MTA's Budget crisis makes people voice stupid ideas

[Deucey]

"Another is to raise the base fare to $2.85. More options on the table include increasing the surcharge for new MetroCards from $1 to $3 and no longer allowing coin payments on buses."

Yeah, that'll stop fare evasion.

"“Right now I’m somewhat in favor of eliminating the time based passes because I believe there’s a lot of fraud associated with them,” said Schwartz. “Who is purchasing those seven-day time-based passes?”

Folks who only need unlimited rides for 7 days, methinks. But as high-priced as unlimited passes are now, why didn't the bean counters factor in people on unlimiteds giving swipes away into pricing, and why not require entry and exit swipes to "control" for fraud?

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-mta-nyc-subway-bus-fare-hike-proposals-20201118-4n7uuckhnvgr3ljp3s7jgabwoq-story.html

Edited November 22, 2020 by Deucey

[LGA Link N Train]

1 hour ago, Deucey said:

"Another is to raise the base fare to $2.85. More options on the table include increasing the surcharge for new MetroCards from $1 to $3 and no longer allowing coin payments on buses."

Yeah, that'll stop fare evasion.

"“Right now I’m somewhat in favor of eliminating the time based passes because I believe there’s a lot of fraud associated with them,” said Schwartz. “Who is purchasing those seven-day time-based passes?”

Folks who only need unlimited rides for 7 days, methinks. But as high-priced as unlimited passes are now, why didn't the bean counters factor in people on unlimiteds giving swipes away into pricing, and why not require entry and exit swipes to "control" for fraud?

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-mta-nyc-subway-bus-fare-hike-proposals-20201118-4n7uuckhnvgr3ljp3s7jgabwoq-story.html

Just looking at the 2 ideas that you wrote here. It makes me question the following:

"Do these people even ride the transit system to begin with?"

Now I understand that the  is in a budget crisis, but why are they considering ideas that not only hurt them in the long run, but also have proven to be ineffective in practice? 

[Deucey]

1 hour ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

Now I understand that the  is in a budget crisis, but why are they considering ideas that not only hurt them in the long run, but also have proven to be ineffective in practice? 

Because of the ongoing reason  was in the pre-covid mess it was in - they focus solely on losses that afflict the system instead of successes and innovations that (could) sustain and grow it.

[MHV9218]

Man, that made my head hurt. Larry Schwartz is such a goddamn moron. It's offensive that Cuomo stuck that thug on the MTA board. Can't we at least pretend to have people who know or care about transit on the board of the most important agency in the country? You'd think it would help...

"Right now I’m somewhat in favor of eliminating the time based passes because I believe there’s a lot of fraud associated with them”

Is he taking notes from Rudy Giuliani? Fraud? What the hell is he talking about?

Edit: Oh jesus, it gets worse...

Quote

Schwartz argued the $2.75 base fare is used more often by New Yorkers who depend on transit, and claimed those who buy unlimited passes are “casual riders.”

Could you come up with a more backwards version of this? If you tried? It's like the guy is thinking of the old 1-day FunPass and that's metric for the 30-day. He is so profoundly dumb.

Edited November 22, 2020 by MHV9218

[Deucey]

32 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Is he taking notes from Rudy Giuliani? Fraud? What the hell is he talking about?

That folks with unlimiteds are more likely to give a swipe than folks on PPRs. Which is true.

But the flaw to the logic is that unlimited means without any limitations on usage, so that "loss of revenue" from using service that exceeds the cost of the pass should've already been built into that fare structure - especially since the damned things have gone up from $100 to $132 in 7 years (that's what a 32% rise?).

Just maths alone say that if the typical commuter pays $5.50/day for 20 round-trips on 4 services (a train and bus each way), that's $110 per month - so a $132 monthly pass is profit. The only loss would come from using 4 more round trips. So an occasional gift swipe does nothing.

It's that knownothingness that makes it hard to get the COVID restitution/bailout that's needed.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Deucey

[Lex]

2 hours ago, MHV9218 said:

Man, that made my head hurt. Larry Schwartz is such a goddamn moron. It's offensive that Cuomo stuck that thug on the MTA board. Can't we at least pretend to have people who know or care about transit on the board of the most important agency in the country? You'd think it would help...

"Right now I’m somewhat in favor of eliminating the time based passes because I believe there’s a lot of fraud associated with them”

Is he taking notes from Rudy Giuliani? Fraud? What the hell is he talking about?

Edit: Oh jesus, it gets worse...

Could you come up with a more backwards version of this? If you tried? It's like the guy is thinking of the old 1-day FunPass and that's metric for the 30-day. He is so profoundly dumb.

