There are extensive delays and suspensions in train service
because of a temporary loss of power.
The New York City subway is the circulatory system for the global capitol of finance and media.
And today this 114 year old engineering marvel is coming apart.
Stalled trains, signal breakdowns and constant line closures
are complicating the lives on New Yorkers
who ride the trains more than 5.5 million times a day.
The MTA, the public agency that runs the subways is woefully mismanaged,
fiscally irresponsible and politically captured.
Thanks to the clout of the transit workers union,
subway workers on average make 155 thousand dollars in total annual compensation
or more than twice as much as the passengers they serve.
The political response to this crisis
has been mainly to devise new ways to collect more money for this troubled operation
such as a new millionaires tax or by imposing additional tolls and surcharges on cars.
But a major lesson of the first 114 years of subway history
is that giving the MTA more money from outside sources
is like bringing an alcoholic to an open bar.
The path to real reform and accountability
is to make the subway live off its customers once and for all.
Subway riders should bear almost the full cost to ride
with the exception of low income folks where there's going to be some subsidy.
Baruch Feigenbaum is the assistant director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation.
A fare in New York City is a couple bucks and change,
what would it be if it was more fully account?
So during rush hours it would probably be at least five dollars one way
and probably up to eight or maybe even ten based on how far the person is travelling.
We charge what it takes to cover the cost
and then for folks who need the service,
they would get a voucher or some sort of other discount so they can use it
we're not trying to subsidize upper middle class folks here.
One of the arguments against that is it's gonna decrease economic activity overall
because there is a positive externality
to subsidizing people who come into Manhattan from the boroughs.
I really don't think eight or ten dollars even is that much
when you consider some of the other challenges in New York and people still live there
The center of everything does not have to be Manhattan.
Is that the limit of transit policy?
That people ride, we pay the full cost?
That is the most efficient system, it's also the best system for the rider.
Because if the rider is the one paying the cost
then the transit agency is serving the rider.
If Albany is bailing out the transit system, it's gonna be whatever Albany wants.
Lately whatever Albany wants has included budget items big and small
that don't have any impact on service and reliability.
And this is a theme that extends all the way back to the system's early days.
The subway's troubles are deeply rooted in the decline of the fare
as it's primary revenue source.
When the subway opened in 1904 it was five cents a ride.
Which was more than enough to finance its operations.
But when inflation eroded the value of a nickel, the city refused to permit fare increases.
By 1920, 500 other US cities had raised fares on their transit systems.
Meanwhile New York City's populist mayor John Hylan
campaigned on the preservation of the nickel fare,
calling it 'as sacred and binding as any contracts ever drawn
in the history of financial transactions the world over.'
The fare did eventually go up but not enough to keep pace with inflation
and the subway's revenue shortages became an endemic problem.
Decades later the city and state discovered a new way to plug up the shortfall
forcing drivers to pay for transit.
In 1968, governor Nelson Rockefeller orchestrated a backroom deal
to reallocate revenues from nine major bridges and tunnels to transit.
Last year alone drivers payed 1.1 billion dollars in tolls
that were diverted to subways and buses.
The state created more hidden funding streams in the years that followed
and taxes and subsidies now comprise a larger share of the MTA's revenue than fares.
These include a special sales, corporate and payroll tax
and fees on real estate transfers, car rentals, driver's license renewals and vehicle registrations.
And the state just imposed a brand new surcharge on taxis and ride shares coming into Manhattan
with the money going to the MTA.
These subsidies violate a central tenet of good transportation policy.
Which is to make each mode of travel self sustaining.
If fare subsidies were to come to an end,
could the subway survive on its customers alone?
It could in 1904 when the system opened,
and it could in 1982 when the MTA studied the issue
and journalist Peter Samuel wrote about it in Reason.
The key is getting riders directly invested in slashing wasteful spending
and reigning in wildly inflated salaries
by making them feel the horror not just of signal malfunctions,
train rerouting and line closures,
but that they pay top dollar for the privilege of such dreadful service.