6 ms·

New York's Incredible Subway

49 points by gwintrob 10y ago

davidf18 10y ago
You can travel on the subway and busses as much as you want for about $110 per month. Remarkably, the subway had even more ridership in the late 1920's and late 1940's, exceeding 2 billion rides per year.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  Manhattan's population was also much larger back then.
  - gwintrob 10y ago
    Interesting. There were 2.3mm in 1910 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people-can-manhattan-hold.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people...).
  - astrodust 10y ago
    When you had fifteen people jammed into a three bedroom it was no wonder it was higher.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      There's a lot more square footage now, so they could have the density if more folks lived with roommates. But the number of people who want to live alone is much higher now.
- PhantomGremlin 10y ago
  You can travel on the subway and busses as much as you want for about $110 per month. The passes cost $29 for 7 days. So a family of four, visiting NYC, can ride around for a week for $116. Not a bad deal at all!
placeybordeaux 10y ago
> each of which is 20 percent or more denser than any municipality large municipality in the United States or Canada And a chart that seems to be indicating that ridership has increased by 1,000 * 100 million riders from 2005 to 2015. Who edited this?
Animats 10y ago
The big difference between the NYC subway and all other US systems is that it's four-track. Not only is it four-track; there are lots of switches, crossovers, and interlocked signaling to support taking a section of track out of service without affecting traffic much. That's why the system can run 24/7. Almost all maintenance is done without stopping all traffic. Surprisingly, China's new subways are not generally being built as four-track systems. Nor does Japan have much four-track subway trackage. London Underground is cramped in every dimension - the system is two-track, the tunnel diameter is small, and the platforms are short. London cannot fit any more rolling stock onto their tracks on some lines.
- justincormack 10y ago
  Signalling is one of the main issues in London, as a lot of it is old and needs replacing for higher density. More tracks are being added, and the wider metro rail systems are being integrated and extended though.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Much of the old signaling on the deep lines is gone. Trains on the Northern, Victoria, Central and Jubilee lines run automatically, except a driver pressing a button to close the doors.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Signalling is a huge issue in NYC. The control center actually has no idea where the trains are due to outdated equipment and rely on the block signals to report roughly where the trains are at any given time. It'll be a huge project to update that and give them GPS-level accuracy on the trains.
- brooklyndavs 10y ago
  -> "The big difference between the NYC subway and all other US systems is that it's four-track. Not only is it four-track; there are lots of switches, crossovers, and interlocked signaling to support taking a section of track out of service without affecting traffic much. That's why the system can run 24/7. Almost all maintenance is done without stopping all traffic." Totally. I'm always surprised at the amount of planning that went into the NYC subway as far as capacity and redundancy goes. Not only in the IRT and BMT lines, which were private companies at the time, but also the IND system which was built and owned by the City. For example, the first time I took the F train to Coney Island I was socked to see it's four-track all the way to the end. It's a huge disappointment that the Second Ave subway is going to be two-tracked.
FreedomToCreate 10y ago
I haven't had an opportunity to ride the NYC subway, but I was a regular user of the Shenzhen/Hong Kong subway for a few months during a long term project in the region and I would have to say its incredible/insane. If you ever get a chance, experiencing the Hong Kong system at rush hour is crazy but you will be amazed by it efficiency. Don't know if I can say the same about SF or Toronto.
- stuxnet79 10y ago
  Toronto's transit definitely needs improvement. But how does SF even figure into the equation? I thought all the west-coast cities were car-centric.
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    San Francisco isn't, not really anyway. Actually, to be honest, it's kinda just crappy to get around no matter how you want to do it... but as far as cars are concerned, since the earthquake felled the Embarcadero Freeway the freeways are only on one side of the city, and even the fastest routes through town have a bunch of stoplights, and traffic is bad and slow. But it does have transit! Mostly, it has Caltrain and BART, which are essentially commuter rail systems that drop people downtown where they actually want to work. They have some issues but they fundamentally work. San Francisco also has MUNI, the Municipal Railway, which runs the streetcars (and also runs the buses) and, for the US, it's pretty good transit. But that's mostly just low expectations: there's one downtown tunnel (which shares half its route with BART) and then the rest is mostly interlined with the aforementioned traffic, and it is slow, and notoriously unreliable (even besies traffic, SFMTA has well-known issues with its relationship to its labor union which contribute substantially to no-show drivers, and in the absence of driverless buses that's a bit of a monkey wrench in normal operation.) And very few of the buses have dedicated bus lanes (although the Geary corridor might be getting some in the future as part of a bus rapid transit system some day soon). There is an ongoing project to connect Caltrain to Market Street and Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf with a new streetcar line. We'll see how well it works out... there's already been drama and delays about moving the alignment from 3rd St to 4th St...
- 10y ago
buro9 10y ago
This made me curious about London's passenger or trip numbers, and I found this: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-and-figures https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-und... 1.34 billion passengers (I presume 'trips') per year.
brooklyndavs 10y ago
Strangely, and hypocritically, the same author of this post also wrote this: "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life" WUT?
billforsternz 10y ago
The author forgets Tokyo and Seoul in his intro. Tokyo because like NY, Paris and London it's both old and huge. Seoul because like Shanghai and Beijing it has emerged more recently as a genuine contender for the title of biggest and best system.
biftek 10y ago