Hell, I can say that those who regularly pay the $2.75 fare are casual riders, less active riders (they ride fairly frequently but not enough to justify a monthly pass), and those who are just barely able to afford the round-trips on a regular basis but are unaware of/not qualified for a reduced-fare MetroCard.

[MHV9218]

29 minutes ago, Lex said:

Hell, I can say that those who regularly pay the $2.75 fare are casual riders, less active riders (they ride fairly frequently but not enough to justify a monthly pass), and those who are just barely able to afford the round-trips on a regular basis but are unaware of/not qualified for a reduced-fare MetroCard.

Right, if you asked me I would have said exactly the opposite – $2.75 base is for tourists, chumps, and people who don't ride frequently enough for an unlimited. Sometimes I know I'm not gonna make the unlimited threshold so I use a pay-per-ride, but by and large the unlimited riders are the deeply-committed.

[Interested Rider]

I seem to remember many years ago, a reporter checking on how many times did MTA board members use the free Metro card that was given to them. I think that the answer was close to zero. 

MTA board members are not expected to know anything abou the system as after all, they were chosen by their political benefactor to what he says. 

The problem here is if he phony media ever did their job, we would not be in this mess in first place.

 

[JAzumah]

40 minutes ago, Interested Rider said:

The problem here is if he phony media ever did their job, we would not be in this mess in first place.

That's exactly right. They should be calling the MTA bigwigs all kinds of names for proposing to raise the fare when they are considering a 40% cut in services.

[B35 via Church]

12 hours ago, LaGuardia Link N Tra said:

Just looking at the 2 ideas that you wrote here. It makes me question the following:

"Do these people even ride the transit system to begin with?"

Now I understand that the  is in a budget crisis, but why are they considering ideas that not only hurt them in the long run, but also have proven to be ineffective in practice? 

Judging by the exasperation you appear to be exuding, you seem awe-inspired by this display of stupidity... I'd say it's par for the course....

Not sure if those questions you pose are rhetorical or not, but having been around these parts for as long as you have, you should know the answers to them...

3 hours ago, Interested Rider said:

I seem to remember many years ago, a reporter checking on how many times did MTA board members use the free Metro card that was given to them. I think that the answer was close to zero. 

MTA board members are not expected to know anything about the system as after all, they were chosen by their political benefactor to what he says. 

The problem here is if the phony media ever did their job, we would not be in this mess in first place.

...among other things.

3 hours ago, JAzumah said:

That's exactly right. They should be calling the MTA bigwigs all kinds of names for proposing to raise the fare when they are considering a 40% cut in services.

They should be calling for their jobs.

[Deucey]

5 hours ago, Interested Rider said:

The problem here is if he phony media ever did their job, we would not be in this mess in first place.

Well we only have the Telecoms Act of ‘96 to blame for that - it let all these media firms consolidate and ownership caps to be raised.

End result? Infotainment and Journalism by rewriting press releases; cutting investigative journalism because it only leads to profits IF it’s salacious; cutting local news because papers lose money to Google and Facebook due to loss of classified ads - which fund(ed) them, and the rise of opinion reporting because the talking heads and bloggers can be salacious and one-sided because no fairness doctrine exists (and “Equal Time” no longer applies).

I blame Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Baptist Evangelicals.

[JAzumah]

5 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

They should be calling for their jobs.

You aren't wrong, but you know they have someone on the bench that will take the job until they get the job they REALLY want.

If you do a really good job, then the governor gets offended that you are running a transportation agency like an actual transportation agency and makes you miserable until you leave. The MTA is turning into a booty call for people trying to level up. The pressure should go on the governor as well.

[B35 via Church]

4 hours ago, JAzumah said:

You aren't wrong, but you know they have someone on the bench that will take the job until they get the job they REALLY want.

If you do a really good job, then the governor gets offended that you are running a transportation agency like an actual transportation agency and makes you miserable until you leave. The MTA is turning into a booty call for people trying to level up. The pressure should go on the governor as well.

Good point.... Shit is a revolving door of f***ery (for lack of a better way of putting it)....

[Trainmaster5]

7 hours ago, JAzumah said:

You aren't wrong, but you know they have someone on the bench that will take the job until they get the job they REALLY want.

If you do a really good job, then the governor gets offended that you are running a transportation agency like an actual transportation agency and makes you miserable until you leave. The MTA is turning into a booty call for people trying to level up. The pressure should go on the governor as well.

You've been around the block and you know the game and how it's played. PR snow jobs and as Deucey pointed out the press accepts it and passes it on to the public. I worked in the construction and rehabilitation field and only those with knowledge in the field ran things. I came back to NYCT and found that the people who really knew the ropes were sidelined and the brown noser types were front and center. I used to have conversations with the last civil service trainmaster and saw firsthand how he was treated ( like dirt ) . The board has no knowledge about how the system works so they will accept whatever the incompetents tell them. It's not just Transit.  Imagine a brain surgeon in charge of HUD. Sad part is most people accept the pronouncements as if they were gospel. My opinion. Carry on. 

