New York City Subway Ridership Jumps | Hacker News Reader

New York City Subway Ridership Jumps

wsj.com

68 pointsqzervaas44 comments

It is infuriating to have the life blood of one of the greatest cities in history so utterly ignored by Andrew Cuomo, the person who is actually responsible for funding it. The best and most practical plan for funding the unfunded capital plan is Move NY [0], which is a form of congestion pricing.

[0] http://iheartmoveny.org/

I'm all for spending more money on transit. I think both Albany and Washington should be kicking in more money considering the net cash flows.

That said, the MTA has a serious cost problem. Their projects are routinely way over budget and massively delayed. The 7 extension and east side access (LIRR) projects cost considerably more per km than any rail project anywhere in the world. Yes, they are complex but so are many other projects (e.g. London crossrail).

It's not any one underlying problem, but the byzantine MTA governance structure makes it hard to address all of them.

The cost problem is tied to how procurement & bidding is done by the MTA. Rules & regulations (often in law) have built up over time to protect against corruption & failure. They have calcified out-dated construction practices and insulates the process from any real competition amongst the limited number of approved suppliers.

In addition, federal funding comes with requirements to use suppliers that only employ unionized labor.

> Rules & regulations (often in law) have built up over time to protect against corruption & failure

Having worked for NYC and become familiar with their vendor selection processes, I often wonder if the costs of corruption prevention (both direct and opportunity costs) often outweigh their benefits.

For one thing, the vendor certification process costs quite a bit of time and effort on the part of their potential vendors, which rules out a lot of smaller (perhaps more efficient) entities in favor of bigger corporations who have the resources to jump through the hoops.

The Tweed Courthouse may be one of the most corrupt structures ever built, but at least it's beautiful and it got done.

That looks pretty good. However, I don't think it's really reasonable in a city the size of NYC for people to be commuting by car. I'd honestly rather see the following:

1. Bridge tolls raised to make things even rather than reducing some to make them even. 2. Exception for trucks which transport stuff that can't be transported by train. 3. Use the money to expand parking at suburban entry points to the rail system and improve the rail system.

The way I see it, bridges are for trucks transporting goods, not for people driving to work.

Right, I don't disagree with you, but....that's not going to happen. It's literally politically impossible right now. So incremental steps are great.

No! I demand it all or nothing, right now!

(the vibe I get from the typical political activist)

That's just pretty basic political strategy. If you want to build a hotel on a pristine island, start off with a proposal to build 40 hotels on the pristine island. Then you compromise on 1 and you've got what you want.

You may not find driving across bridges palatable for the environment or congestion, but there are many situations in which it makes sense. For example, there are people with disabilities who can't take trains. There are workers who live in areas of Queens or Brooklyn not covered well by the Subway. There are tourists who want to drive into the city from neighboring states.

I speak from personal experience. I personally hate driving into the city but I'm aware of many people/situations who for all practical purposes must.

I would think that tourists are willing to pay for the privilege, people with disabilities can receive a discounted rate based on their metro card which leaves only the workers who live in areas that are not covered well by the subway.

Getting off track what I'd actually like to see is a standardized app/technology driven jitney/minivan system to help people make the last mile connections to and from subway endpoints.

* Access-a-ride exists for disabled people

* We should be building more subways in Brooklyn and Queens.

* Tourists can park in NJ or north of the city and hop on the trains.

Your thinking is either transit-centric, or it buys into car culture.

WRT more subways — I'm all for this, but it's sort of expensive and takes a lot of time. MTA is not exactly the fastest builder (see 2nd avenue line, PATH).

Tourists driving onto Manhattan are probably a minor traffic problem. I'd rather have them pick some "tourist pass" at designated locations on roads in NJ than have them leave their car and hop onto a PATH train with all their tourist gear (possibly not very light) or take a taxi to avoid a high bridge toll.

Having lived in Jersey City for some time, I can sympathize with people who'd rather take a car when they need a guarantee to get to NYC, because PATH can be canceled "due to a signal problem" unpredictably at any moment.

The PATH is not the MTA, it's the Port Authority.

