> The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic
How does one realistically reform something like this?
How does one realistically reform something like this?
Slowly and methodically.
For starters:
Create legislation that prevents construction firms from making campaign contribution and MTA employees from taking jobs as political consultants. This is probably the largest source of corruption, graft and waste.[1]
The MTA's Board of Directors is predominantly controlled by the Governor of the state. The Board of Directors has long been a political dumping ground. Residents - the people who depend on the train have almost no say. Residents should have representation on the board of directors even if its a only a handful of rotating seats. Having people on the board who actually use and depend on the train would provide an instant feedback loop.
I think you also need to implement a rotating independent oversight committee whom the MTA must be beholden too. One that is democratically elected. The oversight committee should have real teeth though perhaps with veto ability in certain instances.
And yes as someone else mentioned you probably need to fire a whole bunch of people.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
The MTA would be much better off if the appointed representative of the county was replaced with the actual elected executive of said county (so county executives, borough presidents, mayor/council speaker/what have you, etc.)
I don't believe it was ever under Mayoral control. The current governance structure came under then Gvernor Nelson Rockefeller.
But anyway Nassau, Suffolk, Westcheste, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, and Putnam counties each get to appoint a board member. That's nearly a third of the 17 total seats. Beside Wescheter and Nassau counties none of those counties even border any one of the 5 boroughs.
That's 5 votes by people who most assuredly do not ride the subway to work and maybe not at all. As such it's hard to believe they would ever have NYC residents best interests at heart.
The distinction to make is that the counties and the City get to recommend the appointees for their slots to the Governor. It's a formality most of the time, but the Governor or State Legislature could tell the mayor or county executives to "try again".
As far as that last point, it's important to understand why the MTA was created in the first place; its primary mission is to dole out the goodies from the State and the tolled crossings to its subsidiaries. What they know about the system is at best, secondary to the job, since they are, by and large, not the people who run the system. That's why they appoint chairmen and agency presidents and all that.
The LIRR, the Metro North and NYC Subway system are completely independent lines, with completely separate payment systems, completely separate citizens as their majority riderships and they don't share any tracks. They are completely separate concerns - the LIRR and Metro North serves the commuter belt people that most likely have a car or two in the driveway. The NYC Subway's majority ridership are people that have neither a car or a driveway at home.
They are non-contiguous in every way. The only thing they share is a bloated org chart.
So yes, the idea that someone from Duchess County who drives a car to work and has most likely never ridden the NYC Subway to get to work is making "informed" decision about whether or not to address the problem of overcrowding on say the 456 line is perhaps the height of "irrationality."
If anything the problem with regional transit systems in the US is that they are far too provincial and federated, leading to all sorts of overlapping and wasteful things. For example the fact that the Port Authority and the MTA don't get along means I can't take a fucking train to any airport in the most important and densest city in the country.
Or stuff like how they didn't bother to connect the 4/5/6 line to the PATH system during WTC reconstruction despite the fact that they are compatible, and they apparently had over three billion dollars to light on fire.
Or stuff like how the PATH train runs to Newark and inexplicably stops a mile or two short of the airport despite the fact that NJ Transit/Amtrak right of way runs right there down the exact same line.
The idea that separating LIRR from Metro North from the Subway and creating yet another set of competing bureaucracies is going to somehow help things is delusional, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how NYC area politics works.
Yes exactly those people vote in those instances. The key word being vote - i.e they have a say and can research the candidate before casting a ballot. The context here is positions where people CAN'T vote because those MTA board positions are political appointees. Ir'a apples and oranges. Your comparison makes no sense.
>"Or stuff like how they didn't bother to connect the 4/5/6 line to the PATH system during WTC reconstruction despite the fact that they are compatible"
Except you are wrong those are actually connected via the Dey Street Concourse. See:
https://www.metro.us/new-york/mta-to-open-passage-connecting...
