Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Cities live and die by housing policy and transportation policy.
Speaker 1: Everything else is tinkering around the edges. Today, I'm talking
Speaker 1: transit with three people who have thought a lot about
Speaker 1: the current mess that we call the New York City
Speaker 1: transportation system. New York City Council speaker and two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one mayoral candidate Corey Johnson Tom Wright, the head
Speaker 1: of the century old Regional Plan Association, and journalist Nicole Jelinas,
Speaker 1: who's also a scholar of urban economics at the Manhattan Institute.
Speaker 1: Johnson wants to blow up the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the
Speaker 1: most basic body in charge of New York transit today.
Speaker 1: The mt A board is appointed by the governor. Johnson
Speaker 1: would split off buses and subways into a new agency
Speaker 1: called Big app Transit, with the buck stopping clearly with
Speaker 1: the mayor meaning him, he hopes. At the Regional Plan Association,
Speaker 1: Tom Wright has spent his career thinking about how to
Speaker 1: improve how cities run. The r p A also wants
Speaker 1: to break up the m t A and fundamentally rethink
Speaker 1: housing and transit in New York. The coolech Alimas is
Speaker 1: the person best suited to keep Corey and Tom's big
Speaker 1: ideas in check. She believes in big changes as much
Speaker 1: as the other two. But for years she has told
Speaker 1: us again and again, we will not get a transit
Speaker 1: system worthy of our great city if we cannot get
Speaker 1: costs under control and our financial house in order. The
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Transportation Authority is the single most important factor in
Speaker 1: whether New York succeeds or fails. When New York had
Speaker 1: its crises of the late sixties, throughout the seventies, and
Speaker 1: then the early eighties, crisis began with the city losing
Speaker 1: its way and transportation. When the transit system fails, new
Speaker 1: York fails. If you cannot get people to work, get
Speaker 1: people to school, the city's economy does not do well.
Speaker 1: It is the mission, and I'll say this to Tom,
Speaker 1: is the mission of the m T A unchanged from
Speaker 1: sixty or how has that evolved since then? The goal
Speaker 1: was to get people on public transportation. Can't move everybody
Speaker 1: around by car? Is the mission the same? Basically? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it basically is. And part of the problem is that
Speaker 1: there was this idea that there would be a synergy
Speaker 1: between having the subways and the buses and the Long
Speaker 1: Island Railroad and Metro North all under one umbrella, and
Speaker 1: that we would have a kind of coordinated, integrated metropolitan system.
Speaker 1: The truth is the m t A it ain't metropolitan
Speaker 1: because it doesn't look at the entire metropolitan region. It
Speaker 1: doesn't pay attention to New Jersey. It ain't really transportation
Speaker 1: because it's only parts of the system. The buses are
Speaker 1: running on city streets. And it isn't really an authority
Speaker 1: because an authority means to those of us in kind
Speaker 1: of public service. An authority should be a self funded entity.
Speaker 1: Like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Speaker 1: does not get annual handouts from New York and New Jersey.
Speaker 1: It's self financed from the operations, whereas the m t
Speaker 1: A is unable to do that, and so it has
Speaker 1: to go hat in hand every year. Back to see
Speaker 1: the Port Authority is self funny. You're talking about fees
Speaker 1: they charge at the Gates Institute airlines, at the airport.
Speaker 1: It makes an enormous amount of money from the airports
Speaker 1: and people driving across the Hudson River, and it takes
Speaker 1: that money and it runs the airports and those crossings,
Speaker 1: and it subsidizes the path system and the Port authority,
Speaker 1: bus terminal and other operations. But they have a huge
Speaker 1: amount of debt, but they're able to to serve it
Speaker 1: with the cash flow that they generate on what percentage
Speaker 1: is debt service? Oh, we're gonna get to that. I
Speaker 1: think the same as it's it's it's lower than the
Speaker 1: m T as I'm pretty sure Nicoles the expert on
Speaker 1: these issues. Yeah, I haven't looked at the port throw
Speaker 1: in a while. I think it's around temper. That's what
Speaker 1: I would half of what the right now some would wonder.
Speaker 1: And again you can educate us about this as well, Nicole.
Speaker 1: At one point in the seventies and the Ford to
Speaker 1: New York dropped dead period where the city files for bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: the city goes into receivership with Albany. Albany is in
Speaker 1: charge and the city can't really do very much of
Speaker 1: what it wants to do in these large projects and
Speaker 1: and and beyond that. And I'm not trying to point
Speaker 1: a finger at City Hall or Albany, but was was
Speaker 1: it as bad before the receivership in seventy five or
Speaker 1: to get it to get worse once Albany was calling
Speaker 1: all the shots in the city. It got a little
Speaker 1: bit worse after nine and then it started to get better.
Speaker 1: The subway system failing was part of what led up
Speaker 1: to New York's financial distress and to take over essentially
Speaker 1: by Albany and the federal government of New York's finances
Speaker 1: for quite a long time actually, and the problem with
Speaker 1: New York City's approach to the subway and bus system
Speaker 1: is that from the nineteen forties well into the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, the city's focus was on keep the
Speaker 1: fair down. There was a nickel fair for a long time.
Speaker 1: Then it went up to a dime. It was less
Speaker 1: and less able to cover the operating costs. But mayors
Speaker 1: from Wagner to lindsay for very good reason, they wanted
Speaker 1: to keep the fair low because they wanted poor people,
Speaker 1: working class people, middle class people to stay on the subway.
Speaker 1: They thought, if we right, if we increase the fair
Speaker 1: too much, more people are going to leave the city.
Speaker 1: They're going to get in their cars and go to
Speaker 1: the suburbs. But the problem with the focus on the
Speaker 1: fair was that there was no focus on capital investment.
