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Comment by InitialLastName | Hacker News Reader

The issue is really that the MTA is funded and controlled by the State of New York, while it predominantly serves the City of New York. Since the population (especially the voting population) of the city is <0.5 of the state population, but the city is an outsized chunk of the state's total economy, the state uses funding of the transit system as a weapon to get the city to acquiesce to other demands.

Hence why the NYC mayor is so intent on funding worthless streetcars and ferries; they let him get out from under the thumb of the state.

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MTA was looted by the state. It is reasonably profitable but all those profits are being spent by the state for other non MTA activities.

https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/infrastructur...

The best public transport model is the one in London.

Incorrect. According to the NYT, redirection of MTA funds amounts to about $1.5 billion over 20 years. That’s $75 million per year, or what MTA spends in 2 days.

>Since the population (especially the voting population) of the city is <0.5 of the state population[…]

I did a quick and dirty check on Google for "new york state population" [0] and " "new york city population" [1] and the percentage I get is 43%.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/2zkmdjm

[1] https://imgur.com/a/904hwM2

EDIT: As did a few others, I read "<0.5" as "<0.5%".

You're both right: 43% < 0.5, 1 = 100%

I read his statement as .5% first as well and then realized that he meant 50% because otherwise there would have to be 1.6B people in NY state to make the number work.

.5 = ½ = 50%

> Hence why the NYC mayor is so intent on funding worthless streetcars and ferries

I'm assuming you're using the "worthless" adjective only for the streetcars - I use the NYC Ferry regularly (a stop opened near my apt last year) and it's way better than the subway. I have to walk a bit further on the other side, but it's still way more comfortable.

It may be useful for you but in the grand scheme all the new ferries cover only a trivial percentage of the total number of daily trips.

And the ferries are heavily subsidized and very expensive to operate, and they pollute quite heavily.

They don't compare remotely favorably to the subway along any axis except start-up cost (it's cheaper to buy a boat and build some piers than to build a subway tunnel).

except start-up cost

Which is, well, hugely significant when you think about it.

Cities should have a planning timeframe for infrastructure improvements with a horizon longer than a couple years.

Well, yeah. And they should probably be having discussions based on something beside snarky retorts and popcorn-throwing too, I guess.

But I guess those discussions will need to happen elsewhere.

Even if you could afford to run enough ferries to make a dent, which you can’t, they simply don’t have the bandwidth.

Some people tried to make the math work for the L shutdown and even if you had a line of ferries just following each other as close as safely possible it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Subways are incredibly efficient at moving large numbers of people.

I use it as well but it moves far fewer people at a much higher running cost. I love the ferry but it's not a viable replacement.

No one would consider suggesting it as a "replacement" for surface transport.

However, it is a valuable augment to the surface system. The point is that it helps "connect the dots" (providing more options for people to get from A to B) - hence making the system more effective as a whole.

Streetcars aren't even necessarily worthless. They're called trams in Australia and Sydney has recently rolled out a network after seeing how heavily utilized they are in Melbourne, and how convenient they are for short-distance travel. Pretty much everyone who works in the city has a tram trip somewhere in their commute. Provided the tracks run past places people need to go, there's no reason they need to be worthless.

Melbourne trams are awesome! Sure, they're not everywhere or go everywhere but for near the city center and some main routes they make so much sense.

Same in Brussels. And in Lisbon they're also touristic attractions: http://www.lisbonstopover.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/lx-...

People keep saying that the street car will be worthless, but I simply don't buy it. It connects all of the fastest growing neighborhoods in the city, where there have been increasing large amounts of effort around economic development within the areas that these places connect, where it will massively increase the value and in turn ability to build real estate along the waterfront, as one of the key determiners of land value in NYC is access to transit.

What does a streetcar do that buses (or articulated buses) can't if they're provided the same traffic priority?

Trams run on metal rails because steel has a much lower rolling resistance than rubber, and suffers less wear and tear. So you can carry more people more frequently with less maintenance.

To me, the problem is poor connectivity to the rest of the train network.

Hence why the NYC mayor is so intent on funding worthless ferries;

Worthless? The ferries are one of the few unequivocally positive things to have happened to the city in recent decades.

Surely the city could give extra funds to the MTA if it wanted to?

The state would take them out. It controls the MTA.

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