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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

#201

Post by ajdlinux »

randall wrote: post #191
somberi wrote: post #189

Many readers have quoted the superiority (rightfully so), of Moscow and Tokyo subway systems. Both these systems operate from around 5am till midnight (approx). NYC Subway operates 24 hours. These few hours downtime, make a huge difference with respect to maintainability and upkeep. These 4 hours each day adds up to ~60 full days of maintenance window. Maybe NYC can stop the late-night services for a year or so and I…

Late night tho... that 2am subway home is a lifeline for a lot of folks. I remember getting home at like 4am once thanks to the subway. I could probably live without it, but it wouldn't be as nice.

You need to boost other public transport services to provide at least some level of late night service. In Sydney, they run substitute buses between many railway stations from 0000-0430 - it's not great, but it's possible to use buses to provide a minimum level of service coverage when the railways are shut down.

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

#202

Post by ajdlinux »

pmiller2 wrote: post #63
kgc wrote: post #54

Maybe they should have scheduled maintenance closures that reoccur over the same parts of the day every day. Say, 1-5am?. So, it would be a 20hr/day instead of 24hr/day subway, but would be dependable during those 20 hrs.

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.

Highly controversial opinion - if we need to shut down some services during the night hours to ensure they're well maintained, and it's not reasonably possible to do the necessary maintenance any other way, then maybe the population needs to adapt its behaviour.

Obviously, some people work overnight shifts or have other critical needs for transport around the clock, so there needs to be a reasonable level of public transport services for that purpose. But if the problem is that people can't stay out late at bars, then... maybe they just shouldn't stay out late at bars if they don't have a way home?

I am deliberately ignoring the obvious issues with drink driving risks, flow-on effects of the "nighttime economy" and so on here. Also, I'm an introverted non-drinker who doesn't understand why people are out drinking at 2am when they could be sleeping at 2am... So more practically, yes, you need decent coverage of night-time substitute bus routes.

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

#203

Post by ttn »

After I started riding motorcycle instead of public services or my car, time spent during transportation reduced almost %80. I live in Istanbul, when I leave work to go home (prime time) it takes up to 2 hours with car and 1.5 hour with public transportation to reach home. With my motorcycle it is around 25-35 minutes.

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

#204

Post by ajdlinux »

pmiller2 wrote: post #160
yardie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Night bus. The MTA has more than trains.

Sure, theoretically, that would work, if I were near either of the 2 bus stops in SF that serve the line I'd need to take. Those buses also only run every 20 minutes when they're on schedule. It's not a great solution.

You can run specific night-time substitute buses that follow the train route between stations rather than the regular street-side bus stops.

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

#205

Post by ttn »

ttn wrote: post #203

After I started riding motorcycle instead of public services or my car, time spent during transportation reduced almost %80. I live in Istanbul, when I leave work to go home (prime time) it takes up to 2 hours with car and 1.5 hour with public transportation to reach home. With my motorcycle it is around 25-35 minutes.

There are many advantages (and few disadvantages) riding, for me time spent on road was the killer and you can not imagine how much I recommend it.

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

#206

Post by ajdlinux »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #39
baud147258 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's interesting how the euphemism used differs by country. The Dutch railway companies use "collision with a person".

"Human/bodily accident" / "jinshin jiko" in Japan.

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

#207

Post by innocenat »

ajdlinux wrote: post #200
timlod wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but 'Tokyo Metro' is only a small part of the Tokyo train network. There is also Toei Subway, JR East trains, Minato-Mirai, ...the list goes on. 2100 may work for the entire metropolitan area of greater Tokyo. In any case, the city is massive, extremely well connected by public transport, and services millions of people daily without delay.

Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo#Rai... ) says "There are 882 interconnected rail stations in the Tokyo Metropolis, 282 of which are Subway stations, with several hundred more in each of the 3 surrounding densely populated suburban prefectures. There are 30 operators running 121 passenger rail lines (102 serving Tokyo and 19 more serving Greater Tokyo but not Tokyo's city center it…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area#Rail

> There are around 136 individual rail lines in the Greater Tokyo Area, and between 1,000 and 1,200 railway stations depending on one's definition of the area.

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

#208

Post by claudius »

randall wrote: post #191
somberi wrote: post #189

Many readers have quoted the superiority (rightfully so), of Moscow and Tokyo subway systems. Both these systems operate from around 5am till midnight (approx). NYC Subway operates 24 hours. These few hours downtime, make a huge difference with respect to maintainability and upkeep. These 4 hours each day adds up to ~60 full days of maintenance window. Maybe NYC can stop the late-night services for a year or so and I…

Late night tho... that 2am subway home is a lifeline for a lot of folks. I remember getting home at like 4am once thanks to the subway. I could probably live without it, but it wouldn't be as nice.

Wouldn’t it be possible to have nightline buses operating the same routes as the subway during that window? It works well e.g. in Berlin and Munich and only takes minimally longer than the train (since the roads are not congested at night and the bus can hence go much faster).

At least it should be possible for a temporary maintenance window?

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

#209

Post by hyeonwho3 »

stefs wrote: post #128
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.

well, do all factors scale linearly? if so, it shouldn't make that much of a difference. let's compare it to the subway system of vienna, austria (which is said to have one of the best public transport systems in the world). so here's my personal theory. all numbers - city population count, station numbers, system length and ridership - scale at a pretty much constant factor of 4. there are at least two huge differen…

Many people have written many articles about the NYC subway recently. Because the trains run 24/7, they cannot renovate lines and install advanced train control. Because of the terrible train control, they put simplistic speed limits on trains. Because of all the slow trains the number of passengers per train increases, resulting in more platform delays and medical emergencies.

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

#210

Post by CalRobert »

Arbalest wrote: post #105
CydeWeys wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Belgi…

You say "strangely" but if you spend enough time cycling you'll start thinking that the idea any other mode of transport is faster through a city is strange. It's incredibly frustrating to see governments spend literally 100 times as much money on a rail system as they could on a decent bike network that moves just as many people more equitably.
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