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Speaker 1: If you ride the subway in New York City or

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Speaker 1: take the train in chances are you're having a miserable

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Speaker 1: year and it's about to get even worse. Transit trouble.

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Speaker 1: This time for the subway riders out there's some signal

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Speaker 1: issues with synical problems which cause massive delays on seven

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Speaker 1: lines the A, B, C, D, E F subway riders

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Speaker 1: delayed and even stranded on stuck trains because of signal

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Speaker 1: problems have had enough. Service is back up and running,

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Speaker 1: but it seems those problems are happening more frequently. Delays

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Speaker 1: have become rampant, people are getting stuck installed subway cars,

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Speaker 1: and overcrowding has become the norm. Meanwhile, Penn Station, which

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Speaker 1: is the hub for trains from Amtrak, New Jersey and

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Speaker 1: Long Island, is braced for a summer of hell with

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Speaker 1: the closure of several tracks for repairs and corresponding reductions

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Speaker 1: in service. Today on Benchmark, will hear about how this

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Speaker 1: all adds up to one thing, bad news for the

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Speaker 1: economy in the world's financial capital. I'm Scott landman and

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Speaker 1: economics editor with Bloomberg in Washington. Joining me today as

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Speaker 1: our guest host is Henry Goldman, a Bloomberg reporter who

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Speaker 1: covers New York City. Henry, thanks for being with us today.

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Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be here. So, Henry, what exactly

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Speaker 1: is happening with the subway up there in New York. Well,

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Speaker 1: the subway is showing its stress. It's got, you know,

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Speaker 1: an ancient signal system. It has, some of its rolling

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Speaker 1: stock is more than fifty years old. A lot of

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Speaker 1: it's electrical wiring and signals were damaged by sandy saltwater flooding.

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Speaker 1: When you go to try to build something, you come

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Speaker 1: up against the highest construction costs in the country, and

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Speaker 1: there's a lack of political accountability because the m t

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Speaker 1: A and the Port Authority, the transit systems are all

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Speaker 1: kind of run by bifurcated agencies that are partly New York,

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Speaker 1: partly New Jersey, partly the city, and the accountability is diffused.

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Speaker 1: And when all this happens, this is something that can

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Speaker 1: really gum up the lifeblood of the city's economy. Right

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Speaker 1: usually because the subways are basically the circulatory system of

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Speaker 1: the city when they're when they're operating well, or just

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Speaker 1: their mere presence. The Second Avenue Subway increased the real

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Speaker 1: estate values about along that spine of Second Avenue running

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Speaker 1: from nineties Street to seventy s. Well, it's hard to

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Speaker 1: imagine what life is going to be like if the

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Speaker 1: subway really breaks down and nothing can get done. But

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Speaker 1: maybe it's something we have to contemplate. And we have

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Speaker 1: two distinguished guests today who are going to help put

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Speaker 1: these issues into context. Later we'll be speaking with Tracy Gordon,

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Speaker 1: a senior fellow with the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center

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Speaker 1: in d C. But first we're going to bring in

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Speaker 1: our first guest, Jim Venturi, who's sitting in our New

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Speaker 1: York studio with Henry. He's a technology entrepreneur, urban planner,

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Speaker 1: and the founder and principal designer of Rethink Studio and

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Speaker 1: Rethink and y C. And in that capacity, he's created

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Speaker 1: a transportation vision for the whole New York City region

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Speaker 1: to better connect all suburban transit lines together, fixed Penn Station,

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Speaker 1: and even build new transit hubs outside of Manhattan. Jim,

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Speaker 1: we appreciate you coming to join us today on Benchmark.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Jim. We know what's wrong

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Speaker 1: with the subway, but what's wrong with the broader transit

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Speaker 1: infrastructure in the New York City region. I think to

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Speaker 1: a large extent, it's a mindset issue that stems from

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Speaker 1: the bifurcation that Henry was talking about earlier. You have

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Speaker 1: three different agencies that handle commuter rail in the region,

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Speaker 1: Metro North, Long Island Railroad in New Jersey Transit. Each

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Speaker 1: represents one of the three land masses that adjoin Manhattan,

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Speaker 1: and these stemmed from private railroads that later became state agencies.

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Speaker 1: And so there's a lack of unity of thinking about things.

