Tag: Albany

Today the Democratic members of the New York State Assembly will take mass transit to Lower Manhattan and discuss how, in lieu of congestion pricing and without sacrificing the future through additional borrowing, they will fully fund the ongoing operating and capital needs of the transportation system (including the 2010 to 2014 MTA Capital Plan) and how, without unfairness or favoritism and with limited economic damage, they will ration those driving to congested parts of New York City to the level of traffic the road network can support. Or they will drive there, using their permits to park in restricted free on-street parking areas, and they will grandstand, be publicly disingenuous, continue to promise something for nothing and the expense of the future, and privately discuss deals to reward their supporters. In honor of Silver, Brodsky, Brennan et. al, or in fear of the future they will leave us with, I have decided to forego our transit system (with its uncertain future) and bicycle to work. Or at least part of the way to work, because I was unable to identify anyplace to safely park my bike in the vicinity of my office in deepest, darkest, priciest Midtown. The only place I found bicycles locked was to small trees, not a good idea. So I’ll ride six miles from Windsor Terrace to the Lower East Side, and take the subway from there.

Compared with many of those posting on transit geek sites I have participated in, and the signal engineers at New York City Transit where I once worked, I’m not an expert in subway and road capacity. But compared with those who have been making an issue of it, well, in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king, so I’ve elected to provide an overview of what I know in a post. Before getting technical, however, the most important thing about the capacity of the region’s rail transit service is this: there is more room on the tracks than the region will ever be able to use during most of the day; the only capacity problems are during the AM and PM weekday peak periods, and the only severe capacity problems are during the peak hour within those periods. Meanwhile, the streets of Manhattan and some parts of the outer boroughs are congested for much of the day, and in some cases increasingly congested as the day goes on. That is because during the AM rush hour, the capacity of the bridges and tunnels entering Manhattan, and their approaches, limits the number of vehicles on the streets, but as the day goes on more and more are present and trying to move. During peak hour most people are already taking transit, so congestion pricing is more likely to shift drivers to transit during the off peak period, when there is plenty of room to add more riders and, if needed, trains.

Today's news from London made me think of something. Some time after 9/11, I wrote an essay (not here, R8 didn't exist) about the possible need to limit auto and delivery access to Manhattan Island, and perhaps other islands, to those with some kind of security clearance. In addition to perhaps tolling the free bridges.

I hope, with all the resources it has been given, the federal government will prevent another 9/11 or, worse, a successful attack with WMD. I accept that no one can stop a suicide bomber pedestrian blowing themself up on a street or in a subway car, though the number of people killed by such is likely to be in the overall scheme of things low. That is a risk all of us must take. In between are the sort of car and truck bombs of the sort ravaging Iraq and nearly hitting London today. We leave ourself open to them because the one civil right Americans have been unwilling to sacrifice in the wake of 9/11 is the right to drive, as the congestion pricing issue (and others) shows. But once one goes off in Times Square, kills a couple of hundred people and maims far more, we will have both congestion pricing and security clearance. Too bad political expediency requires we wait until then.

Not wanting to devalue their on-street parking permits, but not wanting to be accused of doing nothing, it is clear that the State Legislature is looking for a congestion pricing alternative. But the only alternative to rationing street space by price is rationing by queue; congestion will rise to the point where there are no more people who can stand it, and the rest will either use other means to travel or relocate themselves (and their businesses?) elsewhere. Once the state has decided that the only acceptable limit to congestion is congestion itself, and thus the city has no choice but to live with it, however, taking away street space, and taking other measures to reduce traffic flow, will become reasonable. Such measures wouldn’t make congestion worse, because congestion would simply be as bad at it is going to be anyway. The only difference is that the general public would get the benefit of alternative uses of the street. And how about the revenue that congestion pricing would bring? With space that tight, it becomes impossible to avoid committing traffic infractions such as blocking the box, impeding emergency vehicles, and getting stuck in bus lanes. Ruthless enforcement (you decided to drive here and didn’t want to pay? Tough!) could bring in the cash in fines, rather than fees. Indeed according to a Daily News article last week, when it comes to scarce “free” on-street parking spaces in my neighborhood, this is already happening.

