"The city is awake.
Across the length of its five boroughs,
a vast stream of humanity will move."
This was what a New Yorker's commute looked like in 1961.
"— can be seen the daily miracle that is the New York City
transit system."
But that was then.
And this is now.
[screaming]
"Stand clear of the closing doors, please."
Subway riders demanding an end to their commuting nightmare."
"So fed up with all the delays and cancellations
that they are suing the M.T.A."
The New York subway now has the worst on-time performance
of any major rapid transit system in the world.
And commuters are pissed.
This woman's commute has gotten so bad,
she's considering leaving a job she really likes.
"No.
I got a new job."
This rabbi was sent into a panic when his train stalled just
before Shabbat.
And then there's this guy, who was
stuck underground for so long, commuters
sang to pass the time.
"... Gonna make me lose my mind up in here ..."
"It's been two hours."
They ended up making a Facebook group.
They're still in touch.
"Yeah."
"The mornings where every single line is delayed —"
"It was like cruel or arbitrary."
But it really wasn't that long ago
that New Yorkers would laugh at other city subway systems.
Four lines in Boston, two in L.A.?
That's cute.
In New York our trains run 24/7.
We have 665 miles of track, 472 stations, 27 subway lines,
and almost six million riders every single day.
"Does it really have to be this way?"
"Also, has it always been this bad?"
Turns out the M.T.A. has recovered from a transit crisis before.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are being held momentarily
by the train's dispatcher."
These were the trains in the 1970s.
"Poor maintenance, high crime and widespread graffiti."
"It was kind of scary."
And that's Jim.
He's been reporting on the subway since before I was born.
"He wrote the book about the subway, literally.
In the '70s, it was really, really bad."
"Maintenance really had suffered."
So officials poured money into the system, and it improved.
[cheering]
"They are working on it.
They're doing the best they can."
"They're fixing the tracks.
Well, they're fixing the track.
They put in a new escalator downstairs."
"They improve it in the '80s.
"Today we got better equipment, better parts and better tools."
"In the '90s it gets to be the best it's ever been."
The 1990s were the golden era of subway functionality.
"So if you want to prove to someone
that New York has it all, just show them your MetroCard Gold."
New York's governor at the time, George Pataki,
called it a transit renaissance.
But then, that city that has it all started
taking the system for granted, starting with Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani.
"Cut down the size of city government."
Just a year into his first term, the mayor
cut the city's contribution to the M.T.A.'s budget
by millions of dollars.
Then, Governor Pataki followed Giuliani's lead.
And so began a trend of mayors and governors
diverting part of their budgets away from the M.T.A.
and toward their own priorities. And then blaming one
another for the problems that followed.
"Right."
So while the city and state contributions
got smaller and smaller and smaller,
subway ridership went up, and so did the fares.
But fares still weren't enough to make up for the budget cuts.
So a group of Wall Street executives came to the M.T.A.
with a deal.
[cash register ringing]
These Wall Street execs, they went to the head of the M.T.A.,
also known as the governor, and said, give us your debt.
We'll pay you cash.
Pay us back later.
Pataki agreed to the deal to refinance the M.T.A.'s debt.
"Basically, they used the Amex to pay off the MasterCard."
And these bankers, many of whom were donors
to Governor Pataki's campaign, walked away with $85 million
in commissions and fees.
And that debt lives on today —
"... finally reaches its destination."
— even if some of the equipment we're still paying for
does not.
"Great habitat enhancement for fish and shellfish."
Then —
"It was a fiscal crisis globally."
"That was a really big turning point for the M.T.A."
"Maintenance was withdrawn."
"You're checking the cars less frequently,
you're repairing the cars less frequently,
then they're going to break down more frequently."
"So basically —"
"The trains became slightly less reliable."
But there were millions of dollars draining
from the M.T.A.'s budget that could have been used for maintenance.
"So what happened was —"
This summer Governor Cuomo's administration
forced the M.T.A. to bail out some upstate ski resorts
after an unusually warm winter.
