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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

#131

Post by tokyoguy »

peter303 wrote: post #109
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.

that is no excuse. it's called maintenance. other cities manage to maintain their transit system . NYC has zero excuse . See Tokyo's transit history for how often they've upgrade the entire system a piece at a time.

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

#132

Post by parent5446 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #81
cheeze wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One of the sole advantages of NYC taxis: they are required by law to take you anywhere within city limits you ask.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by gruez »

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…

>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...)

that pretty much only works if you have 1 generation of rolling stock currently in use, and you know (or forsee) that you want to install platform doors. considering that the new york subways were built before platform doors were a thing, I can totally see how door location wasn't even a concern when purchasing rolling stock.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by ams6110 »

ndespres wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This matters if you can't afford to live in Manhattan It also matters if you’re catching a regional rail train ( e.g. on the Metro-North or LIRR), which tend to run on time to the minute.

I've just begun commuting into NYC on Amtrak, and it leaves on time to the [i]second[/i]. After years of my commute impacted by subway delays, NJ Transit delays, and an independent ferry service that had its share of problems, Amtrak is really quite refreshing. I had forgotten that things were supposed to be on a schedule! I lived in NYC for 5 years, and had no idea that the subways were on a fixed schedule. I though…

Chicago Metra (suburban heavy rail trains) runs on schedule like that, almost always. The CTA trains (the "El") seemed much more random to me when I lived there, but it was over 10 years ago now.

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

#137

Post by BWStearns »

feiofh398r39rty wrote: post #108
caminante wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[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).

Moscow was one of the only places I've spent more than a week riding public transportation and not experienced a delay. Honestly confused as to that particular efficiency given the rest of the city/country's inefficiencies but they're doing something right.

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

#138

Post by mancerayder »

CydeWeys wrote: post #116
berbec wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The New York City subway system is old, one of the first in the world. It's not built to modern standards; in a lot of places it was built by cut-and-cover, which means excavating the entire route along the subway and then rebuilding the road essentially as a roof above the subway line. As a result of this lineage it also has quite frequent stops, which are easy to put in when the subway is just a stairway's height b…

One of the first is a stretch, because the most compared lines were around or before NY's experience. The London Underground had its first line in 1863. Paris, 1900. NY, 1904.

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

#139

Post by skeleton »

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.

While there are very strong benefits to commuting on a bicycle, a motorcycle will likely be the faster method of commute transport.

Although this is probably dependent on your local laws and how much you abide by those laws, as I know lane filtering and such is illegal in a lot of the US.

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

#140

Post by mancerayder »

ndespres wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This matters if you can't afford to live in Manhattan It also matters if you’re catching a regional rail train ( e.g. on the Metro-North or LIRR), which tend to run on time to the minute.

I've just begun commuting into NYC on Amtrak, and it leaves on time to the [i]second[/i]. After years of my commute impacted by subway delays, NJ Transit delays, and an independent ferry service that had its share of problems, Amtrak is really quite refreshing. I had forgotten that things were supposed to be on a schedule! I lived in NYC for 5 years, and had no idea that the subways were on a fixed schedule. I though…

In some ancient and mean bureaucratic twist of history, Amtrak owns and operates all that track (at least on the Northeast Corridor) and NJT trains have to slow down and move their butts out of the way for any Amtrak trains needing to pass.
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