The attached spreadsheets compress National Transit Database data for 2007 operating costs into two three-page tables. The first shows operating costs per each hour a revenue vehicle (bus or rail car) is operated in revenue service, per unlinked trip, per passenger mile and per employee work hour. The second shows fare revenue per trip, and the percentage of operating costs covered by the fare. Data is provided for all automated guide way (AG), commuter rail (CR), heavy rail (subway or elevated) HR, light rail (LR), and ferry boat (FB) systems. My chief contribution to the tables is to limit the number of demand response (DR) handicapped paratransit systems, and bus (MB) systems, that are included, to the largest and a few others in New York State, as there are many such systems throughout the country, most quite small.

The data shows that the total cost New York City Transit pays to operate a subway car for an hour is lower than any comparable system other than Chicago, which apparently wasn’t paying enough of its pension, retiree health care, and track maintenance cost in recent years, resulting in a massive fiscal collapse and a near meltdown in service. Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth costs to operate each rail car for an hour were much higher than the subway — and other similar commuter rail systems. NYCT buses do not have a similar advantage per revenue vehicle hour, and are in fact relatively expensive due to relatively high costs per employee work hour. NYCT bus costs are among the lowest per trip, however, as its buses are fuller. The subway covered 67% of its operating costs in 2007, down from prior years but better than virtually any other public system, MetroNorth (59.3%), the LIRR (46.3%), or PATH (41.4%). NYCT buses covered 36.9% of their operating costs, better than most but about the same as Westchester’s Bee Line (36.2%) and Long Island Bus (34.9%), something I hadn’t expected.

As the great sportswriter Jimmy Cannon used to say, nobody asked me but…

Immediately after posting my piece yesterday concerning the antics of  Pedro “The Mamaroneck Bomber”  Espada and Hiram "The Sultan of Swat Monserrate", collectively known as "The Aztec Two-Step", I was besieged with email, most of which came from Republicans calling me an anti-Latino bigot, and the balance of which came from fellow Democrats, telling me I was “not being helpful.”

There was a Party Line, and the Party Line was that this was a “Failed-Attempted-Coup.“

Well, despite the best efforts of Malcolm Smith to bring about Republican control of the State Senate sooner, it took Republican an entire six months to get the deed done, courtesy of their signing the team of Pedro Espada and Hiram Monserrate, who shall from now on be referred to in this department as the “Aztec Two-Step.”

It was an astonishing display of "Brown Power." Indeed, when it comes to role models in leading a legislature, each Party Leader in the NYS Senate has a Brown as his avatar. In Dean Skelos' case, it is Willie (who pulled off the same maneuver in California only about a dozen or so times), in Malcolm's case, Gordon. 

The National Transit database is out for 2007, and this time there is data that is either new or at least new to me. For selected items, time series data is presented for each year from 1991 to 2007, showing how the MTA (and perhaps other transit agencies) got into this mess. I’ve analyzed the data for two MTA subsidiaries: New York City Transit (NYCT), my main concern and former employer, and the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), for comparison’s sake. The “download” portion of the attached spreadsheet also contains the same information for other MTA subsidiaries and New Jersey Transit, for those who want to go further. The expenditure detail doesn’t include such relevant items as pension costs, borrowing, debt service and retiree health care expenditures, which can be used by those skilled in political deception (or perhaps self-deception) to shift costs to, and suck revenues, from the future.

What the data does show, however, is that during the 1990s the amount of revenue provided to NYCT, both in fares and subsidies, was drastically reduced adjusted for inflation, both per-ride and per hour a revenue vehicle was in service. In 1993, just prior to the start of the administration of He Who Must Not Be Named, the NYCT had $2.92 per unlinked trip in revenues (operating and capital), including $1.30 from the fare, in 2007 dollars. By 2000 that had fallen to $1.90, a decrease of 35 percent, including $1.01 from the fare. For each hour it operated a revenue vehicle (bus or subway) in1991 NYCT received $264.65, including $94.50 from fares. By 2000 that had fallen to $155.64, a 41.2 percent decline, including $82.87 in fare revenue.

