A Better Billion and the Cost Model versus the 125th Street Subway Extension
We released a new report called A Better Billion. It was covered rather positively in the New York Times yesterday, with quotes from other transit advocacy groups. The idea for our report is that Zohran Mamdani promised free buses in his successful primary campaign, and promised free and fast buses in his successful general election campaign for mayor, so let’s take the $1 billion a year this could cost in forgone revenue and see how to spend it on subway expansion instead.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the article and on social media about the idea of free buses, but instead I want to talk about our proposal’s cost model, in the context of a rather incompetent plan the MTA released recently for a subway extension of Second Avenue Subway under 125th Street, at twice the per-km cost of Second Avenue Subway Phases 1 and 2, and twice the cost we project. Our model is not based on non-Anglo costs, but rather on real New York costs, modified to incorporate the one major cost saving coming from our previous reports, namely, shrinking station size. Based on everything combined, we came up with the following medium cost model:
| Item | Cost (2025 prices) |
| Tunnel (1 km) | $530 million |
| Tunnel, underwater (1 km) | $1,050 million |
| El or trench (1 km) | $260 million |
| Station, cut-and-cover | $510 million |
| Station, mined | $770 million |
| Station, el or trench | $240 million |
These costs include apportioned soft costs and not just hard costs. Altogether, an extension of Second Avenue Subway from Park Avenue to Broadway, a distance of 2 km with three mined stations at the intersections with the north-south subway lines, should cost $3.4 billion. This is not much less per kilometer than Second Avenue Subway Phases 1 and 2, which can be explained by the denser stop spacing and the need for mined stations at the undercrossings. If everything else were done in the right way rather than the American way, the low cost model would apply and costs would be reduced further by a factor of about 3, but the per-km cost would remain one of the highest outside the Anglosphere for those geotechnical reasons.
But the MTA and its consultants, in this case AECOM, project $7.7 billion, not $3.4 billion. Why?
Worse project delivery
We’ve assumed the existing project delivery systems the MTA is familiar with. However, what doesn’t move forward moves backward, and the procurement strategy at the MTA is moving backward rapidly, for which the primary culprit is Janno Lieber, first in his role at MTA Capital Construction (now Construction and Development), and then in his role as MTA head, pushing alternative delivery methods, especially design-build and increasingly progressive design-build (unfortunately legalized in New York last year). Such methods add to the procurement costs and especially to the soft costs. Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 had an overall soft cost multiplier of about 1.5: the total cost including soft costs was 1.5 times the hard costs (Italy: 1.2-1.25 times). This proposal, in contrast, has a multiplier of 1.75: the hard costs are estimated at $4.4 billion, and the total costs are 75% higher, technically including rolling stock except rolling stock at current New York costs is $80 million.
Contingency
The soft costs include a federally mandated 40% contingency. The FTA mandates excessive contingencies – the norm in low-cost countries is 10-20%, and anything more than that is just wasted. The contingency figure varies by phase of design and decreases as it advances, but in the earliest phase it is 40%, and it’s in that phase that budgeting is done. However, 40% is only required over hard costs based on standardized cost categories (SCCs), and not over past ex post costs that incorporated contingency themselves. In effect, the estimation method the MTA and AECOM prefer bakes in a 40% overrun at each stage, letting project delivery get worse over time as the globalized system of procurement takes deeper roots in New York.
Overdesign and overbuilding
Based on our recommendations, the MTA shrank the station overages in Second Avenue Subway Phase 2. Phase 1 had station digs 100% longer than the platforms, based on standards that were both extravagant to the taxpayer and spartan to the end user – the extra space is not usable by passengers but instead for unnecessary break rooms, separated by department. By Phase 2, this was reduced to a 50% overage, and we hoped that proactive design around best practices would reduce this further.
Unfortunately, the overages are still substantial, 50% at St. Nicholas and 25% at the other two stations (Italy, Sweden, France, Germany, China: 3-20%). Moreover, the stations still have full-length mezzanines. This a longstanding New York tradition, going back to the 1930s with the opening of the IND lines starting with the A on Eighth Avenue in 1933. And like all other New York subway building traditions that conflict with how things are done in more advanced, non-English speaking countries, it belongs in the ashbin of history. Mined stations’ costs are sensitive to dig volume, and there is little need for such additional circulation space, for passenger comfort or fire safety. Mezzanines are essentially free if the stations are built cut-and-cover, in which case they are used for back-of-the-house space in advanced countries, but not if the stations are mined, in which case the best place for break rooms is under stairs and escalators.
Moreover, as we will explain soon at the Effective Transit Alliance, mined stations and bored tunnel require a minimum spacing from the street and from other tunnels – but the proposal includes much more space than necessary, forcing the stations to be deeper, more expensive, and less convenient as it takes a full five minutes to transfer between platforms or to get from the platform to the street. It’s possible to ge even shallower with shoring techniques used in China to reduce tunnel and station depth in complex urban undergrounds.
Proactive and reactive cost control
When the MTA announced cost savings and station size shrinkage in Phase 2, we were excited. But on hindsight, costs in effect fell from $7 billion to $7 billion. The savings were entirely reactive, designed to limit further cost overruns, and are not proactively incorporated into further projects.
No doubt, if a $7.7 billion project is approved against any honest benefit-cost analysis (which is not required in American law), then shrinkage in station footprint and reduction in mezzanine length will be found to be saving money in 2032, and the successor of Lieber, hired from the same pipeline of people whose takes on other countries are “I had a kid who did a semester abroad in Stockholm,” will be proud of reducing costs from $7.7 billion to $7.7 billion.
The path forward must instead incorporate cost savings proactively. There’s a way of building subway stations cost-effectively, and instead of quarter-measures, the MTA should adopt it; we have blueprints from a growing selection of examples, all in places that have avoided the destruction of subway building capacity infecting the entire English-dominant world in the last 25 years. The MTA can even hire people with direct transport official-to-transport official communication with peers at other agencies (for example, through COMET) and with the language skills to read documents produced in lower-cost countries, instead of people whose best skill is giving interviews to softball interviewers and talking about sports.
