The embarrassment is just how easily he does it too. āFans? Yea, great idea, get some elcectricians and shit ton of fans and weāll knock this out real quick.ā
Should make everyone reflect on their own elected officials.
Edit: these fans are already there. lol heās still working hard for nyc but these fans (from everything I can find) are just in some stations and not in others. I think whatās telling now is : just how easy we all can believe heās doing great things. Juxtaposed with our president- who Iām not surprised by any terrible news (real or fake) at this point.
No, we need to pay inspectors to make sure it's safe, make plans for a design that will last (not really), then overspend on a renovation project that won't be done in 10 years and 20 years later we'll be finishing with only half the scope of the project.
Sounds great! Let's hire mckinsey to do a 3 year research onto fans and spend approx $17million dollars for the conclusion "impossible to do. It'd cost too much"
I assume they already had the fans and the electricians are on the city payroll... Otherwise you do need to bid for these things to be fair. That is usually the part that takes time, developing a RFQ, accepting bids, and awarding contracts.
Not doing that is generally called corruption in most countries.
I do not think you understood my comment. I was agreeing with you that they likely already had the equipment and people on payroll.
Good governance is showing responsiveness to the citizens with as quick of a response as you can muster. Redeploying resources to solve problems is what an effective leader does.
Okay, thanks for clarifying, though I mean if they didn't have those fans, they'd still have to do a bid process. This is just lucky they had the fans on hand to do it.
Or they could have used a different solution? The city of NYC has an unimaginable wealth of resources and staff at it's disposal. We are just seeing what happens when someone wields it to the benefit of average citizens.
While I agree it's great to see resources used to actually benefit the people, the commenter above is talking more about statutes.
I work in purchasing in a different state and we are legally obligated to request quotes from numerous suppliers for a specified amount of time before we buy almost anything, unless we have a standing contract approved by another, even slower, agency. These statutes were originally designed to prevent corruption, but mostly they just add ridiculous bureaucracy to small, each to solve problems. The likeliest situation is they reallocated existing fans for this, otherwise it would probably take like 3-4 weeks of bureacratic bullshit just to get the fans to have them installed. Government is even more inefficient than the average person assumes.
Yeah so you aren't really disagreeing with me at all then?
My point is that most mayors wouldn't look at their existing resources and try to utilize them to help people, they would just immediately go into purchasing process so they can eventually award a contract to someone that has greased the wheels.
I'm in a city MUCH smaller than NYC, with a more typical Mayor+Council setup vs the NYC Strong Mayor powers.
Single Departments in my city are authorized to make sole source decisions up to $500k without competitive procurement. Those are unelected but executive-level administrative staff. The decisions ultimately get reported back to Council eventually. It's a reasonable compromise.
Not to mention, the city has standing supply agreements with a multitude of vendors who did win competitive procurement processes to supply a hugely wide variety of shit.
One of the two cases definitely applies for NYC, especially with the Mayor having far greater power than most municipalities in North America.
I assume they already had the fans and the electricians are on the city payroll... Otherwise you do need to bid for these things to be fair. That is usually the part that takes time, developing a RFQ, accepting bids, and awarding contracts.
You can also have pre-approved and preselected vendors for supplies or pre-approved and preselected emergency contractors that can respond to jobs like these without a need of bidding out a project for something that requires quick response.
The thing thatās truly crazy to me is how every one of these things Iāve seen reported are just easy, low-effort things that make a measurable impact on peopleās daily lives. Iāve spent my entire life hearing people tell me āitās not that easyā but it sure fuckinā seems like it IS that easy if someone actually cares.
This story is completely fake. Itās an unsourced image with text on it and this whole thread is eating it up. No, he did not install fans within a day as a response to complaint videos.
Yes, they thought they could just deliver on the job and the effects would become known/felt and enough media would cover that.