[MHV9218]

19 hours ago, Interested Rider said:

The problem here is if he phony media ever did their job, we would not be in this mess in first place.

Not sure why the "media" is "phony" here. If anything, they're just reporting on this nonsense that occurs.

No, we're in this mess because governors use the MTA board positions as a veritable patronage mill for their stooges and flunkies. No amount of press coverage seems to change that corrupt and unethical process.

[Deucey]

2 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Imagine a brain surgeon in charge of HUD.

Gawd midday Jan 20 can't come fast enough.

[Deucey]

51 minutes ago, MHV9218 said:

Not sure why the "media" is "phony" here. If anything, they're just reporting on this nonsense that occurs.

No, we're in this mess because governors use the MTA board positions as a veritable patronage mill for their stooges and flunkies. No amount of press coverage seems to change that corrupt and unethical process.

That's how politics work on the East Coast, I've learned.

Transit execs in the rest of the country get hired to other Transit agencies (is Nathaniel Ford got hired by MUNI from MARTA). But none of them ever come to , , PATH, WMATA, or MBTA.

Makes some wonder why...

[JAzumah]

3 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Imagine a brain surgeon in charge of HUD.

I'm ok with a brain surgeon running HUD. I am not ok with billions of dollars earmarked for Puerto Rico not being spent because no one in Puerto Rico bothered to write a plan to spend that money for the benefit of their people. Almost $20B was sitting in the HUD category because there was no plan of how to rebuild Puerto Rico.

That comes down to people with skills and people with the will. When I saw that, I reached out to a friend of mine and told her she should try to get that position and put something together for the island since she has an engineering background. However, she preferred to simply complain about "colonizer attitudes". You have societal breakdown because of the brain drain (as you mentioned) and because people want other people to fix it instead of doing it themselves. This is bigger than President Trump. Did California get any high speed rail built under the Obama administration? Where did the money go? China built literally 21,000 km of high speed rail in that time. 8 out of the last 12 years was spent under a Democratic president.

Let's face it: a lot of our political leaders are dumb. The people who run the MTA are not stupid people, so we can clearly see that they are just trying to babysit the system instead of run it. A lot of the political types ARE stupid and they have no solutions for you. Let's not pretend that different people in DC are going to change things. The last round of major cuts were in 2010 under the Obama administration. The Chicago region lurched from crisis to crisis for awhile because the corruption there is off the charts. This idea of a future Biden administration (if it happens) saving the MTA is a fantasy. There is nuttiness everywhere from the subways to the streets. We have to start being very vocal while the United States has the liquidity to fix things because if the stupid continues, the flexibility we have today will be gone and it will be the 1970s all over again. The people with money will leave, the powerful middle-class will pile back onto the express buses and ride nothing else, and the subway and commuter rail systems will break down.

[CenSin]

17 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

this display of stupidity... I'd say it's par for the course....

Welcome to homo sapiens circa 2020.

[Trainmaster5]

1 hour ago, Deucey said:

That's how politics work on the East Coast, I've learned.

Transit execs in the rest of the country get hired to other Transit agencies (is Nathaniel Ford got hired by MUNI from MARTA). But none of them ever come to , , PATH, WMATA, or MBTA.

Makes some wonder why...

Nat Ford moved on from NYCTA. David Gunn was a favorite of mine and he moved on. The DC Metro design comes from NYCT subways, down to the blue lights and the emergency alarm box setup. Earn your stripes here and move on if your upward progress is blocked. Right before I retired one of my supt. friends introduced me to a new member of the NYCT team. He came over from the LIRR. Told him that I knew about him before we met and he couldn't figure it out. Turns out that brother-in-law was hooked up with a female in his office and she gave me the lowdown on him. It's a small enclosed field when you're talking about mass transit in North America or the UK. Perhaps it's time to incorporate other perspectives into the picture such as Asia.  Just my musings. Carry on.

[JAzumah]

Asia really knows how to maximize the use of real estate on their systems. That is a very good starting point for the MTA. They could push value capture a lot harder.

[B35 via Church]

13 minutes ago, CenSin said:

Welcome to homo sapiens circa 2020.

Homo sapiens, period.

20 minutes ago, JAzumah said:

I'm ok with a brain surgeon running HUD. I am not ok with billions of dollars earmarked for Puerto Rico not being spent because no one in Puerto Rico bothered to write a plan to spend that money for the benefit of their people. Almost $20B was sitting in the HUD category because there was no plan of how to rebuild Puerto Rico.

