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NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

theguardian.com

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Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#121

Post by sonar_un »

yholio wrote: post #71
chadlavi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying conductors a living wage isn't nearly as expensive to the agency (and the state, and we the taxpayers and riders) as mismanaged and corruptly nepotistic multi-billion dollar contracts for construction.

On the other hand, paying living wages to thousands of unnecessary workers is quite expensive, regardless if they are employees or contractors. Unions work on both goals simultaneously, increasing wages but also providing job security to their base, inserting strong restrictions on who can perform certain labors etc. The more employees, the higher the power of the union, it's not like a competitor could spring up and…

The MTA's union has kept unneeded workers employed. One of the main issues is having two people per train employed when almost every other transit system in the world uses only one person per train.

On top of this, but actively lobbying against having driverless trains and other cost-saving technologies leaves NYC with the most expensive and antiquated system in the world

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#122

Post by dougmwne »

plants wrote: post #20
JPKab wrote: post #7

“The subway service and the bus service has become unreliable enough for people to stop using it. If people aren’t using it, there’s less money, and they have to keep raising fares without delivering better service.” I was a daily rider of the DC metro for 8 years. This is exactly what happened there. Reliability plummeted, then ridership, and all the while major fare increases.

If you haven't been back, I think you'd be surprised at the (weekday) reliability of the metro now. The metro is almost always terribly messed up on weekends (with single-tracking and line closings), but they make a damn good effort to get weekday commuters to work on time. I've been living in the DC area for the past two years and it seems like they have really been making the metro a priority. I have a transfer dur…

When I was back in DC a few months ago the system seemed to be about 30% closed, some short-term closures and some multi-week closures. I realize the closures are due to the accidents and deaths and are necessary for safety. I haven't heard the words "reliable" and "Metro" in the same sentence for many years.

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#123

Post by Retric »

whack wrote: post #99

This is a really depressing story to read. I've always believed that a good indicator of a country's health, is its ability to tackle complex large-scale projects. Projects that require coordination on multiple fronts: politics, bureaucracy, technical-know-how, civic sacrifice. In the old days when all this infrastructure was built in the first place, we showed our ability to do so. But now, we've gotten to the point…

These problems are really common with 50+ year old infrastructure. Looks at the NYC subway from 50 or even 70 years ago and it looks about the same as it does now:

Now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_map#/medi...

1968: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/irvingtr...

1948: https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/maps/system_1...

The problem is basic day to day maintenance is really not enough, infrastructure get's increasingly complex and expensive over time. Now compare this with you example city's 70 years ago and it's a rather different situation. Singapore for example did not even start construction on a subway system until 1982.

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#124

Post by notyourday »

wefarrell wrote: post #88
exabrial wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when conductors aren't needed or necessary. Having a fully autonomous rail system is a much simpler problem than autonomous cars.

Are there any currently in existence?

Yes, L line in NYC is automatic train control system. If one is to walk to the end of every L train platform, one would see a sign that says "Automated Train Control System is in Effect"

It requires conductors because of the union contract requires them. Not only it requires an engineer "driving" the train (aka pushing a button "I'm here") but also the second one looking to make sure that the train doors can be closed ( or closing them on the person )

So just on the L train MTA can cut 50% of the conductors by fully engaging automated train control and merging door checker engineer duties with the "I'm here" engineer duties.

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#125

Post by [deleted] »

codyb wrote: post #38
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #21

CLOSE THE SUBWAY MIDNIGHT-5AM and fix it Like most other civilized societies who have a functioning and well-maintained metro system. That is really all there is to it!

That really hurts most a lot of poor people who work odd hours. Then suddenly they have to find a way home or two work that will be much more expensive and eat into their earnings. I'm not sure what the solution is, but "that's really all there is to it" will affect very negatively hundreds of thousands of people in NYC.

[deleted]

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#126

Post by huebomont »

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #111

Cities like NYC are overcrowded and dysfunctional, but our financial system allows dysfunctional and failing systems to continue to operate up until the point to which they physically collapse and start either entering prolonged periods of obvious mechanical non-function and/or killing people in embarrassing numbers. Without all the bailouts, the MTA would have failed decades ago and would have had to have been restr…

"If something's not working well, abandon it" is pretty pathetic advice. There are very clear ways to fix the problem, the only cause for pessimism is whether the people in charge will do the right things.

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#127

Post by dbmyh »

codyb wrote: post #38
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #21

CLOSE THE SUBWAY MIDNIGHT-5AM and fix it Like most other civilized societies who have a functioning and well-maintained metro system. That is really all there is to it!

That really hurts most a lot of poor people who work odd hours. Then suddenly they have to find a way home or two work that will be much more expensive and eat into their earnings. I'm not sure what the solution is, but "that's really all there is to it" will affect very negatively hundreds of thousands of people in NYC.

They can take the bus. Don't you have night buses?

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#128

Post by huebomont »

wefarrell wrote: post #88
exabrial wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when conductors aren't needed or necessary. Having a fully autonomous rail system is a much simpler problem than autonomous cars.

Are there any currently in existence?

In NYC the L and soon the 7 could be operated with one person, but the union insists two remain onboard for "safety."

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#129

Post by School-Cotton »

chmaynard wrote: post #2

> Critics say it is bad service that is driving people away. One datapoint: I live in Rhode Island. Recently I attended a concert in Brooklyn. The obvious way to travel there was Amtrak to Penn Station and MTA (train or bus) to the final destination. However, I was warned that MTA service is unreliable. I decided to drive. Next time I probably won't go at all.

Why not just go to Penn Station planning on taking the train to the final destination, then Uber on the off chance there ends of being a problem with the train?

The MTA has problems, but it still usually gets you where you need to go.

Re: NYC subway and bus services have entered 'death spiral', experts say

#130

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

whack wrote: post #99

This is a really depressing story to read. I've always believed that a good indicator of a country's health, is its ability to tackle complex large-scale projects. Projects that require coordination on multiple fronts: politics, bureaucracy, technical-know-how, civic sacrifice. In the old days when all this infrastructure was built in the first place, we showed our ability to do so. But now, we've gotten to the point…

I don't disagree with this sentiment, but it's worth pointing out that nearly all transportation projects from the "old days" around the world were done by private companies, and often met a swift end in bankruptcy. Creditors lost a lot, but the assets were then picked up by others, and refined through years of trial and error into endeavors of modest profitability. Only our sepia-colored glasses and the survival bias of remaining parts makes it look like people back then had it figured out, and we don't.

Private rail systems in Europe eventually were nationalized during the warring decades of the 1900s and remained that way longer than in the US, while in the US the government spun up Amtrak to relieve rail operators from passenger rail and its rapidly declining revenues, while letting freight railroads go through waves of mergers until only a handful remained. Soon after Amtrak, the airline industry was deregulated, and airlines proceeded to copy the idea: rack up costs, declare bankruptcy, sell, reset.

Truth is, big, ambitious construction projects, and big, ambitious service networks have always sucked, and the ones that remain went through many cycles of overruns and disappointment and service reduction before they stuck. Maybe what ought to worry us isn't that we've lost the magic touch of delivering ambitious, long-running deliverables (railroads, infrastructure, cities, government services...) sustainably, but that we never mastered it in the first place, and the things we have now are the much-recycled husks of former grand ideas that managed to eke by.

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