Speaker 1: That they needed to increase the fair and they needed
Speaker 1: some tax revenues to buy new subways, air conditioned subways.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to raise money at some point, right
Speaker 1: buy new buses, repair the tracks, repair the same When
Speaker 1: did they start doing that, well, they that changed in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties when finally trains were breaking down
Speaker 1: every twenty thousand miles, very frequent for someone to be
Speaker 1: kicked off the subway train and be stuck on the
Speaker 1: platform because the doors on the train wouldn't close, and
Speaker 1: so very frustrating commutes for people. And in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, uh Dick Ravitch, who was the mt A
Speaker 1: chairman at the time, convinced the governor convinced the state
Speaker 1: legislative slature in Albany that they needed to approve a
Speaker 1: package of taxes to support the m t A start
Speaker 1: to rebuild the capitol. Yes, and the business community was
Speaker 1: on board with this, and it was a signal to
Speaker 1: New York that we're not going to give up on
Speaker 1: the city. We're gonna double down and we're gonna rebuild
Speaker 1: the physical infrastructure that the city needs to thrive again.
Speaker 1: And starting in the eighties, as soon as they made
Speaker 1: these first investments, population of the city started to grow,
Speaker 1: tax based started to grow again, and that was the
Speaker 1: only thing that made it possible for us to turn
Speaker 1: around the crime situation and other problems starting in the
Speaker 1: early nineties. How would you describe Let me ask this
Speaker 1: to Corey, what's the city's relationship to Albany now? But
Speaker 1: it's still in the same position. It wasn't seventy No,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a financial control board that was
Speaker 1: put in place to oversee New York City, and the
Speaker 1: financial control it still exists. It hasn't been phased out.
Speaker 1: But we are not in the same position in any
Speaker 1: way as we were now. We are the economic engine
Speaker 1: for New York State. And I've been on the City
Speaker 1: Council for five and a half years. I was elected
Speaker 1: in two thousand and thirteen, and the first budget process
Speaker 1: that I went through in the middle of two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, our city's budget was around seventy three billion
Speaker 1: dollars with a B. The upcoming budget we're voting on
Speaker 1: in the next couple of weeks is now ninety two
Speaker 1: and a half billion dollars, almost twenty billion dollars in
Speaker 1: growth in less than six years. It used to not
Speaker 1: be that way, and the times that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: what the financial crisis, with the subways deteriorating, with Central
Speaker 1: Park being an unsafe place, and so now we give
Speaker 1: more to Albany every year than we get back, just
Speaker 1: like the exactly as New York ss the Washington We
Speaker 1: are a donor city to Albany, and New York State
Speaker 1: is a donor state to Washington. And so now part
Speaker 1: of the reason why it's happened since a great recession
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine, when there was a major downturn,
Speaker 1: we've seen seven and eighty thousand private sector jobs created
Speaker 1: in New York City, unemployments at an all time low
Speaker 1: three point nine percent, Tourism the highest level ever recorded
Speaker 1: last year at over sixty six million tourists. So if
Speaker 1: you looked at New York City on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: by the numbers, you would say, hot, damn, the city
Speaker 1: is doing really well. But when you dig into the
Speaker 1: finances of the m t A, when you look at
Speaker 1: the number of homeless children in our school system, if
Speaker 1: you look at what's happening, uh, just on poverty numbers
Speaker 1: in New York City, there is still a long way
Speaker 1: to go. But I think, as Nicole and Tom both said,
Speaker 1: the future of New York City, the way we can
Speaker 1: gain further economic growth is through investing in mass transit.
Speaker 1: It's the lifeblood of New York City. And the m
Speaker 1: t A has become a political hot potato where if
Speaker 1: something good happens, people stand up and say I'm in charge,
Speaker 1: and when something bad happens, they say it not me.
Speaker 1: Go to that board that no one knows a single
Speaker 1: person who serves on the board, and blame it on them.
Speaker 1: And the m t A is far too important to
Speaker 1: be put in the middle like that, which is why
Speaker 1: I'm grateful we have someone like Andy Byford, who was
Speaker 1: a world class guy, who has come in and I
Speaker 1: think is moving the system in the right direction. Let
Speaker 1: me let me highlight that. I mean, in the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties and nineties you were talking about those bad
Speaker 1: old days, and I remember Central Park when you didn't
Speaker 1: go in after dusk. Back then, for every ten jobs
Speaker 1: created in the metropolitan region around New York City kind
Speaker 1: of southwestern Connecticut, Long Island, northern New Jersey, nine of
Speaker 1: them were outside New York and one of them was
Speaker 1: inside New York City. It was a suburbanizing economy, is
Speaker 1: Nicole was talking about. New York was trying and failing
Speaker 1: to compete with the suburbs, and that's where all of
Speaker 1: the growth of jobs and prosperity was occurring for the
Speaker 1: last ten years, not only as New York suddenly caught
Speaker 1: up with the rest of the region. Today, nine out
Speaker 1: of ten new jobs created are in the five boroughs
Speaker 1: of New York City, and it's parts of northern New
Speaker 1: Jersey and Long Island and Connecticut that aren't keeping up.
Speaker 1: And so this this economic boom has been really terrific
Speaker 1: for the city and its finances, but still all many
Speaker 1: controls things. I mean, we just passed, you know, congestion pricing,
Speaker 1: which we think is a great policy, which will mean
Speaker 1: that people will pay to drive into Manhattan south of
Speaker 1: sixtieth Street, and that will generate money from mass transit.
Speaker 1: And that's all very well and good, But the truth
Speaker 1: is the city had no control over this. It was
Speaker 1: up to Albany, and it was up to legislators in
Speaker 1: Buffalo and Niagara to decide whether or not that's right. No,
Speaker 1: of course it's not right. But it's a legacy of
Speaker 1: this of the bankrupt and I want to go around,
Speaker 1: and I want to go around the room. And I'll
Speaker 1: continue with you, Tom. And that is about congestion pricing. Now,
Speaker 1: I think congestion pricing is a horrible idea. I think
Speaker 1: it's an awful idea. And the reason I think it's
Speaker 1: an awful idea is it punishes people who It's a continuation,
Speaker 1: in my mind of my least favorite condition of living
Speaker 1: in New York, and that is the residents of New
Speaker 1: York come last. People who live here and this is
Speaker 1: their home, and they pay taxes to live here as
Speaker 1: citizens of the Five Bros. They come dead, asked in
Speaker 1: the decisions that are made. And congestion pricing should not
Speaker 1: punish a person who lives in the Five Brooks. But
Speaker 1: if you live along Island or Rockland, or Philly or Delaware,
Speaker 1: they're commuting from all these different places to come to
Speaker 1: New York to do a business. And you're gonna ride,
Speaker 1: single person in the car, We're gonna hit you so
Speaker 1: hard you're gonna pass out with the with the charge.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with that idea? Basically, what's going through is
Speaker 1: very consistent with what you said. Most of the people
Speaker 1: who are driving into Manhattan south of sixtieth Street are
Speaker 1: coming from Westchester, from Fairfield County, from Nassau County. That's who.
