I was a bit shocked by New York’s subway; you always seems to have to wait a loooong time for a train. On the London Underground the carriages are much smaller but waiting even 5 mins for a train is vanishingly rare. Tokyo has a crazy subway that guarantees to almost the second when the trains go. You can literally say exactly when you’ll be somewhere across town down to the minute and it’s nearly never wrong.
What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
121–130 of 176 posts
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#122I 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…
NYC's subway system was started before cars were widespread, and it's still the lifeblood of the city, so it has to work. When it's even a little bit off, people complain.
SF's public transit system (except cable cars which are mostly just preserved for tourists now) was built after the automobile, and as such it feels like an afterthought.
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#123I was a bit shocked by New York’s subway; you always seems to have to wait a loooong time for a train. On the London Underground the carriages are much smaller but waiting even 5 mins for a train is vanishingly rare. Tokyo has a crazy subway that guarantees to almost the second when the trains go. You can literally say exactly when you’ll be somewhere across town down to the minute and it’s nearly never wrong.
Completely agree. Paris, London, and Tokyo all have better and cleaner subways than NYC. But NYC is about as good as it gets in the US.
Believe it or not, as nasty as NYC subways are now, in the 1970s they were far dirtier.
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#124As non-NYC resident the first thing I though was, "Huh, I wonder what's wrong with New York's subways?" But alas they went straight into solutions so I am still left to wonder what problems they are trying to fix and in what priority. Pretty webpage though.
If only there were some way to find out information on the problem of New York's subways! Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-... Great comment though.
That's not what I mean.
Take for example solution #1: "Redesign stations to get more people on and off trains faster."
The text and graphics then goes on to explain some interesting issues with various stations but what solutions are the experts recommending to get more people on and off? How many more people per unit of time do they need to accommodate? This is solution #1, does that mean it's the most urgent? etc. etc.
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#125The more I think about our future with self driving cars/busses; I wonder at what point will subways no longer be needed? If you look at the capital cost of a new bus compared to the cost for the operator(s) who work it, we could greatly increase our fleet of bus services simply by removing the driver. If that and the cost per mile falls under $1/mile for uber and the like, I don't think we have a massive need for su…
You could be right. The key for making this work is creating more dedicated bus lanes which can then act like a small above ground train.
That is exactly what I believe will happen.
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#126I 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…
Conversely: tons of people here in Vancouver complain about our equivalent systems (the Skytrain, usually), whereas people I know who've visited from New York are blown away by how clean, fast, and efficient it is. Trains that come every 90 seconds, no garbage on the tracks, bright, open, airy stations (most are above ground on that line). NYC is a model of public transit from the perspective of ubiquity, feasibility…
Isn't the problem with vancouver's system the lack of coverage? And overcrowding during rush hour?
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#127Privatize it. Like it was originally built.
Who would buy it? The system has $40 billion in debt, plus pension obligations, plus union contracts. The only way to make money on this privately would be declaring bankruptcy and hoping for a good settlement.
The city is going to have to eat the debt/pensions anyways. Privatize so they can get help paying that debt, and system improvements can’t be held hostage anymore.
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#128I 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…
I moved to NYC a year ago and have the same basic feeling as you. Could the subway be improved? Obviously! But New Yorkers don't realize how good they have it compared to the rest of the U.S. [0] If a train takes 10 minutes, they're annoyed. Meanwhile, scheduled headways of 20 minutes are the norm where I'm from -- on the one light rail line that goes through the center of town.
My daily experience on the NYC Subway is that it's an incredible marvel. [1]
[0] There was even an article on r/nyc earlier this year about how New York shouldn't get Amazon's HQ2 based on the access to transit requirement. The article argued that the transit is too bad here. That's -- that's so absurd as to be almost beyond belief.
[1] An enormous caveat here: I can walk or bike to work. I do use the subway at peak hours fairly frequently, but I'm not reliant on it or held hostage by it, as many others are.
Re: What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet I have heard horror stories of how it was so run down in the 70's and 80's that people were afraid to even take it at all. Isn't this a case of people glorifying the past? Are there objective metrics that demonstrate service quality has degraded (reduced train frequency, reduced amount of seats, etc...)?
> Are there objective metrics that demonstrate service quality has degraded (reduced train frequency, reduced amount of seats, etc...) Yes, there are, and the NYTimes has reported that data in previous articles from this same series.