And the PATH is reliable just fine. It doesn't get "canceled due to a signal problem". I've lived in Jersey City or Hoboken and commuted on the PATH for over ten years, with maybe five instances of any difficulty at all aside from Sandy or blackouts. It's enormously reliable compared to the construction messes that occur on the MTA subways, where entire lines shut down for entire weekends.

And the PATH is only touristy on weekends, there isn't competition between tourists and weekday commuters. Overall, NJ within PATH range is one of the best options to live affordably with a short NYC commute.

> For example, there are people with disabilities who can't take trains.

I have no issue with providing an exemption from tolls for people with disabilities to go across bridges.

> There are workers who live in areas of Queens or Brooklyn not covered well by the Subway.

So use the money to build better subway coverage. That's part of what I was suggesting.

> There are tourists who want to drive into the city from neighboring states.

Then they can pay the tolls. Even if tolls went up to $20 each way they would be a small part of the cost of staying in NYC with a car for a day, and for a tourist it's a one-or-two time cost.

To put this in perspective, we frequently ticket or tow tourists' cars. About half the people who have visited me by car have gotten ticketed or towed while visiting. It's a mess. If you want to fix the tourist driving experience, I'd look to that long before I'd care about bridge tolls.

I wanted to see just how true MoveNY's claim is that the price is skyrocketing.

Here'a a graph with some quick data grabbed off the internet:

http://i.imgur.com/qbhSNbH.png

The fare was $0.30 in 1970. From there, I applied the inflation rate to compare with the fare prices. The price of a ride should be reduced on this graph once unlimited metrocards were introduced because those are cheaper and account for a big chunk of the usage.

Regarding the chart above, the slope of the "line" for the fare is 5.4 cents/year and the slope for the price index "line" is 3.6 cents/year.

To be fair... the price was artificially kept at $0.05 from when the subway system was opened in 1904 until some point in the 50's - which in the process helped drive the private operators of the system out of business.

I think the price is fair. But the ridership, growing or not, is already HUGE. Multiple lines are packed multiple times every single weekday and sometimes on weekends too. Whether people are paying $116.50 monthly or $2.75 per-ride, the MTA must have huge revenues. Wikipedia says "operating revenue" in 2011 was $6.5 billion.

That's a huge amount of money. Sure, it's a big system, with a lot of costs, but... so much money... and there's no easy way to apply competitive pressure, you can't have a literal competitor, so I don't know what could be done, but it has to be possible to have better maintained stations, even more frequent trains during rush hours when certain lines are literally overflowing, and have money left over.

And somehow they were losing money in 2011. Well, individually, I suppose not...

That price is competitive with many systems in other major international cities[1] --many international cities have fares based on distance. Flat fares are nice (contrast with tokyo, wash DC, london, stockholm)

[1] http://www.priceoftravel.com/595/public-transportation-price...

I doubt the accuracy of that table. It's been a number of years since I regularly took CityRail but I remember the price of trains in Sydney to go up pretty drastically the further into the suburbs you got. Like, $5/ride and such. Though maybe that was for fares all the way out to Wollongong.

I've always found the flat fee nature of the NY subway to be wonderfully egalitarian, since the high fees tend to be a regressive tax on those who can't afford to live close to the city.

Tokyo has 3 railway operators: Japan Railways (above-ground rail, but it runs the Yamanote line which hits all the important stops and it's packed like sardines in rush hour), Tokyo Metro, and Toei Subway.

I know that competing operators from Yokohama->Tokyo were putting up some combatative ads earlier this year, so this competition must actually help.

More people rode this same system in 1956 and I seriously doubt they had all the routes and trains they have available now.

The subsidy on fares is such that fares themselves only pay forty percent of the cost to run the agency.

So there is an upside and downside to all of this, the upside is more people use it, the downside as they do it costs everyone more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/nyregion/delays-and-costs-...

It really does seem to me like the only possible sane strategy, on a systems level, is to raise the cost of operating a private automobile in Manhattan and use the revenue to subsidize or build more trains. Every other approach leads to Robert Moses/Houston/Atlanta. The implementation details and prices are certainly debatable but I'm always astounded that there exists anyone who questions the fundamental strategic premise of Manhattan=transit.