Speaker 1: That's the vast majority of the people who are going
Speaker 1: to be paying into the system in the first place,
Speaker 1: and right now they've been getting a free ride. And
Speaker 1: worse than that, there are some routes that are charged
Speaker 1: and others that are free, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: them are doing what we call toll shopping, and they're
Speaker 1: driving out of their way to get in through the
Speaker 1: free Brooklyn Bridge. A quarter of the people on the
Speaker 1: b Que this morning, really we're coming from South Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: and the most direct route for them to get into
Speaker 1: Manhattan would have been the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, but instead
Speaker 1: they drove across the b Que to get over to
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Bridge and take the free crossing in. It
Speaker 1: makes no sense right now. As Tom said, if you
Speaker 1: take the Battery Brooklyn Tunnel you currently pay a toll,
Speaker 1: but if you take the Brooklyn Manhattan or Williamsburg Bridge
Speaker 1: you don't pay a toll. If you take the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Hall and Tunnel you do pay a toll. So it
Speaker 1: was a piecemeal, screwed up approach that we're trying to
Speaker 1: bring some sanity to and the real questionnaires. You have
Speaker 1: to make these difficult public policy decisions when you have
Speaker 1: a system that is failing and needs a permanent revenue
Speaker 1: stream and six sixplomatic parking too. Well, they've got the money,
Speaker 1: but but six million people take the subways and busses
Speaker 1: every single day. And there's been an analysis done. If
Speaker 1: you look at Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx SAT
Speaker 1: now is different because they don't have an extensive rail system.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the three outer boroughs, the vast, vast,
Speaker 1: vast majority of people that are coming into Manhattan every
Speaker 1: single day below sixty Street are currently doing it by
Speaker 1: subway already. So let's improve the subway service with a
Speaker 1: reliable revenue stream for those people. Yes, what Corey and
Speaker 1: Tom say is correct if and this is a big if,
Speaker 1: if the m t A implements congestion pricing correctly on
Speaker 1: both sides of the equation, cutting congestion and spending the
Speaker 1: money on projects that actually improved the transit system. On
Speaker 1: the congestion side, they're already overwhelmed with requests for exemptions.
Speaker 1: The people who work for the m t A, they
Speaker 1: wanted a congestion an exemption for the congestion charge exactly,
Speaker 1: not just when they're on duty, but just when they're
Speaker 1: driving to their workspace. The undergoing to set exactly. Other
Speaker 1: other city unions are going to want the same exception exceptions, police, fire, santation,
Speaker 1: teachers driving their private cars into the city are going
Speaker 1: to want to be exempt from this charge. And you
Speaker 1: know they do wonderful work. But everyone who works in
Speaker 1: the city does wonderful work, private sector, public sector, low paid,
Speaker 1: well paid. If we give one exemption, you almost have
Speaker 1: to approve them all because everyone has some reason why
Speaker 1: they shouldn't pay the charge. I mean we all do
Speaker 1: so either do no exemptions or don't have the program.
Speaker 1: The number of exemptions that are being lobbied for right now,
Speaker 1: congestion pricing will look like a gigantic piece of Swiss cheese.
Speaker 1: It would be like every thing that happens in New York.
Speaker 1: The tour bus operators are asking for one is if
Speaker 1: they don't cause any traffic congestion. Now are the web
Speaker 1: of contractors who are bidding for mt A projects, not
Speaker 1: just the Second Avenue debaccle, but other things like that.
Speaker 1: Is it a kind of a uh, the usual suspects
Speaker 1: that are coming, Like what prevents a person in charge
Speaker 1: Albany or city Hall to turn around and fire every
Speaker 1: single one of them and say, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. I'm gonna get housing in New Jersey. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna bring a bunch of Amish people here. But Robert
Speaker 1: Moses had them pitched ten on the frozen Zack's Bay
Speaker 1: and the workers work through the dead of winter. So
Speaker 1: the beach house that Joe, I mean, I read Carol's book,
Speaker 1: so the Jones Beach could open on time for that summer.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we're going back to that. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: go back to that. I would have them pitch tents
Speaker 1: on the frozen reservoir in Central Park May They're gonna
Speaker 1: all live there. But my point is is what's gonna stop.
Speaker 1: What's going to stop the hemorrhage of the sickening contract
Speaker 1: Because as we all know, certain politicians, mostly north of
Speaker 1: the city have a have a very sweetheart relationship with
Speaker 1: the unions and want them to and want to appease them.
Speaker 1: What's your answer for how we lower these costs? Everybody
Speaker 1: benefits from the current system except for the average New Yorker.
Speaker 1: The contractors benefit because a lot of the global contractors,
Speaker 1: the companies that are actually good at doing this in
Speaker 1: France and Spain and Japan, they won't bid on our
Speaker 1: projects because the system just intimidates them, and rightly so
Speaker 1: whenever they bid, for example, they're afraid of our union
Speaker 1: work rules. France, Germany, Japan, all countries with first world's
Speaker 1: work rules. They treat their workers well in terms of healthcare,
Speaker 1: in terms of working conditions, but they don't have the
Speaker 1: byzantine work rules that are rich. In the end, it
Speaker 1: takes political leadership, like if you look at the Long
Speaker 1: Island railroad work rules for example, that are pushing up
Speaker 1: over time, where people are making quintuple their incomes in
Speaker 1: their last few years of work by essentially working around
Speaker 1: to manipulate. Yeah, these are due to the work rules.
