I haven’t mentioned the famous MTA “job actions” in which motormen deliberately held trains back and vandalized the schedules and made millions late for work when it suited their purposes during negotiations. In one case it was done simply in response to negative news coverage in the media.

This obsession with light rail is just one more effort to destroy faith in the integrity of the public institution even as they insist the Goverment is the Community, not, as Martin Buber said, a community of communities.

And you saw this narcissicism and inflexibility in Mayor Bloomberg’s truly bizarre attempt to run the Marathan.

1. To deal with the high volume of traffic, we could connect several busses together, to form chains.

2. We could remove the costs of maintaining batteries by providing a continuous power supply along each bus route, in the form of a powered rail.

3. Since the busses will be following fixed routes, we could increase efficiency by installing steel guides for the busses to follow, so they always take an optimal path along their routes.

4. Even more efficiently, we could replace the rubber tires on the busses with low-friction polished steel wheels. They could run along the tops of the steel guiderails.

These are such obvious improvements, I’m surprised no one has thought of them before!

Privatization obviously has the potential to greatly reduce costs and improve service, but privatization done wrong can be a squandered opportunity, as the history of post-Soviet Russia shows. It would need to be done in a way that enhances market competition, benefits the public, and doesn’t result in a giveaway to the politically connected.

Here’s a novel possibility — sell off the individual subway cars to independent operators, limited to ownership of one car per operator, and require them each to operate on a set schedule fixed by a management company contracted for that purpose.

Let each operator enhance, decorate, etc., their individual cars as they chose, and charge whatever fares they desired while requiring them to contribute a set amount to the management company sufficient to cover maintenance costs.

If you were waiting in the subway and didn’t like the prices being charged by one car, or thought it was too dirty or shabby or whatever, you’d just wait for the next one to come along. There would be a set schedule, so you could plan to arrive at the right time to catch the cheap or luxury car of your choice. Strictly prohibit any price collusion between car operators, and penalize them for failing to keep on schedule or for having safety violations that result in actual harm.

Free market competition would keep prices low and service innovative. Car operators on certain lines at certain times of day might offer free onboard entertainment, food and beverage service, historian guides, etc. The variety of options sure to sprout up in such a system would offer something for everyone and make it fun and exciting to ride the subway.

Hint: It’s a proven fact that rubber on pavement is less energy efficient than steel on steel. The tradeoff of course is maintenance cost (and the way steel rusts when a storm surge brings seawater into the tunnels).

But I bet if we actually run the numbers, it’s a tossup between electric busses and steel-on-steel electric subway trains.

Oh, and battery tech isn’t quite there yet to free the electric busses from some form of power- be it “third rail” delivered or overhead line delivered or something else.

Also, I can’t imagine that pulling out all the rails from the tunnels and paving the tunnels for buses will be any cheaper than fixing the limited portion of the underground that was damaged by water.

@Jaime

After a long hard day at work, the pedicab drivers could refresh themselves with a nice 31.9oz glass of soda…