New Yorkers are not very clever, are they? The still nonexistent Second Avenue Subway was first bonded in 1951, if not before. And it's been bonded several times since, with negligible results. It's not even a "cost of doing business" since no business has been done. And NYers keep voting for these bond issues? Sheesh, are blue state voters just damned romantic fools?
I dunno, why don't you ask TOD:NYC?  They were pushing the Transportation Bond Act last fall.
Hey, I can vouch for the fact that they would not be doing the Second Ave Subway without that latest Bond Act. And they are doing it, I've been to the engineering meetings and the financing is 100% in place.

The problem we had in NYC was decades of corruption, unresponsive public authorities and a state government that vetoed many good city projects and moved the money upstate. Robert Moses personally blocked all major mass transit projects and moved that money to highways for about 35 years. Then we hit the financial crisis of the 1970s and everything was put on hold while they put the finances back in order.

Mind you, New York City pays out more than $24 billion in taxes than it gets back in government services from the state and Federal level.

We have some very uncorrupt, competent and capable leaders right now in the city at least. Trying to clean up the mess of earlier generations that put the present ahead of the future.

Well, OK, but the two giant holes that are still in the ground down by Vesey St., after five long years, don't exactly reassure me that the corruption and endless obstructionism have even slowed down, much less stopped. So I suppose I'll entertain the possibility that it will happen for real this time - which was the pre-referendum spiel every other time - when some major construction - not just more studies - starts. And I don't suppose I'll fully believe it until the first train runs...if I should live so long...
.. and of course, this wouldn't be the first train, more like the 20th, while 2nd ave (and all the other aves) are also served by bus service as well, so it's not like NYC has been Anti-transit.  Far from it.

The People ride in a hole in the ground.. it's a helluva town.