>"The idea that separating LIRR from Metro North from the Subway and creating yet another set of competing bureaucracies is going to somehow help things is delusional, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how NYC area politics works."
No its quite simple, if infrastructure passes through multiple counties its under the purview of a state agency. I its infrastructure that falls within a single county or just the 5 boroughs then it should be a city specific agency.
Lastly I have actually worked in NYC politics so I'm pretty sure I have a firm grasp of how NYC politics works.
It's interesting that you choose to make statements like that without knowing anything about a person's professional background. So an opinion contrary to your own constitutes delusion and indicates that someone misunderstand how things work? Is that correct? That seems like a pretty fool-proof prescription for an echo chamber.
That's flatly untrue. People don't vote for FAA administrators or USDA policymakers, they vote for representatives who pick civil service people and so on. The MTA governance isn't strange or unusual, that's my point.
> Except you are wrong those are actually connected via the Dey Street Concourse.
Well yes, the lines are connected if you get out of the train and walk. By that definition all transit lines in the country are connected.
But we could have had a subway that runs from Grand Central to Newark: https://newyorkyimby.com/2014/09/the-port-authoritys-missed-...
I mean in Europe they can figure out how to run fast trains through three countries in an hour or two. But I have to transfer three times to get to the airport. Our way of doing this sucks.
> No its quite simple, if infrastructure passes through multiple counties its under the purview of a state agency. I its infrastructure that falls within a single county or just the 5 boroughs then it should be a city specific agency.
But.... what if you don't want the infrastructure to just fall within a single jurisdiction. That's the entire point I'm making. I want transportation infrastructure to be planned out and integrated on a larger scale. I want to consolidate the various agencies. Having MTA and PA and Amtrak and NYC DOT and NYS DOT and NJ DOT and so on makes for insane schizophrenic policy. Your idea that the subways and regional rails should be split into separate agencies makes that worse not better.
Without the regional integration, we would probably never get things like the Freedom Ticket; utilizing commuter rail lines as de facto subways, even premium ones, is much preferable to the much more expensive option of duplicating existing corridors.
However, if I remember correctly, they're unionized, which is why this hasn't happened yet.
If you'd like to see a fine example of how changing the management and the management philosophy can turn a place around, look at NUMMI. There's a This American Life episode with extensive worker interviews: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
If you don't, well, in China, sucks to be you.
And this isn't even getting into the longer term prospects of the very real danger of the efficiency and scale of China starting to eat into the core economies of other nations as they move away from simple manufacturing and beginning moving up the value chain, as we are now seeing.
First of all, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/nov/19/cra...
Second of all, and this is probably something that was brought up in your high school civics class, the advantage of a democracy is that the overall quality of a government will be the average of all of the people in it. Speaking metaphorically, you can roll N dice and average the results together; doing this repeatedly, you'll notice that as N goes up, the resulting averages will follow a normal distribution more and more closely. If you have enough dice, you can assume that you'll hit the middle of the curve most of the time, instead of having to worry that you might roll a 1.
Your a theoretical should be discarded.
I can quibble with this just a little. A truly benevolent dictator will recognize how harmful dictatorship is and will immediately remove himself from it.
http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdstatehouse/html/gwresignation....
Maybe we're playing semantic games, but Americans worship their leaders in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't think it's necessary for me to limit my statement in order to participate in your religion.
It's interesting how many people on HN seem to believe they are fortune tellers and mind readers now. Personally, I am speculating, but it sounds like all you guys know that I'm wrong.
I've continued to be mostly right for the last decade, I think I'm going to stick with my predictions rather than those of people who don't take too kindly to disagreement.
A benevolent dictatorship cannot exist et alia because a person cannot live for ever and I simply don't know how you could assure that the transition from one benevolent dictator to another when the first one ceases to be competent. For instance, let's presume that Xi Jinping is the perfect president of China. When he dies or retires or becomes too ill to govern, will the PRC be able to select a new perfect president to replace him? or will they choose someone who is inclined to serve their own interests and was able to benefit from Xi's time? This is the ultimate problem of a benevolent dictorship: it cannot assure state continuity and stability beyond the effective lifespan of the dictatorship.