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Speaker 1: And that's what we did with rethink m y C,

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Speaker 1: as we rethought it without these constraints in mind. Can

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Speaker 1: you just briefly explain what your vision is in rethink

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Speaker 1: andy C. Sure. Rethink y C is the idea of

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Speaker 1: creating a regional unified network, which we call RUN, which

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Speaker 1: unifies the networks of New Jersey Transit, Long Island Railroad,

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Speaker 1: and Metro North so that there can be a transportation

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Speaker 1: spine that connects all of the region together. Um this

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Speaker 1: we see as a foundation for a larger transportation system

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Speaker 1: to upgrade the New York area to be more in

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Speaker 1: line with other global cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And it's something is that the kind of thing that

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Speaker 1: we can even get to. Can we can we implement

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Speaker 1: a new transit infrastructure before we even fix basic things

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Speaker 1: with the subway or with the tracks underneath Penn Station. Well, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: those are two different things. The subway obviously has to

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Speaker 1: be fixed, and that takes a long time because investment

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Speaker 1: in this it's a twenty four hour system and it

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Speaker 1: has to be fixed at the same time as it's

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Speaker 1: operating with commuter rail. There's a lot of investment happening

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Speaker 1: already for Amtrak's gateway tunnels. There's also the Port Authority

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Speaker 1: Bus Terminal proposal UH and a significant amount of other investment.

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Speaker 1: What we propose doing is thinking of all of these

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Speaker 1: things together and using the investment for a new paradigm

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Speaker 1: of transportation in the region. Well, I would just say

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Speaker 1: that that's a vision that would certainly improve things. It's

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Speaker 1: it's so difficult politically to get all of these different

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Speaker 1: jurisdictions together because you have systems that serve not only

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Speaker 1: New Jersey, New York Long Island, but a series of

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Speaker 1: counties upstate. You have the state legislatures involved politically it's

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Speaker 1: an incredible morass. It's a wonderful goal. I think that

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Speaker 1: it's uh, it just I I don't have the imagination

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Speaker 1: to conceive of how it could happen given the current

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Speaker 1: state of our political structure or rhetoric or political will. Well,

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Speaker 1: even if it is hard to imagine, is it, is

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Speaker 1: it possible to agree on that you know in order

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Speaker 1: to support the region's economy that you do need some

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Speaker 1: level of investment, either in the subway or in the infrastructure. Jim,

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Speaker 1: I think there is investment that's happening right now obviously,

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Speaker 1: and mentioned the Second Avenue subway. There's Phase two coming

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Speaker 1: up of that project. Um, there's Amtrak's Gateway tunnels, the

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Speaker 1: first phases twelve and a half billion dollars um. And

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Speaker 1: it's a question of how you use this right now.

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Speaker 1: If you live, let's say in Montclair, New Jersey, and

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Speaker 1: you want to go to somewhere else in New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: oftentimes Google will tell you to take a bus to

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Speaker 1: the Port Authority, take a subway to Penn Station, and

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Speaker 1: then catch a commuter rail line from there. Um. We

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Speaker 1: believe that the system should be unified in such a

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Speaker 1: way that you shouldn't have to go twice across the

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Speaker 1: Hudson to take public transit to get from somewhere in

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Speaker 1: New Jersey to somewhere else in New Jersey, or to

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Speaker 1: be able to get from somewhere outside of Manhattan anywhere

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Speaker 1: to somewhere outside of Manhattan. And I think that the

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Speaker 1: car networks are a huge strategic economic liability for our region.

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Speaker 1: And if we can unify the nine different regional net

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Speaker 1: commuter networks in in some way so that let's say

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Speaker 1: there's common ticketing between the systems using an iPhone app

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Speaker 1: or something along those lines, we can have a much

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Speaker 1: more attractive region for companies to come and invest in.

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Speaker 1: Whereas if New York is considered to be broken, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna not only lose future investment, we lose companies that

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Speaker 1: are already here today. Definitely doesn't sound very efficient the

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Speaker 1: way you describe those connections from New Jersey and growing

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Speaker 1: up in central New Jersey, I'm well aware of those inefficiencies.