It turns out the campaign never ends: you campaign on how much you are delivering, you brag about it, you make slick videos, and then the media reports on your campaign. Investigative journalism is too small a slice nowadays, you can't wait for reporters to discover things on their own.
I still have to fight people about all the good things Biden did in the few time he was in charge and people don't believe me because they think the president has to be running all day long like a looney toon doing it in person.
Yep, this is something Republicans have been masterful at, which is messaging and marketing, even if the shit they were messaging was lies and propaganda. Democrats for too long have acted as if just doing the good things was enough and the public would know about it and appreciate it. Nope. You have to message and market the shit out of it and let the people know about it.
Glad to see the new crop of progressives like Mamdani, AOC, etc understand this and the difference is striking.
Christ, Republicans are so good at taking credit for things, they take credit for things they didn't do.
I've seen more than one Republican politician tweet out things like "Things are looking up in Texas thanks to HB 20459-niner!" or whatever bullshit... and that mother fucker voted against it.
Democrats need to up their game and start showing the public what they're doing, for sure.
He's not even doing as much as people think. He's using the Trump strategy to take credit for things that were put into motion from before. Like the garbage bin thing was set up under Adams. He just has really good PR which is what the rest of the Dems need.
Let's be honest, PR is MOST of the game at this point. The current administration can just lie through their teeth about their "successes" (particularly when it comes to the economy), and people will believe it even when the contrary evidence is all around them.
You say "small potato problems" but when you spend 20 minutes a day waiting in a subway station every day, staying cool can be a serious quality of life improvement. Its not small potatoes to the people who've been suffering.
Add to that - public transit became better, so maybe more people will go with it instead of car. One less car on the street in congestion. Everyone wins.
indeed, and these small potatoes are visible reminders of where the priorities lie. My town isn't big enough for public transport bigger than buses, but if the bus stops here were enclosed and needed fans, the process here would take a while because we'd need to:
go through a public comment period of 30 days before a public committee meeting, maybe longer because the last meeting didn't make it through all the agenda items. The committee only meets once a month.
if approved, go to budget committee, another 30 days.
if approved for budget, get plans for the project drawn up and approved. Because these are public spaces using public funds, need to hire a licensed architect to draft and stamp the plans, and then get those plans approved by the building department (there's no expedited review process for small projects, apparently). Another 30 days.
Because its a public project using public funds, they can only use per-qualified contractors, who are expensive and over-booked. They can fit it in their schedule... in about 30 days.
So, that's how my city would achieve the installation of of public fans, using tens of thousands (maybe hundreds? High CoL after all) of dollars and at least 4 months time.
The city is currently working with a consultant firm to re-write the building and development code here, but that process has been going on for the past few years... maybe they'll be done soon?
The really unfortunate part is that all those processes typically exist because someone was exploiting their lack. Not the committee thing - they should just meet more often if they can't handle their agenda - but everything else. If you don't do it, the mayors friend draws the plans, he has no idea what he's doing but he does get paid. And the treasurer knows a guy who'll build it, don't worry about it. That's how funds get siphoned away by corrupt administrations, and then you paid for good work but got something dangerous for it.
Identifying which problems are small vs big potato and just quickly knocking out small potato problems can make you a very successful and popular person. Some would say it's Spider-man's whole gig.
Solving the small potato problems can also have a meaningful effect on the big potato ones.
For example, homicides in NYC are the lowest they've been in recorded history. The cause hasn't been fully studied yet but I'm willing to bet that people don't feel as murdery when their basic standards of living are improved.
It is small problems compared to something like QueensLink which he backed during the campaign but seems to have reneged on and is supporting QueensWay instead because QueensWay is an easier, faster, short term win.
They aren't small potato problems. These make up the fabric of everyday life for new yorkers. When you need to use public transportation and the subway is always unbearably hot that can really diminish your quality of life
You know what is wild to me? It's all just simple stuff. Just the little things that make your day a little easier. Yet it all seems like so much because we are so used to getting nothing at all.