Also interesting that the PATH, which serves parts of Manhattan (and I feel not a lot of people know about), ranks 7th on the list.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's more a New Jersey thing than a New York thing even though technically it goes to Manhattan. That's some pretty impressive volume considering it's not all that expansive: http://www.panynj.gov/path/maps.html http://www.panynj.gov/path/maps.html
- cmurf 10y ago
  Anyone who doesn't work, live, or play in New Jersey wouldn't know about PATH because otherwise it's trivia.
Maarten88 10y ago
I attended a presentation by Travis Kalanick recently, where he told he got the idea for Uber when he could not get a Cab while visiting Paris. I thought that was quite funny: Paris has this awesome ridesharing service, that is even mostly driverless, called the Subway. Everyone there uses it; only a US tourist would use a taxi there. Still that poor idea led to a great company. On a more serious note, this made me think: private companies and startups doing self driving cars and other transport innovations gain nothing when public transport gets more popular. They compete with it. I now wonder if that has something to do with the decrease in rides in US cities outside NY.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Even in cities with good public transportation an autonomous vehicle will be faster than public transportation. Especially when you don't have to park. Gridlocked Manhattan is an exception. But for most trips in most places a car will be faster. Especially if public transportation requires switching one or more lines.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Be prepared to be downmodded by HN'ers who seem to think that the entire purpose of municipal transit is to move the largest possible number of people per hour from one train station where they don't want to be to another train station where they also don't want to be. Of course autonomous vehicles are going to render fixed-rail systems irrelevant... or at least, they will if they're implemented properly. "Gridlocked Manhattan" is only gridlocked because the vehicles doing the gridlocking aren't talking to a central authority, or to each other. But what seems like common sense to me has proven to be a surprisingly hard sell among technologically-literate people who I'd expect to understand it intuitively. People on HN really, really like trains.
    - oasisbob 10y ago
      > Of course autonomous vehicles are going to render fixed-rail systems irrelevant... I'm not sure everyone is willing to take that as a statement of fact. I'm sure not. Can you point to a single transportation expert who believes that centrally orchestrated single-occupancy vehicles are a solution for transportation capacity problems? The difference in lane throughput between single occupancy vehicles and mass transit is staggering. Part of the benefit of rail is that it can use dedicated facilities that are deconflicted. Autonomous vehicles still need to deal with red lights, pedestrians, cyclists, and limits on safe acceleration/deceleration. Here in Seattle our light rail system is hobbled because of non-grade-separated parts of the line - which despite having signal priority is restricted in its operation (station dwell times, # of trains in operation, train separation) because of conflicting cross streets. A central authority is NOT a panacea. With human drivers, lane density tops out at somewhere around ~900 vehicles per hour. Let's say automatic cars can somehow double that - to 1800 vehicles per hour. Even dedicated bus lanes can move 6000 people per hour. Forget Manhattan which is a beast of its own scale - look at Chicago mass transit which moves over a million people a day. You're sure you could replace the capacity of rush-hour Red Line trains at crush capacity with the surface streets? Really? Where would you park these cars? Where would everyone get in and out of the cars? (On/off boarding is the scaling limit for bus lanes - that alone is enough to sink your plan.) You do realize the irony in having faith that centralized coordination between autonomous vehicles will lead to these improvements?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pooze 10y ago
Here is a list of gifs showing the expansion in various cities. Shanghai (http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/shanghai-metro-gif.gif http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/shanghai-m...) Toronto (http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/toronto-metro-gif.gif http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/toronto-me...) Beijing (http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/subwaygif2-01.gif http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/subwaygif2-01.gif) Moscow (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/%D0%9C%D...) New York (https://secondavesagas.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/subwayhistory.gif https://secondavesagas.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/subwayhis...)
- sloreti 10y ago
  Boston: http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2012/04/an-animated-history-of-the-mbta/ http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2012/04/an-animated-...
bogomipz 10y ago
There's no mention of the fact that the "Incredible" New York City subway is buckling under the strain of this increased ridership. The sources are many but just to provide one: http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-subway-system-cant-keep-pace-with-growing-number-of-riders-1458762858 http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-subway-system-cant-kee... Despite a growing ridership, it's still fiscally strapped and under capitalized, so it's buckling financially as well. While the latter contributes to the former it is by no means the sole cause.
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's having trouble, but it's not nearly the burning pile of garbage that is the DC Metro which is in such an advanced state of disrepair there's even a service that tells you if it's currently on fire: https://www.ismetroonfire.com https://www.ismetroonfire.com For a timeline of horror: https://twitter.com/ismetroonfire https://twitter.com/ismetroonfire Which, if you think is all bullshit, observe: https://twitter.com/IsMetroOnFire/status/728349308509003776 https://twitter.com/IsMetroOnFire/status/728349308509003776
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Undercapitalized? MTA has access to lots and lots of capital. They collect fares on the largest transportation network in the United States, have nearly unlimited bonding ability, and collection of sales taxes from one of the larger metro areas on the planet. Underinvestment in capital projects has more to do with the ridiculous politics around the MTA. They have expensive labor contracts, duplicative administration and lots of inefficiency.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Yes agreed, and there's even a tax on your cell phone bill as a resident that goes to the MTA. They are undercapitalized for all the projects they have already begun work on.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

