On the one hand, this is a reasonable point to make and I think it's partially why the political support for congestion pricing wasn't there.
On the other hand, in reality, making new transit funding conditional on the MTA cleaning up all its inefficiencies and corruptions will simply translate into transit being underfunded.
If you think the private sector would have prevented this, you should probably read a bit about the pre-NYCT history of the IRT and BMT :-)
Nobody has every really successfully monetized this kind of mass transit in the US; it's a service that taxpayers fund in exchange for its enormous economic benefits. TFA explains this upfront: NYC would be nowhere near as big and prosperous as it is today were it not possible for millions of people to take trains into the city.
Airlines: notorious for over booking, running down planes on maintenance schedules, failing to pay staff properly, providing increasingly worse service to passengers whilst simultaneously jacking up prices, Airlines in my country had to be bailed out over COVID, they’ll leverage the full power of their bottom line to prevent new airlines from entering their market and competing with them, have been caught adjusting (read, increasing) prices on customers based on device and browsing habits.
Airlines are close to the worst example I’d have given for “can do things better”. Basically the only reason plane travel is as safe as it is, is because governments had to get the regulation stick out and force them to do the right thing.
> The private sector would ruthlessly fire people, cut and restructure costs
The private sector would fire people, make everyone else do triple the work, increase costs for consumers, do even less maintenance if they could get away with it, and exit with a fat check the first chance they can.
airlines used bankruptcy to restructure their finances and liabilities, my argument is MTA must go through deep clean as well, before even thinking about extra $ of taxpayer money.
most importantly people must be changed to more qualified, with less greasy palms, fewer connections to corrupt contractors and political connections
It is routine procedure, the very purpose of chapter 11 is to protect the company from liabilities and negotiate a new structure where both shareholders and bondholders and employee unions take a haircut in order to salvage the company and its business model.
Company will never recover from chapter11 Unless bondholders, employees, union, all take a haircut and build a new economics(cost structure) for existing business model
> The private sector would ruthlessly fire people, cut and restructure costs. I see none of this happening.
Again: please read the history of the IRT and BMT. I think you'll find that "cut and restructure" is not an unknown practice in the history of NYC's mass transit, and that it didn't have the effects you're thinking it might.
> Airlines seem to have no problem fixing their finances and their bankruptcy arguably made them only better
Airlines are famous for receiving large federal subsidies to keep them afloat.
It sounds like it’s an issue with political accountability in that it’s unclear who’s in charge and what the hierarchy is and therefore what the priorities are and who’s responsible for implementing them. Transport for London is government run and it is unique in the world in that it is entirely self funding for operating expenses so it’s pretty efficient but it is expensive to use and suffers from overcrowding. An equivalent to a journey from Coney island to Grand central costs about $12 for a single trip or $100 for a week or $4000 per year if you buy an annual ticket. We also have a congestion charge which is about $18 but you will probably pay more than that per hour to park anywhere in the zone in any case.
On the other hand, in reality, making new transit funding conditional on the MTA cleaning up all its inefficiencies and corruptions will simply translate into transit being underfunded.