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Corruption in the NYC DOT Contract bidding process.
Because the NYC DOT Projects must take the lowest bids, it usually goes to contractors that cut corners and have connections with officials.
I moved from NYC to NJ, while NJ has it's share of problems. In comparison NJ does road repairs better than NYC.
The BQE has been under repairs for my entire lifetime of 30yrs+ in the area. There was a time when the BQE was in decent shape and they suddenly tore it up and put in HOV lanes that made things worst. Than they are ripping HOV and changing it again. Can they make up their minds and fix it? It's a short stretch of highway compare to some highways in NJ that stretch over 20-30mis long. The BQE does have local roads below if they want to close it down and fix it and they should to speed up repairs but nope they want to milk the whole repairs. It's a never ending money pit.
The winter freeze/thaw cycles are brutal on both asphalt and concrete... add to that the insane amount of traffic, especially truck traffic so some douches on Amazon Prime can get some insignificant item delivered the same day or lazy Aholes too lazy to go to a supermarket get it delivered by Fresh Direct, its a miracle the streets survive the winter
Part of it has to do with all the traffic nyc roads get. We also have variable weather conditions like extreme cold and hot. This winter has especially been brutal to the roads. There are also a lot of roads in the city. Also because of traffic roads are often installed very quickly and poorly. Given that a lot of utilities are underground utilities companies are always having to cut and rip up streets and they are never put back to how they were done. We just have to much road to focus on and do right. So much infrastructure.
NYC is 5 counties in one. In every other place in this country each county would be responsible for taking care of its roads and the county tax would pay for it (aside from state funding and state roads). Here we have a segment of the population that pays extremely high taxes (the rich) and then decently paid people also paying high taxes and all that money goes to support all the hoards of poor people. You may have noticed that some poor neighborhoods have nicer roads than rich or decent neighborhoods. Neighborhoods should be as good as the people living there and thus how much money is put in. If you look at hollywood florida the roads are amazing compared to nyc.
It's really a combination of reasons why. Some will say more tax payer money should be spent but enough money is already stolen from taxpayers in the form of taxes and the roads will just turn bad quickly again. The problem is nyc is just too big for one city to handle with too much of a concentrated population per square mile. In other areas you have main artery ways that are kept very nice and you can let gated communities pay for their own roads that connect to these streets. So there is a lot less roads that the county has to take care of.
WOW. I definitely agree with you. Thanks for the reply. Also, i would like to point out that council members of the city getting paid $150,000 per year in salaries and tax deduction is also wrong. I have never seen council member done anything to improve my neighborhood. lazy ****s sit in office and get paid.
In short, its not a priority here.
Go to Switzerland or the UK or Germany if you want beautiful smooth roads that are well lit, standardized and have proper cats eyes markings. The "Old city" nonsense - please. The cities in those countries go back over 1000yrs. Its the decision of whether or not to spend resources on roads etc - that's what is significant.
I just drive a bit slower this time of year so I can spot them or go through them more slowly. Most of them are patched up by the end of spring.
EXACTLY my point. Better roads means people will spend less money fixing their cars and more on buying stuff or eating out, improving the economy. Better roads also mean more stuff will be transported faster, resulting in efficient economy.
The other say someones car shock broke in middle of the road because of ****ing pot holes.
Dirty subways are dirty because of price regulation. MTA cannot move the price of subways up when demand goes up because of price regulations. For example. in London when you take train in the morning during rush hours, the fare will be higher and when rush hours are over fare will be much cheaper. keeping everything efficient. NYC does not have that. that is why they cannot improve their subways to more modern look.
We need third world roads so the 3rd world looking subway system and trash built up on every street don't look out of place.
The infrastructure of this city is going to be in for some major pain. Everything needs major overhauls, but there isn't the funding. Any increase in funding will go to rising union employee wages / benefits / pensions. The funding gap just to keep the MTA running as is (that means bare minimum improvements on a system that needs almost a complete overhaul) is tens of billions of dollars. The bridges will need upgrades in the tens of billions. Just to update / replace the PA bus terminal is ten billion. We have the vice president of the country calling the airport third world, which needs billions in upgrades. We have the worst public transportation of any major developed city linking the heart of the city with the airports, which to update would be tens of billions of dollars.
Basically, the MTA is raising fares just to pay for a piece of duct tape to patch a hole in a dam.
EXACTLY my point. Better roads means people will spend less money fixing their cars and more on buying stuff or eating out, improving the economy. Better roads also mean more stuff will be transported faster, resulting in efficient economy.
The other say someones car shock broke in middle of the road because of ****ing pot holes.
Dirty subways are dirty because of price regulation. MTA cannot move the price of subways up when demand goes up because of price regulations. For example. in London when you take train in the morning during rush hours, the fare will be higher and when rush hours are over fare will be much cheaper. keeping everything efficient. NYC does not have that. that is why they cannot improve their subways to more modern look.
Those better roads will also last longer and cost less since they don't have to be redone as much. Still I'm not sure people in the city are capable of doing such quality work. It would be easy in a brand new city that is built from the ground up. Personally I'd say forget nyc and move somewhere else. That's what I will do. County and state taxes would be much lower and I'd get better roads and services than nyc.
The majority of our highways were built in during the Moses era, when there was just a fraction of the amount of cars on the road that there are now.
I take the belt parkway every morning for over 20 miles on my commute...and honestly, within a day or two of a big storm, there are crews patching up major potholes. Yes, our roads are in bad shape, but would it really make sense to repave a whole stretch of highway before the end of the cold season just to have it break into pieces again from fluctuating temps? This is just a reality of living where we do.
As to the roads being what they are; People complain enough when they get closed down for just normal pothole repair. NYC has so much traffic that it can't simply take a street (multiple blocks) out of commission for a few weeks to strip it down and pave it from sidewalk to sidewalk. And I won't even try to fathom how NY'rs would react if this were done.
We need third world roads so the 3rd world looking subway system and trash built up on every street don't look out of place.
The infrastructure of this city is going to be in for some major pain. Everything needs major overhauls, but there isn't the funding. Any increase in funding will go to rising union employee wages / benefits / pensions. The funding gap just to keep the MTA running as is (that means bare minimum improvements on a system that needs almost a complete overhaul) is tens of billions of dollars. The bridges will need upgrades in the tens of billions. Just to update / replace the PA bus terminal is ten billion. We have the vice president of the country calling the airport third world, which needs billions in upgrades. We have the worst public transportation of any major developed city linking the heart of the city with the airports, which to update would be tens of billions of dollars.
Basically, the MTA is raising fares just to pay for a piece of duct tape to patch a hole in a dam.
When you visit cities like Tokyo or Hong Kong you realize just how terrible NYC subway and infrastructure is. It's a shame for the "greatest" city on earth.
The only things separating third world from first world is sanitation, air conditioning, and population density.
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