Ahh mass transit…something that seems to be overlooked in the United states if you don’t live in New York city. The Metropolitan Transit Authority…what New yorkers tend to hate,however this hate is justified. In recent years MTA has raised lot’s of speculation among New yorkers. The reason being that New York’s MTA system is one of the largest transportation systems in the world which has led to major financial crises throughout time.Mass transit throughout the United states was merely based off of New York cities transit system New York City’s public transport system is the heart and soul of the city to keep New Yorkers on the move ; with recent changes and developments, there is a huge possibility that our transit system is in jeopardy.Which escalated from the neglect of city leaders and governors, whom have had multiple opportunities to address and rehabilitate this array of issues. MTA began operations on October 27th, 1904 and is known as the largest subway system in Northern America.When the MTA system first opened, it was leased to a company named International Rapid Transit Company (IRTC) and only cost 5 cents to ride the train. Through time, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has become a core component of NYC’s Infrastructure, with the first landmark station being the City Hall Station (which is no longer in commute). The city hall station was something of a centerpiece of the system and was full of absolutely astonishing architecture. The transit system had begun to expand as ridership had grown rapidly. One of the biggest reasons behind this rapid expansion was mainly because of the fact there was a mass amount of Immigrants moving into the city. Yet with this mass migration came mass conjunction. As immigrants had come into the city the city found itself having trouble with traffic and the streets ultimately became very congested. The MTA had had some issues behind it during the time. One of the issues being that the trains were only used by the wealthy. Another big issue was that the train didn’t run very far outside of the inner city part meaning that there were lots of communities that lived in poverty were left without this fast mode of transportation. One of the biggest surprising facts about the transit system when it had opened was the fact that it was actually able to be built as many believed that it was practically impossible to make such a thing happen. MTA has always had some lingering problems…TRAIN DELAYS and ROBBERY… “Train delays with the subway also began on opening day as a train had blown a fuse right before the system was open to the public. So this is not just a modern day issue. The train was then pushed to the last stop in order for mechanics to figure out what the issue was, and the system would be able to open on time.”(Wagner). This can raise the question…Is delays just meant to happen in such a system? The MTA was meant to help ease congestion in the streets and overall boost the economy of the city.
Despite the MTA being the heart and soul of New York city and its economy, it tends to be neglected and overlooked by the city officials in the city. The MTA is broken up into an arrangement of different categories. MTA is broken down by Rail/railroads, ground transport such as buses, and bridges and Tunnels. One of the biggest pieces of the Transit system that are highly neglected is the Busses. In comparison to trains and Bridges and Tunnels the Busses get the least amount of attention when it comes to maintenance. One thing that’s important to note is that New York City Transit and the MTA Bus Company operate differently. (Furafo and Musumeci) “The MTA bus system lost 100 million passenger trips in the last 8 years. This is mainly due to the bus system being unreliable, long, confusing and poorly connected…This is not because of unavoidable circumstances but because of age-old institutional failures implemented to help the system reach its max potential.” There is so much that can be done that can help just the bus aspect of the overall system yet failure to try and implement new things is currently the downfall of the MTA buses. If there was more focus on improvement within the system from an operation standpoint than things within the system may not be as bad as they have become. If there were things implemented in order to help the system reach its max potential then it would ultimately have a more positive outlook. This has had a negative effect on the economy as well because of the fact all those loss riders for buses ultimately lose revenue for MTA and that leaves less money to make improvements…so everything eventually comes full circle. Another big problem within the MTA is the amount of political influence that has ultimately taken its effect on the system. Given the fact that the MTA is very much a key factor in the economy of New York city this means that there is a lot of political influence that can take place. This political influence from governors can ultimately take a very negative toll because of the fact that the directors of MTA then feel the pressure from these higher ups. Even with this added pressure from the higher ups there is still so much neglect from those same exact people. This neglect is going to be something that can possibly destroy the economy of the city. According to “For governors, New York City’s Transit Budget is a huge expense that delivers little votes; meanwhile for mayors it’s somewhat of a taxation without representation situation that’s occurring. Governor George pataki and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, have found that it’s better to divert Transit funds to other purposes.”(Feigan) This diversion of funds and lack of political seriousness is a root cause of problems in the transit system. When looking at other transit systems the leaders are much more involved.
