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Kudos to MTA NYC - the raw data to perform analysis is available here: http://web.mta.info/developers/MTA-Subway-Time-historical-da... The details on how the countdown clocks work is available here: https://www.amny.com/transit/subway-countdown-clock-complain... GTFS Format: https://developers.google.com/transit/gtfs-realtime/
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...if the train is on happy path. And believe me, there are some really ugly unhappy paths where underground passenger rail is concerned; we definitely have no technology autonomous enough for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_London_Underground_acc...
A system so safe, that almost all of the accidents in the last 50 years say "no serious injuries" or even "no injuries". One driver was killed in 1968, another in 1984, someone broken a leg in 2003, and a passenger in 2004 dragged along a platform. (The accident in 1975 was with a mainline rail train, not a metro train, I'm not sure why it's on the list.)
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> That's certainly MTA management's narrative when asked by, say, the New York Times. If you're saying that the MTA is trying to misrepresent their role in their own dysfunction when speaking to the news in order to generate coverage that makes them look more favorable, then the MTA should fire their whole PR team, because they're clearly incompetent. It's pretty clear to anybody who's following the issue that the MT…
The relationship between the MTA management and TWU is fractious at best. The relationship between MTA management and the scores of construction companies that curiously increased their costs 50% in recent years is curiously pretty good, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with the increased costs. Of course tried to spin a corruption problem as a union problem. Are they really going to blame themselves?
Construction is a labor-intensive industry, and labor costs dominate. If you look up the public companies that do civil construction work, you’ll see that the profit margins are razor thin (2-5%). These are not companies like Facebook making 20-30% profit margins.
This is not a moral issue. It's not about evil construction company CEOs. Reducing executive pay at these companies wouldn't amount to a drop in the bucket for these multi-billion projects. Nor is it about evil union workers. We're just talking about hard-working folks who are getting paid a rather more comfortable wage than their counterparts in Europe. Which is good for them, but wrecks the economics of the MTA, an entity where payroll, health, and pension make up more than half of expenditures.
Since trains are supposed to be spaced out 4-5 min or so, that means the clock is only really useful to tell if there's a huge delay.
>The L train is also the only line that uses modern >communications-based train control (CBTC), which allows >trains to operate in a more automated fashion. It's not "more automated fashion", it's fully automated, LIDAR and all - they are fully autonomous. L trains have operators because of unions throwing a fit and most of the times they sit there twiddling their thumbs.
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Rich people buy bottled water (and our water system is a disaster that’s poisoning poor kids with lead). Rich people either send their kids to private schools, or carve out enclaves with public schools that have just other rich people (while the “safety net” inner city schools deteriorate). Electricity isn’t a “public service.” For the most part, private companies provide electric service in the US using private infr…
Total attendance, NYPL system in FY2016: 13,867,000 (2M library card holders, 729,000 active) Total attendance, New York Mets in MLB 2016: 2,460,000 Total attendance, New York Giants in NFL 2016: 630,312 "Nobody" uses libraries, indeed. http://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/20...
So 5% of the total eligible population used one.
Don't get me wrong, I love libraries and I go every week with the kids, but I think OP is right -- few people actually use the library.
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I feel it's worth reminding that there's a difference between autonomous trains, driverless trains and unattended trains. The L train is considered Grade of Automation 2 - it starts and stops itself, though it has someone in the driver's seat who controls the doors and gives control to the ATO system. Driverless (GoA3) trains move that role to a train attendant who controls the doors from within the train. Unattended…
> I don't think we'll see a GoA 4 tube for many years Perhaps I'm missing something, but I used to ride a fully automatic (e.g. there was no driver, not even a cabin for one) subway line in Lyon back in 1994/1995.
It's very easy to build automated trains when they're brand new, but much harder to do so on legacy lines.
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I feel it's worth reminding that there's a difference between autonomous trains, driverless trains and unattended trains. The L train is considered Grade of Automation 2 - it starts and stops itself, though it has someone in the driver's seat who controls the doors and gives control to the ATO system. Driverless (GoA3) trains move that role to a train attendant who controls the doors from within the train. Unattended…
It would seem that GoA 4 is already out there in Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...
In a legacy system like New York or London where these facilities don't exist and introducing them would be very disruptive, if not completely impossible, you probably need at least one person on a train to assist with evacuation.
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I don't mind paying a man to sit at the head of the train even if they're autonomous. I also don't believe making all the lines CBTC are going to solve the core issues of breakdowns outside of an ancient signaling system. Some of the lines in NYC are still using R32 cars[1]. They were built in 1965 that is ludicrous. Granted, they were refurbished in the late 80s but that's still 30 years ago. That said most of the l…
It's not a question of whether "one of the richest cities on the planet" can "fund serious upgrades." It's how much money are New Yorkers willing to throw into a system where it takes several times as much money to do the same thing as other countries? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... . New York is rich, but so is London. Based on that wealth, there is a certain amount of money New York…
The contractors that do the negotiation are more than happy to oblige the union's demands, as long as their margins are fat, and so far the MTA has not cried uncle about the costs being passed on, although that looks to be (very slowly) changing.
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I don't mind paying a man to sit at the head of the train even if they're autonomous. I also don't believe making all the lines CBTC are going to solve the core issues of breakdowns outside of an ancient signaling system. Some of the lines in NYC are still using R32 cars[1]. They were built in 1965 that is ludicrous. Granted, they were refurbished in the late 80s but that's still 30 years ago. That said most of the l…
As a person living in Osaka, Japan right now, I always find it funny reading people comment on NYC Subway. Not your specifically, but in general. In Osaka, Hankyu Railway (granted, a commuter train operator, but most if not all commuter trains service in Japan runs like subway) still runs multiple 3300 series, manufactured in 1969. They (the 3300's) actually also run into the Osaka Metro system, and you cannot really…
Three times in the past 2 years (since I moved to the G line) the train had to be evacuated because the brakes locked on a car and someone smelled the awful burning it thinking it was an actual fire in the car. THREE TIMES.
If you maintain the cartridges there's no problem at all but there are so many problems it's way beyond that.
I'm a little of a train nerd (if not obvious) so I went to the train stock as an example but other underground systems prove that proper, well funded and well managed maintenance will make this a non-issue.
"Proper. Well Funded. Well Managed." - Not the MTA Subway System