Group 5: Urban Infrastructure: Transportation

GEC Proposal

Rui Yu, Hannah Keiler, George Zhao, Darron Kinney

General Topic: Urban Infrastructure

Specific Topic: The economics of the subway and their implications on its riding demographic.

Introduction:

In August of 2007, an Interstate bridge spanning over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed, killing 13, injuring hundreds, and bringing the widespread attention to the decaying nature of the nation’s infrastructure. Ever since the years of industrial revolution, the congregation of people into urban centers has put a demand for reliable and efficient infrastructure. Today, cities across the nation are struggling to keep up with the modernization of their transportation. At the core of this topic, the focus is on the country’s biggest city. While New York City boasts the MTA Subway, challenges have been unavoidable. The Subway system is one of the oldest in the world, and construction is frequent. Long-time residents have also felt the financial burdens very heavily: Subway fares cost $1.50 only 8 years ago, and the MTA has announced a price hike to $2.50 effective 2011. Financial challenges to the transpiration of New York City are crucial topics to understand for this research study on the grand engineering challenge of urban infrastructure.

With over 200 miles of routes and delivering over 1.5 billion rides in 2009, the New York Subway is the fourth busiest rapid transit rail system in the world. With the congestion posed by cars and buses on the streets, the Subway provides an efficient method of travel for riders. This topic has close ties with environmental issues. With gas of gasoline increased over the past few years, even more people have turned to public transportation to save money. Figures from United States Department of Energy show that energy expenditure on the Subway rail service per passenger mile is less than the similar figure for automobile travel. This does not even accommodate for the decreased efficiency of automobile usage in the city. Adding onto the benefits of the New York City Subway is its 24-hour operation. The only city in the country other than Chicago with such service, New York is kept vibrant and awake at all times of the day. The enormous impact of the Subway system on the lives of New Yorkers has been embedded into the culture of the mainstream. Culture and entertainment are closely related topics.

Despite the invaluable benefits and the extensiveness of the Subway system, financial burdens have become a vivid reality. Facing a recent budget deficit of $1.1 billion in 2009, benefits have continued to decrease while fares have continued to increase. This study hopes to investigate the finances of the MTA, focusing on Subway. At the focus are the costs to run the Subway. We hope to research the current situation more closely, investigating subjects such as the demographics of groups that use the Subway the most, the neighborhoods served by the Subway, alternative transportation options, and the traffic patterns of the stations with their areas. Social factors like demography and economics are closely related topics. Focusing more closely into financial patterns, we hope to understand more about the advertisement revenues generated, expansion plans, any government subsidies present or available, and the different pricing scheme current available. One special concept we hope to consider is distance-based fares. The New York City Subway is one of the fewest in the world of its kind to implement flat-rate. How do all these factor in the cost to ride the Subway? What are methods to minimize costs yet optimize benefits? This grand engineering challenges hope to investigate these questions.

Place to Visit: We plan to take the Subway and go visit the New York Transit Museum located in Brooklyn. The museum was opened in 1976 as part of the country’s bicentennial celebration. The museum is actually located on what was the unused Court Street station. Among the information available at the museum is the outline of the challenges and the labor involved in the Subway construction during the early 1900s. Also, there is a Fare Collection exhibit that traces the different methods New Yorkers have used to pay. The website of the museum is found at: http://mta.info/mta/museum/index.html

Person to Interview: Carey Stumm is the archivist at the New York City Transit Museum, located in Brooklyn. “The New York Transit Museum Archives holds rich collections of photographs, maps, drawings, documents, and ephemera relating to New York's transportation history” (www.mta.info). These archives are not in circulation, but be viewed by people with a clear research question. Carey Stumm is in charge of the classification and maintenance of these archives, and is an expert in the history of the MTA system. Appointments can be made to speak with her by emailing carey.stumm@nyct.com, but they must be made two weeks in advance.

Two Scholarly Articles:

Toward Valid Measures of Public Sector Productivity: Performance Measures in Urban Transit

John M. Gleason and Darold T. Barnum

Management Science
Vol. 28, No. 4 (Apr., 1982), pp. 379-386

This article is a quantitative analysis of productivity in public transit systems. It first differentiates between efficacy and efficiency, where efficacy is the ability of the system to meet its goals while efficiency is a relationship between inputs and outputs. Any analysis of pricing in the subway system requires some quantitative analysis. Although the article lacks tangible equations to direct our research, it establishes a methodology for establishing such analysis.

Fiscal Equity in Urban Mass Transit Systems: A Geographic Analysis

David C. Hodge

Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Vol. 78, No. 2 (Jun., 1988), pp. 288-306

Like the first, this article analyzes public transit system from a quantitative stand point. However, it presents a solid framework for analyzing geographic distribution and equity through equations and well developed models. The article is a valuable contribution because it's relatively advanced approach to the field is a wonderful model for our analysis. This article shows the necessary data required to emulate its model.

Looking Forward: This project is heavier on the side of researching. Once we know enough or gather enough data, we can devise model or simulate calculations on improvements to make the Subway more efficient in any regards. Math can be used for to compute the financial aspects of the MTA, for example. Our concern is that since MTA is a government agency, we may have access to only a limited range of data needed for projection.