Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

realtime.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#21

Post by otoburb »

BadHumans wrote: post #10
otoburb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings. Even in the suburbs, residents of single-family houses typically need to bring their garbage/recycling bins to the end of their driveways. I think the only time that this isn't…

There is a difference between a garbage bin and a pile of garbage. NYC has piles of garbage bags just on the street.

NYC has both, because I generally consider compost a type of garbage and that is definitely stored in bins and hauled to the sidewalk, at least for the buildings that have opted into the composting program.

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#22

Post by dtjb »

bagels wrote: post #5
otoburb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly -- this chart exhibits massive undercoverage bias for the actual proxy measure (number of daily rat sightings), except the skew in this case likely means the actual value is much higher. Somehow, I'm thinking that this won't come as a surprise to any NYC resident.

I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.

You can see this in the large outlier on Feb 12 2017, which coincided with a storm that delayed trash pickup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12%E2%80%9314,_2017_N...

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-snowstorm-cleanup/

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#23

Post by outworlder »

otoburb wrote: post #7
bagels wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.

I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings. Even in the suburbs, residents of single-family houses typically need to bring their garbage/recycling bins to the end of their driveways. I think the only time that this isn't…

> I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings.

Uh. Where I live – on the other coast – we just place our trash in plastic containers. We place them on the street the same way. Garbage truck picks them up and the driver doesn't even have to get out of the vehicle. No rats, more efficient, no people cutting their hands because they are picking up plastic bags and there's glass shards in them. Nobody has to even touch the containers.

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#24

Post by Symbiote »

RandallBrown wrote: post #6
bagels wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.

The purpose is so that garbage trucks can collect the trash. NYC has very few alleys.

The options seem to be:

- Sacks of rubbish left on the street, potentially for many hours (e.g. café closes at 18.00, rubbish is left outside until collection at 05.00-07.00). London has this in some central areas. [0] (took about 3 tries to find this.)

- Individual bins (usually with wheels) for each property, which must be left at the front of the property. It can seem excessive if there's not much space to store them, you end up with a road cluttered with bins. Many towns in Britain have this. Literally the first place I looked [1].

- Almost-individual bins. I saw this somewhere I stayed in Sweden, where one house had the recycling bin, and the next had general waste, and so on. Half as much bin clutter on the street.

- Larger bins, shared between several properties. Much less street space, much less effort for collection. [2] (also London). In many cities in Europe these take up one parking space on each street/block.

- Larger underground bins, which are neatest but presumably the most expensive solution. [3]

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.522472,-0.1188006,3a,75y,50....

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8093732,-1.5728046,3a,75y,10...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4893475,-0.1432088,3a,90y,22...

[3] https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#25

Post by jareklupinski »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #15

Anyone from NYC know what phenomenon causes the short period up and down?

trash (rats' food source) is usually picked up twice a week in most places in the city, it never lines up perfectly to 'half-way through the week', and sometimes the 'other' collection is 'just recycling' (less organic matter to feast on)

I'm guessing the most frequent submitters send consistent reports when they can see rats on their block going after the trash (twice-ish a week); if more people in different areas reported as consistently, it might even out (some places have trash pickup monday, some tuesday, some wednesday...) (assuming all areas have equal concentrations of rat)

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#28

Post by screenoridesaga »

tetromino_ wrote: post #20
bagels wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.

The bags of garbage are a historical relic. The city allowed trash in bags during as an emergency measure during the 1968 garbage collectors' strike: the metal trash bins were overflowing and garbage on the street in bags was better than garbage on the street raw. The strike ended, decades passed, but the rules were never updated until the last couple years when the city has finally began strongly incentivizing, and…

That explanation sounds real, but it isn’t. Really weird, why make something like this up?

Re: NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

#29

Post by porphyra »

The seasonal changes in rat count are likely due to rat behavior, but do we have any evidence that the long-term change over the years reflects an actual increase of rats rather than more people using 311 to report them?
Post reply on HN