8 ms·

New York’s Subway Frequency Guidelines Are the Wrong Approach

77 points by another 11y ago

jph 11y ago
Terrific analysis. What is interesting to me is all of the items could be explained by a single factor: distributed planning architecture, such as a planning system that calculates each line frequency independently. Essentially each train is its own functional agent. This could cause the kind of data in the article, while also having a legitimate reason for use. Independent units can be better for fault tolerance, emergency recovery, and streamlined risk management, if anything goes awry.
jrockway 11y ago
I don't think the MTA is aiming for optimal scheduling. Peak demand depends on two things: the number of trainsets available, and the track capacity. I recently read their in-depth analysis of the A/C lines. A/C capacity is strictly limited by the interlocking between Hoyt-Schermerhorn and Jay St - Metrotech. It can handle 28 trains per hour if everything runs perfectly, and they have approximately that many scheduled. Similarly, people complain about the C being 8 cars instead of 10 (actually 480' vs. 600'). Unfortunately, the MTA doesn't own enough railcars to be able to run the C with 10 cars. Off-peak service is a disaster and the only thing that explains their scheduling is that they can't afford to pay the conductors and train operators. Their guidelines are definitely shaped by "how can we keep the system running with the atrociously-limited amount of money we get from the state", rather than "there's no possible way to run 28 trains per hour 24/7". Waiting 20 minutes for a train is still better than systems that shut down at 11pm and reopen at 6am, though. Edit: here's the analysis that explains all of this better than I can: http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/AC_LineReview.pdf http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/AC_LineReview.pdf Great document.
- rquantz 11y ago
  how can we keep the system running with the atrociously-limited amount of money we get from the state I've been saying for a while that NYC should cecede from New York State. We send more money Upstate than they send down, and in return we still aren't allowed to run the socialist utopia most city residents actually want. Make the mayor a governor, and we'll have a noble experiment on our hands.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > I've been saying for a while that NYC should cecede from New York State. We send more money Upstate than they send down, Much as I'd love for key NYC infrastructure (namely the MTA) to be free from the grips of Albany, this would never work. New York City is so intrinsically dependent on infrastructure from the surrounding areas that it would be a nightmare to try and negotiate that across state lines. Negotiating water rights alone would be an absolute mess. > we still aren't allowed to run the socialist utopia most city residents actually want Uh, no, "most" residents of New York City don't want a socialist utopia. Just because four of the five boroughs voted for Obama in 2008 doesn't mean NYC is some bastion of radical left-wing thought. Let's not forget that the city voted Bloomberg in three times. (If you really want a deeper analysis, you might want to note that New York City politics is also influenced by people of color to a degree that no other major city in the US is. While they tend to vote reliably for Democratic candidates, black and Latino voters are empirically far less liberal[0] than their white counterparts in the Democratic party). [0] Ignore the op-ed itself; the graph halfway down the page illustrates the data very well: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/upshot/what-the-hispanic-vote-says-about-bernie-sanderss-chances.html?rref=upshot http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/upshot/what-the-hispanic-v...
    - rquantz 11y ago
      Sorry, "socialist utopia" in this case is reclaimed from the Republican insanity of the last 8 years, where any government program is "socialism" and ergo synonymous with evil. I'm not suggesting the majority of New Yorkers want a dictatorship of the proletariat, I just mean most of us want to have the public infrastructure necessary to live in the city, and would probably be ok with better social programs. And would you deny that the city is more "liberal" than Upstate?
    - jdminhbg 11y ago
      > New York City politics is also influenced by people of color to a degree that no other major city in the US is Washington, DC?
      - 11y ago
- dplgk 11y ago
  What if off peak trains were only five cars long but ran twice as much? And each train only had one driver.
  - jrockway 11y ago
    My understanding is that the union wouldn't allow one-person train operation, but apparently the G and M are one-person only on weekends now, so maybe that's changing: http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/opto.htm http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/opto.htm It also costs time (and money) to split up trains every day (10 cars into 5 cars, or 8 into 4), and so the MTA probably wouldn't do that. Finally, if all the railcars are being used 24/7, there is no time to do routine maintenance on them.
    - cballard 11y ago
      Well, we can start firing the drivers at some point. The Canarsie line runs all the same rolling stock, put up the platform screen doors already and go full CBTC like Paris.
      - jrockway 11y ago
        A better example is the AirTrain JFK, which is in New York and is driverless. I don't know much about the Paris system, but has unattended operation scaled to the ridership volume of the NYC subway during rush hour? The problem I foresee is people holding the doors of the train; already a major cause of delays with two staff members in every train. I'm only familiar with AirTrain, which handles "people getting stuck in the doors" by stopping for an insanely long time at each station, and the Yurikamome in Tokyo, which is tiny compared to the real routes there.
        Gmo 11y ago
        In Paris, there are 2 sets of doors. The doors of the train of course and some doors on the platform itself. This is to ensure that people don't jump in front of the train of course, but I think it also has to do with improving the flow.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  The problem isn't money in - it's the high costs that the MTA inflicts on itself. In terms of cost, consider construction. Cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, Delhi, Dubai and Budapest build subways at $100-500M/km. In NYC the cost is $2,000M/km. https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative-subway-construction-costs-revised/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp... I'll talk a bit about the Delhi metro since my wallet currently contains a NYC metro card and a Delhi travel card. The Delhi metro cost 10,800 crore for phase 1 and 19,131 crore for phase 2. That's about $5 billion. http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/delhi-to-recover-entire-cost-of-metro-phase1-by-2011/525800/ http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/delhi-to-recover-entir... http://www.delhimetrorail.com/projectsupdate/project_cost.aspx http://www.delhimetrorail.com/projectsupdate/project_cost.as... Here is a time lapse of the Delhi metro being built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Metro#/media/File:Delhi_Metro_Evo.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Metro#/media/File:Delhi_... For approximately $5 billion, Delhi got 132 miles of track (mixed subway, at-grade and elevated) and 160 stations. In NYC, we spent $2.4 billion on the 7 line extension. We got 1 mile of subway and 1 station. The MTA wastes virtually every dollar we give them. Giving them more money is not the solution; putting them in jail and paying Singapore to administer our transit is.
  - tomarr 11y ago
    There's many differences to consider before calling it 'waste', however that's capital expenditure and not operational which is completely different.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      There are easy examples of operational waste to be found; e.g. trains are overstaffed (relative to any international trains) with highly paid conductors, and we still have token booth employees who grumpily point you to the metrocard machine if you interrupt their candy crush. http://nypost.com/2011/07/13/mtas-too-nice-pay/ http://nypost.com/2011/07/13/mtas-too-nice-pay/ Unlike construction, it's harder to find concrete operational numbers to compare to other more functional systems. But here is an obvious one: Singapore (pop 5.4M) gives their MOT $2.3B for operational costs and and $4.6B for construction costs (the plan is to double the length of the MRT). http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2013/expenditure_overview/mot.html http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2013/expenditure_ov... NYC (pop 8.4M) has operational costs of $13B, and no particularly ambitious construction plans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Authority_(New_York)#Budget_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au...
jib 11y ago
Synchronised frequencies sounds bad. You want non-synchronised to avoid amplification and ensure error correction, surely? If you have just one temporary bottle neck screwing up the relative distance, causing a capacity shortage down the line you will have that pattern repeating if things are synced, whereas if they aren't, you will error correct naturally.