Pedestrian Observations 
“promised free and fast buses in his successful general election campaign for mayor, so let’s take the $1 billion a year this could cost in forgone revenue and see how to spend it on subway expansion instead”
Unfortunately, you’ve torpedoed your report by going with such a negative, divisive framing.
The details of where the money will come from are unclear. It could be parking revenue. It could be a wealth tax. It could be gambling. That is, without that detail, we don’t know what the revenue can and will be. Could be 200m a year. Could be 5bn a year. At this point in time, there’s no constraint.
So the report should say “we applaud Mamdanis focus on transit, and look to build on his short term relief by also providing a vision for the future”
Instead, it comes off as sour grapes that his policy is popular and looks an attempt to block free busses, in the same manner that Elon Musk promised a hyperloop for 10bn if California canceled HSR.
Which is a shame.
The $1 billion will come from the taxpayer.
Put differently, it will come from all the other programs which could’ve used some or all of that $1 billion.
Which is all to say – it’s perfectly valid to point this out, and to criticize the chosen application. And to argue for better alternatives.
In fact, the framing in Alon’s writing doesn’t come across as aggressive or harsh at all. Rather, you’re coming across as unnecessarily defensive. You’re bristling at any criticism of your preferred politician.
The city has finite resources. How can it do the most with them? That’s what matters. Be happy that other, more serious people are working hard to figure this out. And be disappointed in your political leaders for not valuing this kind of hard work. And be ashamed in your fellow Americans for having become too lazy to monitor the efficacy of their local governments, and being placated by slogans rather than sound process and results.
it’s comical that New York is such a basket case that ‘build more subways’ can be equated with ‘hyperloop’ with a straight face
They aren’t free, but the bus fare cap at £2/ride or £3/ride in the UK is pretty popular even with conservatives.
I am sure conservatives like free buses for the elderly which we have done for ages.
Cheap buses are really all round pretty reasonable
NYC already has a $3/ride fare cap because that’s the base fare. Seniors also already get half priced fares.
Everyone wants the things they use to be cheaper. However there is a cost, and that needs to be paid somehow. I can make transit cheaper by eliminating all then routes that are not very busy, and as that snowballs eliminating even more routes – eventually it will settle out to some really dense/busy corridors where any service will get a lot of riders even without feeders. (Depending on your definition of cheap and the size of your city there may be none in your city – but in places like NYC there are routes that will be busy even without any less busy feeders)
There are only a small amount of people who want to use transit, but are too poor. In rich countries like the US (also most of Europe) poor people who discover transit doesn’t get them where they want to go will figure out how to afford a car. A 15 year old “rust bucket” doesn’t cost that much, and your friends/family will help maintain it to make it even cheaper – this is still vastly more expensive than most transit systems – but if it will get you where you want to go it is worth the expense. If you make transit go to more places you help most poor people even more than making existing transit cheaper.
For the few exceptions that are too poor to afford transit fares, yes you need a program to help them. These people need lots of other programs to help them too.
I think @James S is right though, the message should be framed better. What Alon and others really need to lead with: transit is for the vast majority of people already cheap enough. Making it cheaper won’t help people nearly as much as expanding service. If Transit doesn’t go where I want to go, when I want to go it doesn’t matter how much it costs I won’t use it.
I can’t think of any transit goal that is helped more by free/lower cost transit than by expanding coverage. In the real world we have limited money and we can’t get both, so expanding service anytime we get more money is the better use of it.
You talk a lot of sense in general here. But I think the number of people who use transit in a big city is pretty large.
“Making it cheaper won’t help people nearly as much as expanding service.”
I dont think theres any overlap between the busiest bus routes and the extensions proposed in this plan.
You are mistaken.
“In 2019, the Bronx’s crosstown buses were the busiest in the borough and among the top 10 busiest in the city. The Bx12, the busiest of those crosstown buses, connects Bronxites to subways into Manhattan, Metro-North, and two of the five densest job clusters in the borough. It alone carried 40,000 riders per day in 2019 , making it the second busiest line in the entire city. Our proposed crosstown line would trace the route of the Bx12 and follow along Fordham Road, providing a giant upgrade to transit riders now stuck in traffic.”
You can debate where service should be added with the new money. 2nd avenue subway has been planned for decades, and is talked about a lot; but maybe it isn’t right, or maybe it is taking the wrong route, or something. I don’t know enough about the NYC situation to comment.
Though I would caution people who have other ideas to not let perfect be the enemy of good. Sometimes the best think to do is support a project that is good but not the best, and then advocate to follow the on with the best project (whatever it is). NYC should get shovels in the ground soon, and complete the project fast.
To me the important part is to have something to show for this large $$$ investment soon. Building subways takes time, but I want to see one new station opened by the end of 2027.
I certainly agree that Alon and their friends are often bad at playing politics. That’s basically 90% of my disagreements.
I would have thought a surface station could be built cheaply.
This is a failure of imagination.
In the real world, public sentiment matters and billions of dollars cannot simply be shifted around on the excel spreadsheet in accordance with the findings of economic rationalists. In the real world, the reason we can’t get both is not because of “limited money” but rather because every single time someone suggests to get both, they are shouted down. Ironically, the people shouting it down are the people who believe the most in unlimited money. For all that Alon Levy is doing excellent work on identifying cost overruns the entire thrust of their argument is and always has been about spending more money and never about where the money is actually coming from. It’s an implicit assertion in this latest report and every single other report that the money will be there and all they and we have to do is identify the most efficient ways to spend it. They aren’t alone in this, of course; a cursory jaunt through the top search results in the weird world of urbanist content creators reveals a seemingly never-ending collection of fantasy maps and fantasy proposals and fantasies of a better world in which unlimited money can be pulled from somewhere or something else and put to use on making all of our wildest dreams come true. I don’t agree. As you say, the real world does not work this way.