In case you missed it, Gotham Gazette posted an excellent article on the average earnings of workers in their 20s, both in New York City and nationally, over time here. The data show that workers in their 20s today, particularly men, even college graduates (of which there are more), earn less in cash income than they once did, both in New York City and nationally. The situation for non-cash income is even worse. As a result of two tier union contracts and other two-tier personnel policies, my generation was the first to not receive defined benefit pensions. But young people today are unlikely to even receive health insurance, as businesses increasingly hire them as “independent contractors” to deny health insurance to them while providing it to existing employees from prior generations. To this, add the higher student loan amounts today’s graduates are burdened by, generated in part by excessive cost inflation in higher education (which presumably provides more income for more people). Forget the fear that the next generation will not be as well off; it has already happened. And public policies, attentive to the wants of senior citizens to the virtual exclusion of all else, particularly in New York State, pile debts and other burdens on to the future, for those 20-somthings to someday pay. In yet another shot in the generational war, state and local governments are refusing to allow people to know how large those burdens will be.

New York’s MTA recently announced, to great acclaim, that it would “save the fare” for another year, continuing a political game that has gone on as long as there has been a subway system in New York. The long-term results of that game have been terrible. To prevent increases, money has been borrowed and maintenance deferred, until a crisis point is reached and the fare goes up anyway – by a massive amount, generally in a recession when people can least afford it. In the city’s history the typical fare increases have been 20%, 25%, 33%, 50%, even 100% (from five cents to ten cents). It is only during the 1984 to 1994 period that somewhat smaller increases – of 11% or less – were the norm. Deferred fare increases have been paid back with interest, one reason the pay-per-ride subway fare has in the end risen faster than inflation – by 45% from 1904 to today in real dollars. (see attached chart). Think about it – all those populist heroes defending the working people and middle class by fighting fare increases over all the years delivered a 45% increase in the cost of a subway ride adjusted for inflation over a century! There really is a sucker born every minute. In contrast U.S. postage stamps and inflation have gone up by about the same amount over the past century. Postage stamp increases have been smaller, with the latest at just two cents (5.1%), but more frequent – and generally not subject to grandstanding my members of Congress. In New York the game goes on, but according to the blog DCist, a transit board member in of all places Washington D.C. has proposed ending the game there once and for all.

…because the additional staff has already been hired. According to Current Employment Survey data from the New York State Department of Labor, government employment fell by 3,100 in New York City and rose by 6,700 in the rest of the state in the 12 months through April 2007. The long-term trend thus continues.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky is beginning to get on my nerves. Not only has he demanded that NYC's share of state education funding be cut more than I suspect it already has been (still waiting for ALL the data, and where did you think his extra share would come from)? But he is also objecting to an attempt to use a congestion charge as a means of limiting overuse of our public streets. In fact, people from elsewhere in the state would be welcome to use our public streets — on foot — just as they are now welcome to use our public parks. Is that true for NYC residents in all the parks out in the suburbs?

Current Employment Survey data is out for March, and local government employment is down 2,700 from 12 months earlier in New York City and up 8,400 in the rest of the state, continuing a trend that has gone on forever. Clearly something must be done about this. Such as taxing NYC residents to send more "tax relief" to the rest of the state, so it can continue hiring, while cutting the city's general revenue sharing. State government employment was up by 100 in NYC, and 1,600 in the rest of the state, as well. At least the city's private sector is growing. Because if it wasn't, and state revenues dropped, the city would be first in line for reductions in state funding, based on what has happened in the past.

The Fiscal Policy Institute has released school aid data based on the adopted budget. Their data shows the city’s share of state school aid was cut. But from what I can see, this data only includes school aid that is called school aid. From a practical perspective, it doesn’t matter if you send money to schools for them to spend without collecting local taxes, send money to schools to offset the local taxes they do not then collect because they spend it instead (STAR), or send money to taxpayers to offset what they do collect (the new checks). Education funding, therefore, in reality includes STAR and the new “tax relief” checks. I want to see it all.