77 points by another 11y ago

jph 11y ago

Terrific analysis. What is interesting to me is all of the items could be explained by a single factor: distributed planning architecture, such as a planning system that calculates each line frequency independently. Essentially each train is its own functional agent. This could cause the kind of data in the article, while also having a legitimate reason for use. Independent units can be better for fault tolerance, emergency recovery, and streamlined risk management, if anything goes awry.

jrockway 11y ago

I don't think the MTA is aiming for optimal scheduling. Peak demand depends on two things: the number of trainsets available, and the track capacity. I recently read their in-depth analysis of the A/C lines. A/C capacity is strictly limited by the interlocking between Hoyt-Schermerhorn and Jay St - Metrotech. It can handle 28 trains per hour if everything runs perfectly, and they have approximately that many scheduled. Similarly, people complain about the C being 8 cars instead of 10 (actually 480' vs. 600'). Unfortunately, the MTA doesn't own enough railcars to be able to run the C with 10 cars. Off-peak service is a disaster and the only thing that explains their scheduling is that they can't afford to pay the conductors and train operators. Their guidelines are definitely shaped by "how can we keep the system running with the atrociously-limited amount of money we get from the state", rather than "there's no possible way to run 28 trains per hour 24/7". Waiting 20 minutes for a train is still better than systems that shut down at 11pm and reopen at 6am, though. Edit: here's the analysis that explains all of this better than I can: http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/AC_LineReview.pdf http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/pdf/AC_LineReview.pdf Great document.