Speaker 1: Their work rules have been enshrined in the contracts for
Speaker 1: fifty years. In order to change them, the governor or
Speaker 1: the mayor, if we put the mayor in charge of
Speaker 1: them right now, the governor in the governor's responsibility to
Speaker 1: address that. The governor has to decide he'll take a
Speaker 1: strike that he's willing to take. The uh. Short term
Speaker 1: pain of people having a much more difficult time vents
Speaker 1: him from firing every single one of them and replacing
Speaker 1: them with the starting another car. What prevents an emergency
Speaker 1: financial measure in which a state where city entity gets
Speaker 1: sit there and go, we just don't have the money anymore.
Speaker 1: I really don't care how you feel about it. You
Speaker 1: work for us. I'm not asking you what to do.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you what to do. Right do than that
Speaker 1: happen In the end, it comes down to the political
Speaker 1: willingness and donations from those unions. A short term hit.
Speaker 1: It's not even so much donations. I mean, Cuomo is
Speaker 1: very close to the Transport Workers Union, which is the
Speaker 1: subway and bus union. Not so much because he needs
Speaker 1: the money, although money is always useful, but because he
Speaker 1: wants the votes. This is a very reliable voting block.
Speaker 1: A vote is worth a lot of money goes hand
Speaker 1: in hand with a vote is worth a lot more
Speaker 1: than a dollar. I mean, they spend dollars four votes,
Speaker 1: So if you can get the votes directly, that's much
Speaker 1: better from the governor's perspective. Tw this union helped the
Speaker 1: governor tremendously during his primary fight with Cynthia Nixon a
Speaker 1: few years ago. But I just want to jump in here,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying I don't believe this is what
Speaker 1: Nicole was saying, But I want to be clear. I
Speaker 1: don't think I think it would be easy to scapegoat
Speaker 1: and vilify the workers who work on the subways and
Speaker 1: buses every single day. And for a lot of these folks,
Speaker 1: this has been a pathway to the middle class, to
Speaker 1: a pension, to healthcare. And I don't think they're the
Speaker 1: real problems here. I think part of the problem here
Speaker 1: is that you've had at the m t A for
Speaker 1: years and years and years major major mismanagement. You haven't
Speaker 1: had oversight on contracting. I'll give one primary example, east
Speaker 1: Side Access, which is the UH MEGA project which going
Speaker 1: to connect UH, yes, exactly UH. And that project is
Speaker 1: eleven billion dollars over budget. Eleven billion dollars over budget.
Speaker 1: It's not eleven billion dollars over budget because of the
Speaker 1: subways and bus workers. It's because of the broken, collusive
Speaker 1: contracting system and bid system that exists. The amount to
Speaker 1: re signal the entire subway system so that we could
Speaker 1: have state of the arts signaling and cut down and
Speaker 1: delays is nine billion, So we could have taken that
Speaker 1: eleven billion dollars in the cost overrun and already re
Speaker 1: signaled the entire system. The Brooke closer to exactly. We
Speaker 1: can't even have a conversation right now about expanding the
Speaker 1: subway system. You've got a few stations and Second Avenue,
Speaker 1: you've got the one station at Hudson Yards, which was unique.
Speaker 1: But you can't have a conversation about the Utica extension
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn and the other places to expand where they're
Speaker 1: transit deserts when you get have two fresh meadows in
Speaker 1: South Brooklyn and other places. Because we are constantly treading
Speaker 1: water and trying to just keep things going, and you
Speaker 1: can't have a conversation going forward and provide a little
Speaker 1: more context. Eric Garciti the mayor of Los Angeles right now,
Speaker 1: he was able to pass by selling it to the
Speaker 1: voters a multibillion dollar bond on subway expansion. Now l
Speaker 1: a Is, you know, is not a subway city, but
Speaker 1: they're trying to become one. Rama Manuel just left office
Speaker 1: in Chicago and one of the highlights of his final
Speaker 1: term was improving subway service there. Andy Biford was in Toronto, Sydney, London,
Speaker 1: places where they did this type of expansive work, and
Speaker 1: we can't have that conversation in New York because of
Speaker 1: how broken the system is. Now let me just interject,
Speaker 1: you announced your running from mayor, and of course I
Speaker 1: don't fault you for wanting to not scapegoat the union
Speaker 1: transit workers and say that the problem was more the
Speaker 1: contracting process and so forth. But nonetheless, many unions get
Speaker 1: into that whole gouging thing where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: quadruple overtime to the last three years to get the
Speaker 1: sweetheart pension. Do you agree that's got to stop? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But part of the problem right now, and this has
Speaker 1: been I think part of the issue at the very
Speaker 1: public fight you've seen on the mt A board and
Speaker 1: with the governor on the long unmoored overtime. It's hard
Speaker 1: to defend those overtime numbers. But these these are the
Speaker 1: overtime rules that the m t A set up themselves.
Speaker 1: So the union is taking advantage of the rules that
Speaker 1: were given to that. But I appreciate that. I'm saying,
Speaker 1: if you set up a set of rules, of course
Speaker 1: they're not going to say no. But eventually someone's got
Speaker 1: to say no. I have found that in most instances,
Speaker 1: at least recently. And it's different now because economic times
Speaker 1: have been going well, so the city has a lot
Speaker 1: of money. But most unions are willing to make a sacrifice,
Speaker 1: and there is a trade that gets involved. They may
Speaker 1: take a hit on healthcare, but they don't want to
Speaker 1: bag a hit on the pensions. It's always a sort
Speaker 1: of a little bit of a trade back and forth.
Speaker 1: And I think if you sit down and you have
Speaker 1: a conversation and you say this is what we need
Speaker 1: and the public understands what the need is, I think
Speaker 1: most times, uh, most of the union leaders are willing
Speaker 1: to do that. I think John Samuelson at t W
Speaker 1: is actually a pretty pragmatic guy and he's someone that
Speaker 1: you can work with. He's not someone who's out there
Speaker 1: being irresponsible. And I think you need to sit down,
Speaker 1: get around at table. But again, I want to get
Speaker 1: back to the big thing here, which is the m
Speaker 1: t A is set up to deflect any level of accountability.
