Funding Mass Transportation

I decided to get away from the national and international ongoing forever crisis over the economic flop, the war on terrorism, the new Afghan strategy, etc., etc. Instead I find myself deeply concerned about what’s happening in my old home town New York City. I don’t live their anymore, but I have a deep abiding affection for the place I grew up. Yes, it was the Bronx. But like Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island too, they are all part of that great old melting pot called New York.

My father loved the Bronx because we could walk out the door of our 181st street tenement and there was the Zoo. Many Sunday afternoons were spent in and around the Zoo having a picnic and visiting with our “ancestors” in the monkey house. Anyhow, that’s what Papa said. Another great joy was the nickel subway ride to Coney Island for a day on the beach. Papa considered the subway and the beach the greatest gift America could have given us. Papa believed that the City’s greatness was based on its subway, trolley car and bus system that permitted everyone to move around the whole wonderful world of New York museums, theaters and parks for just a nickel. As any of you who have been here know, that nickel fare is long long gone and that’s a shame.

The fares are now $I.50, $2.50, and going up and up. That will have a devastating effect on very many people who will not be able to afford that casual trip to the Zoo or Coney or the Staten Island Ferry. I truly believe that what has made the City great is its huge web of a transportation system that can move millions of people around the place daily at reasonable fares. This is precisely what is now disappearing.

It is because the greatness of the city depends on its transit that the cost of that system needs to be shared by all who benefit from it. Think for a moment what department stores, theaters, museums, Times Square would be without the subways and buses. Nothing. They wouldn’t exist. That’s why the cost of the transportation system in any city needs to be considered part of the cost of running the the place. No different than water, garbage collection, sewerage or road maintenance. Yet the opposite has been happening in New York as well as other major cities around the country.

Some years ago when Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York State, he decided to create some jobs for his friends by creating what is now called the MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. At its founding it was said that its primary function would be to create coordination between independent agencies. Namely, Long Island Railroad, Metro North Railroad, Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and the buses.

The MTA bureaucracy now represents multi-millions of dollars spent on duplicating the efforts of each one of its affiliated agencies. But far more important is the simple fact that the MTA never ever did one single thing to create any coordination between its affiliates, the basic reason that it was founded. Why nobody bothers to ask the question is a mystery, and yet I think I know the answer.

When I worked in civil service back in the sixties, as I made my way through the many government agencies it often occurred to me that the issue of waste or redundancy never seemed to come up. Why didn’t it? There was an unspoken sort of agreement that all of us are in this civil service trough together, so lets not make any waves that might suggest that what any of us are doing may not make sense. And so all agencies and jobs become self perpetuating. Okay, that may work where the result does not fall exclusively on the users, as is the case with the MTA. That cost, though it benefits everyone in and around the Metropolitan Area, is stuck on the backs of the users. This is patently unfair and should be treated the same as Sanitation, Police or Fire Departments. It should be considered just another cost of running the city and spread between all who live there
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Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.