Transportation

The illegal transit strike carried out during the height of the 2005 holiday season took a terrible toll on the city. The economic impact was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Millions were forced to walk great distances in bitter cold. Worse, preventable injuries, and perhaps deaths, occurred as a result.

While biking to work, firefighter Matthew Long was struck by a bus chartered by a bank to shuttle its employees to and from the office. An MTA employee who chose not to strike collapsed in a subway restroom and had passed away by the time she was found. Despite the provisions of New York's Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by public employee unions, this unlawful act nonetheless took place. Even under normal circumstances, New York's mass transit system (while tremendously impressive in scale, complexity, and age) is, well... big, complex, and old. It also can't seem to pay for itself with any consistency, despite taking in more than $10 million per day in fares.

More recently, the Roosevelt Island Tramway made headlines when its two cars became stuck en route, dangling high above city streets and the East River. This antiquated contraption, dating back to the 1970s, was never meant to be a permanent installation, but rather a stop-gap measure to accomodate Roosevelt Island residents until the Q line opened (17 years ago). That the tramway remained open for so many years, despite never being profitable, practical, or safe, defies logic.

Interestingly, the problems underlying these two incidents are related. Both the MTA and the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp. are so-called state-authorized "public benefit corporations", an awkward chimera that's part government agency and part private company. The not surprising result is that we're left with an expensive, low-quality, even dangerous service. These hybrid agency/companies are simply doomed to failure.

Not only are they missing a free market mechanism to encourage quality service, competitive prices, and the profits that such things assure in the private sector, but they also lack of the legislated protective oversight that would apply to a government agency. As a result, the ineptly named "public benefit corporations" tend to be frought with high prices, poor service, an a lack of reliability.

This tortured corporate structure needs to be scrapped if we are to make gains in the quality of our most critical transportation systems.

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