49 points by gwintrob 10y ago

You can travel on the subway and busses as much as you want for about $110 per month. Remarkably, the subway had even more ridership in the late 1920's and late 1940's, exceeding 2 billion rides per year.

jessriedel 10y ago
Manhattan's population was also much larger back then.
- gwintrob 10y ago
  Interesting. There were 2.3mm in 1910 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people-can-manhattan-hold.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people...).
- astrodust 10y ago
  When you had fifteen people jammed into a three bedroom it was no wonder it was higher.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    There's a lot more square footage now, so they could have the density if more folks lived with roommates. But the number of people who want to live alone is much higher now.
PhantomGremlin 10y ago
You can travel on the subway and busses as much as you want for about $110 per month. The passes cost $29 for 7 days. So a family of four, visiting NYC, can ride around for a week for $116. Not a bad deal at all!

placeybordeaux 10y ago

> each of which is 20 percent or more denser than any municipality large municipality in the United States or Canada And a chart that seems to be indicating that ridership has increased by 1,000 * 100 million riders from 2005 to 2015. Who edited this?

Animats 10y ago

The big difference between the NYC subway and all other US systems is that it's four-track. Not only is it four-track; there are lots of switches, crossovers, and interlocked signaling to support taking a section of track out of service without affecting traffic much. That's why the system can run 24/7. Almost all maintenance is done without stopping all traffic. Surprisingly, China's new subways are not generally being built as four-track systems. Nor does Japan have much four-track subway trackage. London Underground is cramped in every dimension - the system is two-track, the tunnel diameter is small, and the platforms are short. London cannot fit any more rolling stock onto their tracks on some lines.

