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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’

#111

Post by bobthepanda »

voidlogic wrote: post #107
njarboe wrote: post #44

This article has a lot of text before getting to describing the problem. Summary: Train wreck 1995 and a installation of a safety-first, CYA response that slows down the trains and does not increase safety. Longer Summary: Train wreck in 1995. Maybe driver was asleep. Start installing new signals that not only automatically stop the trains when there is a train ahead (good idea and already in place), but also when go…

>Trains used to go up to 55mph with no systemic problems. During the age of steam, express passenger trains regularly exceeded 55 mph. For example, during the 1930s the Burlington Zephyr regularly exceeded 85 mph. For example it made the Chicago to Denver run in 1934 in 13 hours rather than the 18 hrs it takes today. Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/05/stop_th...

Realistically speaking, you are talking about two different use cases here.

A long distance train benefits from very high top speeds, because it spends a lot of time at those top speeds. Conversely, increasing the high speed of a subway train is subject to the law of diminishing returns, since the train has to comfortably accelerate and decelerate within the span of half a mile. With subways, the main concern is that every single train operates in pretty much the exact same manner WRT acceleration, deceleration, and speed, since the headways on subways can be measured in minutes, or even seconds.

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

#112

Post by bogomipz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42
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…

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

>"How does one realistically reform something like this?"

Slowly and methodically.

For starters:

Create legislation that prevents construction firms from making campaign contribution and MTA employees from taking jobs as political consultants. This is probably the largest source of corruption, graft and waste.[1]

The MTA's Board of Directors is predominantly controlled by the Governor of the state. The Board of Directors has long been a political dumping ground. Residents - the people who depend on the train have almost no say. Residents should have representation on the board of directors even if its a only a handful of rotating seats. Having people on the board who actually use and depend on the train would provide an instant feedback loop.

I think you also need to implement a rotating independent oversight committee whom the MTA must be beholden too. One that is democratically elected. The oversight committee should have real teeth though perhaps with veto ability in certain instances.

And yes as someone else mentioned you probably need to fire a whole bunch of people.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

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

#113

Post by bogomipz »

geofft wrote: post #79
DiabloD3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are not.

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

#114

Post by bobthepanda »

rb808 wrote: post #109
voidlogic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trains used to go up to 55mph with no systemic problems. During the age of steam, express passenger trains regularly exceeded 55 mph. For example, during the 1930s the Burlington Zephyr regularly exceeded 85 mph. For example it made the Chicago to Denver run in 1934 in 13 hours rather than the 18 hrs it takes today. Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/05/stop_th...

This makes me sad about missed potential. I've taken the ski train from Central London to the French Alps - was great. With high speed rail it should be possible to get a 8hr overnight train from Chicago (or Dallas & Houston) to Winter Park CO. I'm guessing it'll never happen https://www.eurostar.com/uk-en/train/france/ski-train

Running the ski train in Europe makes sense because it's leveraging high speed rail that was built and is mostly used for other things; very little new stuff was needed.

Chicago-Denver, as a city pair, is so sparsely populated and so far apart that new HSR doesn't pencil out, nor does building it out incrementally (it's hard to justify KC to Denver or Omaha to Denver)

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

#115

Post by mrbabbage »

stcredzero wrote: post #26

But there is one type of delay that’s gotten exponentially worse during that time: a catchall category blandly titled “insufficient capacity, excess dwell, unknown,” which captures every delay without an obvious cause. This smacks of corruption or of elements of society deciding that systems aren't going to simply work anymore. The population of New York City when I lived in Queens was 7.3 million when I lived there…

NYC's transit mode share for commute trips is above 50% [1]. Of the additional 1.2 million people, this means that this population growth probably produced at least 1.2 million additional daily rides, since 50% of the 1.2 million rides the subway twice a day, to and from work.

1.2 million additional daily riders is about double the entire Washington Metro daily ridership and triple that of BART's daily ridership! Indeed, 1.2 million daily riders is about equal to ridership on the Lex! So I disagree with your conclusion that "Population increase can't account for the difference". This sort of ridership growth would have destroyed any other comparable system in the US. If anything, it's amazing that the NYC subway hasn't fallen apart more than it already has.

[1] https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/travel-mode-sha...

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

#116

Post by notyourday »

smilekzs wrote: post #14

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

L (Manhattan/Brooklyn) is automated. The drive is there to simply signal "I'm here" to automated system. The second person on is there to mumble something that is difficult to anyone understand.

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

#117

Post by bobthepanda »

bogomipz wrote: post #112
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?

>"How does one realistically reform something like this?" Slowly and methodically. For starters: Create legislation that prevents construction firms from making campaign contribution and MTA employees from taking jobs as political consultants. This is probably the largest source of corruption, graft and waste.[1] The MTA's Board of Directors is predominantly controlled by the Governor of the state. The Board of Direc…

The main issue is that the MTA and its predecessors have always been dependent on one person (now the Governor, formerly the Mayor). The actual board members have no credibility and no accountability, hence why we are here today.

The MTA would be much better off if the appointed representative of the county was replaced with the actual elected executive of said county (so county executives, borough presidents, mayor/council speaker/what have you, etc.)

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

#118

Post by JackFr »

sushisource wrote: post #81
throwaway_80bf3 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

For those of us who aren't familiar with the price history what's the lie here?

The obvious part of the lie to me is that they would raise fares to increase revenue, and claim that because of the 30-day and 7-day discounts you wouldn't be paying any more.

Huh? How are you going to increase revenue if no one is paying more.

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

#119

Post by bsder »

mistermann wrote: post #86
DiabloD3 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which will never happen. Yet another of China's many advantages: ease of optimization.

As long as you agree with the optimization that the man in charge is implementing.

If you don't, well, in China, sucks to be you.

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

#120

Post by gsnedders »

azernik wrote: post #104
LolWolf wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are... one of them is given in the article—which calls the current system "one-shot"—there exists k-shot variants which allow for at least k opportunities/warnings before automagically braking. The (apparent) reasoning behind the MTA not putting these (for some number k>1) was "safety," but the article states that, in general, the timing circuits are much more complicated therefore resulting in a higher cost.[0…

Indeed, this is my understanding of how most non-US high-speed-rail controllers work - the driver sets a target speed, the physical location on the track has a maximum speed, and the traffic system looks at the cars ahead and sets its own maximum speed (e.g. zero when another train is right in front of you). Instead of stopping the train when the driver exceeds the speed limit, it just uses the minimum of all the tar…

TVM is the system I'm most familiar with when it comes to HSR (used on the LGV in France and HS1 in the UK); it has a variable overspeed allowance (5 to 15 km/h depending on current maximum speed). If you exceed that, an emergency brake application occurs.
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