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  • The average number of weekday riders on New York City subways in 2019 was nearly

  • 5.5 million.

  • By June 2023, paid weekday subway ridership was 3.6

  • million, down 34% from that 2019 level.

  • The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the operator of more than 6,400 subway cars,

  • more than 5,700 busses, two of the country's busiest commuter trains and multiple

  • bridges and tunnels saw farebox revenue in 2022 plummet 37% from

  • its 2019 levels.

  • If you're looking at a roughly $20 billion annual operating budget

  • before Covid, about half of that came from fare revenues,

  • when you're still missing a big chunk of your fare revenues and you have to provide the same level of

  • service, that obviously creates a big hole in the budget.

  • Remote work is blamed for much of that decline compared to their 2019 levels, Manhattan

  • office workers were at their desks on average 68% of the time during the mid week

  • and just 37% on Fridays.

  • Fears about public safety and crime have also impacted the city's round the clock subway

  • service.

  • New Yorkers are on edge as violent crime throughout the city's subway system reaches new

  • highs. Three subway murders have been recorded in the past two weeks

  • alone.

  • Out of the search for the man who police say might have left, a subway rider partially paralyzed.

  • He's accused of pushing that unidentified victim headfirst into the side of a train.

  • I would say unfortunately, crime has been a deterrent for some people to return.

  • I think that folks believe that there is a safety in numbers.

  • A surge in people not paying their fares has impacted revenue to.

  • Fare evaders cost the MTA $690 million in 2022 across

  • its network, 38% more than the previous year.

  • People are less

  • rule following than they used to, and that includes subway fare evasion.

  • Also TikTok young people see young influencers jumping turnstiles in various creative

  • fashions and it makes it feel more socially acceptable.

  • You're seeing it modeled by very popular figures in social media.

  • To stem those losses.

  • The MTA is looking to replace its fleet of subway turnstiles.

  • CNBC got a behind the scenes look at a new high tech barrier that the agency

  • might be considering.

  • In the old days, you had a locking mechanism and when you paid your fare, the lock would

  • open and you pushed through the turnstile.

  • Very simple, very old school.

  • What we've done is a big departure from that.

  • We're leveraging not just sensor technology, but also a completely different

  • mechanical design, a much more formidable barrier.

  • Fare revenue is a critical component of the MTA's budget.

  • So when will New York City subway riders return?

  • And what can the MTA do to respond to fare evaders?

  • The New York City subway got its start in 1904 and was initially operated by private

  • companies with government oversight.

  • The first route was built out from City Hall by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company with

  • fares of just $0.05 a ride.

  • The line is credited with transforming Times Square and unleashing a housing boom.

  • The original two private companies are called the Brooklyn and Manhattan Transit Corporation.

  • They made what we now think of as the lettered lines or the B division and the Interborough

  • Rapid Transit Company, which does what we now call the numbered lines with the A division.

  • By 1940, New York had three competing subway systems.

  • In June of that year, the trio were consolidated, creating one of the largest transit systems in the

  • world with nearly 1,200 miles of tracks.

  • From the early 20th century up until right before World War

  • Two to be rough about it, the city was focused on building and expanding and

  • maintaining subways seemed like mass transit was the way that people would get

  • away a dense city.

  • But in the 50s, support for mass transit waned, with successive administrations betting on a

  • future of roads and highways with a focus on the car.

  • The subway became a symbol of urban decay in the 1970s with rampant crime and trains covered in

  • graffiti.

  • This subway station is the end of the line in more ways than one.

  • At this hour, bodies roll in, sleeping or drunk or on drugs or just because a

  • subway bench is the most convenient bed.

  • On an average day in 1981, 325 trains were canceled.

  • A third of all subway car doors were broken and trains caught on fire 2,500 times a

  • year. Crime was abundant.

  • Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz shot four teens who allegedly threatened him in the

  • 1980s.

  • It's about time somebody protect themselves.

  • Nobody's protecting us on the subway.

  • But as the crisis deepened, political consensus to rebuild the system grew.

  • We're not going to have a New York City left unless we rebuild the subways so early 1980s,

  • state legislature enacted a half a dozen taxes to fund subway and commuter

  • rail system and began to rebuild the physical assets get rid of the graffiti.

  • New York City Police Department, a decade later started to control the crime on the

  • subway.

  • In addition to that funding, the MTA proposed a ten year, $14 billion capital

  • investment program to restore the system and ensure its long term survival.

  • Between 1980 and 2015, subway ridership increased roughly

  • 70% from about a billion to almost 1.7 billion riders.

  • But by 2017, overcrowded trains combined with deferred maintenance were straining the system

  • again, leading New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to declare a state of emergency.

  • We know the system is decaying rapidly.

  • I think of it as a heart attack.

  • You basically see a series of every 10 or 20 years the MTA faces a new fiscal crisis and then we

  • figure out a new set of supports.

  • The eve of the pandemic subway is basically a success story.

  • You know, not to say that they were perfect, but only 1 or 2 murders a year on the

  • subways with ridership of 2 billion was the lowest you were ever going to get it

  • . Well funded you had half the revenue coming from fares and tolls, the other half coming from

  • these tax subsidies.

  • And the infrastructure was in reasonably good condition.

  • But the pandemic changed everything.

  • As ridership plummeted to historical lows and new problems arose.

  • The MTA handles about a third of the nation's mass transit users, about 2.6

  • billion riders in 2019 alone.

  • More than 13% of New York City's subway riders didn't pay their fare in the fourth quarter of

  • 2022, up from just 3% during roughly the same period in

  • 2018. On an average weekday, that translates to 400,000 fare

  • evaders, enough to fill Yankee Stadium eight times over.

  • The problem got even worse in the first quarter of 2023.

  • Fare evaders cost the MTA $690 million in 2022, including

  • $285 million on its subways, $315 million on buses,

  • $44 million on commuter rails and $46 million on bridges and

  • tunnels. While enforcement is up, policing the subway is notoriously difficult.

  • It's extremely hard to enforce.

  • I would estimate there are about 1,000 entrances to the subway system.

  • To curb unlawful behavior the MTA is looking to replace turnstiles.

  • As I step into the aisle here, the cameras are sensing me and if you look up at the screen,

  • you see that there's a big red blob.

  • The big red blob here above me, that's me.

  • Conduit, which provides services like electronic toll collection, worked with France's national

  • rail network SNCF, to design the system.

  • You think about the cameras and the detection systems that go into that solution are are quite

  • advanced to be able to detect children from parents, from luggage, from animals

  • and prevent unwanted individuals or devices from coming through.

  • Tall plexiglass doors make climbing over or under more difficult.

  • Flashing lights and an alarm signals a fare evader is trying to enter.

  • The MTA has not yet decided which tech it will use, but Conduent, along with other vendors,

  • showcased its 3D fare gate at a public MTA meeting in May.

  • This is not your grandfather's approach to fare evasion.

  • It's fresh, it's different.

  • It's comprehensive.

  • It can also detect if someone is trying to piggyback or cheat the system.

  • If I pay my fare and someone comes in right

  • behind me and doesn't pay theirs, the system will determine that they haven't

  • paid and they'll get busted.

  • In New York, the majority of subway fare evasions happen when someone leaves the emergency gate

  • open. About 20% of people jump the turnstile.

  • About 16% slipped through the gap and 12% duck under.

  • Most offenses occur between 3 and 4 p.m., roughly the same time schools dismiss.

  • Inflation could be another reason people are not paying their fares.

  • A lot of it has to do with the economy.

  • It's one more cost that people feel like they have to incur when they're already seeing

  • increased costs for rent and groceries and all of their other

  • expenses. And often they see the risk of jumping the turnstiles as

  • worthwhile for the potential $100 ticket.

  • While low income residents can apply for a 50% discount on subways and busses, only about a

  • third of eligible New Yorkers, or about 300,000 people have enrolled in the program.

  • One in four low income New Yorkers can't afford to use public transportation.

  • In the MTA's case, if we lost fare revenue, we would have we'd have massive service cuts.

