MTA fare hikes still on the table next year despite pledge of ‘indefinite’ delay

[R10 2952]

5 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Simplified.

Cuts are already/definitely happening.... On a large scale, they don't have to apprise the public of every paper cut - just the blatantly obvious slash wounds & deep stab wounds....

The passive/slick actions of theirs are what you're speaking to.... When the MTA gears commentary regarding cuts to the public on a large scale, they are speaking to making major/macro actions...

Right,.. While $$$$$ is the obvious catalyst/factor, public transit in general is political... Once you get into things that massively affects society (negatively or positively) - even if you don't use public transit, political involvement is inevitable.... I'd go as far as to say discussion spaces like these wouldn't really exist if the nuances that comprise public transit weren't ultimately political.... It would be myopic to believe public transit was as black & white as say, mixing kool aid in sugar & going OooOhH Yeah!!!!!!!! after ingestion....

In his defense though, he did say he'd rather have that part of the discussion on another platform (twitter).... Can't really blame him for sparing the forum here (basically) from a bunch of red vs. blue shit.....

There are definitely a lot of subtle cuts and shortchanging by the agency that don't get noticed, either by employees or passengers, unless somebody (activists, pols, investigative journalists) decides to call the MTA out on their BS.  For instance, I vaguely remember a number of short-turns and put-ins that got quietly dropped after the MTA took over the PBLs- and this was before they even came out swinging the axe for the 2010 cuts.  

 

4 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Right. The politics is not helpful, particularly when locally both sides basically don't admit the MTA has a spending problem, and if they do, they signed off on that every two years fare hikes thing and called it a day, maybe sprinkled in some good ol' "two books auditing" to make it sound like they wanted to do something. Uncle Sam cannot fix the fact that the MTA's financial problems are structural in nature.

Quite frankly, I don't remember the last time we had a Governor, State Assembly Speaker, or State Senate Leader who did not eventually have some federal indictment against them. I'm not holding out my hopes for Hochul, Stewart-Cousins, or Heastie either.

Last time the state government worked halfway-decent in Albany was probably when Carey ran the show back in the '70s.  And that's not saying much, because him and the legislature didn't have much of a choice.  Rockefeller left behind such a fiscal mess that NYS was basically in the same boat as the City at the time- staring defaults and bankruptcy in the face. 

 

1 hour ago, bobtehpanda said:

There is, and it's called the laws of physics.

The financial industry, particularly investment banking, is about executing transactions as fast as possible, because if you let someone in front of you go first they can snatch a better price before you can. They will literally spend billions of dollars laying new cable across the Atlantic to save 5 milliseconds. 5 milliseconds could be the difference between hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.

How that comes into play is that New York is

• the physical home of the stock exchange
• one of the closest big cities to London and Europe, which is why
• it's the landing point of nearly all major transatlantic cables

Any firm moving to another city to do financial transactions would have to add in the additional transaction time of the distance it takes to send information from wherever they are to New York and onwards. The speed of light is not instant, it still will be slower for messages to travel a longer distance. The only cities with shorter distances would be in New England or eastern Canada, neither of which is particularly appealing compared to New York.

I've heard people raise the specter of Boston every now and then when it comes to finance and large corporations more generally, which I find laughable.  Mostly because their infrastructure isn't too great and the people there are the rudest bunch I've ever encountered.

[bobtehpanda]

5 minutes ago, R10 2952 said:

I've heard people raise the specter of Boston every now and then when it comes to finance and large corporations more generally, which I find laughable.  Mostly because their infrastructure isn't too great and the people there are the rudest bunch I've ever encountered.

I will just say this.

If you're afraid of liberal policies, high taxes, and high cost of living, Boston is the same or worse in literally all of those things.

Edited December 6, 2021 by bobtehpanda

[R10 2952]

But yeah, I agree with the points being made by posters above that a lot of these issues transcend the political divide in this country.  I've seen Democrats and Republicans alike do a shit job of running things, in NY, NJ, the rest of the Northeast and North America.  At the end of the day, red-blue, liberal-conservative, capitalist-communist, First/Second/Third World, it doesn't really matter what system you have if the people in charge suck multiple nuts.

[checkmatechamp13]

6 hours ago, R10 2952 said:

There are definitely a lot of subtle cuts and shortchanging by the agency that don't get noticed, either by employees or passengers, unless somebody (activists, pols, investigative journalists) decides to call the MTA out on their BS.  For instance, I vaguely remember a number of short-turns and put-ins that got quietly dropped after the MTA took over the PBLs- and this was before they even came out swinging the axe for the 2010 cuts.  

That might've been true on some lines, but lines like the B103 got a significant service boost when they got transferred to MTA Bus.