Hacker News Reader

Comment by notmtaemployee | Hacker News Reader

The MTA's problems begin and end at a weak senior management unwilling to standup to Cuomo's frivolous micromanagement and a transit union unwilling to modernize.

Politicians should be pushing for serious procurement and labor work rule reforms, otherwise the systemic managerial and operational deficiencies will ensure that the deterioration of service we see now will repeat it self in 5 to 10 years, regardless of how much money or technology is poured into the MTA.

London and Toronto have been able to modernize much of their transit systems in last 5 years and its not because they have more money. Once you fix the top everything else will fall into place.

Look what Andy Byford has been able to do in 4 short years at the TTC. His 5-Year Plan to modernize the TTC focused on transforming corporate culture and updating internal processes, in addition to new equipment. The results of these changes have been overwhelmingly positive with the TTC recently being named best public transit agency in North America and The TR Class of TTC subway cars in May having a MDBF of over 924,000 miles.

If your interested in getting involved with transit activism in NYC I highly suggest you follow @2AvSagas on twitter.

View on HN

When is the last time America built any impressive infrastructure? I'd say in the 70s.

Most airports, most of the interstate highway network, most subway systems, bridges, tunnels, and dams were built from the 1930s and on to the 1970s. The railroads are even older.

And after that; Silence. It's like you didn't even care to maintain it.

First time I arrived in America, I was taken aback by how old and run down everything was. The only places in Europe I had seen worse roads were in Eastern Europe shortly after the fall of the Wall. In the middle of Manhattan some streets were in a state that in Europe you would only witness in the Balkans or in rural areas. The airports and the link from airports to the city were even worse. The subways didn't even have info tables saying when the next train would arrive. At the same time in Europe, many cities were switching to driver-less trains.

Clearly, the US could afford to expand and maintain the infrastructure. And the US is usually on the forefront of technology. So it's about priority, more than ability. Public infrastructure is just not prioritized that much in the US.

This was my experience of the US as well. Not only the state of the roads, but the poor quality of the buildings, and the incredible number of power cuts. It was more reminiscent to me of the third world than the richest country in the world.

US is a huge place, so experiences don’t generalize well. You’ll have to state the region and probably the city you visited for your statement to have any meaning.

Agreed. My home (outside DC) rarely has power cuts - maybe once every 3rd year during a heavy snowfall or other major weather event. And it's almost always repaired within an hour or two.

My office has more frequent outages, but that's due to heavy construction in the area (shouldn't happen, but it does, I guess).

You've got to be more specific. I've lived in NYC for almost a decade and I think the power went out 3 times and that's always been due to a hurricane. Power cuts are not something I've had to deal with in any significant manner in anyplace I've lived in the USA (and I've lived all over).

NYC, have also done road trips up and down east and west coast. Never been to the middle. I think I've experienced 3 power cuts in the UK in my entire life.

>"This was my experience of the US as well. Not only the state of the roads, but the poor quality of the buildings, and the incredible number of power cuts."

Power cuts? This comment can not be taken seriously. Power cuts in the US are quite exceptional and generally concern circumstance such natural disasters or a severe heat wave. An "incredible number"? Yeah right.

Maybe you're right. I'm trying to find hard facts on this, but it looks like not much data is submitted:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=27892

I've experienced quite a number when I've been there, and it's possible that I've been very unlucky.

This is highly variable. When I lived in rural Alabama, power outages sometimes would happen after strong thunderstorms but that was about it. More recently I lived in downtown Atlanta and power outages were pretty much a monthly occurrence. This was just down the street from the power company's headquarters and next to tourist attractions like the World of Coca-Cola and CNN. It still amazes me how fragile the power grid is in the central business district of a major city. How rural Alabama keeps power on better than the middle of a metro of nearly six million is a mystery.

I know in New Jersey people often lose power after big storms knock trees over power lines. Everyone has a generator. I once lacked power for a week.

Not only the US. It seems the rest of the world managed to build most of their infrastructure in the 60s and 70s.

Now if you look at large infrastructure projects, they are much more expensive, and proceed at a glacial pace.

Except in China, of course.

I (half-seriously) blame computers. We can do so much now, with computers! So we do much...

Before, someone drew a line on a map, and that was that. Any problems had to be dealt with downstream.

Which bring up the subject of visible versus (mostly) invisible infrastructure. Large new hydroelectric projects are now rare but compare communications infrastructure of now to that of even the turn of the century and one can see a huge amount of spending and capacity taking place constantly. But buried fiber isn't seen, it's pretty much magic to most people. Cell and microwave towers only get noticed when they're an eyesore but otherwise go unnoticed. It's this invisible infrastructure where much of our investment now goes.

I live in France, and I was born in the early 80s and I can tell you that a lot has been done during my lifetime regarding infrastructure : high speed train lines, highways, subways, tunnels, bridges, etc... And it didn't stop.

