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The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

nytimes.com

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Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#41

Post by wink »

I'm confused about the part with the teacher. Where I went to school ALL the teachers arrived 15-60 minutes earlier and went into their dedicated room. I don't remember exactly, but one of them coming in late was a "once every few years" thing.

Sure it sucks if you're early but I suppose they could also just get some take-home work (like grading tests) that's not due that day or prepare some stuff. Sure, some of them probably killed the time with morning newspaper and coffee... but still.

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#42

Post by spydum »

ng12 wrote: post #34
swang wrote: post #31

I took a trip to ny last week and the area i was staying at (near trump tower, off lexington), the closest subways were the 2/3/E/M but apparently on Saturday the 2 and 3 weren't available going downtown, so I had to walk a block or so to get to another line to get where I was going. Then I was in Brooklyn to watch a show that night, we got out around 9PM and was trying to figure out how to get back into the city, th…

> Seemed like the locals knew about this though. I think about this a lot. I know what it means when the AC is rerouted along the F to West 4th and can plan accordingly. How the hell is a tourist supposed to figure out how to get to Fulton?

We just ask the guy/gal at the desk. It's not that crazy, though I will admit, my last trip there added some stress because of this uncertainty.

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#43

Post by fancyfish »

jorblumesea wrote: post #6

I'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.

I'm throwing darts at the wall here, but I think part of the problem is our sprawl and geographic size/car culture. In the typical US city you have the wealthier suburbanites living in separate towns/counties than the city they work in. This segregates the local funding because no one wants to pay for someone else's projects. And state funding doesn't benefit you as directly (e.g. state highway projects) and probably suffers the same problem.

Public transit doesn't get funded because it only works in dense urban areas and the wealthier folks drive anyway. European and Asian countries with the better public transit systems seem to be smaller geographically and connect cities to cities with federal funding. To illustrate we've got the Bos-Wash corridor connected via Amtrak but there would be backlash if we tried to fund a super awesome high speed rail there with federal funds because nobody else outside that area would benefit.

For comparison the size of Japan is basically our Eastern Seaboard or California and the UK would be the Northeast Corridor.

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#44

Post by closeparen »

m_ke wrote: post #32
wgerard wrote: post #24

It's interesting seeing the ways people work around this, even for people who don't have hard start/end times (e.g. tech employees). I have one friend who uses Citi Bike to get to important meetings I think people who don't live in the city don't realize how (relatively) stressful it can be when the trains are late. Riding the train during peak hours is already a pretty stressful experience: The sardine analogy is ve…

I just work from home most days now because of how bad it has gotten. I had to move back to Queens a few months ago near where I grew up and the trip to SoHo that used to take at most 45 minutes is now 60-90 min. A few times I was stuck on the E for around 2.5 hours. Living in the outer boroughs has become a huge disadvantage.

Even 45 minutes is an enormous amount of commute time for a normal American city. Twice the median. Coastal megacities may be dense in space, but seem to be less dense in travel time than standard Midwestern sprawl.

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#45

Post by [deleted] »

wutbrodo wrote: post #23
jorblumesea wrote: post #6

I'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.

We're drastically less efficient than most other developed countries when it comes to infrastructure development, and AIUI, experts aren't really sure why. The highest confidence hypothesis I've heard is a handwavy reference to how our contracting system is somehow uniquely inefficient and corrupt, but that jusy raises more questions for me.

[deleted]

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#46

Post by gsnedders »

ng12 wrote: post #33
gsnedders wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the London Underground mostly run to schedule, though, then? Because it's older, arguably as complex (especially the subsurface railway), and not that far below NYC in ridership…

The biggest difference is the Tube doesn't run 24/7. You have a guaranteed maintenance cycle. Also my understanding is that European unions are less corrupt than American ones.

Ah, right; I hadn't realised that it was truly 24/7 (versus the ~5 hour gap most of the LU is shut down for). That said, some of the LU lines are now 24 hour from Friday morning till Sunday night.

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#47

Post by mabbo »

chrischen wrote: post #2

What 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 a cascading failure issue. Toronto has the same problem, on a smaller scale. What I see here:

Step 1: a train gets delayed for a minute somewhere on the line. A dozen common reasons exist- someone becomes ill, mechanical issue, debris on the tracks, etc.

Step 2: Because it's rush hour, there's minimal buffer time between trains so the train behind it must also stop (and the one behind it, and the one behind it, etc). Even a 60 second delay of one train can back up the whole line.

Step 3: Because a train is late, there's more people trying to get on and off, which makes it take more time per station. As well, with more people per train, there's more human-related delays per train. The additional delays mean "go to 1".

With large enough buffers between trains, the system is stable- the problems get smoothed out. With small buffers, like during rush hour, the system can get into a feedback-loop total system failure. A 30 minute trip becomes hours long.

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#48

Post by kyledrake »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #18

To me (as a life long New Yorker) this is yet another sign of our decaying society - our crumbling empire. I've often wondered if the people of Rome understood that their empire was crumbling. Did they actually see the signs as it happened, or did it occur in such a way that the slow-motion decline wasn't sharply felt? The problems here aren't just the subways. The roads, the bridges and other infrastructure are also…

Increased demand for the subway is not a sign of decaying society, it's a sign of prosperity and growth. It's a sign that people feel more safe using the system and living in New York, and that there are more opportunities for people living there.

I for one would much rather live in a NY dealing with some temporary growth success issues than live in NY during the 70s (or really, any time before).

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#49

Post by paublyrne »

baud147258 wrote: post #16
mynegation wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Here in Paris, the rail & subway company instead of "personal injury on a track level", use "people accident". I'd say that most of the lines in Paris are the same.

In London it's "person on the track".

Re: The Subway Is So Late, It’s Making New Yorkers Early

#50

Post by lorenzhs »

baud147258 wrote: post #16
mynegation wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Here in Paris, the rail & subway company instead of "personal injury on a track level", use "people accident". I'd say that most of the lines in Paris are the same.

In part, euphemisms like "personal injury" are used to avoid encouraging copycat suicides. In 2009, a popular German footballer's suicide-by-train received a lot of media coverage. The number of railway suicides more than tripled in the following ~10 days and never declined back to the previous level. See the table in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schienensuizid and also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide.

These euphemisms might sound, well, overly euphemistic or irreverent, but if they help curb the number of railway suicides, then I find that hard to argue with.

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