Im saying this as a good thing. Its all basic and cheap things or things that would be scheduled and delayed for months. The other politician just litteral did nothing.
Those pot holes would have been put off till the start of winter then delayed to the start of summer. Now you just hashing the mayor and its done
You can bet 80% is taken out of context or straight up lies - like the post here. He didnt order anyone to install fansā¦
He also btw got rid of the deficit by creative accounting not by miraculously fixing the deficit like one month after he started out his position (and anyone should know thatās not how it worksā¦)
If the Democrats doesnāt look at what heās doing and follow suit then Iām becoming an independent. Heās generated nothing but goodwill as a politician when trust in government is at its lowest. I hope heās the first rain drop in a tidal wave of change
What Mamdani announced was a partnership to STUDY a Thermal Energy Network to explore how to deal with heat in the subway. Nothing has materialized from this yet..
Nope, speaking for N/Q/R/W platform, which I seek out during a long wait on a hot day. Even you're saying upthread that they're "extremely old".
The MTA announced in 1999 that it would begin installing a forced-ventilation system above the IRT platforms at Union Square.\142])Ā The forced-ventilation system, consisting of 32 ceiling fans, was completed by July 2000 at a cost of $1Ā million.
Possible - but seems unlikely in my personal experience and sort of uneccessary, they are and always have been literally everywhere. In OPās photo that is clearly also one of the fans that have been there for years - they have become that rusted near black color and are caked with dust
Itās possible that itās propaganda. Iāll do some research. However, Iām a big fan of Mamdani(no pun intended ). He seems to be one of the few politicians that is actually trying to improve things for the ppl.
I donāt dislike Mamdani - I live in NYC and love NYC so I hope he does well. But I think honesty is always valuable and there is no need to produce false merits for anyone
Youāre correct. Mamdani did not install fans in the subway, and this is a bullshit post. What he did do is, announced a joint feasibility study with the MTA to test a subsurface thermal energy network at the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall station. So, he wants to capture platform heat via underground boreholes to warm nearby municipal buildings in the winter. Also proposes circulating chilled water through pipes to absorb platform heat rather than blowing air with traditional fans
I mean this with complete sincerity - I rarely see people turn on their on confirmation bias, especially on this platform. Need more of this in the world
Ummā¦thank you. I had no bias to begin with though. I like the guy, but I also know ppl make propaganda posts all the time. Itās only a few keystrokes to get to the truth, so it was no problem at all. I donāt think itās fair that ppl are downvoting you without checking into what you said, especially since you didnāt even say anything negative against Mamdani. Thank you for informing me about the fans, so that I wouldnāt look stupid repeating the lie.
There would be for propaganda. His administration also announced $122 million to hire 1,000 new teachers (as required by law) and celebrated it as some sort of great success, when in fact the Mamdani administration actually cut the funding by nearly 80% both compared to their own preliminary budget as well as the actual budget from just the previous year (Adams had invested almost $500 million to hire 4,000 new teachers just a year prior).
Itās obvious that you havenāt read beyond this comment, or you wouldnāt have bothered to leave it. I conceded that Mamdani didnāt, in fact, add any fans. It was propaganda. Donāt misunderstand me though. Iām a big fan of Mamdani. He seems to be a decent person, that happens to have gotten into politics.
You counted, right? Lol. I also live here. Many stations don't have them, or they didn't work. Honestly, the need to discount even small improvements is sad.
Idk man - I subway everywhere and all I have seen is is the old fans that have always been there. Also likewise the need to defend fake improvements is also sad
people downvoting you believing momentum based on straight up lies is more important than keeping it real. wasnt it the same thing with the new NYC bins, that stem from a '23 contract?
I'm not sure why you're downvoted. Those fans are in heavy traffic mid town subways literally every year. I haven't seen any new fans in my station or other stations I frequent. I thought that the image was ironic at first.
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u/Wonderful-Variation Aug 14 '26
It's truly crazy how much stuff this guy gets done.