MTA Says Some 500,000 Riders Fare Beat Every Day - Video Shows It May Be True

[RailRunRob]

11 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

This is the Paris Metro, which is smaller (133 vs 236 miles) but has similar ridership (1.5B vs 1.7B), and is probably even more crowded considering that Paris uses smaller trains and has no four-track sections.

So it shouldn't be an issue for NYC.

[Around the Horn]

Since we're talking about funding sources:

Quote

Smoke a Joint, Save the Subway?

As the list of states that have legalized marijuana continues to grow, New York could have a new reason to embrace cannabis: It could help save the subway.

Some state and city leaders have started to discuss the idea of making recreational marijuana legal and using the revenue to pay for badly-needed and expensive subway upgrades. The proposal could face improved odds in Albany now that Democrats have taken full control of the State Legislature for the first time in a decade.

“The biggest issue we hear about as elected officials is the state of the subway system,” Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, said in an interview. “To be able to tie these things together is something that could be highly impactful and potentially transformative.”

The idea is still very much theoretical, but it has some prominent supporters and is being considered by a high-profile panel tasked with coming up with ways to pay for a subway overhaul. Any push to legalize marijuana in New York would have to be approved by state lawmakers and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/nyregion/marijuana-legalized-nyc-subway.html

[RailRunRob]

20 minutes ago, Around the Horn said:

Since we're talking about funding sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/nyregion/marijuana-legalized-nyc-subway.html

Yeah that's coming I Mentioned that I believe in another topic maybe the service cuts?. Chatter is saying it's going for vote as soon as April.

[VIP]

1 hour ago, Around the Horn said:

Since we're talking about funding sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/nyregion/marijuana-legalized-nyc-subway.html

Ok they’re doing service cuts and is concerned about fare evasion costs, meanwhile the agency is spending thousands of dollars putting floor mats and looped stanchions on old cars. In general those mats don’t and didn’t help with ignorant/selfish customers who still don’t know how to share a public transportation space. I bring this up because customers are starting to become aware of these pointless upgrades. And I quote “They’re putting these yellow bars for what, these trains are old” “what are these arrows? Some type of passive aggressive approach? I still see people standing on them” “great, new poles and more pole huggers” These were the responses that I and a couple coworkers heard or discussed about. So they’re spending is aimless at most. Even if it’s a part of budgeting; I as a senior accountant would have shot that financial plan down as soon as the order landed on my desk.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

1 hour ago, VIP said:

Ok they’re doing service cuts and is concerned about fare evasion costs, meanwhile the agency is spending thousands of dollars putting floor mats and looped stanchions on old cars. In general those mats don’t and didn’t help with ignorant/selfish customers who still don’t know how to share a public transportation space. I bring this up because customers are starting to become aware of these pointless upgrades. And I quote “They’re putting these yellow bars for what, these trains are old” “what are these arrows? Some type of passive aggressive approach? I still see people standing on them” “great, new poles and more pole huggers” These were the responses that I and a couple coworkers heard or discussed about. So they’re spending is aimless at most. Even if it’s a part of budgeting; I as a senior accountant would have shot that financial plan down as soon as the order landed on my desk.

Their CFO Robert Foran says there are always savings to be had, even though it's getting harder to find them, and that they certainly aren't the most efficient. When your CFO says that, you know you have a problem. LOL I run a department, and if we operated in the red constantly, I'd be on the unemployment line. I run hundreds of projects a year where I have to look at budgets and analyze what goes in and what comes out. I told the board the other night... I said, so you're facing a 215 million dollar deficit from fare beating this year, and only NOW are you addressing the problem... Only now... They looked sort of in shock that I was furious at them not going after that revenue. I mean seriously, could you imagine us in our roles not being fiscally responsible? It's insanity!!

[MysteriousBtrain]

1 hour ago, VIP said:

Even if it’s a part of budgeting; I as a senior accountant would have shot that financial plan down as soon as the order landed on my desk.

Think about it for a second. The thing that this system needs to focus on the most. A system that need to have working trains, not half-ass rehabs, and a system that is not crowded in the entire system?

 

Or one yellow boi?

[Deucey]

18 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

They look sort of in shock that I was furious at them not going after that revenue. I mean seriously, could you imagine us in our roles not being fiscally responsible? It's insanity!!

That's my problem in all this - these folks act as if the entire reason for 's existence is to pay them without actually doing any work.

How do you not come up with plans for reducing fare evasion until 10 minutes after you should have?

How do you not budget for 40 years to repair or replace signals?

How do you not budget money to prevent stations from turning into cesspools of infectious pathogens?

How do you not plan for building a better bus system when you've had MetroCard swipe data for 20 years?