In the real world, the only way to actually build and operate a sustainable transit system in perpetuity is to properly capture the economic value generated by the existence of that transit system as its primary source of funding. In the real world, the idea that transit should pay for itself is correct but this idea has been tainted by its unbreakable association to the farebox which has never and will never be able to actually fund transit and the only way out of this trap is to actually eliminate the farebox and allow transit to pay for itself through increased property taxes levied against the real estate value generated by the existence of the subway that enables those units to be built. Alon Levy’s report estimates 167,064 units of new housing enabled by the plan, and every single one of those units should be assessed $5985.73 in an annual transit value recapture tax to add up to the $1 billion over 40 years which funded the plan that enabled their creation.
In the real world, raising taxes is deeply unpopular, especially when it’s done in ways that probably result in rent hikes. However, it’s not impossible, and especially not when the “payoff” of those increased taxes is immediately visible and obvious. Even if we put shovels in the dirt tomorrow morning, it’d be decades before we saw the completion of “A Better Billion.” But if we shut the fareboxes off tomorrow morning? Everyone sees that, immediately. That’s valuable. Certainly, I’ve accepted that it’s no more achievable than any of the crayon drawings of all the new subways we “coulda/shoulda/woulda” had. But just like wide swaths of urbanism content creators can’t help themselves but to draw maps with crayons, I just can’t seem to help myself but to keep coming back to this fight. I picked this internet handle ironically, because it’s funny to me that my position is the more conservative one when it is centered on the conservative’s greatest enemy – “free rides.” And, yet…
In the real world, we should absolutely be working towards a “free” service now that will enable better services later instead of throwing away every attempt to get a short-term win because it’s not the most efficient possible use of money that only becomes limited when it is spent on things we personally don’t like.
The Japanese railways do pay for themselves with fare revenue, as do most of the high speed operators worldwide, as does Anglia in Britain (and much/all of the London commuter railways pre-Covid)
Why not tax the employers benefiting from having employees?
Exactly like:
London applied the same approach to help fund the CrossRail. Hong Kong MTRC earns a considerable permanent revenue from developments around its (new) stations, enough to fund about 50% of capital costs of new construction.
$6000/yr is a huge rent increase in the outer boroughs of NYC, looking at per borough averages. Even in Manhattan the average rent seems to be $4200/mo so that’s about a 12% increase in rent or 24% in Bronx (lowest average rent at $2100). I do think a transit value tax is a good idea, but that amount is extremely high for a flat tax.
There are other authors. Please give credit where credit is due.
The mayor ran on a pledge to reduce farebox recovery by about $1B/yr. In other words, he wants to spend $1B/yr more on transit than current policy.
The report presents a hypothetical of $1B/yr spent on subway expansion instead of bus fare reduction, and what the effects of that would be.
There is no “unlimited money being pulled from somewhere.” This is a hypothetical using a proposed budget allocation for another use. To the authors’ credit, they don’t even propose using the entire allocation — they propose a combination of subway expansion and compliance with an existing ADA consent decree, a currently unfunded mandate.
It’s telling that the criticisms in these comment threads reflect a surface-level understanding of the report, strongly implying they skimmed it, confirmed their priors, and bailed.
Smart politics does not always equal smart policy. Nevertheless, there may be a compromise here where the city and the state negotiate for fare reductions or all-door boarding or a number of other service improvements or affordability measures in exchange for a smaller subway expansion in lieu of “all buses free all the time,” which provides a balance of a short-term political win popular with voters and a long-term investment in transit infrastructure which extends services to transit deserts and improves the quality of life of the persons living in those areas.
But in order to compromise, you must first have an opposing, differentiated proposal – or you’re negotiating with yourself.
A 40 year program to add 41 miles of subway isn’t wild. The report says it’s expansive and audacious. For the United States, that’s true–because we don’t know how to build anymore. In the global context, it’s modest, and achievable.
In fact, some of the assumptions in the report, I’d argue, are overly conservative:
“potential to add 167,064 units of new housing around the 64 new stations in our program with no additional upzoning required”
Personally, I think it’s more likely that upzoning happens before the report’s assumed FTA New Starts matches. The current administration is hard at work illegally impounding programmed funds for existing projects, let alone prepared to obey future appropriations for states and cities that voted for someone else. Some might argue that it’s a 40 year time horizon, which allows for a lot of political turnover, and that’s true. But I would argue over the next 40 years we’re also likely to see additional demands on federal spending priorities due to climate change, both reactive and preventative; and Greater New York is especially vulnerable.
It’s the result of dividing $1 billion by the number of units proposed. The actual numbers are almost certainly lower per resident. (All of those buildings are housing units and nothing else? The future landlords are allowed to pass 100% of the new tax down directly into rent?) However, even if they’re not:
I think capital expenditure should be funded by flat taxes with expiration dates, so in this case, because the plan is 40 years long and designed to utilize $1 billion per year, that turns into raising $1 billion per year in a flat tax on the development. The YIMBY arguments about the shiny new luxury housing resulting in the more affordable legacy units “trickling down” are being made by me to cut in the other direction: if someone lives in a brand new building on a brand new subway line I want them to pay the full cost of that even if it’s 24% more than the average long-time resident of the Bronx is paying for their old build studio near the 1. If it turns out that nobody can afford to move into the new building because of this, luckily, it’s a tax on the property so the developer is still paying it and now strongly incentivized to start dropping the rent until it’s affordable again.
Operational expenses should be funded through the same kind of thing except across the entire city and indexed to the actual amount spent. What’s that look like? Well, it looks a lot like an unachievable fantasy, but as the next post down says, I need to have an opposing proposal before I can negotiate and so I’m starting with these simple points:
Ultimately, I believe in a balanced budget. I believe that everyone has to make some real hard choices to actually balance the budget. I think “free” fares are an excellent way of adding some sugar to the medicine we have to start taking, and as I said, I can’t help myself but to keep getting drawn back in to this fight.
