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New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

nytimes.com

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Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#81

Post by bsder »

pavement wrote: post #21

A lot of what affects the NYC subway is the principle of the "Sick System." http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html The system is too essential for a stop-the-world overhaul, but so far gone, that only a stop-the-world overhaul can part the clouds. Without a hard flush of antiquated mission critical infrastructure, millions of turbulent eddies and vortices will ensure that the system is always afflicted by parasi…

> The system is too essential for a stop-the-world overhaul, but so far gone, that only a stop-the-world overhaul can part the clouds.

Hogwash.

The "problem" is that you may have to invest for a long time , continuously before you see the result. This is politically untenable, not engineering untenable.

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#82

Post by rst »

chiph wrote: post #68
pavement wrote: post #21

A lot of what affects the NYC subway is the principle of the "Sick System." http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html The system is too essential for a stop-the-world overhaul, but so far gone, that only a stop-the-world overhaul can part the clouds. Without a hard flush of antiquated mission critical infrastructure, millions of turbulent eddies and vortices will ensure that the system is always afflicted by parasi…

Not a New Yorker, but what I heard was that the tunnels only have two tracks, and both are needed for daily operations. So you can't replace one when it wears out because of the service interruption. If they had made the tunnels wide enough for three tracks, they'd have a spare for when they do repairs on one of them. And give them a place to do a rolling-upgrade of old middle-20th century signaling equipment.

Two-track subways are the norm generally, at least in the US. In fact, New York's is unusual in that many trunk lines have more than two tracks, mostly separate express tracks so that express trains can pass locals stopped at a station.

(And it is possible to shut down one track of a two-track line for at least part of the way, if you're willing to run only one train through the affected stretch of track at a time. It may condemn you to fifteen or twenty minute waits between trains, but you can do it. The Washington, DC metro has been doing this a lot lately on weekends.)

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#83

Post by joatmon-snoo »

bogomipz wrote: post #78

>"Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged that the schedules were not being met, and they blamed overcrowding for the shortfall." No, the overcrowding is the effect of the MTA not addressing massive increases in ridership over an almost 20 year period. The MTA likes to pretend publicly that the ridership boom came out of nowhere and blindsided everyone. However the increase in ridership ha…

To make the current situation with chronically late trains worse there is no way to know when the next train is coming until you have paid for a fare and are standing down on the platform. Little good it does you then to find out that next train is not for 12 or 15 minutes.

SO MUCH THIS.

Fortunately, because the MTA has exposed the live schedule data, Google Maps lets you check this (sadly, it isn't 100% reliable: oftentimes a train will claim to have arrived somewhere, or even be departing from a station, while it's still getting there).

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#84

Post by Nelkins »

rb808 wrote: post #76
Nelkins wrote: post #69

The line about overcrowding being one of the major drivers behind delays doesn't hold much water. Ridership has essentially been flat or even declining in some areas[1] (peaked in early 2010s). Decreasing mean distance between failures in cars [2] (as well as mismanagement of crews & trains as mentioned in article) are among the main culprits. [1] http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ridership/ridership_sub_annua... [2] ht…

Are you sure? nytimes recently said its doubled. (thougcomparison to 40s is interesting) > Subway ridership has risen dramatically since the 1990s, when about four million people used the system each day. Now it is nearly six million riders each day — the highest level since the 1940 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...

They said it's risen since the 90s, which is true. That chart in the middle is a bit misleading (not granular enough). Scroll to the bottom of my first link to see the MTA's own figures on annual ridership for the past few years, you'll see it's down .3% since 2011 (although has gone both up and down in the intervening years). And just for the sake of completeness, I'll counter your NYT article with one of my own ;) [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/nyregion/new-york-city-su...

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#85

Post by rkuykendall-com »

nerdponx wrote: post #80

Does anyone know how much those ridiculous touch screens cost?

You mean the ones that allow them to show multiple ads, changed digitally, without paying someone to manually change them out?

If those are net-costing anything at all, I'd guess it's a rounding error on any subway upgrades.