rquantz 11y ago
how can we keep the system running with the atrociously-limited amount of money we get from the state I've been saying for a while that NYC should cecede from New York State. We send more money Upstate than they send down, and in return we still aren't allowed to run the socialist utopia most city residents actually want. Make the mayor a governor, and we'll have a noble experiment on our hands.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > I've been saying for a while that NYC should cecede from New York State. We send more money Upstate than they send down, Much as I'd love for key NYC infrastructure (namely the MTA) to be free from the grips of Albany, this would never work. New York City is so intrinsically dependent on infrastructure from the surrounding areas that it would be a nightmare to try and negotiate that across state lines. Negotiating water rights alone would be an absolute mess. > we still aren't allowed to run the socialist utopia most city residents actually want Uh, no, "most" residents of New York City don't want a socialist utopia. Just because four of the five boroughs voted for Obama in 2008 doesn't mean NYC is some bastion of radical left-wing thought. Let's not forget that the city voted Bloomberg in three times. (If you really want a deeper analysis, you might want to note that New York City politics is also influenced by people of color to a degree that no other major city in the US is. While they tend to vote reliably for Democratic candidates, black and Latino voters are empirically far less liberal[0] than their white counterparts in the Democratic party). [0] Ignore the op-ed itself; the graph halfway down the page illustrates the data very well: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/upshot/what-the-hispanic-vote-says-about-bernie-sanderss-chances.html?rref=upshot http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/upshot/what-the-hispanic-v...
  - rquantz 11y ago
    Sorry, "socialist utopia" in this case is reclaimed from the Republican insanity of the last 8 years, where any government program is "socialism" and ergo synonymous with evil. I'm not suggesting the majority of New Yorkers want a dictatorship of the proletariat, I just mean most of us want to have the public infrastructure necessary to live in the city, and would probably be ok with better social programs. And would you deny that the city is more "liberal" than Upstate?
  - jdminhbg 11y ago
    > New York City politics is also influenced by people of color to a degree that no other major city in the US is Washington, DC?
    - 11y ago
dplgk 11y ago
What if off peak trains were only five cars long but ran twice as much? And each train only had one driver.
- jrockway 11y ago
  My understanding is that the union wouldn't allow one-person train operation, but apparently the G and M are one-person only on weekends now, so maybe that's changing: http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/opto.htm http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/opto.htm It also costs time (and money) to split up trains every day (10 cars into 5 cars, or 8 into 4), and so the MTA probably wouldn't do that. Finally, if all the railcars are being used 24/7, there is no time to do routine maintenance on them.
  - cballard 11y ago
    Well, we can start firing the drivers at some point. The Canarsie line runs all the same rolling stock, put up the platform screen doors already and go full CBTC like Paris.
    - jrockway 11y ago
      A better example is the AirTrain JFK, which is in New York and is driverless. I don't know much about the Paris system, but has unattended operation scaled to the ridership volume of the NYC subway during rush hour? The problem I foresee is people holding the doors of the train; already a major cause of delays with two staff members in every train. I'm only familiar with AirTrain, which handles "people getting stuck in the doors" by stopping for an insanely long time at each station, and the Yurikamome in Tokyo, which is tiny compared to the real routes there.
      - Gmo 11y ago
        In Paris, there are 2 sets of doors. The doors of the train of course and some doors on the platform itself. This is to ensure that people don't jump in front of the train of course, but I think it also has to do with improving the flow.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
The problem isn't money in - it's the high costs that the MTA inflicts on itself. In terms of cost, consider construction. Cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, Delhi, Dubai and Budapest build subways at $100-500M/km. In NYC the cost is $2,000M/km. https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative-subway-construction-costs-revised/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp... I'll talk a bit about the Delhi metro since my wallet currently contains a NYC metro card and a Delhi travel card. The Delhi metro cost 10,800 crore for phase 1 and 19,131 crore for phase 2. That's about $5 billion. http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/delhi-to-recover-entire-cost-of-metro-phase1-by-2011/525800/ http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/delhi-to-recover-entir... http://www.delhimetrorail.com/projectsupdate/project_cost.aspx http://www.delhimetrorail.com/projectsupdate/project_cost.as... Here is a time lapse of the Delhi metro being built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Metro#/media/File:Delhi_Metro_Evo.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Metro#/media/File:Delhi_... For approximately $5 billion, Delhi got 132 miles of track (mixed subway, at-grade and elevated) and 160 stations. In NYC, we spent $2.4 billion on the 7 line extension. We got 1 mile of subway and 1 station. The MTA wastes virtually every dollar we give them. Giving them more money is not the solution; putting them in jail and paying Singapore to administer our transit is.
- tomarr 11y ago
  There's many differences to consider before calling it 'waste', however that's capital expenditure and not operational which is completely different.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    There are easy examples of operational waste to be found; e.g. trains are overstaffed (relative to any international trains) with highly paid conductors, and we still have token booth employees who grumpily point you to the metrocard machine if you interrupt their candy crush. http://nypost.com/2011/07/13/mtas-too-nice-pay/ http://nypost.com/2011/07/13/mtas-too-nice-pay/ Unlike construction, it's harder to find concrete operational numbers to compare to other more functional systems. But here is an obvious one: Singapore (pop 5.4M) gives their MOT $2.3B for operational costs and and $4.6B for construction costs (the plan is to double the length of the MRT). http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2013/expenditure_overview/mot.html http://www.singaporebudget.gov.sg/budget_2013/expenditure_ov... NYC (pop 8.4M) has operational costs of $13B, and no particularly ambitious construction plans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Authority_(New_York)#Budget_gaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au...

jib 11y ago

Synchronised frequencies sounds bad. You want non-synchronised to avoid amplification and ensure error correction, surely? If you have just one temporary bottle neck screwing up the relative distance, causing a capacity shortage down the line you will have that pattern repeating if things are synced, whereas if they aren't, you will error correct naturally.