Incorrect. The mayor ran on a pledge to make buses free. We don’t actually know how much it would cost. We can project hypothetical fare revenue but that has zero bearing on what the actual cost of the program will be both because you can’t spend a revenue stream that doesn’t exist and because the actual cost of driving a bus only cares about a single occupant of that vehicle: the driver.
That’s my point. That has always been my point. How much is the MTA currently spending on its bus operations year over year, and what is the difference between that number and how much the MTA currently receives in operational subsidies for the same? We should figure out how to levy a tax that bridges the gap between those two numbers and we should sell the public on the institution of that tax by saying “in exchange for this, the buses are now free forever.”
There are plenty of arguments for and against this. We could all be having a rational discussion around those arguments, but we’re not, because a deliberate choice was made to once again see the words “free [transit],” and then write a report that says and I quote “Free buses, like free lunches, aren’t free” before laying out a case for system expansion again, as though the money can simply be moved from box to box on an excel spreadsheet. (I say again: it can’t.)
Sorry, was this supposed to be a gotcha? Did you expect me to feel some kind of shame? Perhaps I was supposed to be cowed into engaging in good faith with this report’s bad faith arguments? No, you’re absolutely right, I confirmed that the report has a single section devoted to a patronizing explanation that free does indeed mean it was paid for some other way than through fares and then bailed. See point number two on my simple two point list above: I don’t really care what $1 billion a year over 40 years hypothetically buys beyond asserting that I’m happy to have a discussion about it if you want to put a 40-year flat tax on all those brand new housing units to pay for the plan. Otherwise, the argument shouldn’t be about what uses we can invent for a pile of hypothetical money to spend.
The pledge on the table is not to expand the subway. It’s to make buses free. Those are two separate arguments and it isn’t me who is trying to weld them together, it’s everybody else. I’m not the one jumping into every comment thread across all of urbanism content creation insinuating that the crayon maps are cute but actually check out my plan to overhaul how transit is bought and paid for instead. In fact, I’m only ever bringing up free fares second after somebody like Alon Levy the author and owner of this very website has first cast a lateral spending plan in direct opposition to a proposal for transit fare reduction instead.
And just as a PS: we are so far removed from the global context that it genuinely terrifies me at this point. This isn’t the right forum for addressing those kinds of topics, though, except to say that you are correct but it doesn’t matter because we are living in the United States where averaging even one mile of new subway over 40 years is audacious and wild.
The report has two estimates and splits the difference.
Okay. I guess we’re done.
Okay, ten cents a month on cable/satelite TV bills across the country. Because everybody watches cable news and even more people watch the talk shows based in Manhattan. And the rest of the media. How about whatever it is they do on “Wall Street” – a quarter of a mil on stock trades sounds good to me. Or whatever they are doing in Silicon Alley.
You do understand that in 40 years there will be assets that have worn out and need to be replaced.
Why does it have to be a tax on new housing units? Why isn’t it a tax on new office cubicles?
> housing units and nothing else
Many buildings likely would be, my limited experience of NYC outer boroughs is that other than directly on (within a block) commercial strips, retail is rare and when present not exactly high margin.
> allowed to pass 100% of the new tax down
Why wouldn’t they be? How would you enforce this? If you require some of the housing to be affordable, then that increases the rent of the other units even more. At which point people are probably going to choose higher amenity areas than furthest Queens (looking at that F extension on Google Maps, basically zero amenities), for the same price.
> start dropping the rent
My understanding of NYC from youtube is that banks do not like this, hence the high commercial vacancy rates. If this happens with regularity, the developers won’t be able to get loans to build.
I don’t think you can add 167,064 units of new housing without also adding a non-trivial amount of grocery stores to support them, at the very least. I’d further argue that a new subway line is the perfect place to create a new commercial or entertainment strip and that a diversity of land usage along with reasons to go outside are a key component of healthy neighborhoods and healthy cities. I would much rather see even mediocre national chain retail lining the street then an uninterrupted strip of “luxury” complexes with stupid names like “1 Yonkers” but the o is replaced with an at symbol and there’s absolutely no reason to ever set foot in that area unless you live exactly there.
Alternatively, if such places are the only thing allowed to come into existence, then I want to make sure that the cost of those buildings falls on the people building and occupying them and not the city as a whole.
Developers being allowed to get away with something isn’t always or only a question of legality. It’s also a question of public tolerance. If nobody moves into “1 Y-atsymbol-nkers” because the rent is too damn high and the banks stop lending so that eventually those kinds of buildings stop being built, that’s a good thing, because the market will eventually correct into building livable buildings instead since there will never not be a need for more homes. The only question is whether we have to experience another historic market crash on our way there first.
Okay, I guess that isn’t entirely fair. The other question is whether we collectively can actually acknowledge what the problems are and be willing to put the work in to fix them even if it means acknowledging that the “everyone” in “everyone is going to need to make some hard choices if we want to make it out of this mess” chiefly means the developers and the banks and everyone else who got out of 2008 scot-free.
Personally, I think we should get serious about regulating, and put up some actual guard rails on the housing market. I think affordable housing requirements are generally a good thing and that we should generally be doing more to support individuals seeking housing at all levels beyond just saying build more at any cost and hope affordable housing trickles down as a result. But, since that’s another unattainable fantasy, I have to settle for arguing that if we can’t get anything other than fake-luxury built then we should at least make sure those who are the most responsible pay for it.
Which is where they are proposing to build their fantasies. Tear down the single story commercial it can be replaced with three story with retail on the ground floor and apartments above. Like it’s in in denser parts of the same outer boroughs. The kind of thing they are did in places hipsters infested a decade or two ago.
And yet people, without consulting with you, live there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residences_of_Donald_Trump#Queens
…short walk to the current end of the line.
