Lord of Oop North

In newspeak, we call it a "humanitarian city".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rp31lk7mzo Nakba Part 2

No, because in those cases SCOTUS will just rule the opposite. Blah blah blah, executive authority.

We know how this goes: Blah blah blah, States rights.

I went through this with my cousins. Their parent was a founding partner in a financial investment firm, which is doing billions of dollars of investment. Unfortunately we never really did navigate it. We were close when younger, and went on vacation together etc. But eventually they moved into different circles. Especially once they got older, married, bought houses, had kids etc. Now they simply live in an entirely different social class altogether. When I was younger, I don't think I quote fathomed how much money they had. But now it's just front and center. Like their master bedroom suite is bigger than the entire main living area in my house. So if we go to their house for a get together, and if they have their "friends" over, you feel so out of place because those friends are also rich as fuck. Probably she won't notice too much until they are adult, which I think is when more things will change.

To be honest, I never said the bus should be free. You assumed that because I challenged your take that the pilot program was a failure. It wasn't a failure, it increased ridership significantly. That shows you that ridership is sensitive to price on some level, despite what you are claiming. Yes obviously riders want everything else that you mentioned, and yes obviously they are sensitive to those things too. You talk like it's black and white idiotic idea, when it is much more complicated. At the end of the day, these are just tax buckets. Revenue coming from fares vs general tax is not much different. It's just accounting beans. You are acting like more ridership is a bad thing for a public transit system. This is the wrong attitude. Yes more ridership means more costs for service level increases, maintenance, driver payroll etc. Obviously. But the goal of the system should absolutely to be to increase ridership and increase transit modal share, which should decrease government costs for road & highway maintenance & capital expansion, and also decrease business costs associated with congestion. That is the whole point of public transit. A good system would be balancing fare costs with ridership, and not be trying to limit access to protect its' current service level. If I decrease costs by x%, they will increase ridership by x%, therefore I need to increase service level by x% to maintain service level standards, which increases cost by x%. And then you say increase ridership by x% will reduce traffic by x%, saving government and business x% on reduced road maintenance, capital expansion, congestion etc. That's the real analysis that needs to be done. Also don't forget that higher ridership will increase the farebox recovery ratio. Lower ridership since COVID is the reason it has dropped so significantly, and is the reason more general tax revenue is covering the shortfall.

Ran, I got some news for you. The farebox will never cover this cost. Last year the overall MTA farebox recovery ratio was only ~25%, which is the ratio of fares vs operating expenses. The operating budget (over $19 billion) includes payroll, overtime, pensions, health & safety, utilities and debt service for bonds funding system upgrades or expansion. The capital budget is another $13-14 billion per year on top of that. So fare revenue is already not covering the operations, maintenance or upgrade of the "aging" system. You will never be able to increase the fare enough to do that. There is not a single public system in NA (and probably Europe too) that is funding itself through the farebox. The only systems doing this are Asian systems where the agencies are also property managers, using cheap fares to generate huge ridership to subsidize their business holdings. Their fundamental business structure is completely different. I do agree that fare elimination would require governments to think about how they fund these agencies. If they lose the farebox, you need to convince governments to make up the shortfall through taxes. That's true enough. And that's a big fight. But the simple fact is that these systems are reliant on general tax collection, not fares, to exist.

No, It's not clear at all from that study. Honestly blowing my mind that you referred to a pilot that increased ridership by 30-38% and saying it is a failure because only 12% were new customers. Customers don't matter. You are talking about about a free system. The point of a free system isn't customers, it's riders. More riders by transit is less riders by other modes (like car), which has major net benefits in a city to everyone, including businesses that lose money because of congestion. Even if only 12% of riders were "new", the others 20-28% of existing riders that are now riding more is significant. Either they weren't riding before at all, or just as likely were traveling by other modes. This is potentially a huge modal shift. You need to evaluate how ridership improves the city, either by increased trips to local business and events, or reduction in traffic. Maybe that report exists for this pilot. That would be interesting to read.

12% new rider growth is nice. I think any system would consider that success. That is 1/10 people that were either not previously travelling, or were driving. Either way that is good.

So I was curious and read the report. I don't think the results prove anything like that. It is much more nuanced. https://www.mta.info/document/147096 Per that report, weekday ridership on the five routes was up 30% and on weekends up 38%. On time performance for the five routes was down 2.2% but system wide was down 2.3% Dwell times increased by 7% vs 1% system wide. This could be related to the 30%+ jump in ridership, probably without adequate service level increases. More ridership with same service equals higher dwell times. But the report doesn't delve into that. Rate of fare evasion on nearby routes consistent with other routes, 8.1pp vs 7.2pp In a world where we look at eliminating fares, 12 million lost doesn't mean anything on its own. Obviously it lost money. They made it free. You are trying to evaluate the benefit of all riders, including riders that will ride more. You can't discount more frequent riders. More riders is usually correlated to economic activity - people going to work, stores, restaurants, events, etc. There is a potential net benefit there that hasn't been measured.