With the lack of funding within the system…it really causes questioning on where MTA is losing and gaining its money at. This is important because of the fact that it will give us the reader insight as to where MTA is losing and gaining its revenue and the contrast between how much is coming in and going out. The covid-19 Pandemic had a really big negative effect on revenue in the MTA as people were confined to their houses. During this time period MTA had lost millions of dollars due to low ridership. As we know ridership is one of the key ways to the transit system making money. Before the covid-19 pandemic the ridership within the MTA was at an all time high as life was bustling people were outside, traveling to school, work ect. Yet once covid-19 hit in march 2020 ridership plummeted. Aside from the MTA losing revenue from the covid-19 pandemic…revenue is also being lost in large part to Fare evaders. Fare evasion has “cost the MTA $119 million in the first three months of the year, according to new statistics — and officials want transit workers to help them rein in the costly problem.”(Meyer). 119 million in the first 3 months of the year is absolutely ridiculous. That’s a very large amount as this money could have been used for an array of different things through the system. The system has lost this major amount between fare evaders on both the bus and the trains through the system. With this rapid decline in ridership this led to MTA creating something called the capitol funding plan. What they had aimed to do with the capitol funding plan was to have a significant increase in federal funding to 1.7 Billion. This was meant to help MTA and the problems within the system as “Time is money, and every day the MTA fails to get congestion pricing revenue, the MTA loses funds that could go to modern subway signals, new train cars, new buses and station accessibility. Additionally, delayed money that eventually comes in will have less value due to its having to cover inflated costs for labor, materials and equipment.”(Reinvent Albany.com). These gains in ravine that are planned can be a really big help because of the fact that it can be used for things to really improve the system and these improvements within the system could lead to an overall increase in revenue as people don’t want to pay for bad service and dirty train stations people don’t want to pay that price of $2.75 for a system that simply does not have the ability to deliver on what people need and what the people of New York demand. The system does not have the ability to keep up with the Demand of NYC and that’s one of the biggest problems. When looking at the allocation of money within the MTA there’s significant gaps which don’t make complete sense. According to the budget report from MTA “The majority of our Operating Budget is spent on the more than 70,000 workers required to keep New York moving 24/7. This includes salaries, overtime, retiree pensions, and healthcare. A quarter of the budget goes to Non-Labor costs — things like maintenance equipment, software, and other basic expenses that every business needs to operate efficiently. About a third of non-labor costs are electricity and fuel to run our buses, subways and trains; and paratransit services.”(new.MTA.info). This really puts the budget in question and the transparency of the MTA at question because they’re saying that a very large amount is going to workers yet there is currently a massive shortage of workers within the MTA system…Is MTA really allocating their budget correctly and in a manner as to which it will allow for improvement? That’s the real question at hand. This was a talk that I had with a few friends. I asked what they would do if they had the money to improve the system. The majority said that they would do things such as a survey system that customers can use based on their ride and this system will allow for MTA to get a representation of improvement from a riders point of view and this will allow for them to plan accordingly. This would be a great bid to keep the city’s economy as MTA is a very central part to keeping the nation’s economy alive as “With its approximately $1.8 trillion GDP — comparable to that of Canada — the New York metropolitan area accounts for roughly 8% of the national economy, and the region’s financial success is driven in large part by its robust transit system.”(Levin). While 8% may not seem like much, that’s actually a very large percentage that’s accounted for when looking at the overall GDP factors and the transit system plays a very large role in that. What this ultimately means is that a collapse of MTA could have massive implications for the overall economy as it will have such a negative domino effect.
It’s how these problems are being addressed that are really important. It’s no secret that the system needs to undergo a massive amount of improvement, yet is MTA really taking the approach that it needs to in order to really create that improvement. Majority of the Improvement known to the everyday individual would be something such as quicker times for trains, rebuilding stations,etc. Yet there is also some outside improvement that needs to be made and one of the biggest areas that improvement needs to be made is safety. Safety is something that’s very overlooked in the MTA system as there is absolutely no allocation for safety in the overall budget. Safety within the MTA system is currently at an all time low as “the possibility of falling victim to violent crime in the subway remains remote, even as the rate of violent crimes — murder, rape, felony assault and robbery — per subway ride has more than doubled since 2019, before the pandemic’s disruption.”(Zraick,). This increase in crime has really been a negative factor as since crime has gotten so prevalent within the system people do not feel safe using the system as there’s now the growing fear that something will happen to them. One may avoid the system as that person could fear getting hurt, robbed and or even losing their life. The MTA needs to have more enforcement in the train stations and such in order to lower the crime rates because as of right now there’s a very large amount of subway crimes that end up going unsolved. The MTA needs to ramp up on protection of the passengers, now it’s very clear that no system will be 100 percent safe yet there are steps that MTA can take in order to make the system an overall safer place. Not only through a crime aspect but also through an operational aspect. When we look on the tracks today we can see that they are very dirty as people throw trash and such on the tracks and this causes things such as track fires as sometimes trash hit’s the electrified 3rd rail and causes fires this in turn causes train delays and it overall has a knock on effect on the system. There is one solution that’s going to help the MTA improve operational safety and this is a system called platform doors. What platform doors do is that it puts space between the individuals and the tracks and platform itself and the doors only open when the train is in the station. This will ultimately allow for no trash on the tracks and it will also prevent subway crimes such as shoves and people falling on the tracks and other train striking incidents. Yet there was one reason as to why MTA has pulled back on the operation of platform doors due to money.
The MTA has been through this Financial crisis for a very long time now. The financial crisis has absolutely ruined the overall economics of the transit system as the system is now in a constant downward trend. The MTA system is under deep threat and if improvement is not made it can have massive consequences to not only itself but to the cities overall economy as MTA plays a very big role in getting millions to work on a daily basis and overall keeping the city going. There needs to be more focus and more federal funding in order to help MTA reach its max potential because of the fact that the system is so big it has massive potential. This potential can be reached through planning and federal funding in order to make the system much more safe, and overall efficient.
Citation Page
Meyer, David. “MTA Losing $119m and Counting to Fare Evasion, Officials Say.” New York Post, New York Post, 22 May 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/05/22/mta-losing-119m-and-counting-to-fare-evasion-officials-say/.
“Open, Accountable New York Government.” Reinvent Albany, https://reinventalbany.org/. August 2021
Metropolitan Transit Authority. “MTA Operating Budget Basics.” MTA, 2019, https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics.
Finnegan, William. “Can Andy Byford Save the Subways?” The New Yorker, 2 July 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/can-andy-byford-save-the-subways.
Wagner , Katherine. “The Subway System .” Blogs.shu.edu , https://blogs.shu.edu/nyc-history/tours/the-subway-system/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2022.
Levin, Tim. “New York’s Transit System Is in a Financial Crisis — but Saving It Is Vital to the US Economy, Experts Say.” Businessinsider.com, 26 Sept. 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/saving-mta-transit-system-subway-us-new-york-economy-experts-2020-9. Accessed 14 Nov. 2022.