Speaker 1: So we can talk about all these super important issues
Speaker 1: on repairing, contracting, and on negotiating with unions and expanding
Speaker 1: the subway system. But until you get down to the
Speaker 1: fundamental issue of singular accountability and responsibility, everyone is always
Speaker 1: going to be able to point fingers, which is why
Speaker 1: I called for municipal control. I agree with you piggybacking
Speaker 1: on that the roads in the city, and it is appalling.
Speaker 1: The roads are better in Lima, Peru than they are
Speaker 1: in New York City. They finished fiction the roads on
Speaker 1: my block, and two weeks after they had the gutted, pitted,
Speaker 1: bombed out preparations done, and then and they went and
Speaker 1: laid the roads on their Two weeks later they started
Speaker 1: cutting it up for some utility start of chopping it
Speaker 1: up again. I had a meeting about this yesterday, this
Speaker 1: fairy topic not and not to get too granular, but
Speaker 1: one of the big issues if we're talking about contracting
Speaker 1: that New York City is run into, is that when
Speaker 1: you want to restripe the roads after the paving, you
Speaker 1: can't restripe the roads for weeks, which is like the
Speaker 1: most basic thing a government should be able to do
Speaker 1: in a city. Can't why because none of the striping
Speaker 1: is done by the city. The striping is done by
Speaker 1: outside private contractors who have set up a collusive industry
Speaker 1: on how to gouge the city by all working together.
Speaker 1: And so these are big issues that affect basic municipal services.
Speaker 1: New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson with him our
Speaker 1: Regional Plan Association President and CEO Tom Wright, and journalist
Speaker 1: Nicole Jelinas. If you like thinking about how New York works,
Speaker 1: you'll love my conversation with Martin Horne, who has had
Speaker 1: just about every job imaginable in New York City corrections,
Speaker 1: including head of the prison system, which led him to
Speaker 1: some unusual opinions. I would legalize drugs across the board.
Speaker 1: You would legalize which all of them? You would legalize
Speaker 1: old rugs? Yes, that's a pretty well well, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that. I wouldn't say that while I worked for
Speaker 1: a governor or a mayor who was an elected definition.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you say that then as opposed to now
Speaker 1: because I had a mortgage debate. The rest of my
Speaker 1: conversation with Martin Horne at Here's the Thing Dot Org.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: I'm joined by journalist Nicole Jelinas, New York City Councils
Speaker 1: Speaker Corey Johnson and Tom Wright, President and CEO of
Speaker 1: the Regional Plan Association. Right in the middle of another topic,
Speaker 1: just had to turn back to the insane amount New
Speaker 1: York pays to build and maintain its subways. I have
Speaker 1: to hit this issue on why things cost so much.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to defend the work rules of the unions
Speaker 1: and some of the things that drive up the cost.
Speaker 1: We've got to get more competition and with contractors and
Speaker 1: other things, but the entire system is broken from front
Speaker 1: to end. The procurement process in New York State is
Speaker 1: so ridiculous that contractors will be hired to build a
Speaker 1: piece of the Second Avenue subway. They will know that
Speaker 1: it's going to change, but it's going to take a
Speaker 1: year for the procurement process to effectuate that change. So
Speaker 1: they build something knowing that at the end of it
Speaker 1: they're going to be told to rip it up and
Speaker 1: rebuild it again under some new way. But they have
Speaker 1: to do it, and the contractors if they don't do
Speaker 1: all the time, all the time. There were thousands of
Speaker 1: change orders on the Second Avenue Subway in the last
Speaker 1: year or two to opening it up as subway. All
Speaker 1: of these things subway. Here's another example of one running
Speaker 1: the Number one line through the World Trade Center site.
Speaker 1: It was a kind of historic achievement of the MTA
Speaker 1: to restore that service, and then the mt A basically
Speaker 1: said to the Port Authority, you can rebuild this new
Speaker 1: path station at Fulton, but you're going to continue to
Speaker 1: run our subway through it. The cost of doing that
Speaker 1: was hundreds of millions of dollars, when any rational situation
Speaker 1: would have looked at and said, you know what, we're
Speaker 1: going to shut this down for a couple of months
Speaker 1: and we're gonna then rebuild the whole thing and it
Speaker 1: will save us an enormous amount of money. But essentially
Speaker 1: you had kind of the m t A and the
Speaker 1: Port Authority, both state entities, kind of saying, well, it's
Speaker 1: not my dollars, so I don't care. You just have
Speaker 1: to go do it. And that's the kind of failure
Speaker 1: of the eleven billion dollar overrun that Corey talks about
Speaker 1: with east Side Access close to a half a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Because New York State has ridiculous insurance protections. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that if we just adopted the California protections that people
Speaker 1: would still have plenty of protection here in New York,
Speaker 1: but we add hundreds of millions of dollars to the
Speaker 1: cost CUOMO rated the subways state of good repair money
Speaker 1: for pet projects. Correct, is that on a yeah? Well
Speaker 1: when did that happen? Well, you were very critical of
Speaker 1: thattor we were, we were critical of The truth is,
Speaker 1: depreciation is not just a kind of financial accounting idea.
Speaker 1: It is cables giving out, it is wheels giving out.
Speaker 1: And it's not sexy, it doesn't add it doesn't give
Speaker 1: you a big ribbon cutting. But those kinds of basic
Speaker 1: investments in the system have to keep going. And that's
Speaker 1: what God got it. And that's what we saw over
Speaker 1: the last decade or so, kind of money being taken
Speaker 1: out of and that's what suddenly led to the situation
Speaker 1: of the crisis and Nicole. If you were given some
Speaker 1: czar like position of the biggest cost controls that you
Speaker 1: would implement, what would you do? More transparency? And I
Speaker 1: know that that's a cliche, but I'll give you a
Speaker 1: couple of specific examples of a project's cost is buying
Speaker 1: materials meant steel. These are global commodities and the global
Speaker 1: price is known. You can look in the newspaper and
Speaker 1: see what's the going price for especially right, But these
Speaker 1: are part of these contracts where the contractors go to
Speaker 1: subcontractors and buy the materials, and so the cost of
Speaker 1: the raw materials is not known by the public. Every
Speaker 1: single materials purchase, the volume and the price should be
Speaker 1: disclosed to the public and benchmarked to a global index.