I’m glad the report pointed out the high cost of owning and operating a car as a point of comparison ($12,296 annually). That has to be a lowball for New York City though, I’d imagine. Insurance costs more for city drivers. And parking! Especially for Manhattanites – it’s got to run into hundreds per month on average. I’m off to see if I can find stats by locality…. it’s disheartening, what we learn to live with.
In any case an even higher cost of car ownership only serves to reinforce the report’s conclusions, and hopefully, given the political relevance of affordability, this report gains traction among policymakers. Great work!
Just clicking through – you can lease a 2026 Toyota Crown for under $500/month- call it $6000/year. If your record is good you can get insurance for $3000/year (I don’t live in NYC so it is hard to get real numbers – I just picked my insurance and rounded way up). $125/month in parking and $125 in gas – leaving $296 for maintenance – which on a new car is only oil changes). Seems like reasonable numbers. That is a new car, the average car is 12 years old and so the payments are much less (maintenance is somewhat more, but not as much as payments, and insurance is also less). Of course I picked a cheaper Toyota, luxury cars will be a lot more.
The point remains, anyone with a car is not helped much by free transit – if transit costs were the issue they wouldn’t afford a car. Of course every little bit helps for the individual, but if people can get rid of 100k cars instead that is overall more money saved for the family. Most people live in a family situation with a car per person, so we don’t even have to say get rid of all cars, just get rid of one car and you still keep the truck to tow the boat (or whatever it is people think they need a car for).
As a life long New Yorker , who has never owned a car, I can respectfully tell you that no one in Manhattan has $125/month parking anywhere close to their home.
Alon:
Given the estimated passenger loads projected, do the stations as you propose them have sufficient capacity to enable decent circulation (B or better for at least 23 hours of the 24, and no worse than C in that other hour)?
Having taught us to think this way in your evaluation of Penn Station platforms, can you quantify the argument here by applying the same paradigm?
A tonne of money could probably be saved by closing the subway late night like other cities and doing night buses instead.
I doubt that.
NYC has an unusually large number of night workers.
Each bus needs an operator and goes much more slowly than a subway, even at night. According to the 2024 NYC Transit Profile in the FTA National Transit Database, the average operating expense for a bus is $41.77 per vehicle mile. The average operating expense for a subway car (typically with both an operator and a conductor) is $41.77 per vehicle mile. So single person or fully automated, 2-5 car subway trains appear to be more productive than night buses. Of course there are other cost factors for each and costs to shut down and reopen the subway system.
Most riders pay a fare to ride the subway. Would the night bus be free?
SORRY for my error. Average subway car operating expense is $18.63, ~44% of that for a bus.
Why on earth does a bus cost $45/mile to run?
Good question. It looks like low speed and labor costs. The difference between operating expense per mile and per hour indicates that average bus speed is 7 mph. (Only 98 miles in 14 hours). Labor is 72.5% of operating expense over the entire agency. With 1 employee per vehicle on a bus, I’d guess that the labor cost is a higher % of OE.
Over $300/hour to run a bus is still awfully expensive.
Also is the subway cost per train or per train carriage?
There aren’t enough East River road crossings compared to subway crossings.
This isn’t really relevant at night when there’s no traffic congestion on the roads.
People would need to learn entirely different night bus networks that are very different from the subway network and there will have to be significant diversions just to get back home at night.
We have google and Apple Maps now.
Where’s Adirondacker when needed (for a bit of well aimed scorn …).
The Noctilien night bus service in Paris/Ile de France substitutes for the RER and follows the same route stopping at the RER stations. Only every 30 minutes and I suppose slower to get to those distant banlieus but still pretty efficient in the early hours.
Looked up the average speeds for London.
The overall average speed in the period 9 (4 weeks commencing the 8th November) was 8.92mph – or 8.86mph within the London boundary.
The overall average speed of a bus with an ‘N’ night prefix was 13.04mph in the same period. Honestly I would have expected it to be quicker than that but it is still 46% quicker than the whole day average.
Buses can go “anywhere”. They could arrange the night buses to use the bus stops at the entrances to the corresponding subway stations. The way they do now when a line gets bustituted. Whether not they want to run buses is different question.
Why would busses at night be cheaper? Honest question. I thought busses would have higher operating costs in just about any condition. Especial when automation is considered.
There are a lot of “it depends”.
Even if buses are more expensive, you need to close the track once in a while to do maintenance. NYC because they are running 24×7 without a good plan to close small sections of track while the rest still runs is way behind on maintenance and this is increasing costs. Modern 24×7 subways are designed so that any one section can be closed and maintenance can happen – when NYC designed the system in the 1920s it was the workers fault if they tripped and fell on the in-use track, today we don’t allow that accident to be possible, but they often don’t have room for the needed fences.
Subways are cheap per passenger when there are a lot of passengers. However the cost to run a subway train is generally more than the cost to run a bus (more subway cars to break). Overnight the bus can be cheaper when you consider all the costs – cleaning the stations for example. (full automation likely changes this, but that is a different issue)
In general I would prefer that everyone run the subway 24×7. New subways should be designed for this upfront – in many cases the extra cost isn’t much, if it is you can figure that out in the design phase and have a meaningful discussion on trade offs. For existing systems though we need to consider all the trade offs – there are often things I want even more than 24×7 subways but until we are talking about a specific case we can’t know all the trade offs or make a decision on how they should apply.
Isn’t the only 24 hour modern metro system Copenhagen?
Thanks, Alon,
For this article and your contributions to the “A Better Billion” report. Your cost estimates are valuable standards. They are not being ignored.
Although Janno Lieber and the MTA have a pro-transit state governor and currently have favorable state funding, life is not easy for them. They are dealing with a long-term failure to invest in MTA maintenance and new infrastructure. The MTA’s funding security is better than that of many US transit systems, but quite unpredictable in the long term. A significant share of the public believes that railroads and transit should be fully funded by fare income. There is no broad public and political support for a long-term commitment to investment in rail and transit infrastructure. They have been under pressure to privatize and minimize pension costs (which limits the ability to build a proper in-house engineering group), have to deal with politically strong unions, and currently are not viewed favorably for federal funding.