Simple. You hire folks who DGAF about being effective.

Don't let me become governor...

[N6 Limited]

22 hours ago, Deucey said:

Costs would be borne into the fare structure of Giuliani didn't merge NYCTA cops into NYPD...

And now NYPD doesn't have sufficient staff to patrol trains regularly.

But notice  cops are there to get you for not paying tolls (even though the gates are removed) - instead of NYS Troopers.

Wonder why that is.

 

22 hours ago, RailRunRob said:

How does that work when you're billed to home for cash payments?

 

18 hours ago, Deucey said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Therein lies the problem - why does TBTA have cops that aren't needed to collect revenue when NYCTA needs cops to ensure revenue collection?

If tolls are not paid within a specified time period, the vehicle's registration gets suspended. If the cameras identify a vehicle with a suspended registration, the cops get notified immediately and the vehicle gets pulled over.

[Via Garibaldi 8]

26 minutes ago, Deucey said:

That's my problem in all this - these folks act as if the entire reason for 's existence is to pay them without actually doing any work.

How do you not come up with plans for reducing fare evasion until 10 minutes after you should have?

How do you not budget for 40 years to repair or replace signals?

How do you not budget money to prevent stations from turning into cesspools of infectious pathogens?

How do you not plan for building a better bus system when you've had MetroCard swipe data for 20 years?

Simple. You hire folks who DGAF about being effective.

Don't let me become governor...

In all fairness to them, when you're borrowing constantly to pay for such projects, it hampers your ability to set aside more monies for such initiatives. 

[RailRunRob]

23 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

 

 

If tolls are not paid within a specified time period, the vehicle's registration gets suspended. If the cameras identify a vehicle with a suspended registration, the cops get notified immediately and the vehicle gets pulled over.

That makes sense gotcha!

[Deucey]

1 hour ago, N6 Limited said:

If tolls are not paid within a specified time period, the vehicle's registration gets suspended. If the cameras identify a vehicle with a suspended registration, the cops get notified immediately and the vehicle gets pulled over.

And why couldn't NYPD, Westchester PD, Nassau PD or even NYSP handle that?

You don't need  cops for that, but you do need them on buses and trains.

[N6 Limited]

10 minutes ago, Deucey said:

And why couldn't NYPD, Westchester PD, Nassau PD or even NYSP handle that?

You don't need  cops for that, but you do need them on buses and trains.

Is there a Westchester PD? I don't think I've seen any, usually they have the city name (Yonkers, White Plains, Rye, New Rochelle Mt Vernon, Scarsdale, etc)

MTA crossings are MTA crossings, I think State Police were there for a while but that's only because Cuomo was busting Deblasio's chops.

[Deucey]

23 minutes ago, N6 Limited said:

Is there a Westchester PD? I don't think I've seen any, usually they have the city name (Yonkers, White Plains, Rye, New Rochelle Mt Vernon, Scarsdale, etc)

MTA crossings are MTA crossings, I think State Police were there for a while but that's only because Cuomo was busting Deblasio's chops.

https://publicsafety.westchestergov.com/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any other toll authority in the US has its own police force - usually it's just state police/highway patrol that monitor crossings and cite toll evasion.

[RR503]

3 hours ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

Their CFO Robert Foran says there are always savings to be had, even though it's getting harder to find them, and that they certainly aren't the most efficient. When your CFO says that, you know you have a problem. LOL I run a department, and if we operated in the red constantly, I'd be on the unemployment line. I run hundreds of projects a year where I have to look at budgets and analyze what goes in and what comes out. I told the board the other night... I said, so you're facing a 215 million dollar deficit from fare beating this year, and only NOW are you addressing the problem... Only now... They looked sort of in shock that I was furious at them not going after that revenue. I mean seriously, could you imagine us in our roles not being fiscally responsible? It's insanity!!

The issue is more complex than fare beating deficits or internal cost structure. Those areas (well, the latter area) certainly merit extensive attention, but underpinning all this is the fact that it is basically incapable of appraising its own flaws, and is thus incapable of allocating funds in a sensical manner. A perfect example of this is the Subway Action Plan. Anyone with a pair of eyes could tell you that a supermajority of all weekday subway delays are caused by either flagging or the operating environment; a person intelligent enough to go back a few years in the board books could tell you that it is moreover in those categories that delay growth has been happening. So why, pray, did we choose to spend $836 million on SAP? To be sure, there are certainly initiatives in the program that are necessary (restoring cut signal maintenance forces being a big one) but this obsession with maintenance delays speaks to the agency's fascination with misdirection. If you don't believe me when I say SAP was basically worthless, go here, find OTP, and filter out the  which all got padded to hell. OTP is down. 