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Speaker 1: But let's let's talk about some more hard numbers here

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Speaker 1: in the broader economic picture with our second guest, Tracy Gordon,

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Speaker 1: who's in the DC studio here with us. She's a

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Speaker 1: senior Fellow with the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center, where

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Speaker 1: she researches and writes about fiscal challenges facing state and

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Speaker 1: local governments, and her previous job include working as an

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Speaker 1: economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisors under

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Speaker 1: President Obama. Tracy, thanks for coming in today to chat

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Speaker 1: with us on Benchmark. Great to be here. Thanks now. Also, Tracy,

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Speaker 1: as someone myself who rides the metrorail subway in Washington,

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Speaker 1: I have a message for my New York friends and colleagues,

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Speaker 1: and that message is welcome to the club. We've had

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Speaker 1: a one day shutdown of the whole system in the

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Speaker 1: past year. We had a UH smoke inhalation accident that

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Speaker 1: killed somebody. We had this head this huge collision about

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Speaker 1: eight years ago that killed about ten people. They're shutting

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Speaker 1: down parts of the system. They're hiking fares, they're cutting service.

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Speaker 1: People are abandoning the system in droves. If it all

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Speaker 1: keeps going downhill, you're probably going to hit the region's

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Speaker 1: economy in some way. So, Tracy, how would you describe

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Speaker 1: the relationship between investment in transit infrastructure such as rails

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Speaker 1: and subways and the economies of city, region or even

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Speaker 1: the whole country right, Well, you hear so much talk

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Speaker 1: about infrastructure and the macroeconomy, and it's very often at

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Speaker 1: a sort of thirty six thousand feet level. So, especially

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Speaker 1: during the recession, you've heard a lot of calls from

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Speaker 1: more spending on infrastructure, as if there was just this

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Speaker 1: machine that you could sort of start and you would

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Speaker 1: get more g or more government spending. But certainly the

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Speaker 1: cost of borrowing is low right now, and so there's

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Speaker 1: been a lot of exhortations at the federal level to

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Speaker 1: try to get people at the state and local level

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Speaker 1: to borrow and to spend more in infrastructure. And they

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Speaker 1: point to um the Safe Track experience in Washington that

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Speaker 1: you alluded to, or New York Summer of Agony as

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Speaker 1: motivation for spending more on infrastructure. So that the studies

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Speaker 1: are are all over the map in terms of how

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Speaker 1: much bang for the buck you get when you spend

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Speaker 1: on infrastructure, anywhere from a dollar for each dollar spent

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Speaker 1: to two dollars reached dollar spent. But the key caveat

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Speaker 1: whenever people talk about this at the national level is

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Speaker 1: well chosen infrastructure projects. So when you have well chosen

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Speaker 1: infrastructure projects, you can get a certain UM. You know,

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Speaker 1: beneficial effect in terms of growing the economy, enhancing productivity

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Speaker 1: going forward, putting out of work construction workers back to work.

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Speaker 1: But how do you choose those projects? I think that's

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Speaker 1: really the key question. So what would be well chosen

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Speaker 1: projects in your view? A lot has been written about

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Speaker 1: UM the selection of infrastructure projects and how they often

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Speaker 1: don't rely on cost benefit analysis. So the Congressional Budget Office,

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Speaker 1: for example, has said that if if state and local

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Speaker 1: governments would just increase their use of cost benefit analysis,

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't necessarily need to spend that much more money.

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Speaker 1: We would just get more use out of current systems.

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Speaker 1: But as the previous speaker alluded to, there are political

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Speaker 1: complications in choosing infrastructure projects, and oftentimes you've got a

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Speaker 1: number of overlapping jurisdictions that all have to sign off

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Speaker 1: on a given project. So the Bay Own Bridge project,

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Speaker 1: for example, um straddle's New York and New Jersey and

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Speaker 1: any number of local governments. So things like getting environmental

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Speaker 1: approvals or rights of way can take a long time

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Speaker 1: just because of the number of UM bodies involved in

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Speaker 1: the unions and all other sort of thing. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's very interesting that you raise this issue because the

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Speaker 1: Partnership for the City of New York, which is a

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Speaker 1: group of chief executives corporate chief executives, did an economic

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Speaker 1: study of the infrastructure projects now going on, and they

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Speaker 1: found that the capital costs, for example, of the Second

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Speaker 1: Avenue Subway, including debt service, exceeds the value of the

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Speaker 1: economic benefit that it's going to produce by about two

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Speaker 1: point seven billion dollars. Tracy, you actually wrote about this

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Speaker 1: a couple of years ago about why it costs so

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Speaker 1: much to build in the US compared with other nations.