Privatize is a problem, but pensions should not be. Rearward compensation dangles a sword over employees heads “don’t rock the boat, or we’ll cut you out of your pension”, but the whole point of new, more empowered, white-collar civil service is to shake things up.
I am not fond to the extent that US retirement income is outsourced to the stock market, but having something that is easy to take from one job to the next is crucial here.
I think this is a really good point.
I don’t think people value it as much as pay either.
Pensions vest. After five years for NY state pensions.
I have a question about contingency costs.
When delivering a project, month to month, you’re paying for goods and services, until the project’s complete and begins operations. Contingency represents a budget allocation which gets drawn down if (when) those payments exceed their corresponding line items in the budget, right?
In other words, it’s management reserve which gets deducted if the estimate at complete exceeds the budget at complete, mitigating the financial risk of labor and material cost volatility.
So in your examination of project accounts, is the contingency always exhausted by actual spend, or is there money left over sometimes? What are the budgeting rules for the MTA – does unspent money go back into a general fund? Conversely, when a project’s costs exceed even the budget plus contingency, where does the money come from? A supplemental appropriation? A line of credit?
I guess what I’m really asking is, how often is the contingency real and how much does it differ from the estimating phase?
I’d imagine there’s a strong incentive with underrunning projects to spend the remaining budget such that future appropriations will not be decreased, even if an underrun might make an appropriation for future projects more likely (especially if the project manager’s performance metric is how much money they spent versus schedule and technical performance). The incentives are opposite for the project manager versus the appropriator.
Great questions, I mostly don’t know.
However I want to point out that when a project is under budget there is no incentive to save money. I know of a project where they were getting close to budget and so spent an engineers-week trying to decide if a $.05 washer could be substitute for a $.10 – if budgets were unlimited they would have used the $.10 washer, but they asked this question because it would save money long term. (budgets are weird in industry, I wouldn’t expect the company makes enough product to make up for the engineering cost, but that is a different question)
Point is that in order to run under budget there needs to be a focus on saying under budget the entire project. If the budget is thought reasonable then those who could save money won’t, and that leaves those who realize they have to spend more. If your engineers decide the cement it too think they won’t redesign to use less of it, but if they decide it is too thin for safety they will demand more because there is no choice – and soon your budget is gone.
Hi, are you including the stub past broadway in your length calculations? I see that the AECOM study does seem to include it. That would be great for a hypothetical Bergenline extension to NJ, but we may have to wait until 2100 for that…
On a related note, something I saw elsewhere was the thought of a station to link up to Penn Access West; this seems excessive to me, but what about a travelator/ped connection? Distance is maybe 1.5 Manhattan long blocks.
People along the Hudson Line who want to change to the Second Ave line will be able to change to the Second Ave line at the station at 125th and Park. Like people along the Harlem and New Haven Lines will be able to do. Giving them a second way to connect to the subway that crosses 125 th St. isn’t a high priority. Because they will be able to do that.
Assuming Penn Station Access for the Hudson Line gets a 125th Street Station – they don’t use the existing one much – and assuming the Second Ave subway get extended to Broadway for some reason – the east end of the platform could be at Broadway which means it would extend quite far to the west.
It’s never going to go to New Jersey. There are other tunnels that would get much more use.
It’s not as hilarious as previous iterations.
Arithmetic is a cruel cruel mistress. You can’t have two trains in the same place at the same time. Or two people in the same seat. Unless they are very friendly. Send trains thither the ones that now go yon no longer have anywhere to go. Or aren’t where there is demand. There are places with…. lack of demand…
…. just because someone proposed sending trains somewhere a century ago doesn’t mean its a good idea today. Or that someone else a generation later didn’t make provisions for something similar. This all takes the box of crayons with 24 colors. 48 colors would likely be better because some of the froth could be satisfied by the LIRR. It’s all going to integrate with sending the LIRR to Wall Street and New Jersey. Isn’t it?
Hello!
I’ve gone through the entire A Better Billion plan, and while I do have to compliment it for the premise, for being clean and easy to understand, and for being more practical than the usual “crayon” fantasy maps or historic expansion plans, I don’t really think I agree with the central idea of it all. I think even this blog post itself shows some problems in the otherwise well thought out plan; namely, asking the MTA to simply maintain the status quo is already a tall order.
Mamdani’s idea of free buses has broad voter support, will provide immediately tangible benefits to most New Yorkers, and can be done within Mamdani’s term. In contrast, this plan is ambitious but will take years to show results (we’ve only just gotten the ball rolling on something like QueensLink and crosstown 2nd Ave Subway), will require consistent cooperation and efficiency if we don’t want delays to stack (meaning it’s susceptible to the usual NY area transit project nonsense), and might not be a politically feasible pivot. Meaning, it’s an interesting idea piece, but I think its utility stops there.
The Long Island Expressway line should go through 60th Street tunnel, not the 63rd Street tunnel.
Shift one thing one way, something else bulges somewhere else and it ….. needs more tunnels. Four tracks on Second Ave would solve lots of problems. Even with that, shifting things one way still makes them bulge somewhere else.
The serpentine route of the Q train, West Side to East Side to West Side to East Side is very useful. It diverts people. Creating capacity, other places, for other people. Working on the assumption that the Q train will be using half of the capacity, on Second Ave, north of 63rd Street, today’s E train could go down Second Ave., south of 63rd Street, without building anything in Queens.
Q train using half the capacity on Second Ave. implies it’s using half the capacity of the express tracks on Broadway. The fantasy needs a place to turn Not-Second-Ave Broadway trains around, north of 57th St. and 7th Ave. Also implies that all of the Broadway locals go through the 60th Street tunnel to Queens. Everybody thinks trains to the airport are a FaBulOus idea. Apparently for other people because they don’t use them. LaGuardia doesn’t need all of the Broadway locals. You can almost spit into Sunnyside Yards from an Astoria bound train. A viaduct over Sunnyside Yards would be a lot cheaper than a tunnel. The new line should use 60th Street.
