As a former NYC transportation commissioner, I am delighted that the city’s bus system is finally at the center of the political conversation. It hasn’t always been that way. Mayor David Dinkins not only appointed me DOT commissioner, he also nominated me to the MTA Board. The thought was the first-ever simultaneous appointments would advance our desire for a strong, coordinated mass transit strategy for NYC.
Within a few months of the new administration, due to a national recession, it became clear the city faced a budget crisis on the scale of billions of dollars. Money for new mass transit just wasn’t available. First Deputy Mayor Norman Steisel led an effort for tolling the East River Bridges to raise the money to support an increase in mass transit. Unfortunately, that effort was blocked by business and political forces beyond City Hall’s reach, and even if it was successful, the needs of NYC’s deteriorating bridges would have consumed all that was raised.
Since new subway construction was out of reach, we pursued a bus strategy, particularly for expanding dedicated express bus lanes on the arterial highway system. We achieved some success by expanding the bus lane on the Gowanus deep into Staten Island, but any effort to improve the local bus system was stymied by a variety of forces.
But soon after being appointed to the MTA Board, I realized that the local bus system was not a real priority of the bureaucracy at the MTA, the subway was. No doubt that the subways were in need of intense attention, but several hundred million people took the bus each year, and they needed to be supported as well. There seemed to be little interest in buses.
In the mid-1990s, due to a combination of factors, not the least of which was an effort by environmentalists to get the MTA to upgrade their buses to cleaner fuels such as compressed natural gas and eventually hybrid electrics, buses improved substantially. Gov. George Pataki was a strong supporter of those moves and should be credited with pushing the bureaucrats to pursue these improvements.
This year, for the first time in decades, buses became part of the campaign dialogue. Free buses was a good political slogan. Of course it is quite impractical at this point. I believe it can happen with the eventual availability of electric, driverless buses which can be automatically charged by devices embedded in bus stops, something the MTA should be pursuing aggressively.
Such buses probably wouldn’t have to return to depots for at least a week rather than the current three times a day. The savings in driver salaries (the largest cost by far) could enable a reduction in fares. Or the system could be doubled or tripled so that no one would be more than two or three blocks from a bus stop. The number of buses could be greatly increased without having to add drivers or depot space.
Until that happens, any effort to reduce fares on buses would be unwise. Actually, the MTA needs billions more money than it has just for the maintenance of the current rail and bus system. The costs are immense just to keep the system in a state of good repair. If you include the need for new subway lines, the amount becomes astronomical. And one of Riccio’s Rules is that New York needs to build a new line each decade for the next 100 years if it wants to remain a leading city in the world.
To raise more funds for the MTA, it is inevitable that the anti-car advocates will seek to expand congestion pricing. But if the object is not only to raise money for the MTA but also to reduce car traffic, one untapped source of money is corporate Uber and Lyft, who have so far almost totally escaped making any financial contribution to the city. Yes, passengers are paying an extra fee, but not corporate Uber/Lyft. Medallion owners paid the city up to $1 million per vehicle to operate; Uber/Lyft just $275.
If corporate Uber and Lyft made annual payments equivalent to the annual carrying cost of a medallion ($15,000), the MTA could have enough money (more than $300 million per year) to dig a mile of new subway tunnel each year. Also, fewer FHVs would be operating, and since they account for 43% of car-type-vehicles in Midtown midweek, traffic would flow far better.
The new mayor should consider fixing our transit woes by using his political capital to raise needed funds by charging the true cause of congestion, the FHVs. Then we can discuss what to do about buses.
Riccio is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business.