I am not trying to tell that France does better than other countries, I think it's not even close. It is just that I know it best.

I think we tend to take everything that works for granted and forget about the difficulties in the past, only talking about present issues. Maybe the convenient road you are using every day didn't exist 20 years ago, maybe it was delayed several years and went way overbudget, but now, you feel like it has always been here, only paying attention when there is a problem.

This nails it. Most first world countries managed to build most of their concrete infrastructure in the 60s and 70s. Unfortunately, little since then and maintainance isn't so easy.

It's impressive what China builds - they were decades behind but times changed. A huge parts of Shanghai city were rice field until 1990. Most skyscrappers were build since 2005. And now Shanghai has probably more skyscrappers than any other city in the world. Impressive also the amount of 2 or 3 story highways and the high speed trains.

As usual, exaggerations on HN about how much Europe is better than the US. All of this is simply not true. I was born and raised in Rome and traveled through most of Europe and the US. There's highs and lows in both of them. Come to Rome and rent a car for a few days, you'll wish to be in Manhattan again.

I've driven in both. Rome is bad, but I would still say the roads are worse in Manhattan.

My only issue with roads in Rome were drivers. Apart from that Italian roads are rather good if expensive.

Note I havent been to the south of Rome

The roads are mostly resurfaced on a schedule that has them resurfacing nearly every day of the year. There is just so much more abuse on Manhattan asphalt from large trucks, heavy trucks, cars, construction, etc. that any given individual point can appear run-down, but then look fresh and new as soon as it is cycled through. You don't see many 16m trucks abusing streets in Rome :)

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/resurfintro.shtml

You don't see many trucks abusing the streets of Rome, only in certain areas. That said, I generally actually find the pavement in Manhattan better than in Rome.

> There is just so much more abuse on Manhattan asphalt from large trucks, heavy trucks, cars

"Abuse" is the right word. Perhaps it's worth rethinking how much of this abuse we allow. Giant trucks parading through Manhattan at will, tearing up the pavement, endangering cyclists and pedestrians, and generally lowering quality of life for residents is a policy choice, not some natural and unchangeable fact about the world.

I am all in favor of a congestion tax that was previously proposed (but failed, politics):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York...

I'd actually just settle for enforcement of existing law. 53' trucks are illegal in NYC, as is driving a truck down a street that is not a truck route. The NYPD could generate a lot of income if they simply enforce the laws on the books. You constantly see 53' trucks driving around (they even literally say "53'" on the side) and no one cares... until they make a turn and get stuck and block up traffic for a mile.

Resurfacing every day of the year is kind of a meaningless metric, though. If the entire resurfacing department is 1 dude, he can be resurfacing every day of the year and only get a (couple?) streets done. The argument there is that the department isn't large enough, which fundamentally impacts the availability of good roads.

Trucks are another thing entirely, and I'd be delighted for them to be both taxed at a higher rate for road wear & tear, and to be somehow limited. But that's road design, and that's not going to be solved for a long time.

Re: Truck taxing, it doesn't have to be a long time -- we just have to not elect idiots. Bloomberg pushed it in 2008, NYC Council voted for it and the NY State Assembly shot it down.

Sure, there are ups and downs. But Rome is a very bad example, it's a down for many reasons and it's not representative at all.

Not generally like that in mug of Texas. Houston proper has some questionable roads — but that has been due to a series of mayors that are more interested in farmers markets and “pocket parks” than actually doing the dirty work of actually running a city. The state of Texas has great roads. Far better than anything you see in places like NY, NJ or other states with Byzantine labor agreements. I live in France now and the highways here in the south (such as the A7 are extremely good — and generally privately managed (our area is run by Da Vinci) while up near the Dijon area the roads get pretty bad by comparison (highways there are run by a different group,) while in Germany, I was generally unimpressed by the Autobahn — especially driving from Hamburg to Berlin. The southern French autoroutes are luxurious by comparison. Infrastructure in Paris is a bit decayed, especially the RER going to CDG airport, while the PATH train in the NYC area is actually really nice. Florida roads are generally really nice and historically, Louisiana roads were pretty bad — you noticed it immediately crossing from Texas — that was a result of years of the Feds denying federal funding for highways because Louisiana refused to be bullied into a 21 year old drinking age.

The Houston airport is nice — a lot of work done in the 1990s and a lot of renovation done recently funded by United Airlines. SFO is nice too. CDG in Paris is a shithole airport compared to Frankfurt and SFO and Houston. Heathrow seems pretty nice, at least Terminal 2 but they don’t compare to Seoul Incheon airport.

