are the funding answer and the rich keep getting richer. What is wrong with the equation?
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Personally, if the mta needs more money raise it. But if they do raise it to an amount that they actually need. Then cap the fare for 20 years. Pass a law that companies or conglomerate aka mc donalds, any company employing over 200 people, would have to subsidize travel for their employees making less than 150k. If we want to preserve and improve mass transit for the future. We need to put the future liable for todays bill.
As one of the richest city in the world, why couldn’t the New Yorkers pay for a replacement for the current antiquated and dilapidated Subways for the 21st century? What gives?
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I say we assign each MTA board member a train station to sponsor & clean. Also, an ad campaign on the trains showing who is on the board, a little bio about them and why they are on the board. This board doesn't seem to represent the best interest of riders when a majority of them don't even take public transportation.
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The subways are filthy, noisy, with the brakes screeching . If we had real political leaders they would put a new tax on the large corporations, and business groups like Amazon . Google, Facebook, and hedge funds, etc and make subways free. Fares have gone up with a very low quality of service. The politicians serve the real estate industry by allowing oversized buildings cause massive congestion . Density is intense in NYC, and they keep building. The second avenue subway goes a few miles and they spent billions, with Bloomberg"s friends getting bought out. Please list the prices paid for the real estate so the second avenue subway could be finished. By the way when I took the second avenue e subway I see cracks in the cement support walls, and I called 311, but they have not fixed it. They will fall one day. the real estate industry needs to be constrained for five years. All I see is massive buildings going up without a tax on these landlords to pay for new public transportation.Talk about a controlled political entity to real estate landlords.
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I feel that the MTA should be audited to see where all the revenues are really going to, plus there should be a better crackdown on fare beaters so that there wouldn't have to be fare hikes or even other claimed ways to help with funds that will just end up the same way the ones they already have do.
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You should stay in Pleasantville.
Busting fare beaters is economically discriminatory (and racist)! It’s already hard enough to live here, why would to punish those at the very bottom?
Why should anyone pay for a broken system? Fix the corruption at the top first then maybe we can figure out a way that no one has to pay.
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@Lyle Rainwater
Calling for a crackdown on fare beaters isn't a class warfare. As a matter of fact, there are those who sneaking onto the buses and subways of all kinds of classes. If they can afford what they have on them, they can easily afford the fares. They are part of the reason for the fare hikes especially when it forces those that actually do pay to give even more while they aren't giving anything. On a side note, just be glad that there are fair fares coming even though I think it won't change much.
That declining ontime service graph is sure attention grabbing. (Light blue, called Figure 1. Yes, from the suspect Manhattan Institute. Let's assume the data reported is valid.)
But the the NY Times needs to report what changed about train and track maintenance in later 2012 and early 2013 to cause these failures.
(No, old signals is not an acceptable answer, the same signals were old in the year 2002 and 1992, but the service was much better between circa 1984 thru 2011.)
Then the New York Times needs to explain to its readers why it didn't notice and report on the big failures in NYC subway service (bus reporting is a separate failing of the NYT) until early 2017 more than 3 full years after the significant service failures of the subways became obvious to any and all regular riders.
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One party Soviet style government in NYC more concerned with giving “free” money away ( our taxpayer dollars) . And a useless city council proclaiming this day or that day for some anti American revolutionary. This is why we are in this mess
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I confess to not always paying for my kids on buses and subways, as a protest against NYC having a reasonable child fare like any other metro system. Instead of kids under 12 being free (Toronto) or half-price (Boston and many other places), New York charges full fare once a child is over 44" tall. (What is that, some old measure against slipping under the turnstile?) Go to any family-friendly neighborhood in New York and you will see that no one pays for their kids because the policy is so ridiculous. Institute a reasonable child fare policy and fare revenue will increase.
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The new format of NY Today is just way too confusing. Too many headlines, sub-headlines, sub-sub headlines -- too many numbered (and unnumbered!) lists that go nowhere, graphics that are plopped in the middle of the newsletter. What happened to the narrative format of the newsletter? It was such a pleasure to read, and elegantly laid out.
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Every weekend, people play alphabet trains since work is being done on many other lines. What happens is that people have to take 1 train to get to another and then take that one to get the one they originally wanted. THEN, like clockwork, Monday morning, signal, switch, track or train problems, coincidentally, on the lines that were being worked on over the weekend. No matter what time I take the NB R/M trains, there is always train traffic ahead (at 9:00 p.m. and even the day of the snowstorm when I was on a train that had maybe 10 people on it, at 2:00 p.m.) getting into 71st and Continental. Move the trains out and stop keeping them in the station going SB for 15 minutes!
We all know(?) that the subway system is controlled by the state. And the one constant during the time of the graph showing the increasing delays is the governor, who can use his "bully pulpit", even if the legislators are reluctant to spend on it. What is really needed to fix the subway system (and the MTA in general) is a specific commitment from those in power (governor, house and senate leaders) to a definitive expenditure over a definitive time frame. That would give Andy Byford the ability to plan and budget for what can be accomplished. Failing that, it will continue to be a "catch as catch can" activity throwing money at the system in an irregular, non-productive manner. As I was told many years ago, if you "fail to plan, you plan to fail".
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Andy Byford seems great but no one can fix the subway without more money from the State (not congestion pricing.)
As for the issue of trash in the subway....it would not be much of a problem if people did not throw trash on the tracks, eat and spill food in the subway, etc.
Somehow people all over the world can manage not to litter in their subway systems - except people in NYC
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@LS No kidding. Just look at the streets -- NYC is filthy with litter compared to other major Western cities. I personally pick up trash on my block every day in a futile attempt to keep it clean. (Most of the street trash in my area, I have learned, comes from idling drivers).
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1) Looking at a stack of expired metrocards, about an inch thick, I feel pretty certain that the MTA makes more in unused fares than it loses from fare dodgers. Yes, I know that I can mail them into the MTA when they have expired, however, the tedious manual process on both sides makes it easy to miss the deadlines for reimbursement. Why can't you just transfer the balance over to a new card at a machine? Why do they have to expire at all? Seems like a scam for the MTA to hold you $$.
2) Shame on Google, a company known through the city for its perks and benefits to employees, won't pay a decent wage to a worker in their cafeteria.
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@N
You can transfer the balance from an expired card to a new card at a machine. When you put it in the machine to be refilled, it tells you that the card has expired and offers to replace the card; the transfer happens automatically. (It won't work with one that's expired a long time ago, though.)
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MTA is planning long delays on Wednesday to honor our #41 president.
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The subways are filthy because its users are. The other day I saw a young man standing against a Q-train door, eating a sandwich, crumbs of which were falling from his mouth. Coffee, candy wrappers, tacos . . . .
And then there are the crazy-homeless whose bodily emissions wind up on whatever surface they touch. It is clear from the stench that they have soiled themselves. They need to be cared for and medicated -- elsewhere.
Trains and platforms need to be bleached and steam-cleaned regularly.
The tracks also tell the story. Along the Q-train tracks, clear to see in the light of day particularly in the span between Newkirk and Parkside, piles of soda cans, beer bottles, coffee cups, articles of clothing, and other refuse rise in drifts between the rails.
We have become a city of slobs. Look at old photos on the MTA website even as late as the 1960s and you'll see neither garbage nor graffiti.
You tell me.
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@B. All true, though it's interesting, I took the Path last week out to Newark and back, and the cars were nearly immaculate. They didn't smell, there were no food wrappers on the ground or smelly people sprawled out across the seats. The cars were well-lit and in good condition. And the WTC station has sparkling *white* platforms. So clearly cleanliness is possible in our region's mass transit. It just depends on funding and priorities.
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I take the path six days a week. Trains run at half-hour intervals on nights and weekends. For six months service to 33d street was shut down on weekends, too; every trip had to be via World Trade Center, which, while shining in polished Carrara and chrome, also involves weaving through a tangle of tourists who stop midstride to gawk at the Oculus, stand on the left side of escalators, and generally make nuisances of themselves. One family was blocking the entire Brooklyn-bound R-train entrance, suitcases arrayed in front of the turnstile like a barricade, as they tried to figure things out. Planting a tourist attraction in the center of a transit hub was decidedly ill-conceived.
On weekdays things aren’t much better. Trains run more frequently but are more crowded, sometimes packed so tight that people wait for the next train or three.
And yes, we do have the same problems with homelessness, begging, and trash (notwithstanding no eating or drinking rule) on Path as on the subway, albeit to a lesser extent.
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HOLD ONTO YOUR PENCIL
Antiques: The City Department of Corrections still uses fax machines.
Whatever happened to radio?
Whatever happened to fax?
The world keeps spinning crazily--
Confusion to the max!
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The numbering is gone! Looking better already. Thanks!
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Given that the current men's restroom at Terminal A is a trailer parked on the tarmac, that photo of the new concourse is extra astonishing.
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the reason 208000 people per day jump the subway turnstile is because it is not enforced. (the DA's office / nypd has said more than once this year they will not enforce) i see people jumping the turnstile ALL the time in midtown, uws - there are never any cops around. not to be, you know, racist, but 95% of the time they're non-whites. they know no one will do anything! it's the same with marijuana ... we have laws, but they may or may not be actually enforced. government is "helping" them by looking the other way. disgusting. and to play devil's advocate, why do any of us bother to pay fares anymore ... since no one enforces the law.