  • And so it's well worth a functioning fare collection system that keeps fare evasion low

  • and stable is the important part.

  • While fewer straphangers have been a drain on the MTA's revenue, systems in other US cities

  • have been hit even harder.

  • Riders on Chicago's L Train in March 2023 were at 50% of their pre-pandemic

  • levels. At the same time, Washington, D.

  • C.'s Metro saw a similar drop.

  • In 2022 the MTA's operating budget was $19.3 billion, while the majority of

  • that money it receives comes from taxes and subsidies about 23% or roughly $4

  • billion came from fares.

  • By contrast, fare revenue from subways, buses and commuter trains in

  • 2019 made up about $6.3 billion or 38% of the MTA's total

  • operating revenue.

  • To make up for that loss, the MTA received billions in federal pandemic aid.

  • It is also increased its base fare $0.15 for subways and buses to

  • $2.90, and has been promised an infusion of state money, including over $1

  • billion annually in the form of an increase in the New York State payroll mobility

  • tax. Congestion pricing designed to shift people to mass transit will also

  • collect $1 billion annually and benefit the MTA by charging drivers more to enter

  • Manhattan below 60th Street.

  • But why do New York City subways lag behind their European counterparts?

  • For starters, New York transit projects are notoriously expensive to build.

  • Our cost of building subway assets is five

  • times at the upper end what it costs to build a global subway assets.

  • So it's not so much that the projects are the wrong projects, although that doesn't help,

  • but it's that even when they're the right projects like building the Second Avenue Subway,

  • digitizing the subway signals so you can run these trains more quickly, the

  • projects cost much more than they would anywhere else in the world.

  • Phase one of the Second Avenue subway, for example.

  • along Manhattan's Upper East Side opened in 2017 at a cost of $4.4

  • billion. Phase two of the project extending the line from 96th Street to

  • 125th Street, not expected to open until 2030, will cost $6.3

  • billion.

  • Greater Paris, the Ratp, it's called, has the same capital budget as the MTA it's about €50

  • billion or $55 billion and they're building hundreds of kilometers of new rail.

  • We're not doing that.

  • We're going to get a little extension in Second Avenue Subway and then hopefully repair some

  • broken stuff.

  • New York City's strict regulations, as well as high labor and construction costs, have been

  • blamed for much of those budget increases.

  • If you think of world cities like London, Paris, Singapore, there is

  • massive federal investment in their mass transit systems.

  • Here in the United States, it's far less of a focus.

  • Public transit gets very little funding compared to our

  • highways and bridges and tunnels.

  • Outside of the transit system, this country really favors motorists.

  • Large debt payments are also a burden.

  • While more than half of the MTA's $19 billion 2023 expense budget went to

  • New York City subways and the Staten Island Rail about 16% went to paying back debt.

  • The remainder went to the Long Island Rail, Metro, North rail, buses, bridges and

  • tunnels. A debt payment of $3 billion, for example, is enough to run the Washington,

  • DC metro system for an entire year.

  • The MTA has to be in this constant state of begging for state

  • assistance and federal assistance.

  • This was happening long before the Covid 19 pandemic.

  • Every couple of years, the MTA has to reach out with its hands out because there

  • isn't a fully committed line of funding that really

  • ensures the ability of the MTA to provide operations and capital

  • improvements on a regular, consistent basis.

  • And that trend could continue as work from home and hybrid policies become further

  • entrenched it could take years before fare revenue and subway ridership return to

  • their pre-pandemic levels.

  • Where is the transit system ten years from now?

  • Ideally, you've got ridership back to 100% or at least

  • 95% of where it was pre-COVID.

  • Your commuter rail system is much cheaper.

  • It's more like a European commuter rail system where the price is not significantly higher

  • than a subway ticket and the system is as safe as it was in

  • 2019.

  • I don't believe that we'll get above 75% until people are

  • required to be in the office or in school five days a week, as they

  • previously were.

  • And I don't know if we'll get to that point.

The average number of weekday riders on New York City subways in 2019 was nearly

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Why The NYC Subway Is Such A Mess

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    神谷 菜々子 發佈於 2023 年 10 月 18 日
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