justincormack 10y ago
Signalling is one of the main issues in London, as a lot of it is old and needs replacing for higher density. More tracks are being added, and the wider metro rail systems are being integrated and extended though.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  Much of the old signaling on the deep lines is gone. Trains on the Northern, Victoria, Central and Jubilee lines run automatically, except a driver pressing a button to close the doors.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Signalling is a huge issue in NYC. The control center actually has no idea where the trains are due to outdated equipment and rely on the block signals to report roughly where the trains are at any given time. It'll be a huge project to update that and give them GPS-level accuracy on the trains.
brooklyndavs 10y ago
-> "The big difference between the NYC subway and all other US systems is that it's four-track. Not only is it four-track; there are lots of switches, crossovers, and interlocked signaling to support taking a section of track out of service without affecting traffic much. That's why the system can run 24/7. Almost all maintenance is done without stopping all traffic." Totally. I'm always surprised at the amount of planning that went into the NYC subway as far as capacity and redundancy goes. Not only in the IRT and BMT lines, which were private companies at the time, but also the IND system which was built and owned by the City. For example, the first time I took the F train to Coney Island I was socked to see it's four-track all the way to the end. It's a huge disappointment that the Second Ave subway is going to be two-tracked.

FreedomToCreate 10y ago

I haven't had an opportunity to ride the NYC subway, but I was a regular user of the Shenzhen/Hong Kong subway for a few months during a long term project in the region and I would have to say its incredible/insane. If you ever get a chance, experiencing the Hong Kong system at rush hour is crazy but you will be amazed by it efficiency. Don't know if I can say the same about SF or Toronto.

stuxnet79 10y ago
Toronto's transit definitely needs improvement. But how does SF even figure into the equation? I thought all the west-coast cities were car-centric.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  San Francisco isn't, not really anyway. Actually, to be honest, it's kinda just crappy to get around no matter how you want to do it... but as far as cars are concerned, since the earthquake felled the Embarcadero Freeway the freeways are only on one side of the city, and even the fastest routes through town have a bunch of stoplights, and traffic is bad and slow. But it does have transit! Mostly, it has Caltrain and BART, which are essentially commuter rail systems that drop people downtown where they actually want to work. They have some issues but they fundamentally work. San Francisco also has MUNI, the Municipal Railway, which runs the streetcars (and also runs the buses) and, for the US, it's pretty good transit. But that's mostly just low expectations: there's one downtown tunnel (which shares half its route with BART) and then the rest is mostly interlined with the aforementioned traffic, and it is slow, and notoriously unreliable (even besies traffic, SFMTA has well-known issues with its relationship to its labor union which contribute substantially to no-show drivers, and in the absence of driverless buses that's a bit of a monkey wrench in normal operation.) And very few of the buses have dedicated bus lanes (although the Geary corridor might be getting some in the future as part of a bus rapid transit system some day soon). There is an ongoing project to connect Caltrain to Market Street and Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf with a new streetcar line. We'll see how well it works out... there's already been drama and delays about moving the alignment from 3rd St to 4th St...
10y ago

buro9 10y ago

This made me curious about London's passenger or trip numbers, and I found this: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-and-figures https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-und... 1.34 billion passengers (I presume 'trips') per year.

brooklyndavs 10y ago

Strangely, and hypocritically, the same author of this post also wrote this: "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life" WUT?

billforsternz 10y ago

The author forgets Tokyo and Seoul in his intro. Tokyo because like NY, Paris and London it's both old and huge. Seoul because like Shanghai and Beijing it has emerged more recently as a genuine contender for the title of biggest and best system.

biftek 10y ago

Also interesting that the PATH, which serves parts of Manhattan (and I feel not a lot of people know about), ranks 7th on the list.

astrodust 10y ago
It's more a New Jersey thing than a New York thing even though technically it goes to Manhattan. That's some pretty impressive volume considering it's not all that expansive: http://www.panynj.gov/path/maps.html http://www.panynj.gov/path/maps.html
cmurf 10y ago
Anyone who doesn't work, live, or play in New Jersey wouldn't know about PATH because otherwise it's trivia.

Maarten88 10y ago

I attended a presentation by Travis Kalanick recently, where he told he got the idea for Uber when he could not get a Cab while visiting Paris. I thought that was quite funny: Paris has this awesome ridesharing service, that is even mostly driverless, called the Subway. Everyone there uses it; only a US tourist would use a taxi there. Still that poor idea led to a great company. On a more serious note, this made me think: private companies and startups doing self driving cars and other transport innovations gain nothing when public transport gets more popular. They compete with it. I now wonder if that has something to do with the decrease in rides in US cities outside NY.

