throwing money at urban problems does not necessarily have a great track record, and NYCTA has had lots of issues with corruption when they do have money to spend. Id be pretty skeptical that giving them a lot of money would mean you can hop on a train in 5 minutes at 2 am, it wouldnt even be cost effective to run that many trains at odd hours. Cars are terrific for this use case, however.
NYC cops have like a billion dollar budget and while they are great at protecting businesses in wealthy areas they are not very popular in lower income areas as they are both blase and overly brutal at the same time, their huge budget not having helped that aspect very much.
and even with fairly poor mass transit system - it's still is incredibly good by American standards.
I moved from NYC an hour north, to be more isolated than the "impersonal big cities". I barely know any of my neighbors - because there are no sidewalks and everyone is forced to drive for anything.
Car dependence kills people, kills communities and reduces your QoL.
You should move back to the city, then. I moved out because I had enough of the crowds and awful mass transit and I'm good with it. The NYC cops were absolutely awful for us as well.
throwing money at the NYC subway seems to have a generally great track record (albeit one featuring less efficiency than throwing money at other global subway systems). NYC could not function without it.
The 7 line extension cost over $3 billion dollars in 2023 terms to build 1.5 miles of track from Times Sq to Hudson Yards and build one new station there. I defy anyone to conclude this represented good value.
The NYC transit system costs $20BN/year to operate, serves a population of almost 9M people and pre pandemic had nearly 10 million passenger trips a day; currently 5M.
Montana spends $1BN/year on roadways and receives another $3BN/year in federal funding and serves a population of 1M people.
The NYC subways system moves five times the population of Montana every day and costs half as much per capita.
Subways are not a waste of money: throwing money at the NYC subway system under the current set of parameters is a waste of money.
P.S. you're also comparing apples and oranges; you're only looking at the MTA operating budget; not the operating + capital budget which the Montana numbers represent.
It was probably good value for anyone that owned any surrounding property.
Ideally the increase in property value should be captured by the public who made the investment - self funding effectively. But that's just the old LVT argument.
NYC cops have like a billion dollar budget and while they are great at protecting businesses in wealthy areas they are not very popular in lower income areas as they are both blase and overly brutal at the same time, their huge budget not having helped that aspect very much.