Without trying to stir up a debate about the merits of various political systems, could this be due to the strong state control in the Soviet era?
I'd imagine it would be a lot easier in Soviet Russia to just say "we're upgrading this, the line will be down for a week, deal with it". It was an authoritarian state, you're not running for reelection, it didn't matter if people got a bit miffed at delays due to an upgrade.
Well, nothing you said is wrong, but the reason is wrong. Both St Petersburg and Moscow have a very well distributed and supported above ground public transit system as well, going back to the early years of the Soviet Union. Trams, trolleys, buses, and the pay vans (Marshrutki) are extremely prevalent and help people get around fast and relatively cheaply. I live in spb right now and am riding a tram where the placard lists the commissioned date as 1958. The wagon of the metro train I moved to while writing this post says 1972; point is this infrastructure has been around a long time.
So yeah, people had no say if a district shut your metro station down for 4 months for repairs (which still happens today), but you had and have many alternatives to get where you want to, so at best it's a minor inconvenience.
Compare this to where I grew up in the Midwest, if the buses there broke that was it. Hope you knew someone with a car who was home or liked walkjng (and I've done a few 7 mile walks home when buses broke down, since my choice was wait an hour in the cold for the next bus or just walk)
Deal with it now in russia and in the ussr basically meant "pick one of these other services".
But the democratically elected state senators do routinely cut the MTA's funding so that they can give their overrepresented rural constituents a tax cut.
> But the democratically elected state senators do routinely cut the MTA's funding so that they can give their overrepresented rural constituents a tax cut.
1. New York is not a democracy in anything but name. Voters have basically no control over the state government; the party establishment has fully captured that role.
Because urban New Yorkers are paying for rural areas' transportation infrastructure. In fact, state taxation and spending policies represent a large net transfer from urban areas to rural areas.
An old lament. Why should rural (anywhere) fund the city folks' needs? E.g. Here in rural Iowa, we pay state taxes for schools like everybody else, and have a tiny underfunded school vs the nearby city's grand edifice with two theatres, enormous football facility, AP classes and full staff.
In most cases it's the city folks subsidizing the rural folks. It turns out that it costs a lot more money to build the roads, power lines, schools, etc than the small number of rural residents that benefit from them will ever pay in taxes [0]. And in the specific case of New York's MTA, revenue from subway fares has repeatedly been diverted to pay for things other than the subway [1].
Everybody benefits from farm access to markets. Rural roads are there for everybody. To say 'its more money per capita for rural folks' just means you're using a heatmap of population and putting it over infrastructure - shazam, it doesn't match!. But it says nothing about who's getting the utility out of the infrastructure.
I'd imagine it would be a lot easier in Soviet Russia to just say "we're upgrading this, the line will be down for a week, deal with it". It was an authoritarian state, you're not running for reelection, it didn't matter if people got a bit miffed at delays due to an upgrade.