The Elephant in the Room

[46Dover]

Fixing up Chambers Street on the and 21 St-Van Alst on the can't come soon enough.....

[RailRunRob]

The MTA plans to fully rehab 6 stations a year. At that rate, to go through all 468 would take 78 years.

Even a metric like this. thank you some facts lets stack the data.

 

At 6 stations a year  = Completion

• Milan Metro :103 stations.  17.1 Years
• Montreal Metro :  68 stations 11.3 Years
• U Bahn Berlin  :170 stations 28.3 Years
• Rome Metro 67 stations : 11.1 Years
• London Underground  :270 stations 45 Years
• Paris Metro 303 stations : 50.5 Years
• Chicago 145 Stations  :24.1 Years

At 78 Years rehab and maintenance is a perpetual state here in NYC.  London and Paris are the closest in comparison as I said before London and Paris both have problems and are slowing being upgraded. But at doing it's job. NYC is second to none. The Central pulls the most people on the  TFL network with 34 trains per hour. The bandwidth and flexibility here isn't a normal thing in other Cities at all .

[BrooklynBus]

To Via Garibaldi 8:

 

You talk about how fragile the system is and how an umbrella can shut down a line. First of all the incident is still under investigation and it is not known at this time what role the umbrella played if any. But as far as I am concerned is not that the line shut down, but how the MTA reacted to the shut down.

 

Public information was horrible with everyone directed to go to Queensboro Plaza instead of providing them with other rail options. Then it took from two to three hours to move everyone out of Queensboro Plaza by shuttle bus because not enough buses were sent there and it took very long for them to arrive. They also created transit's version of road rage with people fighting with each other to get on the buses.

 

The MTA needs to react better in these situations. This happens everytime there is a massive subway failure but it doesn't get publicized. It was this time because cell phone video of people fighting with each other was made available to the media. The other difference is that it was 18 degrees outside this time. Transit riders should not be put through this type of hell. The only plus Is that they didn't try to sugar coat the situation and admitted it wasn't working.

 

Now please explain to me how congestion pricing will prevent future occurrences like this even if there were a law that the funds must be spent on transit. What makes you think that service would be improved.? That buses would run more often and be less crowded. That routes would be added at realistic headways, not at every 30 minutes? Why wouldn't the funds from congestion pricing be spent on more megaprojects to benefit developers like the governor's proposed LGA line or the useless Moynihan Station or #7 extension to benefitted West Side. Or the $4 billion PATH station? Why would the money be used for service improvements?

 

More money is not the answer to all problems. The will to do the right thing is.

[bobtehpanda]

Even a metric like this. thank you some facts lets stack the data.

 

At 6 stations a year  = Completion

• Milan Metro :103 stations.  17.1 Years
• Montreal Metro :  68 stations 11.3 Years
• U Bahn Berlin  :170 stations 28.3 Years
• Rome Metro 67 stations : 11.1 Years
• London Underground  :270 stations 45 Years
• Paris Metro 303 stations : 50.5 Years
• Chicago 145 Stations  :24.1 Years

At 78 Years rehab and maintenance is a perpetual state here in NYC.  London and Paris are the closest in comparison as I said before London and Paris both have problems and are slowing being upgraded. But at doing it's job. NYC is second to none. The Central pulls the most people on the  TFL network with 34 trains per hour. The bandwidth and flexibility here isn't a normal thing in other Cities at all .

 

The MTA's own estimates suggest that rehabs, signals, and cars last on a 40 year life cycle. It is absolutely not acceptable that a station is going to have its rehab deteriorate over two life cycles by the time we get around to it again, and this is assuming that we can maintain the rehab program at the existing level of funding without the MTA collapsing under the weight of its interest payments due to a lack of city and state funding. New York has a bigger system, so logic dictates that it needs to do more to even keep up with the Joneses.

 

Now please explain to me how congestion pricing will prevent future occurrences like this even if there were a law that the funds must be spent on transit. What makes you think that service would be improved.? That buses would run more often and be less crowded. That routes would be added at realistic headways, not at every 30 minutes? Why wouldn't the funds from congestion pricing be spent on more megaprojects to benefit developers like the governor's proposed LGA line or the useless Moynihan Station or #7 extension to benefitted West Side. Or the $4 billion PATH station? Why would the money be used for service improvements?

 

More money is not the answer to all problems. The will to do the right thing is.

 

I mean, the current issue is that the MTA doesn't have enough money to even maintain itself - the hole in the current capital plan is $15B, much bigger than the current megaprojects we have, which receive a good portion of funding from the feds. (PATH is PANYNJ money that they got for 9/11, so the MTA wouldn't be getting their hands on that.)

 

The solution to "this agency doesn't work well" is not death by a thousand cuts.

[SubwayGuy]

The MTA's own estimates suggest that rehabs, signals, and cars last on a 40 year life cycle. It is absolutely not acceptable that a station is going to have its rehab deteriorate over two life cycles by the time we get around to it again, and this is assuming that we can maintain the rehab program at the existing level of funding without the MTA collapsing under the weight of its interest payments due to a lack of city and state funding. New York has a bigger system, so logic dictates that it needs to do more to even keep up with the Joneses.

