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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

Voters don't seem to vote in ways that are consistent with improving subway building functionality.

The problem is that NYC doesn't control the MTA: it was taken under state control back in 1968. And the governor has too many other issues on his/her plate to care enough to give the agency the top-to-bottom revamp it desperately needs. No one gets elected governor of the whole state of NY by campaigning on 'I'll fix NYC's subways' as a message, and indeed some of the more recent governors (Pataki, A. Cuomo) seemed to delight in stomping all over the mayor of NYC and use that for political gain.

> problem is that NYC doesn't control the MTA

New York voters are increasingly anti development. The only thing that protects it from going San Francisco is (a) Manhattan is joint to the other boroughs and (b) developers existing as a voting and lobbying constituency to counterbalance NIMBY homeowners and misguided tenants. Much of e.g. the Second Avenue subway’s delays were due to community roadblocks, not Albany.

There's a lot of Community Board BS, where in my opinion it's just another symptom of how Small Government can not work well at scale (i.e. many small governments behaving as elected or appointed officials that only very narrow interests pay attention to).

I took the opportunity to rant broadly, but I want to ask how that impacted the 2nd Ave Subway project?

Which office are you specifically talking about?

Hochul just got a bunch of funding through:

> But the biggest lifeline arrived in April, when Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers agreed to include new and recurring funding for the M.T.A. in the state budget.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/nyregion/mta-nyc-subway-s...

And the mayor doesn't really have any power - although I haven't seen anything to suggest that Adams is anti-transit.

Cuomo did fuck up a good thing with Andy Byford. But fuck that guy

When it costs absolute bullocks to actually build/revamp any sort of infrastructure, I’d say it’s kinda hard to level up the quality to other cities’ levels.

Hochul just got a bunch of funding through

The MTA doesn’t need more money. At least not yet. It needs a complete and total overhaul in all aspects so it’s no longer the least efficient transit agency in the entire world.

The problem seems to be with the fundamental structure of how the political/administrative system works, not with a particular party or politician.

Which way would that be?

One priority would have to be getting the NY state government out of the city’s public transportation organizations. Right now, everything is subject to state politics because the state controls the MTA.

Another would be making motorized individual methods of transit more and more painful and expanding bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure (this is often two birds with one stone). This will get the public to support politicians that make public transportation the priority.

That’s not a policy priority or choice - NYC bankrupted mass transit decades ago and the bailout consisted of a grand merger between the bridge tolls and transit. The current situation is a result.

It’s a public authority secured by bonds. Unless the feds decide to pump billions of dollars into NYS/NYC, nothing happens unless the organization is insolvent again.

How does shoving more people into the subway system help? The income? The trains are packed on the 'in the office ' days like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And pre pandemic the 45, F and other trains were rush hour torture. Now more apartments are built. But the trains run less frequently.

But we're installing elevators everywhere and making all stations accessible, and that, plus the ridiculous running of trains overnight, are priorities.

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