"So we set out to try and find out
if there were a lot of other examples of the M.T.A. being
forced by the state to spend money on things that had
nothing to do with the subway.
And we found out about these bond issuance fees."
Bond issuance fees may sound a little boring.
So I hired a busker to write a song about it.
"Let me put it this way — the M.T.A. brings in a lot of money.
The state has used that money as a piggy bank
for other priorities."
"The next stop is Fulton Street."
"Fulton Street was the pet project
of a guy named Sheldon Silver."
He wanted Fulton Street to be the Grand Central
Station of downtown Manhattan.
So construction started, the years went by,
and the day of the grand opening arrived.
"Oh, that's way over budget."
At this point, the M.T.A. board wants to scale things back.
And one of the board members —
"Nancy Shevell, wife of Paul McCartney,
said, we're not building cathedrals here."
But the next day, Sheldon Silver demanded —
"You're going to build this thing the way it was originally
supposed to be built, or else I'm
going to veto your capital budget."
So the M.T.A. complied.
"A billion and a half dollars on one station.
It didn't get an extra subway car, an extra foot of track,
nothing.
Did I say it was in his district?"
Fulton Street was just one example.
"These politicians really wanted to be
able to have a big project they could champion,
mosaics and artwork and everything is brand new."
"Clean, shiny subway stations.
This is exciting, right?"
I did this for you.
Here is my gift to you.
"Yeah.
And I feel good about that."
"Of course you should."
"You can't really do that with replacing some ancient subway
signal system that people don't even know exists."
"No one wants to talk about the signals."
"I don't think I understand how the signals even work."
And neither did I. So I watched a documentary released
by the M.T.A. to learn more.
"People know that the system is old,
but I don't think they realize just how old it is.
It's not just the architecture that's 100 years old.
It's a lot of the basic technology as well.
We never really know where the train is."
"Um —"
"Yeah."
"The workers don't actually know where the trains are exactly,
precisely, on the tracks.
They know what section they are in.
So they have to keep them a safe distance
apart as they go through the system.
You can't just go to Best Buy and pick up something
to replace this 1930s piece of equipment."
New signals would mean more trains running more efficiently
and closer together.
But it's been two decades since the M.T.A. first began its push
to upgrade its signals.
And so far, they've completed just one line.
"If you don't focus on the core needs of the system,
bad things can happen."
"So the trains were not as well taken care of,
the signal system deteriorated, and there was
very little margin for error."
And then that margin gets even smaller with Hurricane Sandy.
"The worst disaster in the history of the subway system."
So this is the part of the story where
all of those bad decisions of the past
really start wreaking havoc.
"The M.T.A. is openly violating its own safety directives."
A tunnel wall in Brooklyn collapses onto the track.
"We just boarded the rescue train."
"There have been 22 derailments."
Overcrowding is definitely a problem,
but the M.T.A. can't blame everything on overcrowding.
"The issue is there's not one person to blame."
There's been a lot of back and forth
between the governor and the mayor.
"Blame everybody who has been in power in New
York in the past 25 years."
A train careens off the tracks in Harlem, injuring 34 people.
And in summer of 2017, the waiting and crowding
and derailments reach a breaking point.
And at long last, Governor Cuomo declares a state of emergency.
"I mean
there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
No pun intended.
I actually did not intend that pun.
There are some signs that politicians are now
taking the maintenance of the subway system seriously."
"Elected leaders are finally expected to come out
with a plan to pay for the M.T.A.
And I think there's a consensus they can't just
rely on debt anymore."
"I believe in you, subway.
But you've got to get it together."
"We want to do this.
We need to do this.
We will do this."
"I think delay is, in a messed up way,
our way to bring people together."
"There's no New York City without the subways.
I regard it as the great public commons of New York."
"Yeah, it's good."
"Nice meeting all of you."
"They ride together.
And in this journey can be seen the daily miracle that
is the New York City transit system, upon which
the very existence of the city and its people, depend."
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