Best thing I did for my mental sanity this year has been purchasing a bike. I ride it door-to-door from my apartment in Greenpoint to my office in Manhattan. I haven't taken the subway in almost 4 weeks. I am noticeably happier and more positive.

What about when it rains?

I know people who made a sport of riding their bikes to work several miles every day of the year through the Minneapolis winter. Maybe there were a small handful of exception days. A little rain isn't a problem.

You don't even have to be a thrill-seeker to ride all year in semi-harsh climates. I did it in Boston this year without a ton of gear - just a warm coat, gloves and skull cap (under the helmet) for the cold, and rain jacket/pants for the wet. Helps that we have indoor bike parking though. I hate leaving a bike in the rain all day.

That's when you take the ferry across the river and bring an umbrella :)

The ferry is awesome, especially at sunset.

I'm lucky enough to have a flexible schedule that lets me dodge the rain, or leave when the rain is the weakest. And my tires are pretty good for wet conditions.

You're lucky your bike commute is so calm. I ride my bike to work 3/4 days a week year round from the UWS to wall street, and the dedicated bike lanes are filled with people walking in large groups, roller bladers, joggers, bikers who don't know what they're doing, etc.

What you need is still: less complaining, more bikes. When the flow of bikes is steady, the groups and joggers realise that this space is not meant for them.

It's not calm, I have to dodge ignorant pedestrians all the time. But the normal commute hours tend to have plenty of bikers on the road who keep the lane pretty clear.

It's definitely not a scenic ride through the country, but it still beats the L. :)

Don't forget parked or idling police cars.

1.75 billion customers last year which is a 2.6% increase. It would be helpful to have the context of how much of the city's population has used the system over time. A quick google search makes me think this increase is far outpacing the population increases in the city.

Agreed. I looked at the title and thought, "Well duh, the population is increasing." But if subway ridership is outpacing population growth by a wide margin, that would be interesting.

That does seem to be outpacing growth in both the City and metro area. The City is now at approximately 8.5MM people [1], the metro area has approximately 20.1MM people.

The City had 8.17MM people in 2010[2], so just a hair under 5% growth since 2010, maybe 1% per year?

[1] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-56.h...

[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/36/3651000.html

The population growth analysis would require further breakdown. The eastern half of Queens doesn't have a subway network. And what about Staten Island?

I couldn't find any sub-regional breakdowns for this year’s census data yet. I assume they’ll appear at the second link eventually.

Speculating but based on living here: much of the population growth has been in Brooklyn and "inner" Queens. The Bronx and Manhattan have also had growth but at slower rates. Outer Queens lacks subway but the LIRR (commuter rail) has multiple lines hitting those neighborhoods. Not at all the same as rapid transit but they're not totally lacking transit options, and typically connect into key subway junctions.

SI lacks rapid transit to the core business centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn. You can take express buses, drive, or the SI Ferry to lower Manhattan but then you still (typically) have an additional commute.

Several of the NJ cities immediately west of Manhattan have also had decent growth but aren't counted in the NYC stats.

The numbers are meaningless unless measured against total passenger miles of all sources. Taking numbers out of context is one way to make a story where one is not. Sure ridership is up, however was it take a away from self driven miles or wholly new people entering the system for all travel types?

I find it interesting that the Howard Beach stop (where one gets off to go to JFK airport) dropped by 42% since 2013, while the Aqueduct Racetrack stop - which is the immediately prior stop - increased by nearly 200%.

Was the Howard Beach stop closed down for repairs during that time or something?

Beach was damaged severely by Sandy and I believe parts of it were closed in 2013. Racetrack increased due to ResortWorld probably.

Oh, good call.

Fares just went up 10%. Does that make sense?

There's so much bullshit in the NYC transportation situation, it's ridiculous. Traffic cops spend all their time ticketing parked cars(usually for remaining parked during the twice a week street cleaning, or not having paid the meter), because it is the easiest source of revenue. Meanwhile, on the main avenues of NY during rush hour, trucks double park and take up a half or a third of the available traffic lanes, and very rarely get tickets.

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