Here's the real kicker, though: SAP is largely at fault for the current budget crisis. No one ever really funded those initiatives on the governmental level, so they were just absorbed into to MTA baseline, vastly increasing the deficit. So instead of a relatively well balanced book, we're today seeing service and maintenance cuts to fund an $836 million plan to absolve the MTA's operations policies of fault for this sh*tshow. 

Sadly, we seem to be headed down a similar path. CBTC isn't a necessity, yet every regional pol and 'leader' with a pulse is falling over themselves to endorse it without so much as a second thought. I'll bet all the money in my wallet right now that the program won't be fully funded (or will use PAYGO, or extensive debt) and will thus require some level of ops budget 'rationalization' -- or service/maintenance cuts. So not only will we not be really winning any victory, but even the perceived one will be pyrrhic at best. 

[shiznit1987]

20 hours ago, Deucey said:

You'd have to control for confirmation bias, and given how ingrained racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes are in society, good luck with that.

The best way to get to the bottom of NYPD misconduct on this issue is station cameras. If we see White people jumping turnstyles with officers just ignoring it and then see Black or Latino people jumping with action being taken then those officers need to be disciplined. 

 

[shiznit1987]

17 hours ago, RTS CNG Command said:

My reaction lines up with Konst, Esha, Lizanne Hinkle, and Rev. Schmitz. The MTA has some serious balls scapegoating the poor for rising its fare to $3 (which will only worsen the fare-beating). How about the MTA and Cuomo put some real introspection and blame their corrupt asses for not investing in their service and letting the transportation quality crumble. Oh, wait, if that happened, then that means Albany's committed to cleaning up their act.

To counter @shiznit1987, a bigger fix would be for be this for the government:

1. quit blaming the poor and (wishful thinking, I know) fix Albany

2. eliminate the fares altogether

3. put congestion pricing into law

4. not view the MTA from a pro-profit, capitalist perspective

5. close corporate/real estate tax loopholes and use those taxes to invest in our transportation

1) Fix Albany? Won't happen. I don't see anyone "blaming the poor" for much of anything. Everyone here has made it pretty clear that fare-beating has become an ingrained behavior across racial and economic lines. My own experiences also back this up. Not to be a smart ass, but the ranks of fare dodgers is as diverse as NY itself. 

2) It's a nice idea, but again money? I could argue the city could quite feasibly make the subway free out of it's own spending (the city budget is like $100 billion/yr now), but then you'd have to trim other areas, which in a bluer-than-blue city like NY is going to upset too many entrenched interests. 

3) CP, even at elevated levels, will not get the MTA out of it's current hole, never mind bring us anywhere close to idea #2

4) No one looks at the MTA from such a lens to begin with.  

5) I won't get into a big discussion here, but taxing business is a tax on the poor. Any money business pays out in taxes is money they won't spend on hiring or investment. Or the price of things goes up (you see this in Europe with the VAT). As far as real estate taxation goes, that just drives up housing prices. 

[trainfan22]

2 hours ago, Deucey said:

https://publicsafety.westchestergov.com/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any other toll authority in the US has its own police force - usually it's just state police/highway patrol that monitor crossings and cite toll evasion.

Port Authority crossings have PAPD. However PAPD also patrol PATH, WTC site, etc. 

[bobtehpanda]

9 hours ago, VIP said:

Ok they’re doing service cuts and is concerned about fare evasion costs, meanwhile the agency is spending thousands of dollars putting floor mats and looped stanchions on old cars. In general those mats don’t and didn’t help with ignorant/selfish customers who still don’t know how to share a public transportation space. I bring this up because customers are starting to become aware of these pointless upgrades. And I quote “They’re putting these yellow bars for what, these trains are old” “what are these arrows? Some type of passive aggressive approach? I still see people standing on them” “great, new poles and more pole huggers” These were the responses that I and a couple coworkers heard or discussed about. So they’re spending is aimless at most. Even if it’s a part of budgeting; I as a senior accountant would have shot that financial plan down as soon as the order landed on my desk.

To be fair, back when overcrowding was the main issue, looped stanchions are actually better because they give people more real estate to grab onto.

Of course, it seems that the MTA has decided that to solve overcrowding you must cut service.