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Speaker 1: Did did you figure out an answer to that? Unfortunately, no,

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Speaker 1: we just posed a bunch of questions. But some of

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Speaker 1: the hypotheses that we had were sort of this fragmentation

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Speaker 1: story that I was telling earlier. Um. But the point

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Speaker 1: of that blog was really to point out that some

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Speaker 1: of the facile explanations people come up with that, for example,

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Speaker 1: the Second Avenue Subway is expense of because New York

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Speaker 1: is a really dense city. Uh. We found counter examples

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Speaker 1: in places like Tokyo, which are also dense and have

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Speaker 1: lower cost per kilometer for rail projects, or others would say, well,

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Speaker 1: it's because it's so highly regulated in the United States,

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Speaker 1: there are all these labor provisions that Davis Bacon um

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Speaker 1: law and that sort of thing. But then you could

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Speaker 1: point at Spain, which also has a pretty tightly regulated

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Speaker 1: labor market. Or you know, New York is an older city,

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Speaker 1: um and so you have to get lots of permissions.

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Speaker 1: But that's true in Paris as well. So really that

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Speaker 1: piece was sort of a number of examples and counter

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Speaker 1: examples to point out that there's really not a clear

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Speaker 1: obvious explanation for why this is, but we think it

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Speaker 1: might have something to do with this political story. The

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Speaker 1: politics of this stuff is really unbelievable. I mean, the

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Speaker 1: Port Authority built a four billion dollar terminal in Lower Manhattan.

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Speaker 1: It's gorgeous, it was designed by Calatrava. It's called the Oculus.

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Speaker 1: It's a fabulous place, but it costs we're billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: It's almost empty every day. It serves less than fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand people a day. And on the other side of

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Speaker 1: the city, going north, we have Penn Station, which is

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Speaker 1: probably busier than LaGuardia Airport on any given day. And

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Speaker 1: that's a place that Senator moynihan described as a RATS warrant.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's completely dysfunctional and has been for for

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Speaker 1: decades now. So the process of making the choice is

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Speaker 1: so fraught with political interests and grandstanding and all kinds

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Speaker 1: of irrational reasons that that's a major problem for moving

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Speaker 1: ahead with a rational policy along the lines that Jim

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Speaker 1: would suggest. But let me let me ask Tracy one

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Speaker 1: more question before and then we'll go back to UM. Tracy,

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Speaker 1: we've been talking about investing in infrastructure, the return on projects,

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Speaker 1: you know why it costs so much. Is there any

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Speaker 1: precedent for talking about whether neglect on projects such as

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Speaker 1: the subway in New York will actually detract from economies

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Speaker 1: in the city or region. Right, I actually was going

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Speaker 1: to say. Implicit in what Henry was just saying is

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Speaker 1: that there are political rewards to expanding the existing system,

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Speaker 1: whether you're talking about roads or transit, rather than maintaining

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Speaker 1: what you've got. UM. So elected officials like going to

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Speaker 1: ribbon cutting ceremonies, But there are no rewards to just

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Speaker 1: basic incremental maintenance. Although the Congressional Budget Office again and

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Speaker 1: others have said that really that's where the biggest bang

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Speaker 1: for the buck is in in maintenance and fixing UM

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Speaker 1: rather than expanding what you have, so UM again sort

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Speaker 1: of the selection process doesn't necessarily reward that, but it could.

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Speaker 1: You could have funding formulas that are tied to the

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Speaker 1: degree of road roughness, for example, UM, rather than things

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Speaker 1: like UM contributions to the Highway Trust Fund, which is

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Speaker 1: how it works now at the federal level, UM, we've

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Speaker 1: got funding formulas that UM disproportionately allocate money to small

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Speaker 1: and rural states and not necessarily UM places where the

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Speaker 1: people are and where the jobs are. So you have

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Speaker 1: these bottlenecks UM that can you know, cost the economy

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Speaker 1: in terms of individuals who are losing time in their commutes,

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Speaker 1: or even the movement of goods that is not going

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Speaker 1: as quickly as it could. One more thing on public transit.