That comes down to people with skills and people with the will. When I saw that, I reached out to a friend of mine and told her she should try to get that position and put something together for the island since she has an engineering background. However, she preferred to simply complain about "colonizer attitudes". You have societal breakdown because of the brain drain (as you mentioned) and because people want other people to fix it instead of doing it themselves. This is bigger than President Trump. Did California get any high speed rail built under the Obama administration? Where did the money go? China built literally 21,000 km of high speed rail in that time. 8 out of the last 12 years was spent under a Democratic president.

Let's face it: a lot of our political leaders are dumb. The people who run the MTA are not stupid people, so we can clearly see that they are just trying to babysit the system instead of run it. A lot of the political types ARE stupid and they have no solutions for you. Let's not pretend that different people in DC are going to change things. The last round of major cuts were in 2010 under the Obama administration. The Chicago region lurched from crisis to crisis for awhile because the corruption there is off the charts. This idea of a future Biden administration (if it happens) saving the MTA is a fantasy. There is nuttiness everywhere from the subways to the streets. We have to start being very vocal while the United States has the liquidity to fix things because if the stupid continues, the flexibility we have today will be gone and it will be the 1970s all over again. The people with money will leave, the powerful middle-class will pile back onto the express buses and ride nothing else, and the subway and commuter rail systems will break down.

This is why I don't get all hell bent, riled up over, or revere or take heed to the words of any politician... The funny thing about a politician is that they all politick.... I don't give a good god damn what political "party" they represent, either; people in general are self-serving by nature & like to feign that they're such these humani-damn-tarians - especially under the guise of portraying exceptional moral character....

26 minutes ago, Trainmaster5 said:

Nat Ford moved on from NYCTA. David Gunn was a favorite of mine and he moved on. The DC Metro design comes from NYCT subways, down to the blue lights and the emergency alarm box setup. Earn your stripes here and move on if your upward progress is blocked. Right before I retired one of my supt. friends introduced me to a new member of the NYCT team. He came over from the LIRR. Told him that I knew about him before we met and he couldn't figure it out. Turns out that brother-in-law was hooked up with a female in his office and she gave me the lowdown on him. It's a small enclosed field when you're talking about mass transit in North America or the UK. Perhaps it's time to incorporate other perspectives into the picture such as Asia.  Just my musings. Carry on.

I won't attempt to speak for other cities in North America, but here in NYC specifically, commuters simply do not take pride in public transportation... It's merely nothing more than a means to an end... We can't have a new subway, bus, or railroad fleet go a yearly quarter before riders start jacking them up....

[bobtehpanda]

6 hours ago, Deucey said:

That's how politics work on the East Coast, I've learned.

Transit execs in the rest of the country get hired to other Transit agencies (is Nathaniel Ford got hired by MUNI from MARTA). But none of them ever come to , , PATH, WMATA, or MBTA.

Makes some wonder why...

MBTA I hear is in a better place these days; I mean, they did manage to control costs on their Green Line Extension, which is for a start better than anything we can say about the MTA.

5 hours ago, JAzumah said:

Asia really knows how to maximize the use of real estate on their systems. That is a very good starting point for the MTA. They could push value capture a lot harder.

The Asian operators tend to already have a large amount of capital with which to buy property, or get it gifted to them at below market rates by their respective government.

The MTA doesn't own that much land. They don't have money to buy land. It's not clear they would be good at developing real estate since they can barely do their primary job right. And the examples we have are not that encouraging.

• Atlantic Yards - never lived up to its full potential, still under construction two decades after the fact.
• Hudson Yards - had multiple developers come and go, we used a lot of tax breaks to get people in so it's not even clear that it was a net positive.
• WTC - the Port Authority's perennial money pit (other than PATH)

IIRC this was actually studied by the Comptroller, and the conclusion was that most of the MTA owned land today is not located in areas that would justify the cost of building a deck costing at least a billion dollars the way Hudson Yards happened.

Edited November 24, 2020 by bobtehpanda

[BreeddekalbL]

Some actually are pushing for opto systemwide still, hell no 

[Gotham Bus Co.]

On 11/22/2020 at 9:59 PM, Interested Rider said:

I seem to remember many years ago, a reporter checking on how many times did MTA board members use the free Metro card that was given to them. I think that the answer was close to zero. 

MTA board members are not expected to know anything abou the system as after all, they were chosen by their political benefactor to what he says.

 

I like the Los Angeles County MTA approach, with a board made up of elected officials. I would do something similar here and expand the MTA Board as follows...

• NYC (7 members): all five Borough Presidents + Public Advocate + Chair of City Council Transportation Committee

• Outside NYC (7 members):  County Executives — not appointees but the County Executives themselves

• Co-Chairs: NY State Transportation Commissioner (representing the Governor) + NY City Transportation Commissioner (representing the Mayor)