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#86

Post by bogomipz »

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #83
bogomipz wrote: post #78

>"Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority acknowledged that the schedules were not being met, and they blamed overcrowding for the shortfall." No, the overcrowding is the effect of the MTA not addressing massive increases in ridership over an almost 20 year period. The MTA likes to pretend publicly that the ridership boom came out of nowhere and blindsided everyone. However the increase in ridership ha…

To make the current situation with chronically late trains worse there is no way to know when the next train is coming until you have paid for a fare and are standing down on the platform. Little good it does you then to find out that next train is not for 12 or 15 minutes. SO MUCH THIS. Fortunately, because the MTA has exposed the live schedule data, Google Maps lets you check this (sadly, it isn't 100% reliable: of…

>"Fortunately, because the MTA has exposed the live schedule data, Google Maps lets you check this (sadly, it isn't 100% reliable: oftentimes a train will claim to have arrived somewhere, or even be departing from a station, while it's still getting there)."

Yes and the issue is that the MTA doesn't make the service disruption data available.

See: https://medium.com/transit-app/how-were-bringing-real-time-c...

Why wouldn't you make this data available? Why stop short? Most likely because it would expose just how many unplanned maintenance disruptions there actually are.

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#87

Post by zanny »

mysterydip wrote: post #71

Is this just a problem with NYC's system, or is this an "elephant in the room" problem with mass transit? If an individual's car breaks down, they can find alternate means to get where they need to go. If everyone were to depend on public transit in the future, how do you handle upgrades? I know the metro in DC will run extra bus routes for some down trains, but I think that's just for certain smaller repairs. It's s…

Almost every Subway supports transparent upgrades during operation. In the absolute worst case scenarios you shut down single stations at night. By design almost every Subway is redundant - you at least have to have two lines, one for station bypass and one for returning trains. When you work on any Subway, you shut down one of the lines and manage traffic through the other.

The NY Subway is just the most incompetent, most mismanaged, most technically indebted subway on Earth.

There is no "problem with mass transit" as much as it is a problem with centralized administration of complex things, period. Anything of large scale that impacts many lives but has limited controllers to manage it is both rife for ineptitude / corruption / incompetence and easily ignored on the consumer side because of the complexity.

The same issue turns up all over infrastructure - outdated bridges, power lines, internet infrastructure, water pipes. Central authorities of incompetent taxpayer dollar rent seekers run them, the people are too ignorant / ill informed about deteriorating conditions to care, legacy technical debt builds up over centuries to be impossibly large.

And you won't escape them. The inverse of your scenario - rather than the car breaking down, the road collapses from age - is still wholly applicable. Car travel and vehicular routes are just as mired in corruption and bureaucracy making them a nightmare as trains. Trains breaking down is as easily solved as cars - there are maintenance stations, you take one train off, you put a new one on. The real problem is always when the tracks go bad - the centralization part. You could have a billion trains but not enough track / switching capacity to use them.

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#88

Post by TillE »

Sangermaine wrote: post #75
Larrikin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it should close at night. Pretty much every city with a subway system worth bragging about does. It always seemed strange to me that Philly is the only city I've been to that fully replaces the subway at night with buses.

>Then it should close at night. No, it shouldn't, and I take it by this statement you don't live in NYC. I do, and have lived in Tokyo and other cities with excellent mass transit. While Tokyo's system is much, much better, it's pretty fantastic that I know I can always get a train home no matter what time it is, no matter where in the city I am, much faster than any ground vehicle would take me.

Everywhere else just runs replacement buses at night and it's fine. Yeah ok it's a little slower, but it means you're not running a huge train for five people.

Re: New York’s Subways Are Not Just Delayed, Some Trains Don’t Run at All

#90

Post by zanny »

lasermike026 wrote: post #67

NYC MTA needs billions of dollars to fix the system. NY state must raise taxes on the rich and deploy it too the MTA. The federal must chip in too. The MTA will never make money and this is how it is.

Where does the misguided notion infrastructure should make a profit even come from? Everyone hates on Amtrak for not being a profitable company. When in history has infrastructure ever existed for the sake of the network operators profit? It is always for the sake of profiting those who use it - the infrastructure enables profits, but in the same way sticking profits into medicine cripples the efficiency of the system, trying to stick rent seeking into infrastructure defeats the point of using it.
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