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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?

#151

Post by jsjohnst »

keevie wrote: post #94
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…

The NYC subway system is orders of magnitude better than anything else in this country, absolutely. This also means that pretty much everyone relies on it to get around every day---so we have to hold it to a much higher standard. If the subway were as bad as it is in SF, the whole city would more or less stop functioning entirely.

> If the subway were as bad as it is in SF, the whole city would more or less stop functioning entirely.

And SF is far better than say LA or Denver as far as public transit. I think you nailed it perfectly though, being “the best” carries a lot of responsibility and the MTA isn’t honoring that.

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

#152

Post by jsjohnst »

JustAnotherPat wrote: post #73
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…

The problem is during rush hour. Wasn't uncommon for me to be stuck for 45 minutes in the same spot.

The past few weeks it’s also maintenance closing lots of stations without any signs or it being really hard to follow the sign if it exists even as a local.

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

#153

Post by jsjohnst »

Danihan wrote: post #55
chimeracoder wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> And people wonder why Trump got elected.

Except he lost by something like 8:1 in NYC. Why? Because the folks in NYC knew he was as crooked or worse as the swamp he claimed he would drain.

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

#154

Post by lloyd-christmas »

chimeracoder wrote: post #63
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…

> I found NYC's subway a pleasant improvement. Yet I keep seeing articles about how it needs to be fixed. Decades of underinvestment means that it's not as good today as it was ten years ago, or as good ten years ago as it was a few decades before that. That said, even with all its problems, the NY metro area still has far better and more extensive public transportation than any other metro area in the country. Over…

Living in NYC, I haven't driven a car in 3 years and haven't even renewed my driver license for 2. I still manage to go hiking during summer weekends and skiing during the winter. Accessibility really isn't the issue.

I think it's optics more than anything. NYC residents pay a ton in taxes and get little back. Our state taxes get moved upstate and our federal taxes go to poor states. I really think it's just trying to put pressure on our representatives to be a bit more "selfish" as to what happens with our taxes.

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

#155

Post by lloyd-christmas »

jsjohnst wrote: post #149
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…

> Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station You must not have had to come from Brooklyn to Manhattan during commute hours. Daily (or multiples times a day even) occurrence in that case. I’ll still gladly take MTA over Muni/BART any day, but NYC could definitely learn a thing or two from Hong Kong or even London’s subway systems.

I take the L every day from Graham to 6th at 9am. I very rarely have to wait to get on a train and the delays aren't more than just being slower compared to off-hours. I can understand a frustration trying to get on a train if you live on Bedford, I'm sure that's a nightmare. However, I simply don't understand the complaints (comparing it within the city). Maybe it's just because every other commute I've had has gone through Union Square or 42nd. Compared to those, everything is easy.

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

#156

Post by jsjohnst »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #155
jsjohnst wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station You must not have had to come from Brooklyn to Manhattan during commute hours. Daily (or multiples times a day even) occurrence in that case. I’ll still gladly take MTA over Muni/BART any day, but NYC could definitely learn a thing or two from Hong Kong or even London’s subway systems.

I take the L every day from Graham to 6th at 9am. I very rarely have to wait to get on a train and the delays aren't more than just being slower compared to off-hours. I can understand a frustration trying to get on a train if you live on Bedford, I'm sure that's a nightmare. However, I simply don't understand the complaints (comparing it within the city). Maybe it's just because every other commute I've had has gone…

> I take the L every day from Graham to 6th at 9am.

How’s the L like during the summer on your way home? 110°+ platform temps weren’t uncommon back when I took it.

That said, I think the line you are on makes a big difference. My line (A/C) seems to have the worst trains as far as age / cleanliness of the ones I’ve been on. Way too infrequent during commute hours and when they do come they come in pairs or triplets. This causes the first train (and sometimes second) to be packed Tokyo style, which then causes delays for trains after it as it takes longer for folks to get on / off. If they just made them run consistent and more frequent (seriously 10-15min between groups of trains during commute hours isn’t uncommon), they’d not be overcrowded and not delay as much, but alas, scheduling seems to allude MTA.

As to other lines, 4/5/6 has decent trains and are pretty frequent, but horribly crowded during commute. 7 train (inside Manhattan anyway) is typically full (not too overcrowded), but frequency is sometimes a problem and I wish it was better aligned with the schedules of the lines which feed into it. 1/2/3 and N/Q/R aren’t bad in general usually. I’ve not taken the B/D/F/M/J/Z/G lines enough to have a fair opinion, but I usually seem to have one issue or another with them when I do end up on them (usually maintenance related lately).

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

#157

Post by fjsolwmv »

sandworm101 wrote: post #147
majormajor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you and the person you're replying to are using vastly different definitions of luxury real estate. Add a few zeros. :)

Yes. Most of NYC real estate only exists to support the real luxury units, the top 1-5% with massive profit margins. A great many units are actually built at a loss to support the construction of the penthouses. Such not-luxury units only exist as a result of zoning. Google "poor door" to see the extreme physical manifestation.

That's sound like saying most airline fare exists only to support first class.

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

#158

Post by fjsolwmv »

MR4D wrote: post #99
acranox wrote: post #98

What would it take to fix the subway? Money of course. Where's it come from? Who cares, just spend it. Transit is necessary. Tax the businesses that benefit from good transit. Raise the gas taxes, because driving is a luxury if you could have taken mass transit. Boston's transit is a mess too. Some of the problems can be fixed just by throwing money at the problem. The Boston subway breaks down all the time because t…

After reading your comment twice, I still can't tell if it's sarcasm or not...

Why would it be sarcastic? NYC area is one of the wealthiest areas in the world, in large part due to the subway. Pay it its due, like Hong Kong does.

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

#159

Post by fjsolwmv »

chimeracoder wrote: post #108
betterunix2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says the union did exactly what I said the union can do: prevent the MTA from cutting jobs. That does not prevent the MTA from modernizing the signal system -- the entire context of the dispute over the L line was the MTA's effort to reduce trains to a one-man crew, from the current two-man crew, after a modern signal system was installed and operational . The MTA is busy installing that same modern syste…

> The TWU had nothing to do with it and continues to have nothing to do with it. It sounds like you're treating the TWU and MTA as two separate entities. Legally, yes, that's true, but in practice, more often than not, the TWU and MTA act in tandem. If you just look at one and not the other, or the interplay between the two, you miss out on the broader picture. (In this specific case, I don't see a particularly signi…

The point is that as long as MTA budgets labor pay at an upward trending rate, TWU has no reason to oppose. The should love new signals that let workers sit in cushy control center desk jobs or get paid to be station attendants (sorely lacking in MTA) instead of train/signal operators. There's plenty of labor to do at MTA, there's no risk of losing demand for jobs.

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

#160

Post by fjsolwmv »

jblow wrote: post #130
gotofritz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London Underground was privatised, then the government had to step in to rescue the firm that went bankrupt...

Tokyo subway is privatized and is very very good.

What works in Japan may supremely fail in US.

This article looks promising, but then think about the disaster that is the private ISP industry or the red-light camera industry in the US. The US is bad at privatization, we tend to turn it into exploitative subsidies of crony capitalists. http://marketurbanism.com/2010/12/22/japanese-transit-and-wh...

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