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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

#461

Post by talldan »

geezerjay wrote: post #442
asib wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could get from any point in London to anypoint for less than an hour only by rail and walking. Whilst in general I agree with the sentiment of your comment, this is not true. Lots of residential areas in Greater London will have ~20 min walk to nearest tube or overground, and if you're going across the city, the train part of your journey can definitely be > 40 min. As an example, I've got two friends, one live…

> I've got two friends, one lives in Wimbledon (far south), the other in Barnet (far north). That isn't a fair assessment. Metro lines are used to enhance mobility within urban areas. Their goal is to replace cars and 20-30min walks with a 5-10 metro ride with an additional 5min walk. That's why typically subway stations are placed about 500m to 800m apart, and the system's commercial speed is designed to be around 5…

That's an ideal and not actual reality.

Taking London as an example, there aren't many ways to cross London in such a way using commuter rail (ThamesLink currently and Crossrail in the future are probably the only two?). Most people would still use the tube.

That's why 1hr + journeys in London are not uncommon.

(edited to add) London and New York are also much much larger cities than Madrid. It's not really a fair comparison.

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

#462

Post by ghthor »

aylmao wrote: post #388
huehehue wrote: post #97

It's bad. The A/C/J/Z lines still contain R32 cars, which were built 54 years ago, and are 20 years past their service life. These cars were built before the moon landing, have terrible brakes, have terrible air conditioning, and are, generally speaking, sweltering rattly deathtraps. The Second Avenue line is 100 years in the making and has a grand total of...drum roll...3 stations. That opened in 2017. But hey, they…

Not to mention the state of the stations. I don't think they've been maintained or even cleaned in years.

The not being cleaned is concerning ne a lot. The 34th herald square stop air smells like infection, avoid that station at all costs.

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

#463

Post by baud147258 »

rayiner wrote: post #227
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #151

The problem with urban transport systems is that no one sees them for what they really are... an expensive thing that drives the economy. There seems to be an obsession in the west with making public transport pay for itself, but the reality is that a few billion invested in better public transport results in a lot more billions being made elsewhere. We need to get away from this idea that public transport systems ne…

Nobody expects the NYC subway to "break even or even turn a profit." The subway historically recovers less than 50% of its operating expenditures from fares, compared to 70% for Berlin, 88% for Amsterdam, and over 100% in Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio . MTA is broke because it costs several times as much for MTA to do anything compared to its counterpart…

Thank you for the link. The ratio in Paris where I live is 30%, but I think it's not just subway that's included, but also light rail around the city, tram and buses. Still with the price we're paying I would have though the ratio would be higher. It must be caused by fare jumpers and the work for renovation/new lines. It's also not helped by the yearly strikes by the local union for political reasons.

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

#464

Post by baud147258 »

adrianN wrote: post #410
Retric wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The subway systems in London and Paris are pretty old but work reasonably well. You have to properly maintain and modernize the system then the age of the original structures doesn't matter as much.

As an example for Paris, the oldest subway line (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_M%C3%A9tro_Line_1) is fully automated.

There are some of the cars on other lines (like line 10 I'm taking to go to work) are more than 40 years old (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MF_67), but they've been through some refurbishment since then.

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

#465

Post by Dylan16807 »

gameswithgo wrote: post #265
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that most of the wear and tear on our roads isn't caused by people's cars. People pay much more than their fair share of road maintenance via gas taxes etc than the industries that cause the most damage to the roads. Semis cause 1,400x more wear than cars [1]. [1] https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf

it is my potatoes in the trucks. I can pay the road tax, or more for potato. doesn't matter.

A trucker can cut road damage 10x just by adding more axles. This saves you money. But they'll only do it if they save money too. If everyone has to pay for wear, then the truckers have a reason to make those upgrades.

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

#466

Post by asib »

geezerjay wrote: post #442
asib wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could get from any point in London to anypoint for less than an hour only by rail and walking. Whilst in general I agree with the sentiment of your comment, this is not true. Lots of residential areas in Greater London will have ~20 min walk to nearest tube or overground, and if you're going across the city, the train part of your journey can definitely be > 40 min. As an example, I've got two friends, one live…

> I've got two friends, one lives in Wimbledon (far south), the other in Barnet (far north). That isn't a fair assessment. Metro lines are used to enhance mobility within urban areas. Their goal is to replace cars and 20-30min walks with a 5-10 metro ride with an additional 5min walk. That's why typically subway stations are placed about 500m to 800m apart, and the system's commercial speed is designed to be around 5…

It is a fair assessment, because I did take into account commuter rail, which is not any faster - a quick Google maps check says both tube and rail (of any form - overground, national rail, etc.) journeys come to around 1 hr 40 mins.

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

#467

Post by afterburner »

culturestate wrote: post #460
afterburner wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My morning commute in Hong Kong > I'm neither upset nor in China The fuck

There’s an international border between Hong Kong and mainland China. A Chinese citizen needs a visa to come here and a Hong Kong citizen needs (what is basically) a visa to go there.

There may be a border, but it's still China. Did you miss the handover ceremony?

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

#468

Post by taobility »

xxpor wrote: post #107
taobility wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is why other cities have shitty transit. Commutes can't be looked at as the only purpose of a transit system. Especially in NY, it's the PRIMARY mode of transportation for a lot of people. Making it shitty outside of commute hours is not an option.

"This is why other cities have shitty transit."?? If NYC continue with current shitty schedule, the subway would be worse and worse, which means less and less commuters will rely on it, and eventually it will be closed as worthless. Will you be happier? As at that time, nobody will benefit. Be more practical, gentleman! We are living in 2018, there is lot of proving that we should optimize a system by reducing the bottleneck. For those 0.1% commuters, they don't nee the whole subway system to support them, they can take bus/shuttle or even uber, which will save millions of dollars for the whole system, and also improve the rush hour transit much much better.

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

#469

Post by taobility »

natestemen wrote: post #60
taobility wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

i dont think it's really that simple. even it was i don't think the decision is that easy anyway. it's important to think about who your decisions affect, even if they may be a minority (which is bigger than 0.1%). why is it okay to put more burden on the people who already have the most burden as it is?

NYC is the only city which has such requirement and have to provide subway to support them? How many other cities provide same 24/7 subway transit? why the other cities don't provide such service? The other cities don't have people work so late? How does those people commute?

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

#470

Post by taobility »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #304
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;-)

The NYC subway system has more stations than any other subway system in the world. 29% more than next most station-rich system.

Would that approve anything or excuse for anything? According wiki, NYC has 424 stations, and Shanghai Metro has 393 stations. (424-393)/393 = 7.3%
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