How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC? • Hacker News Board

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#131

Post by bob_theslob646 » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:40 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #47

londons_explore wrote: post #24

Travel times would be much improved by a high speed line. Ie. a route with 4 stops and a travel speed of 100 mph. The finances of railways actually get better with faster trains - because the sooner you can get the person to their destination, the quicker you can get that train serving another passenger.

MTA runs express trains. They don't get up to 100mph, but they skip many local stops along the way. Raising their speed to 100mph would likely not meaningfully increase transit time - you'd maybe shave off a few minutes.

I wonder if there was a way to calculate how many more passengers they could serve if they had faster trains?

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#132

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

pieix wrote: post #54

londons_explore wrote: post #24

Travel times would be much improved by a high speed line. Ie. a route with 4 stops and a travel speed of 100 mph. The finances of railways actually get better with faster trains - because the sooner you can get the person to their destination, the quicker you can get that train serving another passenger.

Are there any metros with intra-city high speed trains like this?

In London you can take a high speed train from St Pancras to Stratford, though it's a normal high speed train that then continues far outside the city.

It's the blue+yellow line which goes off the east side: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-rail-and-tube-services-map...

I don't think that's unusual for very large cities with high speed trains. The longest-distance trains probably only stop at one station in each city, but medium-distance trains can stop at multiple.

I've never come across a metro train travelling that fast though. The cost of building the line to support those speeds would be tremendous for a small difference in journey time.

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#133

Post by rightbyte » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #88

Tade0 wrote: post #11

I'm of the opinion that every 500k+ city should have a subway line. I grew up in a city with one (just one for the majority of my 20 years there) and if there's one thing I miss from that place it's the ability to move at an average speed of 35km/h at any time the trains were operating, especially at 2am on a Friday night after a couple of beers with the guys. The other thing I noticed when I was visiting my family t…

Having lived in / visited a few dozen cities in Europe, I actually think trams are generally preferable to subways. In places with both, I tend to use the trams almost exclusively. A hop on, hop off tram system is much quicker and efficient than going into a subway station, then back up, etc. At least if you aren’t going entirely across town.

I disagree. Trams are too slow. They are not good for long tracks, like sub ways.

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#134

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:56 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #126

ghaff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In London, you also have the Piccadilly line depending upon where you're going and how much luggage you have (many of the London tube stations are pretty awful in terms of accessibility as I discovered on a trip where I had heavier luggage than normal last year).

Since 2022 there's also the Elizabeth Line, which uses the same tracks as the Heathrow Express, but then continues under Central London and far to the east. It takes 27 rather than 15 minutes to Paddington, but it's also half the price of the Heathrow Express. It's the purple edged line: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/london-rail-and-tube-services-map...

Right. But I usually stay near Trafalgar Square and the Piccadilly line is much more convenient for that. (Though I will be taking the Elizabeth line from LHR my next trip because I'm initially going to Shoreditch. And, yes, Heathrow Express is something of a rip-off which the airport steers you towards.)

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#135

Post by chimeracoder » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #130

chimeracoder wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The MTA does not have a good track record of timely maintenance A big part of that is because the MTA has been starved of funding for fifteen years now, to the point where they've had to substitute capital funds for operating funds in an effort to keep the lights on. Maintenance becomes more expensive when it's perpetually deferred - and it just became even more expensive because Hochul's inexplicable last-minute f…

You're conveniently forgetting out the nuance of the MTA. You do recall that the top person in the world for Transit quit because of the bureaucracy there, right? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43561378

> You're conveniently forgetting out the nuance of the MTA. You do recall that the top person in the world for Transit quit because of the bureaucracy there, right?

Byford quit because of Andrew Cuomo, the then-governor, not because of bureaucracy within the MTA. This was widely reported even before his resignation was official, but was confirmed explicitly later on[0].

> To use a transit analogy, Byford fled the MTA because he felt like he had been tied to the tracks while a train driven by Andrew Cuomo cut his legs off, Kramer reported

Which is my point: the governing authorities make political decisions to starve the MTA of funding or cancel capital projects at the last minute, which harms the MTA in the long run and creates many of the problems that people end up blaming the MTA for.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/exclusive-andy-byford-m...

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#136

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 10:00 PM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #66

rsynnott wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of metros run at 5 minute frequencies or less. Some _trams_ do, at peak times.

The highest frequency subway lines do 3 mins at peak, which is amazing.

The Victoria Line in London has a 100 second interval, although apparently in practise it's more frequent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ0zk4MWCQY

From a quick search, there are also lines in Paris and Moscow with similar frequency.

