The New York Times has an editorial today on the fight between Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio over who gets the blame for New York City’s deteriorating subway system. The editorial concludes with this:
...Ultimately, it is the governor who bears responsibility for the transit system and its governing board, which for too long sat by while money dribbled wastefully away. That was underlined by a recent Times series showing, for example, how a single mile of new track cost seven times the global average. How do we know Mr. Cuomo is where the buck stops? Because he said so himself, pointing to No. 1 when he asked, “You know who runs the M.T.A.?” That was at the end of 2016, when he basked in the limelight as the man officially opening brand-new Second Avenue subway stations.
But Mr. de Blasio has an important role to play as well. It is past time for the two of them, governor and mayor, to get it together on transit. They managed a united front in reassuring New Yorkers after a truck attack in October killed eight people in Manhattan. Really, gentlemen, will nothing short of a terrorist act get you to find common ground?
That’s fine, as far as it goes — but it doesn’t go far enough. New York State has a much bigger problem than just the subways, as I pointed out in a comment:
Not to take away from the subway problem, but New York State has a much bigger problem - the state has no real policy to deal with anything that runs on rails.
The Long Island Railroad also needs new equipment and more money to keep the system in good working order. The Hudson River Tunnels need to be refurbished, and new ones built as well.
Amtrak service in New York State is in trouble because the state needs to replace the aging Empire Service fleet of special locomotives that are wearing out. There's no excuse for the lack of food service on Hudson River Amtrak trains. Service across upstate needs to be increased, improved, and freed of the delays caused by CSX.
CSX is a major freight carrier in New York State - but it's management is more focused on pleasing Wall Street than serving its own customers. It's driving customers away and making New York far less attractive as a place to locate anything that depends on reliable rail service.
Three heritage railroads - two in the Adirondacks and one in the Catskills - are under severe threat. The state is trying to demolish one, another is drawing fire by trying to survive by storing rail cars, and the Catskill rail corridor out of Kingston is being destroyed by Ulster County, despite a potential tourism base of the 45 million people who live within two hours of it.
New York State is going to end up with a rail network a third-world country would be ashamed of, and an economy to match - on Cuomo's watch.
The state of the rail system is the result of the choices we make through our government, at least as far as the government listens to us, and how much we’re willing to pay for. The latest accident with Amtrak looks like it was due to negligence on the part of CSX, though the final report won’t be out for a while. Amtrak is getting such a bad reputation, I saw a comment elsewhere that began with “The Amtrak presidency of Donald Trump...”
America used to have a world-class reputation when it came to railroads; now we can’t even keep the companies that make locomotives in that business any more. GM spun off EMD years ago; now GE is thinking of getting rid of its locomotive division.
As it is, we subsidize everything that competes with railroads with our tax dollars. The wizards of Wall Street have no interest in the meager returns from investing in rail, other than what they can get from cannibalizing it. The fossil fuel industry, the highway lobby, trucking, airlines — there’s a whole mob who want to see railroads gone for their own particular benefit. It’s a wonder we have any trains at all.
I have a lot more to say on this subject, but this will have to do for now.