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‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

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Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#71

Post by gsnedders »

masklinn wrote: post #68
gsnedders wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing off the shelf, even if some other subway gave them all the design (unlikely), it would still be hundreds of thousands of dollars per train to make it fit the New York trains. What? Alstom, Ansaldo STS, Bombardier, Siemens, and Thales all have off-the-shelf designs that they will happily sell. And I've probably forgotten some here. I realise none of these are American companies, and "Buy American" i…

That's the com system, but there are fully automated off-the-shelf systems (com, rolling stock, …). Two examples are Siemens's VAL (Lille, Taipei's Brown, Seoul's U-line, VAL tech has also been used in Lyon's D and Paris's 14 and 1) and Hitachi's AnsaldoBreda Driverless (Copenhagen, Taipei's Yellow, Milan 5, …). The latter is very popular and getting deployed in several places right now: Honolulu, Thessaloniki, Lima…

> Hitachi's AnsaldoBreda Driverless

To nitpick, this is actually Hitachi (the ex-AnsaldoBreda part) and Ansaldo STS (which Hitachi only bought 40% of, and became its own company when Hitachi bought AnsaldoBreda).

Depending on rolling stock and space for equipment, replacing the rolling stock when replacing the signalling equipment might not be required (see, for example, the the London Underground 1995 Stock on the Northern Line).

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#72

Post by throwaway_80bf3 »

bogomipz wrote: post #22

This would not be the first time that the MTA has willfully deceived the public by maintaining two sets of facts - the private set which reflects the truth and another set of facts that are used in discussion with the public. 15 years ago the MTA was caught maintaining two different sets of books - one internal that showed the agency had a surplus of cash and another set of books for the public which showed the agenc…

About 8 years ago there were a few house ads in the cars that were effectively gaslighting riders. It was one of the craziest things I'd ever seen as a consumer -- borderline antagonistic. The agency, and the workers to some extent, can be pugilistic when criticized.

http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/176/files/2010/03/f...

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#73

Post by davidf18 »

I live in NYC. For a couple of years I'd be reading NYTimes articles about the system is having problems from overcrowding, yet you'd see articles that more people took subways in the 1950's - 1960's.

Within the past few months there was a NYTimes article that stated that after an accident in the mid 1990s (?) that they slowed the system down. Thus, the problem wasn't overcrowding, but slowing the system down.

The system has been underfunded for maintenance. When the city went broke in the 1970s (?), the financing was transferred to the state from the city. NY State taxes the city but does not returned the taxed funds to the city for the MTA. Transferring management of the MTA back to the city would help with holding the Mayor accountable, something to think about if they want to be re-elected.

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#74

Post by masklinn »

iooi wrote: post #50
smilekzs wrote: post #14

Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?

I've said it before [1] and I'll say it again, even if I get downvoted to hell again: Unions NYC has some of the strongest unions in the country. Everything from hotels to the MTA are plagued by really, really strong unions that only care about their interests -- leaving the city with a shameful transit system, in this case. Unions make up nearly 25% of workers in NYC[2], that's more than the double the national aver…

Paris has been able to convert an existing line to fully automated (GOA4) and is currently working on a second one.

Unions sound more like your personal bogeyman than an actual cause.

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#75

Post by efuquen »

iooi wrote: post #50
smilekzs wrote: post #14

Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?

I've said it before [1] and I'll say it again, even if I get downvoted to hell again: Unions NYC has some of the strongest unions in the country. Everything from hotels to the MTA are plagued by really, really strong unions that only care about their interests -- leaving the city with a shameful transit system, in this case. Unions make up nearly 25% of workers in NYC[2], that's more than the double the national aver…

Denmark has one of the highest union participation rates in the world and they were able to a build a fully automated metro system in Copenhagen.

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#76

Post by masklinn »

gsnedders wrote: post #59
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countries with way stronger unions and automated trains. I doubt unions are the deciding factor.

Union culture can be significant though. From my understanding, in the US I'd expect a union to refuse any form of automation indefinitely; in other countries, they might accept it if the redundant staff are provided training for another job with good employment prospects.

> Union culture can be significant though.

Union culture is as antagonistic in France as in the US (for the same reasons that corporations are antagonistic) and it not only has multiple GOA4 metro systems running right now across the country[0], Paris is actually converting existing lines to full automation.

All of Germany (which has a much more cooperative union culture) has two GOA4 lines both in Nuremberg, meanwhile Copenhagen Metro (in highly unionised Denmark) was created fully automated back in 2002.

I see no evidence that unions have anything to do with it.

[0] quite literally: Lille, Toulouse, Lyon, Rennes, Paris

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#77

Post by cynicalkane »

soperj wrote: post #58
iooi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it before [1] and I'll say it again, even if I get downvoted to hell again: Unions NYC has some of the strongest unions in the country. Everything from hotels to the MTA are plagued by really, really strong unions that only care about their interests -- leaving the city with a shameful transit system, in this case. Unions make up nearly 25% of workers in NYC[2], that's more than the double the national aver…

So really the answer isn't unions. It's corruption. Unions work in many places in the world.

Per the linked articles, unions are intertwined with the corruption. This wouldn’t be the case if unions were politically touchable. As long as there enough voters who will always say, “unions aren’t the problem”, they will be part of the problem. They get money for nothing and nobody blames them.

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#78

Post by davewritescode »

iooi wrote: post #50
smilekzs wrote: post #14

Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?

I've said it before [1] and I'll say it again, even if I get downvoted to hell again: Unions NYC has some of the strongest unions in the country. Everything from hotels to the MTA are plagued by really, really strong unions that only care about their interests -- leaving the city with a shameful transit system, in this case. Unions make up nearly 25% of workers in NYC[2], that's more than the double the national aver…

Massachusetts just eliminated all toll plazas in the state and those workers were highly compensated and unionized. Many of those workers were retrained for other positions.

There are ways to make the union happy and the workers happy it just takes longer term thinking which governments and voters are frightently bad at.

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#79

Post by geofft »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #62
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic How does one realistically reform something like this?

You fire everyone. However, if I remember correctly, they're unionized, which is why this hasn't happened yet.

Is management unionized? The article makes it sound like the engineers themselves are frustrated with this system.

Re: ‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’

#80

Post by d4l3k »

masklinn wrote: post #55
sbarre wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Skytrain in Vancouver does not have human conductors either. Although I would assume there are conductors in a control centre somewhere?

There are no conductors , there's a control room with system overview and links to metros, stations and service personnel. See http://www.ansaldo-sts.com/sites/ansaldosts/files/brochures/... page 21.

Interestingly enough, all transit staff are trained to be conductors in cases when the automated system doesn't work. It recently snowed which incorrectly triggered the "something is on the track" sensors causing the entire system to stop. They just took all the people normally doing other tasks and made them manually drive the trains for a day until the snow melted.
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