My point is that generalized statements about the American infrastructure aren’t generally fair since the US isn’t a monolithic organization — things vary widely due to local history. Heavily union places like NY and NJ generally have far worse infrastructure than places that aren’t so influenced by corrupt union “machine” politics. When labor bosses and the mafia have material control of infrastructure politics, you are going to have sluggish development. Another problem in New York is that’s you have seemingly dozens of agencies all stepping on each other: you have the City, the Port Authority, the states of NJ and New York, individual boroughs, multiple unions and then the Feds on top of that — and everyone in that chain has to get paid. It’s a mess.

> My point is that generalized statements about the American infrastructure aren’t generally fair since the US isn’t a monolithic organization

Very true, but I'd say when talking about roads, that goes for the state level in places like Texas and even down to the metropolitan level. Where I live, there are 75 mph high quality privately-managed roads close to terrible ones.

Mexico was the same way. We drove across the country and some of the public highways were very poorly maintained but right next to it was a (very cheaply tolled) private highway that was nicer than anything Ive been on in Canada (I havent driven much in America). It was a joy to drive on a well maintained roads... the value is real.

Most people may not realize what they are missing, as a result of their local/state being crippled by incompotent public management or all powerful unions, as they don't know anything different.

Not surprised to hear that it's not the case everywhere in the more decentralized US. Competence and good laws are possible. Especially when it's in a lower tax state like Texas which shows its not merely a result of lack of access to money.

I realize some of this is YMMV, but IAH is one of my least-favorite airports in the US. It was probably one of the worst-designed pre-TSA airports in the US; I know they couldn't have foreseen the uptick in security but adding security lines to that airport was definitely a hack.

Aside from that, Democratic party machine politics are starting to get dismantled by a wave of pissed-off progressive and tech-savvy millennials who are realizing the biggest hurdle to progress is coming from the Democratic party... Millennials have been abandoned by all the major institutions (unions, government agencies, religions, etc) so they shouldn't be surprised that we're coming for them on both sides of the aisle.

>"In the middle of Manhattan some streets were in a state that in Europe you would only witness in the Balkans or in rural areas."

This is complete nonsense.

Taxes. Every politician in the last 30 years got elected by promising lower taxes. Literally nobody in the US has ever asked: if taxes are cut how will it impact the budget?

All people want is lower taxes.

and military spending.

Not true. US military spending as a percentage of GDP is comparable to many countries. In sheer dollars, it’s vastly more, but then so is the GDP. It isn’t like MTA money is being diverted to buy tanks.

No true at all. Of the developed industrialized western nations, not only is the US the highest by total dollars ($611b), it is also the highest by percentage of GDP (3.3% GDP).

The personal tax rate in the US seems generally on par with the EU. The United States certainly does not present as an outlier by any measure in this aspect.

From what I have read, the particular issue around public transit surrounds cultural trends around city population. The middle class left cities in droves after WW2, leaving city budgets starved (I believe the MTA's ridership peaked shortly after WW2 as well). A half century of neglect can do a lot of damage to infrastructure.

Additionally, public investment in infrastructure is not expedient for politicians with a focus on the short term. Investment in the MTA could take years to reap benefits--and most riders will just remember whomever pushed that investment as the individual who closed down the L train for a year. A long term focus makes no sense whenever you just want to get elected for the next term.

https://www.businessinsider.nl/trump-tax-plan-federal-defici...

Americans are YOLO. Part of me is in awe, there are rules against increasing the deficit and politicians are just wiping their ass with it.

I would agree. The Federal gas tax was not raised since 1993. People love the idea of new transit systems and infrastructure but will freak out if gas prices go up a few cents.

Well, you're ignoring massive swathes of infrastructure types. Containerization has led to a complete revamping of US ports during that period. The electrical infrastructure has been massively upgraded, including a huge decrease in coal fired plants. While passenger trains haven't been improved at all, freight train usage has grown rapidly and the already very extensive rail lines have been maintained (conflicting demands between passenger and freight being one of the major limitations on high speed rail). The entire internet was built during the period you specify. As was a nationwide cell network with nearly universal coverage in populated areas, despite a much larger area and lower population density than comparably developed European countries. The GPS constellation was deployed and opened up to the public. Automated banking and payment systems. Etc etc.

Not all infrastructure consists of roads, bridges, and tunnels.

None of that infrasture is unique, impressive or better done than in Europe.

The point is that Europe did all that and more.

By the looks of it Europe just does public infrastructure better.

Well, that wasn't the point I was responding to. I was replying to this claim, "When is the last time America built any impressive infrastructure? I'd say in the 70s."

But to your point, I would argue that US achievements on the internet and cell networks are more impressive than Europe's because unlike Europeans Americans invented those technologies from scratch. And other than Russia, the US is the only country with a GPS infrastructure at all.

I don't dispute the claim that European nations and the EU have generally done a better job investing in public infrastructure, but I think the gap isn't as bad as some in this thread have made out, especially when you consider the vastly different conditions under which those policies were made. I've lived in a lot of countries, including the US and two European nations, and I've worked in project finance, so I have some direct experience with this. That said, the US desperately needs to invest in bridges and several other categories of infrastructure.