Speaker 1: So well, why isn't it because the system as it
Speaker 1: is benefits everybody. But contractors should not be making a
Speaker 1: profit on the portion of the contract that involves materials
Speaker 1: purchases because they're not adding any right, they're they're not
Speaker 1: they're not adding any value to that, so they do
Speaker 1: get a markup on it, but they shouldn't. That's one
Speaker 1: thing is making sure that there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: padding and corruption in the materials purchase process. And the
Speaker 1: other thing would be all of these construction contracts between
Speaker 1: the contractors and the construction unions iron workers union, steel workers, carpenters,
Speaker 1: all of these contracts should be public right now. The
Speaker 1: contractors and the unions keep these contracts in these work
Speaker 1: rules private because they say these are just arrangements between
Speaker 1: private parties. I mean, if Tom and I signed contracts,
Speaker 1: really nobody's business. But in this case, the public is
Speaker 1: the final payer. If the m t A is spending
Speaker 1: twelve billion dollars on the East Side Access Project five
Speaker 1: billion dollars on the Second Avenue subway, the public should
Speaker 1: know every single one of these work rules, and each
Speaker 1: work rule should have a cost item next to it.
Speaker 1: This costs US fifty million dollars a year. Just getting
Speaker 1: those two pieces of information would get us a long
Speaker 1: way to reform because all of these things are connected.
Speaker 1: You know, someone might say Long Island Railroad Union has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with construction unions. But if one set
Speaker 1: of unions gives up something, the other sets of unions
Speaker 1: knows that it has to give that thing up to
Speaker 1: t W is never going to sign a deal that
Speaker 1: is less generous the Long Island Railroad contract because one
Speaker 1: side looks like a chump, one side looks like you've
Speaker 1: got a better deal. So all of these things have
Speaker 1: to everybody right all down together. Um, Now for Corey,
Speaker 1: just to change the arc here just a bit, what
Speaker 1: would you do if you want to improve the city's
Speaker 1: relationship with the governor. Well, I would say that I
Speaker 1: don't want to be presumptuous, but I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that you need to do in politics and
Speaker 1: in life is you need to be able to relate
Speaker 1: to people and to maybe use a little bit of
Speaker 1: charm sometimes. What what do I may that? I mean
Speaker 1: that in a hollow, empty way. What I mean is,
Speaker 1: I think part of the job of being mayor of
Speaker 1: the City of New York is when you saw at
Speaker 1: Cotch standing at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge during
Speaker 1: the transit strike, shaking people's hands. There was a little
Speaker 1: bit of theater involved when you see people out there
Speaker 1: when you're screaming how am I doing. Part of what
Speaker 1: the job of mayor is is making sure the city
Speaker 1: is running in the right way, so that you don't
Speaker 1: have homeless encampments, so that the subway isn't breaking down
Speaker 1: every day, and you're working with Albany to get that done.
Speaker 1: See that you don't have a hundred and ten thousand
Speaker 1: homeless children during one point of the year in the
Speaker 1: City of New York. You need to work on those issues,
Speaker 1: but you also have to be a cheerleader for the
Speaker 1: City of New York. You have to do both of
Speaker 1: those things. And I think if you do that, if
Speaker 1: the if the public relates to you in that way,
Speaker 1: not just on an operational level, but they like you.
Speaker 1: They like how you're championing and cheerleading New York. I
Speaker 1: go around last night. I spoke at the y m
Speaker 1: C A galat Cipriani Street, and I stood up and
Speaker 1: I said, New York City is the greatest city in
Speaker 1: the world. We are the city that gave the world
Speaker 1: j Lo and Barbara streisand we are the city that
Speaker 1: is the holes. We are the city of the home
Speaker 1: of the lemon Ice, King of Corona. We are the
Speaker 1: city with the Statue of Liberty not that far from me,
Speaker 1: or the torch is a beacon to immigrants and refugees,
Speaker 1: sam seekers. I think the disconnect is in that budget
Speaker 1: number I gave you from seventy three billion dollars to
Speaker 1: billion dollars, nineteen billion dollars in revenue growth in five years,
Speaker 1: and you still have people who feel like they're being screwed.
Speaker 1: You still hear that money coming from the economy. The
Speaker 1: economy has been hosting You've seen prosperity. So if you again,
Speaker 1: if you look at seven eighty thousand private sector jobs,
Speaker 1: three point nine percent unemployment, the highest number of tourism ever,
Speaker 1: recorded crime, homicides, and an all time low since nine
Speaker 1: when crime numbers started to get reported. And New Yorkers
Speaker 1: right now, the mayor is not getting credit for that
Speaker 1: because you actually do need to cheer lead those things.
Speaker 1: But you need to cheer lead those things and at
Speaker 1: the same time say, I know that it is totally
Speaker 1: screwed up that we have a record homeless population New
Speaker 1: York City, that nights is crumbling, public housing is crumbling
Speaker 1: before our eyes, that the subways are in a state
Speaker 1: of disrepair, and that I'm going to go out there
Speaker 1: and use all of that record growth that we've seen
Speaker 1: to address this crisis. Uh. There are things that I
Speaker 1: don't agree with Michael Bloomberg on, like the third term,
Speaker 1: but he said something which I do agree with him on.
Speaker 1: He said it, and this is why I was a
Speaker 1: critic of the Amazon deal. He said, if you want
Speaker 1: to attract businesses and jobs to New York City, you
Speaker 1: need to do three things. Number one, you need to
Speaker 1: have low crime. Number two, you have to improve the
Speaker 1: school system. And number three, and that's what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you have to invest in infrastructure and public spaces. If
Speaker 1: you do those three things, businesses will come to New York,
Speaker 1: people will come to New York, and the economy will grow.