[bobtehpanda]

5 hours ago, RR503 said:

The issue is more complex than fare beating deficits or internal cost structure. Those areas (well, the latter area) certainly merit extensive attention, but underpinning all this is the fact that it is basically incapable of appraising its own flaws, and is thus incapable of allocating funds in a sensical manner. A perfect example of this is the Subway Action Plan. Anyone with a pair of eyes could tell you that a supermajority of all weekday subway delays are caused by either flagging or the operating environment; a person intelligent enough to go back a few years in the board books could tell you that it is moreover in those categories that delay growth has been happening. So why, pray, did we choose to spend $836 million on SAP? To be sure, there are certainly initiatives in the program that are necessary (restoring cut signal maintenance forces being a big one) but this obsession with maintenance delays speaks to the agency's fascination with misdirection. If you don't believe me when I say SAP was basically worthless, go here, find OTP, and filter out the  which all got padded to hell. OTP is down. 

Here's the real kicker, though: SAP is largely at fault for the current budget crisis. No one ever really funded those initiatives on the governmental level, so they were just absorbed into to MTA baseline, vastly increasing the deficit. So instead of a relatively well balanced book, we're today seeing service and maintenance cuts to fund an $836 million plan to absolve the MTA's operations policies of fault for this sh*tshow. 

Sadly, we seem to be headed down a similar path. CBTC isn't a necessity, yet every regional pol and 'leader' with a pulse is falling over themselves to endorse it without so much as a second thought. I'll bet all the money in my wallet right now that the program won't be fully funded (or will use PAYGO, or extensive debt) and will thus require some level of ops budget 'rationalization' -- or service/maintenance cuts. So not only will we not be really winning any victory, but even the perceived one will be pyrrhic at best. 

Of course it'll be PAYGO. No one ever sorted out how Capital Plans were supposed to be paid for. All those taxes and fares go towards operations; capital is at the mercy of the emperor in charge at the time.

This is Cuomo's fault, but Paterson, Spitzer, Pataki, and Cuomo Sr. all walked this path before.

[Around the Horn]

To paraphrase a tweet I saw earlier:

If the MTA is going to focus so much on fare evasion, we should start referring to delays and missed trips as service evasion.

[paulrivera]

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

This is Cuomo's fault, but Paterson, Spitzer, Pataki, and Cuomo Sr. all walked this path before.

The operating deficit is partly Cuomo's fault also.

Cuomo raided $30 million from  funds for these blue and yellow tiles ("blue and gold" my ass, those tiles are yellow) for the Midtown and Battery Tunnels.

[bobtehpanda]

15 hours ago, Deucey said:

But the beauty of it is it's transparent, it's an absorbed cost since folks will always eat, buy coffee or go out to bars, and it doesn't result in diminishing returns (because all it takes to end-run congestion charges is for Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester to agree to build a bridge or tunnel from Rye or Mamaroneck to Oyster Bay or Glen Cove - OUTSIDE TBTA's jurisdiction - and even with a $8 toll, the congestion charge becomes another oppressive tax on City residents).

The beauty of this is that Long Islanders are stuck so far up their own ass that they would never do this. You'd think Nazi zombies were coming to town, the way the Island reacted to the last bridge proposal.

[B35 via Church]

5 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

The beauty of this is that Long Islanders are stuck so far up their own ass that they would never do this. You'd think Nazi zombies were coming to town, the way the Island reacted to the last bridge proposal.

Something I don't miss w/ my old PM commute is the incessant bitching of Islander fans on the LIRR having to go to Brooklyn for home games.... It's funny how Nassau/Suffolk patrons exude this attitude/disposition of being insular & preserving "the island" at all costs - but let there be any service alteration on the LIRR & cries of foul can & will be heard from the tip of Montauk Point to damn Hunters....point.

What they want is to have free reign to get to the city & at the same time, to keep non-lawnguylanders OUT!

#transitaintaonewaystreet #getwifdaprogram #thisaint1950 #death2nimbees

[Q101viaSteinway]

20 minutes ago, B35 via Church said:

Something I don't miss w/ my old PM commute is the incessant bitching of Islander fans on the LIRR having to go to Brooklyn for home games.... It's funny how Nassau/Suffolk patrons exude this attitude/disposition of being insular & preserving "the island" at all costs - but let there be any service alteration on the LIRR & cries of foul can & will be heard from the tip of Montauk Point to damn Hunters....point.

What they want is to have free reign to get to the city & at the same time, to keep non-lawnguylanders OUT!

#transitaintaonewaystreet #getwifdaprogram #thisaint1950 #death2nimbees

LIRR riders and Long Islanders as a whole are very very very territorial and Nassau/Suffolk might be the most culturally backward place in the whole NYC metro area. 

[Deucey]

13 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

Port Authority crossings have PAPD. However PAPD also patrol PATH, WTC site, etc. 

Kinda obvious in the name, Port Authority, that it manages ports and cargo while charging tolls, but isn't a Toll Authority.