….convert the Astoria line to an automated people mover to LaGuardia – the subway isn’t going to stop at all the terminals. A people mover could. In addition to shuttling people between terminals etc. Two new lines could be squeezed out of the 60th Street tunnel.
… why doesn’t the line continue to Flushing and beyond? One of the “Second System” proposals was to send it all the way out to Bayside. With peak direction expresses because the Astoria line has three tracks.
I’ve asked other people to look at this fantasy. Questions, so many questions. A cynic observed that if there are Second Ave trains going to the Queens Blvd line and Broadway trains going to a new line there isn’t any reason to extend trains along Hillside Ave because there won’t be any. I assured her there is likely complicated handwaving to explain how the tunnel can have a Second Ave train, a Sixth Ave train and a Broadway train. We both agreed it would be likely be easier to send a Broadway train through the tunnel they already use to get to Queens, to get to Queens. We speculated that perhaps the Second Ave. train would be going to Hillside Ave. Then there is no reason to extend the E train. And perhaps that’s the reason for the obsession with adding the M train to Howard Beach. Giving people on Queens Blvd a convoluted way to get to JFK. Instead of using the E train to Jamaica. And then we both agreed, again, it would be likely be easier to send a Broadway train through the tunnel they already use to get to Queens, to get to Queens. There are other questions, so so many questions.
Questions, so many questions.
The main ones for the IBX:
We just want to check a few things. It can’t run over the Hell Gate Bridge because there is too much freight. Which will be using the same right of way in Queens. Brooklyn too. We speculate it’s that the Heisenberg compensaters only work at ground level. Or do giant drones swoop down, on the Queens side and fly the cars to their sidings? Why couldn’t they snatch the cars up, up in the Bronx?. Snatching them up in Jersey City would be quite useful too. I’m digressing. Questions, so many questions. The Hell Gate Bridge is sturdy enough that in the 1920s that there were serious proposals to use it instead of building the Triboro/RFK bridge. With references, to the proposals, in the Wikipedia article about the bridge. If you wanted to run the IBX to the Bronx a deck could be added to the Hell Gate Bridge. You still have the problem of freight trains wanting to get places, on Long Island, but the bridge isn’t the problem. Once it gets to the Bronx there isn’t anywhere for it to go, so whether or not going to the Bronx is a good idea is a different question. So many questions. The other main question is why does it run west of 62nd St and New Utrecht Ave., in Brooklyn? Where passengers could change to and from …. whatever is running on the West End line or the Sea Beach line. Today’s D train or N train. And why does it go all the way to the shore. Where there is a sewage treatment plant. Questions, so many questions. Someone then recalled the astoundingly stupid proposal from the Regional Plan Association to run Staten Island trains to the end of the Triboro line where people could change trains so they could go one or two stops to change trains again. Instead of just sending the Triboro to Staten Island and all the way to Tottenville. Though Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island would be Quadboro. Extend it a few blocks into Manhattan, it would be the All Boro.
The thing connecting Pelham Bay to the Sputyen Duyvil:
The Cross Bronx is the highway I-95 uses to … cross the Bronx… from Manhattan to the Bruckner spaghetti bowl interchange. Call it the Bronx Crosstown. Bronx Light Rail? The Bee-El-Are? While Tremont Ave likely could use something speedier than a local bus many many many people will imagine that something called the Cross Bronx is either on the highway or perhaps on Tremont. If there are going to be tunnels across the ridges of the West Bronx sending the train down Fordham Road instead of up Kingsbridge Road. means it could connect to Metro North’s Hudson Line at University Heights, go across the University Heights Bridge to Manhattan connecting to the 1 train at 207th St. and 10th Ave. and the A train at 207th and Broadway. And serve Bronx Community College in….. University Heights…. instead of Target in Marble Hill. Whether it goes to Marble Hill or Inwood it could be the BiBoro. Duoborough? Manhattan-Bronx Express or Em-Bee-Ecks? Though that’s what we get for allowing a yokel from Buffalo to name things. The rail line formerly known as Triboro isn’t an express because the trains make all the stops all the time. It’s a local. Well it’s not a local either because there are no expresses skipping stops. So will the one going across Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway.
6 to Co-op City:
Keep in mind that Co-Op City is on poorly consolidated former landfill. It’s sinking. It isn’t going to be as cheap as you think it can be.The pilings would have to go all the way down to bedrock. Meh. there are there still going to be buses, lots and lots of buses, circulating in Co-op City. Including circulation to the stations for Metro North and the Bronx Crosstown. And to the Bartow Ave subway stop. It’s quite a hike from most of Co-op City to western end of Bartow Ave at Baychester Ave. Scurrying along the Hutchinson River Parkway to eastern end Bartow Ave. is equally Meh as flying over the Hutch to get to the western end of Bartow. And cheaper because it doesn’t have to fly over the Hutch. Meh. Circulating Crosstown street cars along Co-op City Blvd and Baychester Ave. might be a better option. At least the people in Co-Op city who work at the hospitals, Fordham University and Bronx Community have a one seat ride……. Very much like the current Bx12-SBS route…. Or the Bx23 to get to the 6. I grow weary of consulting Co-op City bus schedules. Meh, the buses will still be running. It might be nice. Someday. Perhaps. And spend extra money to drag it all the way to the center of Co-Op City so more people are withing walking distance.
E extension and 7 extension.
Use the crayons on the “commuter” map. People in Eastern Queens can have express rides between the Van Wyck Expressway and the East River. Allowing people between the Van Wyck and the East River to use the trains that do stop. The Long Island Expressway line goes someplace where there aren’t LIRR tracks, that can give people an express ride. That might be useful. “Wall Street” trains shift people from Midtown by using existing, in use railroad stations, for new trains that flit along Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn. Without stopping every 20 blocks because there are other trains that already do that. People in Nassau County get to express through most of Queens. Lots of changing trains in Jamaica. Flushing too if you work it right.