forrestthewoods 10y ago
Even in cities with good public transportation an autonomous vehicle will be faster than public transportation. Especially when you don't have to park. Gridlocked Manhattan is an exception. But for most trips in most places a car will be faster. Especially if public transportation requires switching one or more lines.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Be prepared to be downmodded by HN'ers who seem to think that the entire purpose of municipal transit is to move the largest possible number of people per hour from one train station where they don't want to be to another train station where they also don't want to be. Of course autonomous vehicles are going to render fixed-rail systems irrelevant... or at least, they will if they're implemented properly. "Gridlocked Manhattan" is only gridlocked because the vehicles doing the gridlocking aren't talking to a central authority, or to each other. But what seems like common sense to me has proven to be a surprisingly hard sell among technologically-literate people who I'd expect to understand it intuitively. People on HN really, really like trains.
  - oasisbob 10y ago
    > Of course autonomous vehicles are going to render fixed-rail systems irrelevant... I'm not sure everyone is willing to take that as a statement of fact. I'm sure not. Can you point to a single transportation expert who believes that centrally orchestrated single-occupancy vehicles are a solution for transportation capacity problems? The difference in lane throughput between single occupancy vehicles and mass transit is staggering. Part of the benefit of rail is that it can use dedicated facilities that are deconflicted. Autonomous vehicles still need to deal with red lights, pedestrians, cyclists, and limits on safe acceleration/deceleration. Here in Seattle our light rail system is hobbled because of non-grade-separated parts of the line - which despite having signal priority is restricted in its operation (station dwell times, # of trains in operation, train separation) because of conflicting cross streets. A central authority is NOT a panacea. With human drivers, lane density tops out at somewhere around ~900 vehicles per hour. Let's say automatic cars can somehow double that - to 1800 vehicles per hour. Even dedicated bus lanes can move 6000 people per hour. Forget Manhattan which is a beast of its own scale - look at Chicago mass transit which moves over a million people a day. You're sure you could replace the capacity of rush-hour Red Line trains at crush capacity with the surface streets? Really? Where would you park these cars? Where would everyone get in and out of the cars? (On/off boarding is the scaling limit for bus lanes - that alone is enough to sink your plan.) You do realize the irony in having faith that centralized coordination between autonomous vehicles will lead to these improvements?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pooze 10y ago

Here is a list of gifs showing the expansion in various cities. Shanghai (http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/shanghai-metro-gif.gif http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/shanghai-m...) Toronto (http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/toronto-metro-gif.gif http://www.thatsmags.com/uploads/galleries/images/toronto-me...) Beijing (http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/subwaygif2-01.gif http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/subwaygif2-01.gif) Moscow (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/%D0%9C%D...) New York (https://secondavesagas.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/subwayhistory.gif https://secondavesagas.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/subwayhis...)

sloreti 10y ago
Boston: http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2012/04/an-animated-history-of-the-mbta/ http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2012/04/an-animated-...

bogomipz 10y ago

There's no mention of the fact that the "Incredible" New York City subway is buckling under the strain of this increased ridership. The sources are many but just to provide one: http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-subway-system-cant-keep-pace-with-growing-number-of-riders-1458762858 http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-yorks-subway-system-cant-kee... Despite a growing ridership, it's still fiscally strapped and under capitalized, so it's buckling financially as well. While the latter contributes to the former it is by no means the sole cause.

astrodust 10y ago
It's having trouble, but it's not nearly the burning pile of garbage that is the DC Metro which is in such an advanced state of disrepair there's even a service that tells you if it's currently on fire: https://www.ismetroonfire.com https://www.ismetroonfire.com For a timeline of horror: https://twitter.com/ismetroonfire https://twitter.com/ismetroonfire Which, if you think is all bullshit, observe: https://twitter.com/IsMetroOnFire/status/728349308509003776 https://twitter.com/IsMetroOnFire/status/728349308509003776
Spooky23 10y ago
Undercapitalized? MTA has access to lots and lots of capital. They collect fares on the largest transportation network in the United States, have nearly unlimited bonding ability, and collection of sales taxes from one of the larger metro areas on the planet. Underinvestment in capital projects has more to do with the ridiculous politics around the MTA. They have expensive labor contracts, duplicative administration and lots of inefficiency.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Yes agreed, and there's even a tax on your cell phone bill as a resident that goes to the MTA. They are undercapitalized for all the projects they have already begun work on.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]