Speaker 1: And the disconnect is, with twenty billion dollars in growth
Speaker 1: just in our city's budget in five and a half years,
Speaker 1: that prosperity is not being felt. And people are like,
Speaker 1: how come the trash cans are overflowing on my corner?
Speaker 1: How come public housing as fall? How come the street
Speaker 1: sweepers can't have a camera on their truck and when
Speaker 1: they pull up behind you and you haven't moved, they
Speaker 1: take a picture, email it to the traffic post and
Speaker 1: you get a ticket. But I want to say, but
Speaker 1: I want to say, well, I mean, I'm don't get
Speaker 1: me started by how much I want to point the
Speaker 1: finger at Albany. But what did our pa think of
Speaker 1: the Amazon deal? We were supportive of the Amazon deal.
Speaker 1: I will admit, UH don't love the idea of of
Speaker 1: public finance incentives, although most of the ones that they
Speaker 1: were talking about were ones that are readily accessible to
Speaker 1: any company that's coming in. And I think that there
Speaker 1: should be a re examination of that entire of that
Speaker 1: entire situation. Everybody that I know that lived out there
Speaker 1: said this thing is going to come out here and
Speaker 1: the speculative buying of of of housing is going to
Speaker 1: drive all of our costs through the roof and ruin
Speaker 1: our neighborhood. That's true. But I want to add one thing,
Speaker 1: not to check on Tom Google, who what is about
Speaker 1: twenty five blocks north of where we're sitting in the studio,
Speaker 1: which is the biggest employer in my council district. They've
Speaker 1: created the most fifteen thousand jobs in the last decade.
Speaker 1: How much subsidy and incentiment they received from the City
Speaker 1: of New York zero. So if you do in a
Speaker 1: precedential nature saying to Amazon, we're gonna give you two
Speaker 1: point three billion dollars in non discretionary subsidy and incentive
Speaker 1: and a five hundred million dollar cash grant which could
Speaker 1: go to the subway system. By the way, a five
Speaker 1: or a million dollar cash grant to build your headquarters.
Speaker 1: What's going to keep Goldman, Sachs, JP, Morgan, Chase, Google, Facebook,
Speaker 1: name a company to come back three years from now.
Speaker 1: Would say we want the same deal Amazon, that I
Speaker 1: can't defend these kinds of deals. And I can remember
Speaker 1: when Governor Pataki essentially because because I would say right
Speaker 1: now that's kind of the way the game is played.
Speaker 1: The rules of the game ought to be changing. But
Speaker 1: I do think that that was what was on the table.
Speaker 1: But isn't right now the time to change the game.
Speaker 1: If not now, when I mean the Amazon deal was
Speaker 1: a classic nineties seventies massive subsidy to build buildings. In
Speaker 1: the seventies under Mayor Lindsay. Under Mayor Beam, these things
Speaker 1: were more understandable because people were fleeing the city. No
Speaker 1: one wanted to locate their business here. We had to
Speaker 1: give something away just to keep some kind of the core.
Speaker 1: Today the problem is the opposite. We don't have catastrophic
Speaker 1: failure anymore. We have a catastrophe fixed success, and so
Speaker 1: to be giving subsidies away when we need every last
Speaker 1: tax dollar for the infrastructure just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Amazon has been their entire business model for twenty two
Speaker 1: years has been to avoid paying their taxes. Often legally,
Speaker 1: you know they're not breaking the law, but they don't
Speaker 1: want to pay taxes. In Texas, they never wanted to
Speaker 1: pay the sales taxes, and so they were competing unfairly
Speaker 1: with bricks and mortar retailers for years and years, and
Speaker 1: this was just another game that they were playing. They
Speaker 1: miscalculated this one and they sort of took their blocks
Speaker 1: and went home. And so the city will be fine
Speaker 1: without Amazon, but only if we stick to Corey's three things. Actually, though,
Speaker 1: in the absence of an Amazon and a kind of
Speaker 1: large growth there, what's most likely to happen is it's
Speaker 1: going to convert to what's been happening, which is residential development,
Speaker 1: which is more residential on the waterfront and people moving
Speaker 1: in there and then trying to cram onto the subways
Speaker 1: to get into jobs in Manhattan. What we need to do, actually,
Speaker 1: and I think Nicole's the jobs out there is put
Speaker 1: the jobs out there. Nicole's come and catastrophic success is
Speaker 1: absolutely right. Wasn't it done in the Bronx? They wet
Speaker 1: to be well? Hell, look, and this might be an
Speaker 1: athema here. I think if Amazon had gone to New Wark,
Speaker 1: it would have been even better. Also way too much,
Speaker 1: you know, actually kind of spreading those jobs around so
Speaker 1: that we take advantage the trains run in both directions,
Speaker 1: and we ought to be taking full advantage of the
Speaker 1: capacity that we have by balancing growth. And yes, the
Speaker 1: Bronx is the place where be even better for them
Speaker 1: to go than the Amazon should still come to New
Speaker 1: York City. I want them to come. There is office
Speaker 1: space available down in Lower Manhattan at the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1: There is office space available at Hudson Yards. It hasn't
Speaker 1: been leased up yet. There is office space available. It's
Speaker 1: going to be available in Midtown East where we just
Speaker 1: rezoned it for more class A office space. There is
Speaker 1: a glut of office space available. Amazon should come to
Speaker 1: New York City. They should play by the same rules
Speaker 1: as everyone else, Google and other Fortune five companies that
Speaker 1: don't get a hunger games like sweetheart deal. The European
Speaker 1: Union bans these type of contests. They should come here,
Speaker 1: and they should come and they should say, wherever we're going,
Speaker 1: we want to invest in that local subway station and
Speaker 1: improve it and make it better for our workers. We
Speaker 1: want to be a good corporate citizen in New York City.
