by 
Donald
Trump
famously
said
he
could
end
the
war
in
Ukraine
in
24
hours,
yet
the
war
is
still
raging
more
than
two
months
after
he
took
office.
In
the
same
way,
Transportation
Secretary
Sean
Duffy
recently
said
that
New
York
City
could
solve
all
of
the
problems
with
its
subway
system
“in
hours,
not
days”
(he
generously
allowed
the
city
36
hours
instead
of
just
24)
if
it
just
had
the
will
to
do
so.
Note
that
Trump
promised
to
stop
the
war
himself
while
Duffy
is
demanding
that
someone
else
save
the
subways.
This
is
the
level
of
naïveté
that
we’ve
come
to
expect
from
the
Trump
administration.
New
York
City
subways
have
problems
with
fare
evasion,
homelessness,
drugs,
property
crime,
vandalism,
and
violent
crime
that
stretch
across
472
stations,
850
miles
of
track,
and
nearly
6,800
subway
cars.
The
idea
that
it
could
solve
all
of
these
problems
by
simply
flooding
the
system
with
police
for
36
hours
is
so
ludicrous
it
isn’t
even
funny.
Even
if
those
problems
were
solved,
they
are
really
just
symptoms
of
the
real
problem,
which
is
that
transit
agencies
have
no
incentive
to
operate
efficiently
or
even
to
attract
riders.
Instead,
all
of
their
incentives
are
to
increase
costs
as
much
as
possible
while
doing
as
little
work
as
possible.
These
perverse
incentives
are
not
the
fault
of
the
New
York
MTA
or
any
other
transit
agency
but
are
due
the
federal
government,
which
began
throwing
money
at
transit
in
the
1960s
and
responds
to
every
transportation
issue
by
increasing
the
flow
of
money.
I
understand
why
Trump
appointed
non-experts
to
run
his
departments
and
agencies.
You
can’t
fight
the
Deep
State
by
putting
members
of
the
Deep
State
in
charge.
At
the
same
time,
the
people
fighting
the
Deep
State
need
to
understand
the
real
problems
or
they
are
just
going
to
flounder
around.
Last
November,
I
urged
Musk
to
take
a
scalpel
to
the
federal
budget,
cutting
wasteful
programs
and
making
sure
such
cuts
are
sustainable
by
combining
them
with
new
policies
that
will
give
government
agencies
incentives
to
operate
efficiently.
Instead
of
a
scalpel,
he
is
using
a
chainsaw,
and
the
cuts
he
is
making
are
not
going
to
solve
the
government’s
problems.
Read
the
rest
of
this
piece
at
The
Antiplanner.
Randal
O’Toole,
the
Antiplanner,
is
a
policy
analyst
with
nearly
50
years
of
experience
reviewing
transportation
and
land-use
plans
and
the
author
of
The
Best-Laid
Plans:
How
Government
Planning
Harms
Your
Quality
of
Life,
Your
Pocketbook,
and
Your
Future.
Photo:
EmperorOfNYC
via
Wikimedia
under
CC
4.0
License.
Go to Source
Author: Randal OToole
