Status: 06/12/2020 10:41 am
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Dirty, ailing, crowded – that was New York’s subway before Corona. Now the wagons are cleaner than ever – but also empty. No passengers means: no income. Will the subway fall by the wayside?
From Peter Mücke,
ARD-Studio New York
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On the first day of the cautious reopening of the metropolis, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo even condescended to ride the subway in a media-effective manner. Otherwise Cuomo can be brought from his official residence in Albany to his office in Manhattan in the armored limousine.
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But the governor also goes underground for a few great pictures. His message: it is safe to ride the subway.
“All subway cars have been disinfected. There has never been anything like it. Normally there are always complaints about how dirty the cars are. Now they are even disinfected,” says Cuomo happily. “Not even my bathrooms at home are disinfected. But the subway, the suburban trains and the buses in the city are.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on his subway ride with the press
Image: AFP
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As governor, Cuomo is the head of the MTA, which operates public transport in New York. Due to the corona pandemic and the far-reaching restrictions on public life, passenger numbers have shrunk by more than 90 percent.
Chronically underfunded
The already chronically underfunded MTA is about to go bankrupt, says Nicole Gelinas of the think tank Manhattan Institute: “Half of the budget comes from ticket sales. But the subways are empty, the MTA has hardly any income from it. And the other half comes from it from state tax revenue. ” But even those are poor due to the consequences of the pandemic. Even before the Corona crisis, Cuomo avoided investing in local transport.
Veraltetes Signalsystem
At the end of January, the subway boss Andy Byford, who was celebrated as a crisis manager, threw himself down after two years in exasperation. All hopes rested on it that the completely ailing system could become a reasonably efficient local transport after all, says Steven Cohen of Columbia University: “The main problem with the New York subway is that the signaling system from the 1930s has passed Everywhere else in the world many more trains can be sent on the line. That would also be possible here if one invested in the infrastructure. Then the trains would not be so crowded. ”
Hopelessly overcrowded wagons
Before Corona, eight million people squeezed into the wagons and buses every day. At peak times, the subways were so overcrowded that they didn’t stop at all and commuters had to wait half an hour for a reasonably empty train. Another reason why the corona virus was able to spread so quickly in New York.
The US health authority CDC is already advising to stop using public transport. A catastrophe, says Jacob Faber of New York University: “My concern is that even more people are now switching to cars. And the worst thing would be if the subway was then only a means of transport for poor African Americans and Hispanics who walked Can’t afford a car, because then support for local public transport would be cut even more. ”
Financing unclear
Governor Cuomo is keeping a low profile about the future of the MTA and is demanding financial support from Washington, which is not particularly likely.
Otherwise he only has one piece of advice for New York commuters in the post-Corona period: “When the train is full, just wait for the next one.”
