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What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

nytimes.com

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Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#51

Post by smelendez »

strictnein wrote: post #19
lr4444lr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No downtime. The system runs 24/7/365.

Is it impossible for them to schedule downtime?

They do. They do some work on nights and weekends, and some lines have shut down and will shut down for periods of months.

The L train (Manhattan to Brooklyn) is scheduled to shut down for over a year to do residual repairs from Hurricane Sandy's flooding.

But it's a major pain. The system is at capacity many hours of the day, as are surface roads, and some points in the city are only near one line, so there's no easy way to get people where they need to go when their train can't run.

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#52

Post by gsnedders »

nine_k wrote: post #32
gsnedders wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question I have is, why were things like the Hudson Yards station, work on the perpetually delayed 2nd Avenue subway, Fulton St. station renovation prioritized over the core signal and preexisting aging track infrastructure? Which gets votes? Renewing existing infrastructure is something nobody understands.

"Renewing existing infrastructure" as in "not canceling L train", or "R trains running without problems", etc? That could get some votes. BTW 2nd avenue subway should be seen as "less crowded green line trains", which matched popular demand rather well, and it did work, to my mind.

> "Renewing existing infrastructure" as in "not canceling L train", or "R trains running without problems", etc? That could get some votes.

But people expect it to keep working as it does today, as far as I can tell. It's about expectations, not realism.

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#53

Post by bdhess »

chimeracoder wrote: post #39
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being 24/7 just takes redundancy. If you have 2+ lines from A B, you can single track them during low demand times and with care take any part of the system offline without shutting down. NYC density increases costs in some ways, but it also makes means they can spend far less to maintain roads / street lights / etc. On top of that the high average and median earnings means NYC has an enviable tax base.

> Being 24/7 just takes redundancy. If you have 2+ lines from A B, you can single track them during low demand times and with care take any part of the system offline without shutting down. Not all lines have four tracks (some only have two), and even for the ones that do, running trains while work is going on means incredibly slow and delayed service.

I don’t think you understood what parent meant by “single track”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#54

Post by betterunix2 »

Nelkins wrote: post #34
perfectstorm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how much money is needed. Why is it that Japan, Hong Kong and most developed European cities have much better rail transportation ? I don't think money is the only issue. NYC is probably one of the richest cities in the world and yet you say they don't have the money to fix this ? I know construction in US is expensive but it can't be that bad.

I'd be very skeptical of the "required" money quoted by anyone who is affiliated with the MTA or state government in general. There's a lot of evidence that indicates the MTA is used as a personal piggy bank. Take, for example, this gem: "MTA wrote $4.9M check to three upstate ski centers in bizarre move requested by Cuomo officials" [1]. Or this one[2] (also part of this NYT series): "Subway workers now make an aver…

I remain confused about the pay figure the NYTimes gave for subway workers; I have a close relative who works in the subway and I know a number of subway workers, and none of them make anything close to that kind of salary, even counting overtime. So unless that counts something other than the hourly employees, or counts pension contributions as salary (in which case it is just an argument against pensions), I have a hard time believing it.

I also have no idea what better alternative there is when a contract negotiation fails. Is the system supposed to stop altogether until a new contract is agreed upon? Are the workers expected to go without pay? The fact is that the union's demands have not been unreasonable -- they ask to keep benefits, to have pay increases that basically track the cost of living in NYC, and occasional to expand low-cost benefits (e.g. allowing all employees to ride LIRR and MNR for free, rather than just employees who live outside NYC).

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#55

Post by Danihan »

chimeracoder wrote: post #21
randomerr wrote: post #2

New York doesn't have enough money to get it done. The politicians are too busy paying for all the election promises they've made over the last 50 years. And they absolutely need to cut the bureaucracy (code word for 'unions' and 'government agencies') that are deeply entrenched in the government. I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets…

> I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out. We're tired of it, but New York government is not a democracy. The two ruling parties have passed an complex network of laws which, in effect, mean that officials are accountable only to the political party, not to their constituents. Case in point: one of the largest advocates of elim…

>We can't vote them out when there's literally no one to vote in, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have a gentleman's agreement not to compete with each other seriously, the same way Comcast and Time Warner Cable do.

And people wonder why Trump got elected.

Pervasive desperation for anyone who might actually shake up the system.

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#56

Post by smelendez »

js8 wrote: post #50
lr4444lr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No downtime. The system runs 24/7/365.

That's interesting. In Prague, subway (which is IMHO superior to NY subway in some ways) is closed every day from midnight till 5 am (roughly, I think it is extended by an hour during weekends). Instead, we have night trams and buses, so the downtime is not a big deal. Maybe a change of culture would be helpful?

That's what most US cities do, too. Chicago has some all-night rail service, but it's mostly just buses, for instance.

But in NYC, an advisory group suggested that recently, and people hated the idea. The problem is traffic can be heavy even after hours, especially on the weekends, so buses would be a lot slower. Lots of people rely on the subway at all hours of the night.

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#57

Post by passwordqq2 »

chimeracoder wrote: post #21
randomerr wrote: post #2

New York doesn't have enough money to get it done. The politicians are too busy paying for all the election promises they've made over the last 50 years. And they absolutely need to cut the bureaucracy (code word for 'unions' and 'government agencies') that are deeply entrenched in the government. I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets…

> I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out. We're tired of it, but New York government is not a democracy. The two ruling parties have passed an complex network of laws which, in effect, mean that officials are accountable only to the political party, not to their constituents. Case in point: one of the largest advocates of elim…

Schneider man is busy taking down la drumpf so why worry about state government?

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#58

Post by ng12 »

spike021 wrote: post #40

I find this situation incredibly interesting as an outsider. I live in the SF Bay Area where we have a Muni "subway", if you can even call it reminiscent of one and BART. They're both absolutely awful, between not having good/expansive coverage/timely service. A plethora of issues plague both. Both times I visited NYC this year I took the subway everywhere. Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were dela…

Depends on where you live -- going through a tunnel or over a bridge adds significantly to the odds of encountering delays. Even if you live near one of the first few stops in Queens or Brooklyn you're dealing with disproportionally higher average travel time.

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#59

Post by spyspy »

bobthechef wrote: post #27
hahla wrote: post #8

If Philly had a subway system as connected as NYC I would be happy.

The connections aren't the problem under discussion. The problem is that it's a crumbling subway system that is having trouble operating at the capacity the city requires. For a city as rich as New York, you would expect something much better.

> having trouble operating at the capacity the city requires.

It's not just having trouble. The capacity the city requires is far beyond what it's currently running at. Meeting current demand would've meant planning for it two decades ago.

Anyone who lives here will tell you that the subway is wildly unreliable. Huge time gaps between trains, train cars that are dangerously overcrowded, random line shutdowns, local trains randomly going express and vice versa, straight up train direction reversals, "signal problems", "mechanical issues", sick passengers who can't get medical help because there's no medical staff in that station, "police investigations", etc are all part of daily life here.

Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

#60

Post by a-dub »

Why are they talking about moving stairs? Why is this first on the list? What is this madness? The stairs don't need to be moved. They simply need to add more brand new lines and stations and invest in infrastructure to improve reliability. That's it.

The NYC Subway is not "broken" because the stairs are in the wrong place. The NYC Subway isn't even "broken."

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