Exactly. It is just like here. The transit operator isn't going to risk a fight or injury to collect a few dollars. So you are spending potentially hundreds of millions to catch and release, as they say. It doesn't enforce the fare. It doesn't stop it happening over and over again, literally every day.

I have seen it here in Toronto on streetcars a lot, but can't remember it happening on a bus. But what happens is that we include them in the reported fare evasion losses as a kind of boogeyman to approve fare enforcement payroll. But this is nonsense because these people are not ever going to be paying any fares, ever. They are homeless. In any scenario you need security or social workers of some sort to deal with that situation and any service disruption they might cause. That situation doesn't suddenly change if the system is free. It costing money isn't stopping any of them now from riding it.

Ran, to cover $315m in lost revenue would cost every person in NYC like $38 per year. Really not that significant. A second part of the question is how much the MTA spends on enforcing this (with their cops) and the answer is not so easy to find, but there are 2500 officers patrolling the system and the average salary is $95k, so you're looking at over 250 million dollars. Not including overtime. They do other shit I guess, but a big part for sure is fare enforcement. I'd have to disagree on the free (or cheaper) transport being economic loser. In Canada they are finding the opposite, by reducing fare costs, eliminating transfer costs or eliminating them (for youths), they are seeing increased ridership Eta: I found a link to their payroll and MTA Police payroll was $319,725,931 in 2023. Reference: SeeThroughNY.net/payrolls/321979390

Well, yes. Roads act to the benefit of all. As does Public transport, by increasing road capacity for example. Especially important in big cities like NYC. Your argument about degraded service could be applied to roads too. Most roads in NA don't have user fees, yet we mostly find ways to maintain them to certain standards. Not universally, but in general. There is no reason that public transportation systems could not operate the exact same way, and in fact there are no transportation systems that I am aware of, outside of Hong Kong and some parts of Japan, that operate on a 100% cost recovery basis. Most US systems are operating below a 30% ratio. So your fare is already not covering the majority of the cost of running the system anyway.

You mean like most roads? Oh wait ...

Our bubble can pop at any moment. Maybe soon. Maybe not so soon. But it could happen, and that may be bad. But also maybe good. Sometimes the end is good. Did I give you a pamphlet yet? If you're worried about the bubble popping, you should read it. If the bubble pops, and you haven't joined we chosen few, then all your worldly earnings will be lost. That would be bad. So best thing is you donate some of that. Maybe not all. But maybe all. Then when the bubble pops and it's all over, it'll be safe. We will be gone. Which is bad but good. But our stuff will be there waiting for us, which is good. Very, very good. And then if you're cool, like really cool, you'll be back. And all will be good.

Yes, you did, and again this take is nonsense. The tariffs as announced did not happen. The exaggerated takes were in response to the tariffs as announced. So it's difficult for me (and others) to really understand why our perspective should have changed? Nothing has actually happened to change our perception that the high tariff regime will hurt economic activity, because the high tariff regime is not really in place to contradict that position. If the high tariff regime were in place, and the economy was great, then sure we can reexamine our bias and shatter our echo chamber, but until then, the situation remains as is.

You seem to be shifting goalposts. In your original post, you were implying that everyone's hysteria over tariffs were unfounded because we have not found ourselves in an economic collapse. First of all, that it is a ridiculous statement, because the tariffs as announced are not what is actually in place right now. They were in fact causing market turmoil until they backed off to avoid that. So your statement in post one is just nonsense. But now you seem to trying to make yourself look brilliant by shifting the goalposts. You are claiming now that we are all in an echo chamber because we didn't realize Trump would back down? That the tariffs and economic collapse was never a real threat, and we were foolish to believe that. And that is the real point of this whole thread?

Yes. What is the point of a doomsday date if we cannot keep postponing it to milk our followers for all they've got?

What the fuck are you talking about? The vast majority of the catastrophic tariff rates were not even implemented, but put under review periods to "make deals". So no, I completely disagree with you. The American government's economic plans can absolutely still be terrible for the world economy, should they be implemented as announced.

Probably they can bomb Fordo at will for days or weeks with what they have until everyone inside is dead either from being crushed, suffocated or starved. Other option is basically a suicide commando raid.

You might be soon. Trump clearly considers Israel to be his proxy in this fight. If Iran doesn't give in, then what happens? Trump does nothing and looks like a limp dick? Meanwhile, carrier groups, tanker planes, etc are all moving into new positions.

Now Trump is demanding Iran's unconditional surrender.

Maybe someone had made that same comment. It had 'kill!' in brackets right after.

Pivoting? They are already there. Earlier Trump posted the following: "We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now." He also posted "We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured 'stuff.' Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA." US proxy war against Iran.