People also tend to become more habitual as they do something for a long time. Politeness and friendships limit them from being able to introduce policies that will benefit the country at the expense of those who have their ears. So it's possible that a governing style which served the state and the country well for many years will need hard revisions. Periodic changes in governor (as democracies have) mean it's more likely the incoming team will be able to retain what is still fresh and discard what is now stale, and they will be connected with different people and therefore not too worried about upsetting some of them. (I think this is a good part of what's wrong at the moment: major parties around the world are connected too much to the same interests, so a change of government doesn't result in as much upset as needs to happen. Votes will gradually transfer from the establishment to the anti-establishment parties. They will be able to upset the entrenchment, but it remains to be seen whether they will do so in the interests of the nation or the interests of an alternative elite.)
As for your last sentence, I think I misunderstand it. I disagreed with you and straightforwardly stated my opinion, and then it seems that you attacked me: it reads like you're accusing me of not being able to handle disagreement. I don't think I attacked you. Perhaps you would clarify it, or highlight the place where you think I "don't take too kindly to disagreement".
Agreed, this is why a dictatorship is generally not a wise idea. I certainly cannot assure a transition to another benevolent dictator, but what's interesting if you peruse the comments here, the overwhelming sentiment of people is that they can assure that a successful transition can not and will not happen, ever, full stop. As you may have noticed, I often have a bit of an issue with self-proclaimed mind-reading, future-telling, and other supernatural capabilities. You would expect this sort of thing among the general public or on Reddit, is it too much to ask for a higher standard on HN? It would seem so.
As for my last sentence, admittedly I'm guilty of taking out my frustrations with HNers in general (for the above stated reasons) on you, in response to your absolutist stance (No benevolent dictatorship has ever existed); perhaps no major nation in recorded history been led by a purely benevolent dictator, but if we had access to a truly omniscient being to settle this disagreement, I'd happily throw down a $100 wager that many truly benevolent (to the best of their abilities) dictators have led smaller, less famous groups of people on many occasions throughout history. Perhaps I have too much faith in humanity at its best.
I wasn't really that worried about China as they are automating extremely quickly and have shown no better ability to utilize the displaced people any better than anybody in the West--see the recent layoffs in steel and coal in China along with the corresponding strikes and protests.
Now with Xi Jinping being President for Life, I'm even less worried. Xi Jingping will regard striking and protesting workers as a threat to his power and he will suppress them. This will break what little feedback there is in China between the working class and the ruling class and the decisions will become increasingly unmoored from external reality.
If I were TSMC, I would start moving fab lines out of Taiwan.
China doesn't see it this way. And the only thing keeping China from steamrolling both Taiwan and Hong Kong are the fact that it would decimate the economies and businesses there.
However, once you have a leader more worried about his power rather than being beholden to the working class, that is no longer an obstacle.
Yes, you can fire everyone in China, throw them in a work camp, take their property for the greater good, etc.
Funny thing happens when you walk all over people that way for the "greater good" ... a few people at the top, who define what the "greater good" is, tend to become extremely wealthy and powerful. The society becomes lopsided. The peasants become frustrated. Then there's violence.
Not that the people at the top are idiots. They understand this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-spends-more-on-domestic-s...
Then turn around and realize basically every large institution humans have ever built relies on shady, selfish, behavior and stop caring about reforming individuals since thousands of years of policing have done jack and squat to remove the behavior from the species.
Seriously, this forum is the worst for overlooking relevant variables (human biology and contemporary culture as a whole) for their trite commentary, usually rooted in nothing more than culturally acceptable bullet points.
Hundreds of years of the same sort of thinking. Still happens.
Since there are credible allegations of crime, is there an inspector general? There should be. If not, bring in the fraud squad and investigate the hell out of them. They'll leave.