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- The mayors stuck to the cuts despite a surge in property values that the subways helped create. New York real estate values — and property tax revenues — have quintupled since the early 1990s, according to the Independent Budget Office.
None of that increased property tax revenue was earmarked for the subways.
That service decline graph is just painful to see.
compare and contrast: Bill de Blasio assumed office Jan 1 2014. That's less than a billion a year.After more than a decade of spending, about $50 billion in today’s dollars, reliability soared. Cars traveled 10 times farther before breaking down. Riders returned in droves. It was a golden era; New York and its subway seemed to be on the rise together.
Mr. de Blasio has been hands off. He committed $2.5 billion in city funds for the M.T.A.’s capital program, but he rebuffed requests to increase operating subsidies and has declined to provide money for the authority’s plan to address the delays.