> And other than Russia, the US is the only country with a GPS infrastructure at all.

Wrong; there are three operational global navigation satellite systems: GPS (US), GLONASS (Russia), and Galileo (EU). China has a regional (Asia-Pacific) system that they are in the process of upgrading to global coverage, as well.

Containers, cell phone networks, the Internet, internet banking etc is infrastructure that has been built and implemented in the rest of the Western World as well, many places to a higher degree or more advanced than in the US, while still maintaining and expanding roads, rails, electrical grid, subways and airports.

You are right that the US has lower population density than most of Europe, but Canada doesn't and it doesn't have the same lack of infrastructure maintenance as the US.

Canada's population is mainly concentrated on the US-Canada border.

> the US has lower population density than most of Europe, but Canada doesn't

Population maps of the US [1] and Canada [2] highlight the problem with this argument, though. Canada has low total density, but it's overwhelmingly concentrated around the southern border of the country. The US concentrates population along three coastlines and the Great Lakes, and has more population to support in the low-concentration areas. (For example, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas exist.)

So southern Canada has better-than-US infrastructure at higher-than-US population density, while much of northern Canada has exceedingly limited infrastructure. Outside of Alaska, there's no territory in the US comparably written-off to much of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

An example: US highways are nationwide [3], while Canadian highways simply stop [4]. And despite the look of that projection, that's more than a quarter of Canada which is further from a highway than any point in the continental US.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/US_popul...

[2] http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-...

[3] https://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/usa-maps/usa-road-map.jpg

[4] https://www.tc.gc.ca/media/images/policy/NHS_2007.jpg

If you exclude tiny Prince Edwards Island, the most densely populated Canadian province is Nova Scotia (with 17.4 Canadians per km2). More than 90 percent of Americans live in states have higher population density than the densest populated Canadian province. Only Maine, Oregon, Utah, Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska are more empty. Those 13 states account for less than 10 percent of Americans.

So - on a state by state / province by province basis, Americans live more close together than Canadians and should have better opportunity for maintaining infrastructure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populat...

And just like Canadians tend to cram together close to the coasts and the Great Lakes, Americans also cram together close to the Great Lakes and their coasts. Go 50 miles inland from either coast, and it's vastly less populated than near the coast, with the rivers as an exception. Take a drive from Buffalo to NYC, and you'll see that it's populated near Buffalo (Great lakes), somewhat near Albany (Hudson river) and again once you get near NYC (East Coast). The rest of NY State is rural.

Take a look at this map of US population density by county: http://i.imgur.com/hY8tpOn.jpg

Statistics don’t tell the story. Look at a population density map of Ontario.

30% of Canadians live in Ontario. About half of Ontarians live in the Toronto metro area alone. Overall about half the population lives in the top ten metro areas.

http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-550...

Look at the map I linked to. It’s the same in New York State, Texas and California.

Statistics do tell the story, but you gotta use the right statistics. Using the population of arbitrary geographical regions (provinces and states) isn't a useful measure. For transit and rail, a useful measure might be something like "population density of a region encompassing 50% of the metro area population."

A single rail line from Quebec City to Winnipeg, through Ottowa, Toronto, and Calgary, with a spur to Edmonton, would cover all eleven of Canada's largest cities, with 30% of its whole population. That's within those municipalities (i.e., people can take local transit to the inter-city rail line). You cannot draw any similar line that encompasses anywhere near that percentage of the U.S. population. Even if you connected America's 11 largest cities, you'd only have about 26 million people (about 8% of the country).

A big reason is that most people who live "in Dallas," for example, don't actually live in the city. Dallas and Ottawa are similar-sized cities of about a million people each. But Ottawa encompasses 70% of its metro area, while Dallas encompasses less than 20% of its metro area. Look at a satellite map of each city. Dallas is sprawl for about 40 miles in each direction from the city center. 40 miles from Ottawa is nothing in every direction (and for the most part, so is 20 miles).

Yes, thanks for this. I mentioned a few particularly empty provinces, but I think working from state/province level or even county level is a fundamentally misleading approach.

The obvious question is how many infrastructure hubs (cell towers, train stations, highways, etc.) are needed to cover X% of the population. And following that, how closely connected those hubs would be.

Suggestions like "Canadians live near the border, but Americans live near the coast so it's similar" completely ignore that reality. The Acela corridor (D.C. to Boston, including Philadelphia and NYC) is the most efficient population-coverage route I know of in the country, but it can't possibly touch the efficiency of that Quebec City to Winnipeg line. Among other things, America has two coasts, and also vastly less urban density than Canada.

We almost have that. VIA Rail operates "The Canadian" line that runs Vancouver-Edmonton-Saskatoon-Winnipeg-Toronto, as well as a line that runs up the ON/QC corridor from Windsor-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City.

I can't speak for the latter, but we took the Canadian from Vancouver-Winnipeg for a family reunion a few years back. It was a great trip, except for the 6h delay sitting just outside Winnipeg due to backed up freight traffic (I believe VIA leases access to most of the track, and has to yield to any freight trains) that meant we were getting off the train and had to find a hotel at midnight, instead of getting picked up by family at a reasonable hour.

I think we're making the same point. The GP was pointing out (correctly) that PEI has the highest population density of a Canadian province, which is similar to small states like Maine.

I'm saying that the raw number isn't meaningful, and you have to zoom in to find value and evaluate it in context.

This is an undervalued point, I'm glad it was added here.

I agree with the parent poster that infrastructure like roads, drainage systems, and passenger trains are built with minimal planning for maintenance and support, but it is worth remembering that those systems aren't the end of the story.

Train usage in particular is a misleading complaint. It's true that the US has worse passenger train support than many nations, but that largely comes down to a sensible cost-benefit choice. The US isn't especially well-suited to train travel - lots of obstacles, diffuse populations that require branching tracks or non-train final steps, long distance travel that requires sleeper cars. So instead, we have an exceptionally large amount of freightage on trains. It's a vastly more natural use - scheduled, hub-to-hub transit, bulky products, no need for food/sleep provisioning - but it's less visible so it disappears from the conversation.

> And after that; Silence. It's like you didn't even care to maintain it.

I'm not sure the overall comparison here holds, but this is overwhelmingly true. America has made a huge amount of funding available for new infrastructure, while constantly underbudgeting (and underspending) on maintenance. The result is a steadily growing liability that would render most suburbs and many cities insolvent if depreciation were honestly accounted for. [1]

The founder of Strong Towns was in fact a civil engineer who started the group in a fit of remorse over doing exactly that. [2] Hired to repair a suburban drainage system, he realized that the maintenance was too expensive for the town to pay, and federal grants were unavailable for small-scale maintenance. So instead he found a massive grant (9x the maintenance cost) to expand and modernize the system. It covered costs, but set up a needlessly large system with vastly more costs to cover down the road.

This is basically how all urban and transit infrastructure gets done here. Partly for cultural reasons, but largely for financial ones: you can't get emergency funding for new construction, but if you spend maintenance money on upgrades and expansions, then you can go begging for emergency repair funds on what you've built. [3]

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

[2] http://time.com/3031079/suburbs-will-die-sprawl/

[3] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/4/this-is-why-inf...

A lot of American infrastructure was built during the new deal era when the federal government had a lot more desire to implement national projects, I don’t think that is still the case. The states are expected to build and manage their infrastructure, some states, like WA, are better than others.

Other countries where you see better infrastructure it’s because the national government has the power to drive the project forward (at least at the time).

Historically, America has a very pragmatic and cheap culture. I think a lot of the stuff hasn't really been upgraded because it, well, just works. When there's competition and impetus for moving forward, America moves forward very quickly. Otherwise, as long as whatever we have is good enough to reach our goals, we tend to sit on it.

Do people in London and Toronto care enough to pressure their leaders about this? In my experience it's hard to find people in the U.S. who even bother to pay attention to who has oversight when it comes to transportation (and not just transportation, this is true for a lot of local issues).

I promise you that New Yorkers care about this deeply.

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-human-cost-of-subway...

Any survey of New Yorkers and government services will tell you how much this matters.

The biggest problem is that the New York government at city and state levels is one of the most corrupt, oligarchic and undemocratic organizations in modern society. I cannot begin to describe how broken it is.

Here's a good example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/nyregion/new-york-politic...

This leaves us with no levers of power over government decisions. When you take into account that the people who most heavily depend on the subway are also the poorest, we have even less power over the elected and appointed government class.

> This leaves us with no levers of power over government decisions.

I'm not sure I understand this. Yes, the hand-picked successor will be able to fulfill the rest of the term, but then he's up for re-election. If people were actually outraged about this, they could vote him out the next time there's an election (just like they could have voted out the predecessor that set this process in motion). If people were really upset about corruption, they could have voted Cuomo out for killing the anti-corruption panel when it started to look in to corruption connected to him (IIRC, this happened just a few months before the 2014 primary).

It's hard for me to believe that these things really bother people when they keep voting back in the people who are doing them.

That's not a very practical way to think about democracy. Yes, that's the middle school government-class platonic ideal of democracy and government, but that's not exactly the whole dynamic.

I mean do you also find it hard to believe that people are bothered by Trump? After all, "they" just elected him.

So, I brought up Cuomo's election in 2014 - let's look at that example. Teachout was running a reformist campaign against Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic primary (and Credico was running as well). Only 594,287 people bothered showing up to vote. Of those showing up to vote, 361,380 voted for Cuomo[1]. In November 2015, there were 5,778,460 registered Democrats in New York[2].

So in 2014, after a fairly serious issue involving Cuomo getting rid of an anti-corruption panel because it was investigating corruption connected to him, only 4% of registered Democrats - four percent! - bothered to show up and vote for someone other than him in the primaries. And this was for governor! Almost 90% of registered Democrats didn't vote at all - they didn't care one way or the other who would be governor. Down ballot races usually get even less attention.

Naturally, I'm not saying that there isn't anyone who cares and acts accordingly. But what I am saying is that the amount of people who care and act accordingly are a minority, and in many cases, a very small minority.

[1] http://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2014/Primary/20... [2] https://nypost.com/2016/04/06/ny-voter-registration-barely-i...

> only 4% of registered Democrats - four percent! - bothered to show up and vote for someone other than him in the primaries.

New York has low turnout because it has a set of laws that serve to disenfranchise voters in ways that other states could only ever dream of. (Yes, people technically have the right to vote, but because of a set of laws which I've described elsewhere, there's no way for them to use these votes to hold their elected officials accountable, like there is in other states).

Once every decade or so, yes, there's a race that's moderately contested (like the one you describe). But at that point, people aren't in the habit of voting anyway.

By the way, in your example the only reason Teachout ran as a Democrat instead of on the Working Families Party as she'd planned is because of these laws. The Working Families Party was pressured into endorsing Cuomo as their candidate, to ensure that they'd retain their ballot access. Teachout was angry enough that she decided to run as a Democrat, knowing full well that she'd lose, because nobody in New York ever wins a primary without the backing of the major party[0].

Teachout is far and away an exception, not the rule. Even then, her run was purely symbolic, and she herself knew it.

[0] Again, due to a whole bunch of laws that give the party incredible influence in shaping the outcome of primaries.

I am genuinely interested in more details. Any links you can give?

> New York has low turnout because it has a set of laws that serve to disenfranchise voters in ways that other states could only ever dream of. (Yes, people technically have the right to vote, but because of a set of laws which I've described elsewhere, there's no way for them to use these votes to hold their elected officials accountable, like there is in other states).

The only laws I've seen you describe elsewhere in this thread is the delay in New York if you want to switch parties (was 6 months in 2016, now I believe it's up to ~11 months) and the fusion voting system. Neither of these prevents Democrats from voting in the Democratic primary, so I'm not sure which ones your talking about.

I'm not sure why you think contested races only happen once a decade. The year before the gubernatorial race, there was, (for example) a pretty well contested NYC mayoral race and NYC comptroller race. There have been plenty of contested races in the NY senate, (some connected to the IDC drama, like Tony Avella beating John Liu 6,813 to 6,245 with ~13% turnout) as well as the assembly and downballot races.

> I'm not sure I understand this. Yes, the hand-picked successor will be able to fulfill the rest of the term, but then he's up for re-election. If people were actually outraged about this, they could vote him out the next time there's an election (just like they could have voted out the predecessor that set this process in motion).

Not if they run unopposed in both the primary and general election.

New York election law is incredibly arcane and structurally makes it almost impossible to win a primary without the backing of the party, and the two parties have an agreement not to compete seriously in each other's districts. It's like how Comcast and Time Warner Cable divide up turf, so they don't ever really have to compete for the same customers.

> New York election law is incredibly arcane and structurally makes it almost impossible to win a primary without the backing of the party, and the two parties have an agreement not to compete seriously in each other's districts. It's like how Comcast and Time Warner Cable divide up turf, so they don't ever really have to compete for the same customers.

Can you give an example of these election laws? I see you mentioned a delay in switching parties elsewhere in the thread, but I don’t see how that makes it impossible for a candidate to win a primary without party backing.

I'm a total outsider to this (being European and all that), but could lack of vote-created change be due to lack of serious candidates who are not the "usual suspects"? If a position isn't worthwhile to hold unless exploited, only exploiters will step up.

I don't know what kinds of offices are the issue wrt the MTA, but generally I have the impression that the USA could be better off with some elected offices less: an elected position is inherently unstable as far as careers go, so they appeal most to people with a bit of a gambling mindset. This is unavoidable in the highest ranks ("...worst form of government except all the others that have been tried"), but in the lower, less visible ranks where the corrective qualities elections are supposed to have apparently do not work very well, "low balling" bureaucrats might, on average, be the lesser evil.

However, even if there was widespread agreement over this (I suspect that it is quite a minority opinion), I don't see much of a migration path because a migration from elected to conventionally hired public servants would be beyond pointless if the new guys inherit all the broken culture from their elected predecessors.

> I'm a total outsider to this (being European and all that), but could lack of vote-created change be due to lack of serious candidates who are not the "usual suspects"?

I doubt it, mostly because when good candidates run you still see pretty low turnout and the good candidates often lose (and with downballot races, even the few people who bothered to vote have a hard time remembering who they voted for, let alone why). And this kind of apathy is everywhere; it's not uncommon to see some nationally famous political writers who are extremely ignorant about major local elections and don't even seem to care about them. And when it leads to bad outcomes, many people see that as an excuse for even more apathy: "See? We don't have a choice, this is an oligarchy, it's impossible to change things by voting, why bother."

I think you have a decent point about fewer elected offices, but it's hard to make a blanket statement because it's very situational since elected offices vary a lot by state. The political parties themselves could also benefit from fewer elected officials, for what it's worth.

We could have voted to reform the constitution and then stayed engaged enough to pick independent delegates instead of the same old insiders catering to special interests. But we collectively let the insiders and special interests talk us out of our once in twenty years opportunity to fix this nightmare.

What opportunity are you referring to?

There was a referendum to hold a constitutional convention which would be able to propose amendments to the state constitution.

For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions.

> For some reason I still don't quite understand, labor unions were viciously opposed to it, supposedly because they were afraid of losing their pensions

That's the excuse they gave, but the real reason is simple. Labor unions already wield disproportionately massive power over the legislature in NY. Any attempt to reform NY government and hold elected officials more accountable to voters would inherently weaken some of their power, by comparison.

Labor unions don't want voters to have power for the same reason elected officials don't.

Their argument was that corporate interests and lobbyists would have proposed amendments that didn't serve to benefit the citizens of NY. Given that Citizens United is a thing, I can't blame them.

> Their argument was that corporate interests and lobbyists would have proposed amendments that didn't serve to benefit the citizens of NY. Given that Citizens United is a thing, I can't blame them.

They actively spread misinformation, among other things telling people that the convention would have the power to adopt amendments. Any amendment would still have to go to a direct referendum anyway, so it's not like voters wouldn't have to explicitly approve the amendments. This referendum was about starting the process - arguing against it because lobbyists might propose something bad makes no sense, unless you also forbid the legislature from proposing constitutional amendments too.

And that's why "corporate interests and lobbyists" wouldn't use this process to propose amendments benefiting their own interests, because they already have the ability to do that, through the legislature. The point of the referendum is to balance this - every twenty years, voters are supposed to have an opportunity to check thr power of lobbyists and legislators directly. Since New York doesn't do ballot initiatives the way other states do, it's the only way for New Yorkers to vote directly on statewide policy like this.

In fact, this was literally the argument they used. "Why should we pay millions of dollars for a convention, when we already have a process for amending the constitution?" Of course, this argument conveniently omits the fact that the whole reason this referendum is required to be held every twenty years is to serve as a check against special interest groups capturing legislators... which is exactly what they've already done!

Not up enough on New York state politics to know what the legislature looked like when this happened, but constitutional conventions are a little dicey since only God knows what will come out of them and be almost permanently committed to law. The 1789 US constitutional convention ended up with something entirely different from the Articles of Confederation, for instance.

The Constitution is not flawed it's the powerful who ignore it that's the problem. The two most populated states have the very worst policies and on an epic scale. You wouldn't get them to change their corrupt ways no matter what changes are made. There's no going back. Strength is in their numbers even if you drew a picture of how it's going to end up they will argue their weak to ridiculous points to the very bitter end. California is particularly difficult to accept. They have ruined one of the most beautiful areas of our country. For what? To keep their lifestyle in their gated mansions. The peons be damned. We suffer the most gross injustices in decades.

My girlfriend thought it was for a Federal constitutional convention...

There is a movement for a constitutional convention via state conventions floating around. I had a lot of trouble figuring out their agenda though.

Given that Citizens United is a thing and that Bob Menendez somehow wasn't convicted in a pretty cut-and-dry bribery case, I don't think I want a constitutional amendment any time soon.

Give me a break. The political conditions right now made it incredibly dumb to do a convention now.

With the ridiculous court decisions that have been made, the governor has unlimited, nearly unchecked power via the budget process. If you are happy or unhappy with anything, credit/blame needs to be directed at whomever the governor is from Spitzer forward.

The way New Yorkers got conned out of having a con con is the most disappointing thing that happened in politics this year IMO. It's amazing how pretty much every organization and politician right and left got together to oppose a chance for meaningful change.

That's because people keep voting for Democratic candidates, no matter their performance as incumbents.

Why can't people vote for the candidate of a different party? It doesn't have to be Republican. Why isn't there a "Fix the Subway" single-issue party running candidates that people can vote for?

The internal machinations of political party membership are only relevant if voters no longer have a de-facto choice on election day.

If you have primaries it rally doesn’t matter the label of the candidate that gets elected - the problem really is that too few people bother to get involved at the primary stage and elect new uncorrupt people.