Speaker 1: I'm not against Amazon coming in New York City. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm against setting up this hunger Games like contest which
Speaker 1: doesn't benefit the city real quickly give me uh the
Speaker 1: next mayor. In terms of the problems with the m
Speaker 1: t A, the next mayor should do what's their first
Speaker 1: priority or two. The next mayor's got to come and
Speaker 1: make sure congestion pricing gets implemented in the right way,
Speaker 1: and make sure that we fully fund Andy Byford's fast
Speaker 1: Forward plan, because that's the right plan. He needs forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars to do it, and we can't be nickel
Speaker 1: and diming him on that s your idea, I think,
Speaker 1: someone who is contemplating a run from mayor, I think
Speaker 1: you need to come up with big, bold, creative, outside
Speaker 1: the box ideas. Bloomberg did it when he called for
Speaker 1: mayor control the school system, to Blasio did it when
Speaker 1: he called for universal pre k. I think the future
Speaker 1: of New York City, the lifeblood of our economy, is stabilizing, transforming,
Speaker 1: expanding our mass transit system. And so I think we
Speaker 1: need now a better governance model, singular accountability, not a
Speaker 1: deflective model, which is what the m T. A. Garners
Speaker 1: right now by the way it's set up. And so
Speaker 1: I think we have talked about municipal control of the
Speaker 1: subways and busses tied in to a master plan of
Speaker 1: the streets of New York City. In London, the person
Speaker 1: that oversees the tubes and the buses is also the
Speaker 1: Department of Transportation commissioner who oversees the city street. How
Speaker 1: would you plan to do that with when you become there? Well,
Speaker 1: typically it's okay. In two thousand and one, when Bloomberg one,
Speaker 1: he got mayoral control in the first six months of
Speaker 1: his first term. When to I think there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a mandate that is given to a new
Speaker 1: mayor after they've won if they have run on a
Speaker 1: big idea, and if this is also a part if
Speaker 1: they have convinced the public it is the right thing
Speaker 1: to do ahead of time, which typically they have if
Speaker 1: they've won the mayorw election. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the big things. So I'm gonna keep talking about
Speaker 1: municipal control, transforming our streets, breaking our call culture, focusing
Speaker 1: on pedestrians and cyclists, and having a livabol city. And
Speaker 1: I saw that. I have to mention that I saw
Speaker 1: that on your phone. You were getting a call from
Speaker 1: Andy Biford, who we begged to do the show, who
Speaker 1: stiffed us, but being British, he did it in the
Speaker 1: most elegant where he stiffed us in a really plummy
Speaker 1: and very very English way. You're big ideas for the
Speaker 1: m T and Nicole. The next mayor should be riding
Speaker 1: the subways and the buses every day and should be
Speaker 1: walking the streets. We we need much faster bus service,
Speaker 1: which means we need zero tolerance for double park cars,
Speaker 1: double park trucks. Every single one of these vehicles should
Speaker 1: be slapped with a ticket every single time they violate
Speaker 1: the bust lane. We need more bike lanes to the
Speaker 1: extent that we can get people. Road closure. Well that yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another process. Yeah. I think parts of Fifth Avenue,
Speaker 1: Madison Avenue, Sixth Avenue, these avenues should be for buses,
Speaker 1: bicycles and for Yellow times Yellow taxis because Yellow taxis
Speaker 1: already paid the congestion fee and in terms of paying
Speaker 1: a million dollars in some cases for the medallion. And also,
Speaker 1: at some point, you know, fifteen years in the future,
Speaker 1: a free autonomous bus that does a fixed route that
Speaker 1: comes every minute, so if you're going by Rockefeller Center,
Speaker 1: no private cars and things like we pedestrianized Times Square.
Speaker 1: That's been a success. If we hadn't pedestrianized Times Square,
Speaker 1: we would have to do it today because of the
Speaker 1: risk of vehicle terrorism. We should be doing more of
Speaker 1: that in Rockefeller Center in Lower Manhattan. But coming back
Speaker 1: to the mt A, the one thing that the mayor
Speaker 1: controls now is the streets. Use the streets for much better,
Speaker 1: faster bus service, and if the MTA doesn't provide it,
Speaker 1: hold them accountable. I would have alternate side of the
Speaker 1: street delivery. So if you're on the east side of
Speaker 1: the street or the north side of the street, it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
Speaker 1: and your deliveries on the other side there's Tuesday, there
Speaker 1: is a Saturday. To cut down there. We want people
Speaker 1: to have their goods delivered, but they can't do it
Speaker 1: whenever they want to. I mean the double parking. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll name one company who's more egregious than UPS. They
Speaker 1: pull their truck over the open grave while you're at
Speaker 1: your mother's funeral. If they could, they would like to
Speaker 1: move to a district system and and look UPS could
Speaker 1: actually be part of the solution there. I'll throw that
Speaker 1: out there. UPS would like to be biking the everything
Speaker 1: within a couple of blocks, but they got to work
Speaker 1: with the city and the management of the streets just
Speaker 1: hasn't been there. But I want to just finish by saying, obviously,
Speaker 1: thank you, to all three of you. We could have
Speaker 1: gone on and on and and and and served into
Speaker 1: other topics. But thank you well because in my lifetime
Speaker 1: I have never seen people in New York more demoralized
Speaker 1: it used to be. There was it seemed that there
Speaker 1: was a plan when you built buildings. Were at another
Speaker 1: one of those stages where we're tearing down ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen percent of the city. I'm an exaggerate perhaps to
Speaker 1: build new things, but knew what since you brought up
Speaker 1: the construction. That's another problem with the streets. These construction
Speaker 1: companies that are building these super tall towers, they only
Speaker 1: pay a hundred and fifty dollars a month to close
Speaker 1: off the whole lane of the street, sometimes for two
Speaker 1: and three years briskly. They should be paying market price
Speaker 1: for closing that lane of street and get the building
Speaker 1: build faster. If you can't do it faster, than you've
Speaker 1: got to pay this money, and a good chunk of
Speaker 1: that money should go towards the transit. I think if
Speaker 1: you become the mayor of New York, she should have
Speaker 1: some huge position and he should be yours. That was
Speaker 1: Corey Johnson, Nicole Jollinas, and Tom Wright. This is Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing