Hacker News Reader

Comment by volaski | Hacker News Reader

While more tunnels and trails will be convenient for a lot of people, it won't necessarily generate significantly more revenue for MTA. On the other hand if MTA invests in wifi, they will make tons more money through all the new business opportunities that arise (Imagine instead of those paper banner ads where it says "download on the appstore", or "sign up with the code 'subway'" which are basically useless since you can't really download it on the spot nor effectively trackable, you could actually download, purchase, sign up for things. Currently most people just waste their time playing candy crush and temple run but that will all change. Their ad revenue will shoot straight up). When they make more money, they can invest in other useful features you mentioned. They're not stupid. They're doing a good job.

View on HN

The MTA is not a business, it's a public service. We already generate enough revenue in taxes, but it's sent upstate instead of being used here. NYC subsidizes the rest of the state.

http://observer.com/2014/10/northern-exposure-the-give-and-t...

Rents and therefore incomes are higher in a high-demand urban area.

Isn't the phenomenon of money being transferred from city->country an inevitability in any society with progressive income taxes?

Yeah, as wealth generation becomes more urban you have to pretty much expect cities to subsidize suburbs and rural areas.

The main issue here though is that due to some sordid political history the MTA is a state agency, despite running the NYC subway. This has resulted in the city's transit budgets being routinely raided to supplement state budget needs, and also a focus on state-centric mass transit efforts to the detriment of in-city mass transit (see: redeveloping Penn Station which serves long-distance train commuters, designing the AirTrain to LaGuardia to primarily serve suburban Long Island travelers, etc).

There's a pretty dramatic misalignment of incentives when a state agency under the command of the governor runs the city's subways, rather than the mayor or even a regional government.

You can get the BART problem although, where you have to get 3-5 counties and 25+ municipal governments working together to make a unified metro transit system. In the BART's case, only 2-3 counties did and now there are big transit gaps everyone regrets today.

Yes it is a public service, and that's why they need to generate more revenue if they want to provide higher quality service with their fixed budget. Money doesn't fall from the sky.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com