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I lived in NYC during the late 80s when the subway was in a doomsday death spiral. Cars where filthy and tagged with graffiti, homeless where sprawled out along the stairs and against the walls and the stations reeked of urine and excrement. Riders were jumping over the turnstiles on a regular basis. Hate to admit, but the subways improved drastically under Mayor Giuliani. Now many years later, under De Blasio, the NYC subway system seems to be headed right back to the dark days. I avoid taking the subway often, not to save money, because my work gives me a transit subsidy, but because I hate how dirty, unsafe and unreliable it seems to be become again. I just found out that my transit subsidy will also cover Uber and Lyft! The MTA has some nerve to propose increasing fares while at the same time cutting cleaning, services and fare enforcement. The city has become too lax towards fare evaders jumping turnstiles or sneaking in the side exit doors and allowing homeless to live in the stations or stairwells. It feels like the MTA and NYC has colluded to punish the riders who pay and reward those those who don’t.
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I ride the 1, 6, F and NR often and to say they have gotten better is non-sense. They wait time are getting longer, they are jammed during the day, so many homeless on the trains and stations and lastly fare beaters.
The cleanliness of the trains would be better if riders didn’t eat on the train and leave their trash.
I will add that some stations have been renovated and look great!
But more cuts will equal less riders.
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Not quite sure where Cardi B. missing her court date on assault charges fits into the picture -- but ask anyone who has to take the subway with any amount of frequency, and they'll tell you that delays are just about on par with how disgustingly over-crowded they are.
And the fact that we'll soon be hit with another round of fare increases doesn't make any promises of improvement the M.T.A. makes any better.
Maybe if they took public transport more often they'd know what to do with their data.
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I lived through the transit strike in the early 80’s when everyone ended up walking, biking or roller skating to and from the city. Maybe it’s time for MTA customers to start their own strike and start walking again. Perhaps a loss of revenue will open the bureaucrats eyes.
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Regarding the subway lines and their performance: does the MTA have something like CompStat for train arrivals, and the repair and cleanliness status of subway cars? Not to go after the drivers or conductors, but to see which lines, trains and individual subway cars cause the most disruption. Also, how modern is today's subway and bus dispatching? Do we use learning software (the fabled AI) to continuously adapt dispatching to changing circumstances, do we use the security camera feeds to assess in real time how crowded the platforms are, which signals demand? While none of this would alleviate the urgent need to modernize the subway signaling system and overhaul the tracks and trains, every bit helps. The one and only "upside" of the current message is that there is plenty of room for improvement!
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Of course it has not improved a lot, that would take a lot of money and time. I bet the improvement is mostly within the normal variation of the attributes. Pretty simple for a person who understands how such a system works and what it takes to make significant improvements in it.
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@vulcanalex
If it were so "simple for a person who understands how such a system works and what it takes to make significant improvements in it" -- it would've been fixed by now!
What's NOT so simple, is retrofitting an entire transportation system that's over 100 years old to meet the demands of a city that has over 8.6 million inhabitants, plus daily commuters and tourists that's steadily increasing with each passing year.
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The NYC subway system could be fixed very simply: Just give Andy Byford $19 billion. If you don't, you'll be sorry! Get those taxes and bridge and tunnel tolls up, up, up.
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I don't get it.
I lived in Manhattan 1984-99. The subways were a mess when I got there but in the 15 years I lived in your wonderful city, they improved.
You can't really manage the City without the subway. I still remember the day I was on a crosstown bus and the PETA people were demonstrating. One hour and 15 Minutes from 2nd Ave to Broadway. The driver wouldn't let the passengers off. I could have walked it three times.
The subway is generally impervious to street obstructions so why wouldn't a state with what is arguably the world's greatest city in it, want to be sure that revenue-generating engine, Manhattan, is catered to and preened?
These political fights between juvenile-acting men hurt everybody. Get your act together. You've got Amazon coming to town. Pay attention to your subway. If Paris can do it you can. Why, did you know Moscow's subway has chandeliers in it?
I don't get it.
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@Dkhatt
To begin with. Amazon coming to town is only going to add to the problem.
And even though Moscow's subway system has chandeliers (and Art!) in it...who wants to live in Moscow?
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According to the Daily News article linked below, on subway car cleaning: "The cleaning schedule will also be trimmed so that crews only spruce up trains only once during a route — instead of cleaning the subway cars at both ends of the line."
Rarely do I ride the subways anymore but, when I do, I'm often appalled by how filthy the cars and stations are. And they want to clean them less?? At one point does it start to become a public health issue? Let's get congestion pricing moving - and soon.
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@Brian, it feels like the Post Office model.
(1) Deal with less revenue by making service worse, less comfortable, more unreliable;
(2) Then complain that revenue is down further as people who had been loyal start using other alternatives (for some reason you act like you can't figure out)
(3) Since your resources are lower due to lower revenue because customers are not loyal:
Make service worse, even less comfortable, even more unreliable
(4) Complain even more as more people choose to use alternatives.
- Spit. Rinse. Repeat.
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