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Speaker 1: There's also this distinction between UM bus and rail, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of economists have pointed out that bus can

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Speaker 1: be much more efficient and and at a lower cost,

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Speaker 1: is more flexible. If people in jobs move, you can

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Speaker 1: reallocate the roots, whereas once you build rail it's fixed

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Speaker 1: in place. So New York is actually an exception a

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Speaker 1: place where rail has continued to work very well, but

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Speaker 1: there are lots of examples of other rail systems that

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Speaker 1: are no longer performing. Let's go back to Jim for

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Speaker 1: a minute here. Donald Trump during the election campaign talked

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Speaker 1: a lot about infrastructure investment. We've written a lot, I know,

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Speaker 1: I've edited a number of stories about the supposed one

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Speaker 1: trillion dollar infrastructure plan, and the details just haven't really

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Speaker 1: been that forthcoming on that so far. And yet there

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Speaker 1: still is some kind of enthusiasm in the administration for

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Speaker 1: at least doing something on infrastructure. Maybe it wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: as much as during a democratic administration, but you still

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Speaker 1: have something there. Jim, do you think the viewpoints or

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Speaker 1: the positions in the current administration will help at all

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Speaker 1: in terms of developing transit in New York City or

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Speaker 1: is it really just going to be up to the

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Speaker 1: politicians in New York to take care of it themselves. Well,

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Speaker 1: I I hope so. I mean, I don't think any

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Speaker 1: of us have a crystal ball in terms of the

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Speaker 1: Trump administration. But I wanted to get back to something

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Speaker 1: that Henry had said about the study on the Second

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Speaker 1: Avenue subway and and something that relates to Trump in

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Speaker 1: this way, which he is fond of saying, you're not

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Speaker 1: thinking big enough, and you know, there's an issue of

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Speaker 1: the cost, and we know that the costs of the

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Speaker 1: Second Avenue subway were high and perhaps could be lowered

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Speaker 1: in through more efficiency in future UM. But there's the

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Speaker 1: other thing, which is the benefits. And the Second Avenue

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Speaker 1: subway plan that they moved forward with is a truncated

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Speaker 1: version of the Lindsay plan. From the Lindsay plan would

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Speaker 1: have connected to the dire Avenue line in the Bronx,

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Speaker 1: which presently feeds the two and five line. UM. It

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Speaker 1: would have provided structural relief which would have benefited commuters

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Speaker 1: on the two, three, four, and five lines by direct

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Speaker 1: redirecting passengers upstream from these networks. So I think that

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Speaker 1: we can't be thinking about subway improvements only on one level.

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Speaker 1: We have to think structurally and systemically. And there's another

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Speaker 1: analogous project which now Amtrak is pushing forward as part

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Speaker 1: of their Gateway plan. UH. We very much support the

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Speaker 1: new gateway tunnels, but they're planning to build the only

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Speaker 1: new terminal in the world UM after east Side Access,

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Speaker 1: which is Penn Station South, which they're planning to demolish

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Speaker 1: an entire city block of New York, including a church

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Speaker 1: from one to build an obsolete transportation object, and this

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Speaker 1: is really a terrible idea. It's designed to solve one problem,

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Speaker 1: which is to bring in more trains from New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: but it ceases to offer the opportunity that an analogous project,

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Speaker 1: or potentially analogous project, which would be the London Crossrail project,

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Speaker 1: to unify the entire region's network. And really that's really

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Speaker 1: the difference between what we're proposing, which is a systemic system.

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Speaker 1: I mean, in other words, that it's thinking more on

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Speaker 1: a network as a whole rather than piecemeal solving one

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Speaker 1: problem at a time. And I think it's that piecemeal

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Speaker 1: thinking which is giving us this lousy return on investment

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Speaker 1: that Henry was talking about. So you think the motto

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Speaker 1: of transportation investment should be go big or go home.

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Speaker 1: I think it should be that that transportation is a

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Speaker 1: network and networks have to be thought of an holistic manner,

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Speaker 1: and if you don't think of it that way, you're

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Speaker 1: leaving a lot of money on the tab able tracy.

