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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

#41

Post by majewsky »

moate wrote: post #27
jdhn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can ridership in NYC really plummet? It's not like everybody there has a car that they can take to work.

Seems unlikely to plummet to ruinous levels. Ridership has risen by 800 million people since 1990, but there's fewer miles of track and only a few dozen cars. It seems that the system is strained well beyond its limits and that it might be possible that having fewer people use the subway might allow a chance to fix it? The issue seems to be largely administrative based on every article I've read. There needs to be an…

> and only a few dozen cars

Did you mean to say "a few dozen more cars"?

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

#42

Post by majewsky »

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!

I was actually really surprised when I first found out that subway systems in many large systems shut down at night. I live in a modestly-sized city (Dresden, Germany, ~500k inhabitants), and the local transport authority prides itself on operating nearly the entire tram network (plus some important bus services) 24/7. Just this year, they have actually increased the schedule density during weekend nights. Trams now run every 30 minutes instead of every 60 minutes (which is still the rhythm on weekday nights).

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

#43

Post by majewsky »

dionidium wrote: post #39
throwaway427 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbers may not tell the whole story, obviously: https://outline.com/KLsxf3

Yes, and it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes of thinking about the issues to realize that most of the commentary on the topic makes very little sense. Experiential measurements aren't so easily calculated, I'd say. Just a few examples: - Would you rather have a train that arrives one minute late every single day, for a 0% on-time record, or a train that arrives on time 3 out of every 5 times and then is 20 m…

I know you're describing pathological examples to make your point, but:

> Would you rather have a train that arrives one minute late every single day, for a 0% on-time record

At this point, the operator should just update the schedule to reflect actual travel speed.

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

#44

Post by linuxftw »

codyb wrote: post #37
linuxftw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep hearing this with zero justification. Why? I'm confident officials have neglected long term maintenance costs when planning and building all the various infrastructure of major cities. The modus operandi is always underfund the project, get people to rely on it (or at least make the case of not just throwing away the first $x when all you need is $y to complete it), beg for more funding. Maybe the problem is…

Jesus dude, what?? NYC's fantastic. It's one of the safest major metropolitan areas in the world filled with a tremendous variety of culture. It's the most diverse place on the planet with only London even being at a comparable level. And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers. Any person can ride the sub…

> And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers.

I don't have contempt for people riding the subway, I have contempt for the organization that perpetrates that fraud on society.

> Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get around the entire city 24 hours a day.

At what cost? As it turns out, at great cost. Misallocation of capital: making it easier to commute into downtown areas via rail only induces rail demand and increases cost of housing. If end users were forced to pay actual costs of transportation, businesses wouldn't be able to afford keeping down town offices and would move towards worker populations, otherwise they would have to pay higher wages to maintain their labor force. Subsidizing transportation is nothing but subsidizing corporate labor.

If you think NYC is fantastic, that doesn't make my opinion any less valid.

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

#45

Post by ricardoreis »

throwaway427 wrote: post #36
ricardoreis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbers, please. (That's what "metric" means, btw).

Numbers may not tell the whole story, obviously: https://outline.com/KLsxf3

Agreed - I don't need numbers to tell me how unpleasant the daily experience of riding the subway in NYC has become.

I was merely responding to someone else who brought up a numbers-based argument only to find out that they... apparently don't have any.

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

#46

Post by throwaway427 »

dionidium wrote: post #39
throwaway427 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbers may not tell the whole story, obviously: https://outline.com/KLsxf3

Yes, and it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes of thinking about the issues to realize that most of the commentary on the topic makes very little sense. Experiential measurements aren't so easily calculated, I'd say. Just a few examples: - Would you rather have a train that arrives one minute late every single day, for a 0% on-time record, or a train that arrives on time 3 out of every 5 times and then is 20 m…

> All of which is to support my original contention that this story has been decontextualized by surly commuters and the idea that a tourist couldn't rely on the subway to get to a concert is nonsense.

The L train?

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

#47

Post by codyb »

linuxftw wrote: post #44
codyb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus dude, what?? NYC's fantastic. It's one of the safest major metropolitan areas in the world filled with a tremendous variety of culture. It's the most diverse place on the planet with only London even being at a comparable level. And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers. Any person can ride the sub…

> And the level of contempt for people riding subways? Where do you get off? Not only are they better for the environment, they're one of the great equalizers. I don't have contempt for people riding the subway, I have contempt for the organization that perpetrates that fraud on society. > Any person can ride the subway for the same price as anyone else and get around the entire city 24 hours a day. At what cost? As…

The fraud of the subway on society? Lol. Okay.

The trains also run the other direction, you know that right? It's the same cost to commute to Far Rockaway as it is to commute to Manhattan, and there's plenty of workers out there too.

Not seeing too many big office buildings there though.

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

#48

Post by taobility »

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.

To serve much better for 99.9% commuters or serve poorly for 100% commuters, isn't that a easier decision?

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

#49

Post by taobility »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #33
WAthrowaway wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are already doing this for several lines. The L wasn't running on weekends at all in November for them to do repairs. NYC is unique in that there are LOTS of people whose working hours fall into that range and they rely on the subway. Just shutting down the whole system is unfeasible.

Please stop this unique snowflake claim about NYC :+) It's another huge City. Besides having a horribly mismanaged public transport, it's not unique. Except that it's, you know, the center of the universe of course. ;-)

NYC is unique as it's always be the center of the universe, even it's just 8M people live here, and other cities, like Tokyo/Hong Kong/Beijing/Shanghai has more population that it

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

#50

Post by squozzer »

The problem seems fixable, but as others have said, people will have to take some lumps.

A certain political figure with strong (both bad and good) ties to NYC has harped for a couple of years about a federal infrastructure bill. I think the phrase "third world" was used to describe the problem.

No reason why America's Greatest City (tm) could not wring a couple of bil out of the feds to start upgrading their subways. Move back to the first world, you might say.

In turn, because we're talking about a transaction, the MTA might also need to move out of a "third world" mentality. We can safely assume some of their payroll is spent on political favors. Maybe this "death spiral" talk will motivate the agency to make a least a token gesture towards good use of their riders dollars.

Maybe.

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