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Comment by fuzzylightbulb | Hacker News Reader

That is literally what the money is for

The problem is it's just not that much money against the inflated costs of NYC transit construction. It's budgeted to produce $1B/year, though that was before Hochul unilaterally cut the toll by 40%. $1B is like a 2000ft of subway tunnel or half a station these days.

The fact that its a recurring revenue scheme allows them to get bonds based on that income. I think I saw that they were planning to secure $18B for a project when it was $15 for the toll.

Yes though I'd imagine its harder to secure bonds now that Hochul has shown the governor can unilaterally change the fee on a whim, plus new Federal government is antagonistic to the whole program.

Hochul won NY by a fairly narrow margin historically for the state against a pretty MAGA GOP guy. It's entirely possible some more normal blue state GOP type runs against her, wins and reduces the fee further.

> its harder to secure bonds now that Hochul has shown the governor can unilaterally change the fee on a whim

It goes in the bond indenture. State can’t revoke the charge whose revenues it has already sold without defaulting.

You're gonna need a lot more money than that when ~40% of MTA total spending goes to pay pensions and healthcare for people that don't even work anymore by ~2040.

You need ~35% just to keep the system running functioning (which does not include operations - like the actual drivers).

That's only going to leave you ~25% leftover for everything else - and a non-trivial percentage of that comes from the Federal Government - which may not be there in the future (when all of their money is going to pensions and healthcare).

You are exaggerating that number greatly. The number is 8% of the budget for retired employees.

PDF Source, page 9: https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/osdc/pdf/report-17-2025...

It should be noted that the MTA has made at least some pension reforms so that current and future employees won't be as costly. Employee contributions are increased as well as the retirement age.

Would be nice if they made transit better first instead of making driving worse first.

And will the drivers be prepared to fund this via another channel?

They already fund it via gas tax, registration fees, regular taxes. Let the public transit takers fund their own improvements.

Driving in New York has been terrible for a century. The only way to make it better is to disincentivize people from doing it by making it more costly and making public transit better. Urban planners have known this is the case since at least the 40s.

Congestion pricing isn't some kind of new punishment. It's a bill, long overdue, finally getting paid (and only partially).

Robert Moses knew it, but that didn't stop him.

I'm not sure Robert Moses knew that. He wasn't an urban planner. He was an urban doer. He made it his life's mission to not learn the actual impact of his work on people's lives. I suspect he took that willful ignorance to his grave.

Oh, no, he knew.

I didn't mean it in a way that absolves him of responsibility. I mean that he purposefully shut out any information that undermined his self-image as a "great man." That's a form of evil. It's worth differentiating that from other kinds of evil, as I believe it may be the most common.

When I lived in NYC I paid huge amounts of money in taxes and as far as I can tell got very little for my money.

Until they can start using their enormous existing budget wisely I don't see any reason they should be given more money.

> as far as I can tell got very little for my money

You literally lived in the greatest city in the history of world civilization.

Sorry it didn't work out for you.

Tokyo is pretty nice

You seriously think NYC is the greatest city in the history of world civilization? Or is it sarcasm? I am asking this as NYC resident.

As my sister says (lives around Prospect Park with kids) — if you don’t gaslight yourself that it’s the best city in the world while paying such premiums to live here, you’ll get depressed in a second.

But I agree, I’m scratching my head whenever I hear that statement. It’s definitely the best city in USA though, as there are about 3 real cities in the country.

If your definition of greatest is "total GDP" then it is the greatest in the world. That said, I would agree that Tokyo and maybe even London are much finer examples of cities.

Of course I do. Ask any person living in New York, they'll tell you the same thing.

Where else have you lived?

I live in nyc today and whenever I hear people say that , it turns out they mean “New York City is the greatest city in the world of New York City and Waterloo, Wisconsin.”

And even then , I’ve seen photos of Waterloo… looks like the air is nice and breathable there. And apparently you can afford to rent a place on a normal salary.

You don’t have to agree but at least try and get out of your bubble. You don’t even know enough different people in New York City itself to support that claim, apparently.

I mean it's not hard to figure out.

Here's an easy test. Think of the city you currently live in. Ask people where you live if they think this city you're living in is better than New York. They'll have a lot to say about it.

If you ask people in New York if the place you live is better than New York they'll say "Huh, where is that?"

I mean… yeah; I think we agree there. That’s kinda my point: people here whom I know to claim New York City is the greatest city in the world don’t actually know a lot about the world.

I've literally been to 80+ countries and have spent time in every U.S. city of significant size. If you can't look at the world and figure out the obvious fact that New York is the greatest and most significant city that has existed since we climbed down out of the trees I'm not sure what's going to convince you.

Ehh not the best weather and they haven’t invented the trash can or dumpster yet. You can get good food everywhere these days. And as the years go by I am less and less interested in drinking till 4:30 am especially at todays bar prices.

how do you reconcile this theory with the existence of the Mets?

The quality of bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches is sufficiently high to offset the Mets.

The odds of you calling yourself "native new yorker" and having never actually lived anywhere else are virtually 100%

I can just ask everyone I know in New Orleans around me who moved from New York.

Such metric would just indicate that respondents are unaware of other cities, no? Majority of new yorkers never lived in good cities. I guess many just repeat 100 years old notion that NYC is the best city in the world and just never doubt it.

Unless you happen to ask the large fraction of people who knowingly moved there to make big bucks for some number of years before getting out. They will all tell you it sucks, the government sucks, you suck for not realizing that and that they're masterminding their exit to the suburbs of Phoenix or Miami or whatever. These people make up a sizable minority of the NYC population at any given time.

Well yeah sure, but obviously people who fail at living in New York don't count.

I regret to say: I’ve lived here long enough to believe you genuinely mean it when you say that.

Is there a song called "Cleveland, Cleveland" that says if you can make it in Cleveland you can make it anywhere?

Oh, you mean the half-century old song New York New York by Frank Sinatra? One written for a musical depicting golden days of 1945? Nice one, I love it.

You are correct that 80 years ago New York was also the greatest city in the history of world civilization. Quite a run isn't it?

It surely was in 1945, no doubt about it.

Most of the things people like about NYC were either:

1) Built at least 100 years ago. De-facto relics of a government and society that no longer exists.

2) Things built by the people in spite, not because, of its public policy and government.

If anything, what interests me about NYC is “why isn’t worse?”. There is something amazing about NYC: how a city and civilization can be so successful in the face of government incompetence and public policy failures at every level.

I agree NYC is not wisely spending its $100 billion per year, but I think the congestion tax makes sense as a way of pricing in externalities. As a non-car-owner in lower Manhattan I dislike passenger cars -- they make it much less safe for me to bike around, and less pleasant for me to walk around. I think most people here benefit if we have way fewer large vehicles in the city, so the limited spots should be reserved for people who get immense economic value from them, like truckers or movers, not random people from the suburbs who want to have dinner in the city.

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