 

 

I mean, the current issue is that the MTA doesn't have enough money to even maintain itself - the hole in the current capital plan is $15B, much bigger than the current megaprojects we have, which receive a good portion of funding from the feds. (PATH is PANYNJ money that they got for 9/11, so the MTA wouldn't be getting their hands on that.)

 

The solution to "this agency doesn't work well" is not death by a thousand cuts.

 

The problem with funding is that increases in the capital budget for projects are not offset by proportional increases to the operating budget. If you build something, you need to set aside funding to maintain it.

 

That coupled with politician/developer megabillion "graba**" projects like the Fulton Transit Center, serve to to waste the public's time and resources. Sort of like a Roman emperor who decides that rather than improve conditions in the empire, that a publicly funded giant statue of himself would "improve morale". This is the way most politicians think.

[bobtehpanda]

The problem with funding is that increases in the capital budget for projects are not offset by proportional increases to the operating budget. If you build something, you need to set aside funding to maintain it.

 

That coupled with politician/developer megabillion "graba**" projects like the Fulton Transit Center, serve to to waste the public's time and resources. Sort of like a Roman emperor who decides that rather than improve conditions in the empire, that a publicly funded giant statue of himself would "improve morale". This is the way most politicians think.

 

In the Fulton Center's defense, that was mostly 9/11 money that was restricted to spending in Lower Manhattan. There wasn't much that we could've actually spent it on other than two gigantic stations (and they did try to redirect it to actual transportation projects like Lower Manhattan-JFK and SAS, to which Congress basically said no)

[BrooklynBus]

The MTA's own estimates suggest that rehabs, signals, and cars last on a 40 year life cycle. It is absolutely not acceptable that a station is going to have its rehab deteriorate over two life cycles by the time we get around to it again, and this is assuming that we can maintain the rehab program at the existing level of funding without the MTA collapsing under the weight of its interest payments due to a lack of city and state funding. New York has a bigger system, so logic dictates that it needs to do more to even keep up with the Joneses.

 

 

 

I mean, the current issue is that the MTA doesn't have enough money to even maintain itself - the hole in the current capital plan is $15B, much bigger than the current megaprojects we have, which receive a good portion of funding from the feds. (PATH is PANYNJ money that they got for 9/11, so the MTA wouldn't be getting their hands on that.)

 

The solution to "this agency doesn't work well" is not death by a thousand cuts.

Never said I was in favor of cuts. Don't know where you got that from. Just tell me why virtually all the floor tile in stations that have been rehabbed looks like crap today with either mismatched replacement tile or just patched with some type of uneven colored cement. Then if some of the tile is stained due to water damage and the the station hasn't been painted in ten years, the station doesn't even appear to have been rehabbed. Can't even imagine an airport terminal being in the condition even rehabbed stations are in.

[Wallyhorse]

To Via Garibaldi 8:

 

You talk about how fragile the system is and how an umbrella can shut down a line. First of all the incident is still under investigation and it is not known at this time what role the umbrella played if any. But as far as I am concerned is not that the line shut down, but how the MTA reacted to the shut down.

 

Public information was horrible with everyone directed to go to Queensboro Plaza instead of providing them with other rail options. Then it took from two to three hours to move everyone out of Queensboro Plaza by shuttle bus because not enough buses were sent there and it took very long for them to arrive. They also created transit's version of road rage with people fighting with each other to get on the buses.

 

The MTA needs to react better in these situations. This happens everytime there is a massive subway failure but it doesn't get publicized. It was this time because cell phone video of people fighting with each other was made available to the media. The other difference is that it was 18 degrees outside this time. Transit riders should not be put through this type of hell. The only plus Is that they didn't try to sugar coat the situation and admitted it wasn't working.

 

Now please explain to me how congestion pricing will prevent future occurrences like this even if there were a law that the funds must be spent on transit. What makes you think that service would be improved.? That buses would run more often and be less crowded. That routes would be added at realistic headways, not at every 30 minutes? Why wouldn't the funds from congestion pricing be spent on more megaprojects to benefit developers like the governor's proposed LGA line or the useless Moynihan Station or #7 extension to benefitted West Side. Or the $4 billion PATH station? Why would the money be used for service improvements?

 

More money is not the answer to all problems. The will to do the right thing is.

Exactly.  The could have handled that a lot better and I would be demanding complete, up-to-date information when something like this happens and make sure as best possible all sides necessary know what is going on and doing whatever cross-honoring is necessary (including for example having an OOS transfer between Queensboro Plaza and Queens Plaza and if deemed necessary extending the and to 179th Street so three locals can operate on Queens Plaza smoothly to where such locals can after Parsons Boulevard as needed can be transferred to the express track to more easily turn trains (with the express all the way to 179)).  Obviously, that is an emergency situation and you look at all options there. 

[Jsunflyguy]

As far as shutting down the MTA, if you are worried about 30 inches of snow then OK shut it down. Do not wait until the middle of the day to call a shit down, if youre going to believe the forecast then act promptly on it. The day of Juno I was working dispatch at an airline, it was quite clear the impact was going to be much weaker than expected. That late in the game the information was there that the shutdown wasnt needed entirely.