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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

#101

Post by heliodor »

wgerard wrote: post #88
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mostly a problem caused by the sheer population density"

That might seem like the obvious reason, but it's not the case at all. Read up on the NYC subway and its recent problems and their causes. Politicians use the growth in ridership as a scapegoat. There's more to the story than that. There's no physical/mathematical reason why a metro system of a bigger scale is precluded from running well.

Here's an article that offers a glimpse into various other angles and reasons:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/03/13/the-trains-are-slowe...

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

#103

Post by wgerard »

heliodor wrote: post #101
wgerard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mostly a problem caused by the sheer population density" That might seem like the obvious reason, but it's not the case at all. Read up on the NYC subway and its recent problems and their causes. Politicians use the growth in ridership as a scapegoat. There's more to the story than that. There's no physical/mathematical reason why a metro system of a bigger scale is precluded from running well. Here's an arti…

Sorry, I meant that the experience for riders becomes miserable because of the population density (the third paragraph). If delays just meant waiting on an uncrowded platform for an uncrowded train, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a sore point.

I certainly agree with you that population density isn't the root cause of the recent subway issues - as evidenced by the fact that Tokyo's train system is working just fine.

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

#104

Post by eecsninja »

jorblumesea wrote: post #15
nkozyra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In almost all cases I think this is a valid critique, but not against the MTA. It's one of the oldest, most complex, largest and among the ten highest daily ridership. To me, it remains an absolute marvel. Of course daily riders do and will forever complain. As someone who riders infrequently and is warned about impending doom, I find myself too often pleasantly surprised.

I don't buy it, many international cities have just as big and complex systems. Trains generally run on time in Paris, London, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing. Seems just about everyone can do it except us. I think it's a valid question to ask, given that there's nothing exceptional about NYC compared to others in its "weight class".

+1.

I'm tired of hearing people make excuses for the NYC subway system such as age and complexity, seemingly ignorant that there's plenty of large cities in other first-world countries in the 10+ million range that do a much better job. Tokyo was bombed to the ground in WW2 and still manages to do better.

I think the actual explanation is that the NYC system was not properly maintained during the postwar period, when America focused on car transit instead.

Although plenty of people complain, there is no political will to fix the problem, either at the top or at the bottom.

The 24/7 operation and fixed ticket price don't help.

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

#105

Post by Arbalest »

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.

Strangely enough, even in cities such as mine, which aren't so packed, cycling is still faster. Busses are faster than cars because they don't need to park, but still take 30-35 minutes. I can cycle in in 20 minutes. Note there is no train in my direction.

I think this is partially because bicycles are not that popular here, but there are provisions for bikes that go above and beyond cars. Having seen Bruges in Belgium, The bike queue can be comparable to a car queue (narrower, but none the less). I imagine other cycling heavy countries are similar.

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

#106

Post by berbec »

caminante wrote: post #80
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>[Sweden's public transit is] no Switzerland or Japan, but it’s what a reasonably well run system looks like. Comparing Sweden to NYC isn't fair. NYC Subway has ~742 stations (v. ~100 in Stockholm) and 1,756M in annual ridership (v. ~328M in Stockholm). This is just for the subway and excludes NY transit bus ridership.

So NYC has 7x the number of stations for 5x the number of riders?

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

#107

Post by loufe »

borne0 wrote: post #83
mschuster91 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

Exactly. The generations don't HAVE to have different dimensions. There's no worldwide metro standard across all dimensions leading to "common" models, every subway system requires custom made. Of course they can work them in, like they do in Montreal (where I see them working harmoniously)

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

#108

Post by feiofh398r39rty »

caminante wrote: post #80
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>[Sweden's public transit is] no Switzerland or Japan, but it’s what a reasonably well run system looks like. Comparing Sweden to NYC isn't fair. NYC Subway has ~742 stations (v. ~100 in Stockholm) and 1,756M in annual ridership (v. ~328M in Stockholm). This is just for the subway and excludes NY transit bus ridership.

Moscow metro has 250 stations on 3 times as much area (why did NY get to 750 stations?) and annual ridership of 2.4 billion. Train delays are rare, in my experience maybe one delay of 10 minutes a week (not counting the late night-time when intervals can get to 10 mins).

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

#109

Post by peter303 »

DalekBaldwin wrote: post #75

The fundamental reason for worsening subway service in recent years may be more mundane than we assumed: https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/03/13/the-trains-are-slowe... It was slowly driving me insane at my last job. Now, I just have to dial in to the morning meeting, then I can work from home for about an hour before heading in to the office, and we've been asked to stay home even for fairly light snowstorms this wi…

The system is a century old with original electromechanical controllers.

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

#110

Post by CydeWeys »

nl wrote: post #94
inteleng wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this useful?

It certainly added evidence to my view that cycling is a useful form of transit in dense cities. It also added the element of people making deliberate choices in where to live based on transport methods. On the other hand, you have a history of adding comments like this. Good luck with that. Edit: I noticed you are editing your comment. When I replied it read "This comment, as nice as it may have sounded to you, does…

Thanks for getting my intent. I was more trying to acknowledge my privilege in being able to live within cycling distance of work; tech pays well enough to enable that but many other jobs don't. There's lots of people in NYC who can't afford to live even 40 minutes away from work by mass transit, and who suffer a lot when that mass transit starts getting unreliable.

And, no surprise, a lot of my coworkers who also bike to work similarly choose where they live in order to be within cycling range of work. A monthly bus/subway pass is $116.50, whereas Citi Bike is an annualized $14/month. So you can save $100/month by not needing to take transit, which isn't nothing.

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