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#137

Post by ghaff » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

macNchz wrote: post #123

ghaff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory. The commuter rail I sometimes take follows an old rail right of way. Some of the stations are in fairly developed areas. But some of those, like Concord, presumably predate even the original rail. And a lot of the towns are pretty spread out. You can't walk to much until you get to the last two stops in the city proper.

I imagine that at least one factor there is that building up is prohibited by zoning—a super brief glance at Concord's zoning map & code it looks like the only kind of residential buildings you can build anywhere without special permission are single-family. Now there are surely people living there who would argue that this zoning has protected the shape and nature of the town they that they prefer, but the flip side…

There's probably some truth in that. On the other hand, Concord is a pretty far-flung suburb; you're probably over 30 minutes to get to Cambridge without heavy traffic. I believe the prison out there is closed now but don't know what the plans are for the land.

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#138

Post by Tade0 » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #125

Tade0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no city planner, but I would definitely connect the Amrtak station with the University of Arizona and on the other end make it reach the edge of downtown. The rest of the city is really spread out with all those detached houses, so I'm out of ideas but then again my city put a subway station in such a location and it serves a whopping fifteen hundred people daily - that's one subway car, but at the same time appr…

> I'm no city planner, but I would definitely connect the Amrtak station with the University of Arizona and on the other end make it reach the edge of downtown. I went to U. of A. and have absolutely never even heard of any student ever needing to go to the Amtrak station, for any reason. Not trying to be rude, but that smells like unthinkingly-applied urbanist ideology — thinking “trains are cool” and working backwa…

I get where you're coming from as I have a lot of words to say to those urbanist ideologues and none of them are pleasant.

Main reason why I think subway is superior to anything, including trains riding on the surface, is that it doesn't get in the way of anything.

My current city is subject to a double whammy of a train and river system. The result is of course gridlock, as bridges have limited capacity and not all train crossings could be made into viaducts. Having a single subway line would greatly improve things, but alas - the city is in debt due to having built a football stadium which went way over budget.

That being said to me American cities stretch the definition of cities. If there's no functional difference between a district within city limits and a suburb, why bother with having a distinction? I mean, we have districts of detached houses in my corner of the world, but they're former villages absorbed by cities and are gradually being densified.

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#139

Post by oblio » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 10:20 PM UTC

telesilla wrote: post #83

Tade0 wrote: post #11

I'm of the opinion that every 500k+ city should have a subway line. I grew up in a city with one (just one for the majority of my 20 years there) and if there's one thing I miss from that place it's the ability to move at an average speed of 35km/h at any time the trains were operating, especially at 2am on a Friday night after a couple of beers with the guys. The other thing I noticed when I was visiting my family t…

If not a subway at least some form of transport that won't get stuck in gridlock. Three examples I can think of are the Wuppertal suspension railway, Las Vegas monorail (though more of a tourist pull than for the locals) and the dedicated Metrobus lanes in Mexico City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Vegas_Monorail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_Metrob%…

They don't need silly suspension railways in most places. A tram line fits perfectly in 1 lane, so that would make it 2 lanes for both ways. US lanes are so wide that it's likely 2 tram rails fit in 1.5 road lanes, with a bit of extra room for wider sidewalks (sorely needed in most of the US), bike lanes (also sorely needed in most of the US) or just general greenery (hedges would do wonders for US urban landscapes...).

Of course this would require that the 3-4 lane stroads give up 2 of their carlanes so instead of doing the reasonable thing, building infrastructure costing 10x is almost universally preferred.

Heck, it doesn't even need to be a tram. BRTs are good enough for a lot of cases.

Re: How far can you get in 40 minutes from each subway station in NYC?

#140

Post by rsynnott » Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

acjohnson55 wrote: post #66

rsynnott wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of metros run at 5 minute frequencies or less. Some _trams_ do, at peak times.

The highest frequency subway lines do 3 mins at peak, which is amazing.

There’s a tram line in Dublin which hits every three minutes at peak times, which is just bonkers (it’s not fully segregated, so if there’s any traffic problem at all then about four of them end up piled up one behind the other). Its most busy section was meant to be converted to metro, but due to planning permission nonsense it will just continue to be one of the world’s busiest tram lines until at least 2040 (it is actually higher peak time capacity than many metro lines at this point).

They just got permission to go from 22 to 26 trams per hour at peak times. I’m thinking that by the time it gets metro-ified it’ll just be a continuous procession.