> you have primaries it rally doesn’t matter the label of the candidate that gets elected - the problem really is that too few people bother to get involved at the primary stage and elect new uncorrupt people.

In New York, thars not the problem. The problem is that a combination of different election laws make it basically impossible to win a primary without the backing of the party leadership itself.

So, primaries in New York are meaningless; there's basically no way to unseat a candidate who's supported by the party, no matter how much they're despised.

In most states there are laws that make it easier to run as a candidate for an established party, not to mention access to party resources.

Because nobody outside of parts of NYC give a shit about the subway.

The MTA is a public authority controlled by the governor. Control was kept away from the city due to the city’s fiscal and corruption problems and the machinations of Robert Moses. The subway and busses were ultimately bailed out by the bridges and tunnels, which print money.

Which is why the first step is returning control to the municipal government, no?

That ship sailed many years ago.

Public authorities are quasi-government entities controlled by the the bond covenants. You have to line-up the interests of the bond holders with whomever controls the authority and is desiring change.

With something as broad in scope and rich as MTA is such a deep well of political capital, it's incredibly unlikely that anyone would give up any control. It's such a large enterprise there probably isn't one roomful of people who actually understand how the organization works. The current situation was created when the whole NYC transit system was completely insolvent back in the bad old days!

Read "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro. It will open your eyes to why things are the way they are.

I think you're confusing national politics and local politics. DeBlasio has been Mayor for 4 years. The prior 20 years worth of mayors were Republican^. The Governors of New York have been 12 years rep, 12 years dem in that same time period.

^ Bloomberg flipped around parties for convenience of elections. In regards to this topic he would be on the conservative side given that he was constantly butting heads with the transit unions.

Wait, /is/ that article a good example? It argues the source of corruption is that various local politicians can hand off their seats to a preferred successor, giving that successor and their party an incumbency advantage. I can see that being a provlem, instead of an open election, but...

“Vacancies are filled differently across the country. In 25 states, replacement legislators are simply chosen by appointment, either by the governor (11 states) or some combination of party and local officials (14 states), according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Varying rules govern the 25 states that hold special elections, but few bestow more influence on local power brokers than New York does.”

So, in 25 states the power to hand off succession is as or more concentrated. This would seem to put NYs succession regulations right square in the middle of the pack.

You can't look at an individual law alone. New York has a whole array of laws designed to protect the power of both major parties, and they work in conjunction with each other.

Want to switch your party registration? Go ahead and do it today - it won't take effect until 2019. Yes, you read that right. This deadline for change of party registration is an order of magnitude larger than the next largest state. New York also uses fusion voting to weaken third parties - they only have any influence whatsoever if they endorse the major party candidates, which prevents any real competition with the major party candidates. (See how Cuomo created the fake "Women's Equality Party" during the last election cycle specifically in an attempt to strip the Working Families Party of its ballot status).

There are a whole range of these laws, and if I were to go into all of them, I'd exceed the maximum length for a HN comment ten times over,. The end result is that New York is, objective, the most corrupt state in the country[0], and the system is also perfectly stable (in the literal sense) - there is no way, short of a federal court case, that any of these laws will ever meaningfully change.

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

New York in the last decade has had more legislative turnover due to felony conviction than a competitive election. Even republicans don’t get kicked out until they retire or get arrested.

I live in a particularly stagnant political subdivision, but I’d say in the last 20 general elections, there have been maybe 3 that had something more than nominal opponents. Usually it’s for things like county coroner. They are more affirmation than election.

>"The MTA's problems begin and end at a weak senior management unwilling to standup to Cuomo's frivolous micromanagement and a transit union unwilling to modernize."

Did you read the article? The problems began in the 1995 under Governor George Patakis administration. Cuomo has only been in office for 6 years.

> London and Toronto have been able to modernize much of their transit systems in last 5 years and its not because they have more money. Once you fix the top everything else will fall into place.

TBF NYC does have the exceptional — almost unique — feature that it runs 24/7.

That's an infrastructure design thing though. You literally can't run the London Underground 24/7 because there's only one pair through the centre for each line, so when you shut a tunnel to send a bunch people in, you can't run the service.

Night Tube (the centre parts of the London Underground running continuously from early Friday to the middle of the night on Sunday) is mostly about re-arranging maintenance and cleaning programmes to avoid Friday and Saturday night closures. They hired a bunch more staff, but there's no infrastructure fix, so still nothing like New York.

I believe that I read something about upgrading the signalling and/or "third rail" electrical systems was part of it, so they can shut the line down in stages behind the last train and reversely in front of the first, rather than having to wait for the train to terminate at the end of the line and stopping as soon as the first train leaves, often up to an hour outside central London. This gives one or two extra hours of work every night which is why they don't need the weekend.

But quoting from memory, could well be mistaken.

And who hires the "weak senior management"? And has the authority to remove them?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com