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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

#81

Post by pmiller2 »

cheeze wrote: post #76
pmiller2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do people get home from the bars? That's my major complaint about BART, that it stops running too early. If I'm out late enough in the city, I can't return to the East Bay easily, so I either end up stressing to get the last train, or end up having to use my car, which has its own stress involved.

Uber/Lyft? Cab?

Works great, assuming I can get someone to actually take me across the bridge (I had to complain to Lyft about this before), and spend 7-10x as much as BART would cost.

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

#82

Post by lr4444lr »

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…

How do you get out of bed with such pessimism? Rome faced existential threats from German and Persian invaders, as well as multiple imperial assassinations and civil wars.

At the core of it, New York City simply has too many people on an old, straining infrastructure. And yes, though there are a few people who grow ever richer and a bloated City and State bureaucracy which are problematic, but there is also an enormous number of people who cannot and will not ever afford to live there - not middle class people hanging on, but a large number deep in poverty who won't ever get a foothold. And that's because there are actually a lot of services available. The city's has more than 10% of the entire homeless U.S. population, many of whom come out of state, and an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants. With a population density is more than 2X that of many other thriving metropolises in the country, there's a lot of unnecessary suffering. When you're on either end of the economic spectrum, you can get a pretty good deal here. When you're in the middle, you get squeezed.

P.S. I don't know if you actually take the LIRR, but it's an absolute pleasure to ride compared to the subway.

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

#83

Post by borne0 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #66
borne0 wrote: post #35

The trains should only run on tracks that are completely enclosed (More control on the environment will realize better reliability, and as an aside nicer living space. Raised tracks are ugly.), Also they should run on rubber wheels like the Montreal metro has since 1966. Both metros should have barrier between platforms and tracks since they know where the doors will open. It's sad but a non-negligible cause of delay…

> Both metros should have barrier between platforms and tracks since they know where the doors will open. This only works for environments with one type of rolling stock only. It's not uncommon that you take a ride in a decades-old train (e.g. the oldest trains in the Munich subway hail from 1971, they are expected to run for essentially over 50 years!), switch lines at a station and end up in a train that rolled off…

That's true. Montreal just upgraded their rolling stock: (The MR-73 didn't owe them anything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MR-73) but the new cars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPM-10) have the doors in the same place as the MR-73 cars.

Admittedly I hadn't thought of that, but I don't think there's that much variety in rolling stock for a given location, and when speccing out replacements I don't think it's too much to ask that the doors are in the same place (cars are purchased in dozens...), maybe I'm wrong. Montreal is a much smaller network than New York.

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

#84

Post by angelsl »

wink wrote: post #41

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…

Oh man. Where I'm from (Singapore), tests are more of a never-take-home-unless-you-absolutely-have-to work.

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

#85

Post by walshemj »

seattle_spring wrote: post #58
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.

Most transit projects are funded at a state level, but the townies outside of cities vote down every initiative because they "don't want to pay fer those gal-dern city slickers and their fancy jerbs." They're blissfully unaware that the city folk subsidize their entire existence through taxes. At least, that's how it works here in Washington State.

That's what I thought it the tube/train has problems the national press kicks up a fuss and senior ministers up to the PM gets involved I suspect having MP's using the tube to get to work helps.

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

#86

Post by walshemj »

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.

Also some of its is due to the devolved federal structure - its easier to bribe the lower down you go.

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

#87

Post by jhbadger »

borne0 wrote: post #35

The trains should only run on tracks that are completely enclosed (More control on the environment will realize better reliability, and as an aside nicer living space. Raised tracks are ugly.), Also they should run on rubber wheels like the Montreal metro has since 1966. Both metros should have barrier between platforms and tracks since they know where the doors will open. It's sad but a non-negligible cause of delay…

As someone who's lived in both Montreal and the Washington DC area (and used Metro for commuting in both), I have to say that a mixture of raised and buried tracks are really the only way to have a practical system if you want it to work beyond the dense downtown area. Many of the more open places in metropolitan Montreal like Lachine don't have any Metro stops due to the expense of digging tunnels to there. In contrast, you can take the Washington Metro from Fairfax, VA and Rockville, MD. both well over twenty miles from downtown DC.

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

#88

Post by wgerard »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #73
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…

Reading this doubly reinforces how good it is in Sweden where I live now. While trains and buses are notoriously delayed (somewhat frequently), I can look on a phone app and tell when the next one will arrive +- 1 minute. It’s no Switzerland or Japan, but it’s what a reasonably well run system looks like.

Truthfully, it's mostly a problem caused by the sheer population density.

It's common for people to just head for the subway without knowing when the next train's arriving, which at off-hours can mean a 10-15+ minute wait for the next train. By which I mean: The concept of waiting around for an unknown amount of time for the next train isn't a huge deal.

The problem is how miserable the whole experience becomes when it's an unexpected delay at peak hours. If unexpected delays meant just hanging out on an uncrowded platform for 15 minutes to wait for an uncrowded train, the amount of complaining would be significantly lower.

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

#89

Post by closeparen »

bsder wrote: post #79
closeparen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The personal car took over America for a reason: it's the fastest and most pleasant way to get around. Cities only start to seriously entertain public transit when they hit car culture's scaling limits. New York passed those long ago, so the more interesting question is why they can't maintain what they already have. Unlike a typical American city, Manhattan is richer and more expensive than its outlying bedroom comm…

> The personal car took over America for a reason: it's the fastest and most pleasant way to get around. The personal car took over America because the auto companies waged a campaign to dismantle the transit systems that American cities already had. "Car culture" and "suburbs" are only something that started in the 1950's after the Eisenhower Interstate System got built. And ridesharing is showing that people will g…

>And ridesharing is showing that people will give up a personal car if there is an alternative.

Ridesharing is still cars. Whether the steering wheel is operated by you, a robot, or a contractor is irrelevant. Ridesharing takes you directly from door to door in a private, enclosed, climate-controlled bubble.

>The personal car took over America because the auto companies waged a campaign to dismantle the transit systems that American cities already had. "Car culture" and "suburbs" are only something that started in the 1950's after the Eisenhower Interstate System got built.

It's true that our car infrastructure is a human construction, but it's one that public transit advocates admit they can't compete with. Weakening the capacity and increasing the cost of roads and parking are considered necessary even alongside a best-case public transit buildout because status-quo car infrastructure will always be preferable on an individual basis. This is justified by its high collective costs.

This is a silly debate, however. Not many places get to choose whether to be auto- or transit-centric. America's economy is centralizing into a few cities; public transit will be geometrically obligatory in those cities, and financially impossible in the ones that are emptying out.

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

#90

Post by inteleng »

CydeWeys wrote: post #30
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 purposely live within easy biking distance of the office for this reason, which I'll admit is a luxury that not everyone can afford. Fortunately tech pays well. Between my own bike and Citi Bike I can get everywhere I need to without relying on any form of mass transportation. Biking is frequently the fastest form of transportation, depending start/end point of the trip anyway. It certainly is for my daily commute.

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