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Speaker 1: You did mention Tokyo for a second there. I visited

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Speaker 1: Tokyo a few years ago, and it does have a

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Speaker 1: pretty old subway and rail system, at least in the

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Speaker 1: downtown area, and yet it seems to run incredibly well,

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Speaker 1: what are they doing there that can't be replicated in

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Speaker 1: the United States? I think they reap a lot more

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Speaker 1: efficiencies out of the system. The ridership numbers are much higher,

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Speaker 1: and so getting more people in the system lowers the

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Speaker 1: average costs and you can you know, do things besides

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Speaker 1: raising fares and you know, driving people away. So you know,

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Speaker 1: here we've got this difficulty as you know in d C.

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Speaker 1: You know, fars keep going up and people feel like

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Speaker 1: they're not getting enough from the system and so they

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Speaker 1: stop writing, and then you have this death spiral where

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Speaker 1: it becomes harder and harder to raise the revenue that

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Speaker 1: you need to maintain the system. UM. So, certainly there

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Speaker 1: are different models in different countries, but you always have

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Speaker 1: to be sensitive to what the commuting patterns are here.

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Speaker 1: And uh again, you know New York is a is

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Speaker 1: a rare case where people actually ride commuter rail, they

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Speaker 1: ride public transit. Um. There are a number of cities

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Speaker 1: where there are mayors that want to build big, new,

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Speaker 1: shiny projects and it might actually be a better investment

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Speaker 1: to have more high speed buses or to encourage more

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Speaker 1: rides sharing any number of things to get people to

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Speaker 1: the jobs and opportunities that they need. One of the

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Speaker 1: aspects of New York system, which is extremely egalitarian, is

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Speaker 1: that you have one fair uh, and you can go

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Speaker 1: anywhere in the city that is served by a subway.

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Speaker 1: London and many other cities have a fair structure that's

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Speaker 1: based on how far you travel. You know that demands

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Speaker 1: that you have a certain level of income. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to sound a little Pollyannish here, but I have to

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Speaker 1: say that considering the scope of New York subway system

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Speaker 1: and the millions of people whom it serves, uh, it

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Speaker 1: has existed now for more than a hundred years, and

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Speaker 1: uh it needs help in terms of maintaining its ability

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Speaker 1: to serve even more people. But it basically is, as

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Speaker 1: I said before, the circulation system for one of the

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Speaker 1: largest local economies in the world. I mean, it's a

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Speaker 1: one point three trillion dollar a year economy, and uh

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Speaker 1: it's functioning pretty well. One last question before we wrap up,

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Speaker 1: Jim or Henry, do you have any horror stories to

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Speaker 1: share of writing the subway this year? Actually, I've been

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Speaker 1: very lucky. It's uh, it's run pretty well for me.

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Speaker 1: My horror story really was on nine eleven, which in

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Speaker 1: which thousands of people had horror stories where the subway

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Speaker 1: that I was writing to City Hall on stopped and

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Speaker 1: it was really in a tunnel for about an hour. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And I have to say that the m T A

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Speaker 1: conductors on that train performed really really well. Uh. They

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Speaker 1: cared for people who got sick on that train, They

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Speaker 1: kept the panic down. Uh, they coordinated a very complicated

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Speaker 1: evacuation effort. And uh. You know, when all of a

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Speaker 1: said and done, this system is it could be, and

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Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't become a lot worse. It It

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Speaker 1: functions pretty darn well and a lot better than it

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Speaker 1: did thirty years ago. Well that's a good thing to

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Speaker 1: keep in mind. And we'll end it there. Jim, thanks

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Speaker 1: so much for being with us today. Thank you for

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Speaker 1: having me, and Tracy, thanks for coming into and Henry,

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Speaker 1: thanks for being the co host. Thanks. Benchmark will be

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Speaker 1: back next week and until then, you can find us

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Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, are Bloomberg app,

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Speaker 1: as well as on Apple Podcasts, pocket casts, and Stitcher.

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Speaker 1: While you're there, take a minute to rate and review

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Speaker 1: the show. So more listeners can find us and let

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Speaker 1: us know what you thought of the show. You can

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Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at Scott Landman, Henry is at

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Speaker 1: H Goldman seven seven. Our guest, Jim Venturi's firm is

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Speaker 1: at at Rethink NYC Plan and Rethink and YC dot

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Speaker 1: org for the website, and Tracy is at at Gordon

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Speaker 1: t r a C. Benchmark is produced by Sarah Patterson

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Speaker 1: and the head of Bloomberg Podcast is Alec McCabe. Thanks

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Speaker 1: for listening, See you next time.