GIS systems seem to have ushered in a golden age of cartography, with younger generations actually paying attention to less boringly named maps such as “mash-ups” that present information geographically. Well, there is a map I’d like to see the MTA produce and post for the benefit of those younger generations, so they can have an idea what is coming. AMNY reports the agency has acknowledged that service is going into decline, caught between rising ridership and increasing disruption due to maintenance problems. “Trains are falling farther and farther behind since at least March 2006. It's worst in the evening rush where NYC Transit rates itself as running 88% of trains on time in March - the most recent data available - down from almost 92% in March last year” according to this source, and “the number of delays is up as well - an average of 27% over the last 12 months.” The mean distance between failures of the subway cars themselves, whose reduction over 25 years is the pride of New York City Transit, is down 12% over a year.

As readers of my prior posts know, service is going to be a lot worse as the practice of paying for ongoing maintenance and replacement with 30-year debt runs its course, and ongoing maintenance and replacement is cut back, perhaps eliminated. Now those debts – not to mention the state and local tax-free, inflation-adjusted pensions for transit workers who get to retire at 55 and demand to be allowed to retire at 50 – have to be paid for, even as dedicated MTA tax revenues plunge. “The situation is worsened by the news that for the third straight month the MTA saw its revenue from real estate transactions drop below budget estimates,” according to AMNY, but to anyone who isn’t being paid to provide a bogus estimate those transaction tax revenues continue to be greater than the MTA has a right to expect. In the future, everyone will be affected by this. But in New York “the future” and “everyone” don’t matter at all politically. If they did, the New York State legislature wouldn’t have made so many decisions over the past 20 years that have wrecked everyone’s future. So let’s show who will be hurt the most the soonest.

Am I a nerd or what? Yes I played a couple of sessions of paddleball with a friend, took two long bicycle rides with my wife, and attended a barbeque with relatives this Memorial Day weekend. But I also downloaded and crunched down fiscal 2005-2006 comparative state and local government finance data from the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ll write about it when I can, but for those with open minds and a willingness to look at tables, I’ve decided to post the spreadsheets right away.

One spreadsheet shows state and local taxes as a share of the personal income of area residents for New York City, the rest of New York State, and all the other states and the District of Columbia. The second shows revenues and expenditures in many categories, generally expressed as the amount per $1,000 of personal income of area residents, for local governments in New York City, the Rest of New York State, the U.S. and New Jersey. The output worksheets are primed to print on 8 ½ by 11 inch paper. I decided to keep track, and it took me about eight hours to get from the start of work to this point, despite being the fastest grunt-worker on earth (or so I believe). A few more notes follow, for those who haven’t read my posts on this subject before.

Annual retrospectives seem to be the custom here at Room Eight, so I thought I’d write about what motivates me to spend my time researching data and writing essays for this site. I do so without pay or compensation of any kind, and without knowing how many people actually download the spreadsheets and read the essays, if any at all. In part I’m just doing what I was trained to do – compile and analyze information bearing on government policy. That’s a skill I found to be worth little in government because public policy generally consists of deals, favors and non-decisions rather than decisions, and for those no background information is required. And in part I’m taking the opportunity to raise questions about those deals and favors, and their effect on people I care about and our future, which is my children’s future. It is a response to my frustration that there are so many open secrets that no one dares to talk about. In general, the only way to get paid to compile public policy information is to work for a privileged group seeking to maintain or expand those privileges at everyone’s expense. A fair analysis of comprehensive information is not in their interest. No one is going to pay you to tell the truth.

If I was Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, I wouldn't be concerned by suggestions that I shot and killed congestion pricing.

At best, I'd call it a mercy killing; euthanasia. At worst, justifiable homicide.

Drowned out, as usual, by the shrill tone of editorial boards looking to get a quick rise out of their readers, some columnists took a careful and measured look at congestion pricing and found that its advantages are dubious and its problems multifarious.

And some otherwise ludicrous proposals put forward to rebut congestion pricing were pregnant with good ideas: an increased no-gridlock enforcement zone in Lower Manhattan; tighter no-cruising enforcement laws for livery cabs. That's not to say there weren't boondoggles mixed in that made discussing them politically impossible. In one case, these simple policy changes were rolled up with the idea, oft-rejected, of a rail tunnel from Brooklyn to New Jersey to cut down on truck traffic.

Many Americans are feeling outrage over top executives who made risky assumptions, looked good in the short run, paid each other massive amounts, and walked out the door with enormous golden parachutes when their bets went sour. Shareholders -- and perhaps in some cases taxpayers -- are left with the bill. For the past 40 years, however, elected officials and the public employee unions that support them have done the same thing. Whenever the stock market has been on a tear, they have upped the assumption of future rates of return and handed out “free” pension enhancements, claiming the stock market would pay for it all. And later, when the stock market turned down and pension contributions soared, the resulting tax increases, service cuts, and diminished wages and benefits for newly hired public employees have been described as the “inevitable” result of “circumstances beyond our control.” The prior pension enrichments are never given back, just like those executive bonuses. There have been two such cycles in a general sense, as the attached chart shows. In recent years, however, the state legislature has been even more irresponsible – handing out more pension benefits even when the stock market is down, taxes are rising, and services are being cut.