41–50 of 162 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then it should close at night. Pretty much every city with a subway system worth bragging about does. It always seemed strange to me that Philly is the only city I've been to that fully replaces the subway at night with buses.
Part of what makes the subway system worth bragging about is that it runs at night.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then it should close at night. Pretty much every city with a subway system worth bragging about does. It always seemed strange to me that Philly is the only city I've been to that fully replaces the subway at night with buses.
Part of what makes the subway system worth bragging about is that it runs at night.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 456 is the reason I stopped commuting to work before 10. Taking the L from where I live today isn't much different. The trick I've found is that if the sign says there are two trains incoming that are within a minute of each other, always take the second train. People will self-sardine themselves on the first and the second with be mostly empty.
This phenomenon is almost comical with the NJTransit Northeast Corridor lines into NYC. They frequently cluster two inbound Northeast Corridor trains (all the way from Trenton) with the express coming 3-4 minutes after the local (having left Trenton 20 minutes later). Even on weekends, the local is frequently standing room only (usually totally packed) whereas the express will have plenty of free seats. At Secaucus J…
Now, take adults who pay one of the nations highest property taxes, throw in confusion as to where their dollars are going (they thought infrastructure was definitely a bucket), and you have a perfectly good reason to throw a "temper tantrum."
Most NJ complaints, and attempts to speak with your local politician, or even a local agency, falls on deaf ears. Thus, what can these grown adults do when they are pretty entrenched into Jersey? It's frustrating. I moved out of NJ after spending my HS years, Undergrad years, and 1 year of work, and vowed to never give them another tax dollar because their government is filled with people who simply do not care about your problems.
It would seem one could analyze the performance in this day of big data and find a more efficient plan for scheduling the trains and adjusting in real time. Maybe the system is too unpredictable to make this possible. Even so it would be fun to try to model the entire system and try.
Why would it take 50 years to install signalling across the system ? This doesn't sound right at all.
Hard to prove this is the case, but it smells right to me. Modern signaling system that did nothing but give arrival times to the public would not have to make use of any infrastructure at all -- it could run completely independently -- and could be done for a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars that the MTA is spending on the slow work they say is currently necessary to get it.
Anyone know of a documentary on the New York subway? I would love to see all this old equipment and what they are really battling in order to keep it running.
Blocks on a railway system are designed to provide enough space and warning so that trains do not crash into each other. However, when you use line side signals and CTC (Centralized Train Control) to dispatch them, you end up with a set of rules that create spaces for occupancy that can easily be longer than the trains themselves.
In the NYC subway, speaking as an observer as opposed to an insider, the signaling and dispatching requires certain distances between trains and headways (time between trains) to provide safety of 2-4 minutes. However, this results in the cascading delays as one train that dwells too long in a platform can have a stacking effect on trains behind.
For example, if your minimum block distance is 1000 feet, and a max length train is 500 feet, a stack of five trains waiting to enter a station would actually occupy 5,000 feet of track. This could stretch to previous stations along the line.
The best solution would be dynamic blocks and cab signals, where the system itself defines spaces occupied by trains and only allows a train into a space where it can occupy safely, but also can make the distances dynamic based on conditions. Cab signals would be required as you can't have dynamic blocks with line side signals.
However, to do this requires a massive investment in new equipment both line side and on the trains that would take years to implement, along with a massive amount of painful work that would cause even more issues while it is being set up.
Sadly, running more trains probably won't cut it as the system literally cannot handle more safely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a perfect world there are four branches of government: Legislative, Judicial, Executive, Cranky Mass Transit Dictator
Well, we had Robert Moses and look how that turned out
But I agree with your point.
So the transit authority decided that it was more important to have trains evenly spaced out (to minimize the worst case wait times), but the tradeoff was less total capacity and thus more crowded trains. I'm really not sure which is the better case. Trains always arrive in a short time, but can be full. Or you may have to wait longer for a train, and then a little longer still for the train right behind that train t…