Flushing terminal:
I’ll use small words. Express fast. Local slower.
Mindlessly extending it so it can have a “better” terminal isn’t a good reason to do it. I understand you have difficulty with local and express. It’s okay they terminate/originate some local trains at Willets Point. It means the thundering herds of bus passengers using Flushing aren’t on the train. People using the local stations can get on one. Because people headed to Flushing understand that the following express gets to Flushing before the local they are NOT getting on. Even people headed to Willets Point. Apparently the MTA has perfected their Heisenberg compensaters because, according to the schedule, some westbound/northbound local and express trains arrive at the same time in Flushing. ….it’s probably just rounding. To encourage people to take the express. Express fast. Local slower. Work it right people in Flushing can have express rides to Midtown and Wall Street. And less express-y service on the Flushing line.
Alon, any thoughts about LA billions? The Sepulveda Pass tunnel — 13 miles, at $2 billion per mile.
Connecting the Second Ave to the Lexington Ave lines and Metro North on 125th St. is progressing. Gateway plods along. Extending the Second Ave subway to Brooklyn will serve more people than any of the other projects. Working on the assumption that, south of 63rd, there will be a Second Ave. train and a train from Queens, it makes everything else … easier… It should be a higher if not the highest priority project.
There are four tracks of underutilized subway tracks west of Delancey St. and Essex St. That go down Center St. to the three island platforms and side platform on Chambers St. One set the J/Z trains use. The other set, are so underutilized that they are abandoned. That connect to Brooklyn via the tunnel the R train currently uses. Use those. From Delancey St. Rehabilitating existing tunnels, stations etc is cheaper that digging holes for new ones.
Everybody has to take a deep breath and realize that the today’s problems are not “shifting people from the trolley cars and elevated trains rumbling over the Brooklyn Bridge where they connect with elevated trains rumbling up and down Second and Third Ave.” A problem what are now the Lexington Ave lines didn’t solve. At the … Brooklyn Bridge …. stop. They then built the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges so diverted trains could rumble over them and go to the three island platforms and side platform at Chambers St. Where people could change to the Lexington Ave line, Second and Third Ave Els. In the past predecessors of the J train went to Downtown Brooklyn and beyond using the tunnel the R train uses today.
The tunnel connects to the local tracks of the Fourth Ave lines. Without participating in the traffic over the Manhattan Bridge. All for “free”. The R train wouldn’t be able to go to Brooklyn but there are alternatives for getting to Broadway and Cortlandt St. Rehabilitating existing tunnels, stations etc is cheaper that digging holes for new ones.
When they were imagining the IND and the Second System they were deeply concerned that people get out in the fresh air and sunshine. They were carving out parks. Conveniently where there were going to be trains. Real soon. They tore down whole blocks of tenements between Chrystie St. and Forsyth St. south of Houston. All the way down to Canal St. For four tracks of Second Ave. subway. And tore down the tenements on the eastern side of Allen St. Which would allow trains from First Ave. to continue south. …. like the Second Ave Elevated did. Using First Ave, today, south of 42nd, means they have enough space to use the station at Bowery and the abandoned tracks all the way to Chambers. Rehabilitating existing tunnels, stations etc is cheaper that digging holes for new ones. First Ave. is a block closer to the hospitals, Peter Cooper Village, Stuyvesant Town and Ave A through Ave D than Second Ave. If you insist that serving the bodegas on Second Ave. is more useful than the hospitals there are two abandoned tracks on Canal, that connect to the three island platforms that could be used. Rehabilitating existing tunnels, stations etc is cheaper that digging holes for new ones.
The tunnel the R train currently uses, the one the Second Ave trains could use, connects to the Fourth Ave Local tracks. It is….unimaginative… to send all of them to the West End Line. It will …greatly annoy… people on the West End Line. It will incense people at 45th St. and 53rd St. They will be livid, outraged. Express trains change to the local tracks north of 36th St. Local tracks that will be full of Second Ave trains. Which means an express can’t change over to the local tracks. They won’t have any service. Greatly incensed. Makes me wonder if they will make the torches or just buy Tiki torches. People in Bay Ridge will be delighted to have the D train. Or…… half of Second Ave. trains could go to the West End, along with the D and half of them could go to Bay Ridge. Or to the Sea Beach and the IBX could go to Bay Ridge instead of to the sewage treatment plant. Sumptin more …. creative…. than sending them all to the West End Line. Which would suspend service to 45th St. and 53rd. The people mourning the closure of 45th St. can make the torches and the people unable to use 53rd can gather the pitchforks? They are going to have to walk to 36th St. And get off at MetroTech? It can’t be unmodified Tiki torches because only cardboard tubes are allowed in New York. The bamboo and metal fuel bottle would probably be frowned on too. I suppose they could wedge a roll of kerosene soaked toilet paper on the end of the tube. I digress. Mindless sending passenger trains places without considering the passengers is likely to get them pissed off.
Or… with a short tunnel in Downtown Brooklyn, it could connect to the Fulton Line, today’s A and C, which is underutilized. And the Culver, today’s F and G., which is also underutilized. While they were carving out parks they were installing trackways over the IND. There’s one on Utica. For a Second System line that will never come. Rumors are that Nostrand was going to be converted to Second System too. Because by the time they are imagining many different things for the Second System they are trying to relieve the IRT. The Second Ave train could go down Utica, from Fulton Street… which relieves the IRT. On Eastern Parkway. Another short tunnel near the Fort Hamilton Parkway station on the Culver to the West End means it could divert the West End trains out of Dekalb. Sumptin’ more …. creative…. People in Brooklyn can fight it out in the 2030s. Be more imaginative.
Using the money saved by not digging tunnels in Manhattan. Because rehabilitating existing tunnels, stations etc is cheaper that digging holes for new ones.
Yippee! You have to decide which it is, like them or not-like them, because you didn’t like what print media has to say in this one