The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
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Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#2What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#3What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
It’s not about the train showing up late, it’s about the train taking a long time to go from stop to stop. People are spending more time on the train due to how slow it’s moving.
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#4There is one benefit of leaving early: not having to deal with vast crowds of riders on an overpacked train. Another side effect of underfunding.
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#5What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
The trains are frequent, but so are unscheduled stops. Even as a tourist, you don't have to take many rides to get familiar with announcements that start with "We are being held momentarily..."
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#6I'm confused as to why the US seems to fail or fall so far behind in infrastructure compared to other developed nations. It seems that we throw money at our problems but seemingly get nowhere. It's sad because there's many amazing things about this country, but we cannot do basic things like make trains run on time.
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#7What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
They're late because they're moving slower and randomly-but-frequently stopping between stations.
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#8What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
Subways routinely are: 1 late, 2 closed for repair, 3. de routed etc...
eg. today, the 6th is not operating uptown, between 9:45 last night, and 6:am next morning
You say, fine, I will take another line, but then the 2 and 3 are not operating at all due to 'tunnel repair',
You need to go to work? Your choice is go downtown, take one of the express trains to uptown, and take another downtown train.
So, your 15 minutes train ride becomes 45+ minutes. You can always take a cab, but this becomes expensive to do regularly, plus during rush hour it is hard to catch one.
NYC's subway runs 24hrs in theory only. It is always a whack-amole game if the train is 1. late, or overcrowded, your 2. station is closed, 3. the whole line is not running that day, and My least favorite: 4. Tain strands you for a while, because "there is traffic ahead", or some accident happen.
Just as the article mentioned, I noticed I had to start leaving early to make sure I make my soccer games in time (they are in brooklyn). In case the usual route has issues (which happens about 25-30%% of the time during weekends).
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#9What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
THe keyword here is “supposed”. I don’t have regular experience with NYC subway, but used to ride Toronto subway everyday, which is the subject to the similar problems. The trains do arrive every 3-5 minutes on weekdays, but then something happens (security incident on a train, unauthorized person on a track level, fires, signal problems, or - the most horrible - “personal injury on a track level”, the language for someone falling in front of the arriving train - intentionally or not. Then everything stops for tens of minutes, or hours in worst cases, stations get overcrowded, buses get sent to operate on the route, taxis and Uber’s are impossible to get and so on. Things like this push average delay times up, not the uniform slowness of the trains throughout the day.
Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early
#10What does it exactly mean for a subway that's supposed to run every 3-5 minutes to be "late"? Are NY metro trains so infrequent that a schedule is that important?
So, first thing that's helpful to know in answering is that there is actually a schedule for the subway. For example, here's the one for the A line:
http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/tacur.pdf
At least back in 2012 or so, when I cared, the A train did keep reasonably close to this schedule (effectively genuinely on it when it wasn't rush hour). It definitely does not keep to this schedule now.
Now, do New Yorkers actually know this schedule? Well, sometimes, actually: while trains do come every few minutes in Manhattan, any specific train comes much more rarely, up to about every 20 minutes for the A train I linked above. This matters if you can't afford to live in Manhattan, or even if you live far away: for about a year, I commuted regularly from 181st St. to Fulton St. on the A, and you better damn well believe I had a specific train I wanted for that trip.
But even for those who don't, if the train gets too far off schedule, you start getting delays, because the trains cannot handle the throughput. Maybe for those commuting within the Midtown area, you know that a train will come every 3-5 minutes, but if the train that would normally take you is still 15 minutes away, then you've got at least a 12 minute backup of extra people who are going to be on that platform. Not only does that mean you won't manage to get your normal train (because you won't be able to reach the platform); it also compounds, since it'll cause people to enter and exit the trains more slowly. There are also many times when trains join or split from sharing the same track, and scheduling delays can change a smooth swapping of a switch back and forth to a traffic jam as controllers try to figure out whether it matters more to give the E or F priority on such-and-such a segment given that the nearest D and C trains are in such-and-such a place. You get this same kind of thing on your compute with disk seeks: it may not seem like a big deal if a read request shows up a millisecond late due to bus contention, but if it means that the drive head has just moved past the data you want, you're gonna have a long delay while it sweeps back, and that in turn may mean that other requests get delayed and so on.
So: yes, the schedule matters even if you don't know the schedule; but it still causes problems even if you want to think of it purely as "bandwidth."