What will happen to all those excess McMansions built in recent years across suburban and exurban America, as energy costs rise and household sizes and incomes continue to shrink? From the American Planning Association comes a report with a suggestion — why not covert these houses, built for the affluent, into multiple dwellings less well off households could afford to rent and maintain? Here is the kicker — the report was written in 1949, and the subject was older Victorian-era houses in central cities. Many urban homes were in fact converted to multiple dwellings and rooming houses in the post-war era, as the housing units reached 50 years old, were no longer attractive to the affluent, and were passed down the economic ladder. Indeed it is passing down of housing built for the affluent, not subsidized housing newly built for the less well off, that has been responsible for much of the improvement in housing conditions for the less well off in the past century.

Having nearby homes within one’s taxing jurisdiction become affordable to the less well off, however, is not the typical suburbanites idea of a good thing. Particularly in the balkanized Blue States, where local government jurisdictions are many and small, and tax burdens and public service quality vary greatly depending on local success in getting business taxpayers in and keeping less well off service recipients out. That will be one side in the coming political war. The other will feature desperate homeowners seeking rental income to help with the mortgage, former residents who moved away but couldn’t sell and need to rent instead, speculators seeking profit, and working families and increasingly less well off seniors living on Social Security only (once Generation Greed finishes with us) seeking affordable housing. In some places, the battle is already underway.

Continuing a very irregular series on who are the voters in upcoming "hot" elections, I turn today to the 23^rd Congressional District, where there will be a Special Election sometimes this year. The seat is being vacated by Republican John McHugh, who President Obama has appointed Secretary of the Army.

Those who follow the news might have read of a report by the State Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, that the state pension plans have lost lots of money over the past year. In 2011 (after the current members of the state legislature have been re-elected) local governments will have to pay more into the pension plans as a result. And as a consequence, residents of those localities would face soaring taxes, deteriorating public services, or a combination of the two. In response Comptroller DiNapoli proposes that such localities be allowed to defer the additional required pension contributions, in effect borrowing from the pension funds at eight percent interest per year, and thus shift the cost to future taxpayers, perhaps those around after current taxpayers have cashed in and moved out or died off. More off the books debt to add to the massive on the books debt. Governor David Paterson responded that what the state really needs to do is reduce pension benefits for future public employees which, if as a result of lower total compensation those employees are less motivated and qualified, would reduce public services for future state residents.

In the press, this was presented as a conflict between the two, but to me Paterson, DiNapoli, and all politicians of their generation, regardless of party, have more in common than they have differences. Neither Paterson nor DiNapoli is willing to call out those who received the past benefits associated with our current predicament. And note the word in common to both proposals with regard to sacrifices: future. For Generation Greed, that is what (and who) has been sacrificed over and over again.

I’m sure most readers of this blog have probably heard that Mayor Bloomber called Azi Paybarah of the NY Observer a disgrace because Azi had the gall to ask him a question about term limits. 

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/

But I think the most interesting thing about the exchange between Mike & Azi is what Mike actually said was the reason why term limits were extended;

“The rationale for extending term limits is the City Council voted it, and the public's going to have a chance on Nov. 3 to say what they want, and I don't think we have to keep coming back to that.”

At one time all localities in New York State were allowed to limit their desirable local government jobs to local residents. Beginning in the late 1950s, however, a series of state laws have gradually prohibited New York City from excluding suburban residents from taking city local government jobs, while continuing to allow the suburbs to exclude city residents from suburban local government jobs. Often New York City’s own elected officials, as part of contract or political deals with public employee unions, specifically requested the very state laws that discrimnated against the city. In part because their backers were moving to the suburbs and wanted to keep their city jobs in the family. Now, according to the Daily News, unions and members of the City Council are proposing lifting the remaining restrictions, including those on managers.

Whether residency restrictions in public employment make sense in general is debatable as far as I’m concerned. Whether it is fair to permit them outside New York City but not for New York City is not. But I have never once, in all the years I’ve followed public policy, read about a single NYC politician demanding that local governments in the suburbs also be forced to open up their civil service jobs to New York City residents. Not once. Ever. Have I missed something? And if not, how can it be explained that this gross inequity is among the unsaid?

Ben Smith reports that conservatives are responding to the fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom they are painting as a dangerous left-winger, was originally appointed by the first President Bush–