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Is this just a problem with NYC's system, or is this an "elephant in the room" problem with mass transit? If an individual's car breaks down, they can find alt

Is this just a problem with NYC's system, or is this an "elephant in the room" problem with mass transit? If an individual's car breaks down, they can find alternate means to get where they need to go. If everyone were to depend on public transit in the future, how do you handle upgrades? I know the metro in DC will run extra bus routes for some down trains, but I think that's just for certain smaller repairs. It's something I haven't really thought much about before. The simple answer is to have redundant equipment (tunnels, tracks, cars), but few would stomach the cost. Most likely it would just get used instead, in the same way that you can never alleviate traffic jams with more roads, you just get more people using them.

zanny 9y ago
Almost every Subway supports transparent upgrades during operation. In the absolute worst case scenarios you shut down single stations at night. By design almost every Subway is redundant - you at least have to have two lines, one for station bypass and one for returning trains. When you work on any Subway, you shut down one of the lines and manage traffic through the other. The NY Subway is just the most incompetent, most mismanaged, most technically indebted subway on Earth. There is no "problem with mass transit" as much as it is a problem with centralized administration of complex things, period. Anything of large scale that impacts many lives but has limited controllers to manage it is both rife for ineptitude / corruption / incompetence and easily ignored on the consumer side because of the complexity. The same issue turns up all over infrastructure - outdated bridges, power lines, internet infrastructure, water pipes. Central authorities of incompetent taxpayer dollar rent seekers run them, the people are too ignorant / ill informed about deteriorating conditions to care, legacy technical debt builds up over centuries to be impossibly large. And you won't escape them. The inverse of your scenario - rather than the car breaking down, the road collapses from age - is still wholly applicable. Car travel and vehicular routes are just as mired in corruption and bureaucracy making them a nightmare as trains. Trains breaking down is as easily solved as cars - there are maintenance stations, you take one train off, you put a new one on. The real problem is always when the tracks go bad - the centralization part. You could have a billion trains but not enough track / switching capacity to use them.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  In much of Europe, metro systems will shut down for maintenance for appropriate periods. This is massively cheaper than working around a live railway (especially underground), where safety would necessitate many more staff required and more interruptions to work -- if it's even permitted in the particular location. The period depends on the city. Here in Copenhagen, where the metro runs all night, they tend to shut part of a line from 00-05h on a Monday-Thursday night, and put on buses instead. Cities with bigger metro systems might not need the buses: this was the case the last time I visited Berlin, and a central section was closed overnight. London sometimes closes parts of lines at weekends, and every 2-3 years or so there is major work on a line (closed entirely) on ~25-30th December. (To be clear then: the "absolute worse case" is closing an entire line for around a week.)
Symbiote 9y ago
Balance the inconvenience of service interruptions with the cost of reducing the interruption. Engineers and other staff can work at weekends / nights / popular vacation times / public holidays, but at an increasing cost. There's also a limited total number of engineers, so it will help to have a steady amount of work (i.e. permanently employed staff).
tacostakohashi 9y ago
No, NYC's subway is particularly messed up for unique political reasons. They don't have these problems in London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore.. it's not a problem with subways, it is a problem with the MTA.
wutbrodo 9y ago
> It's something I haven't really thought much about before. The simple answer is to have redundant equipment (tunnels, tracks, cars), but few would stomach the cost. Given that your premise is that everyone is on transit, presumably some of the incredibly gargantuan subsidies that are handed to private vehicle drivers would be used. I don't know if it's the just-world fallacy or what, but people always seem to have trouble grasping truly how inefficient car travel is. In a situation where gov't doesn't heavily subsidize them (and the drivers aren't paying the high costs associated with cars), I can't imagine that the cost of redundancy equipment required for no-downtime upgrades would be un-stomachable. On the other hand, the other thing I know is that the electorate is far too stupid and far too selfish to grasp simple concepts like this: my own city has to fight tooth and nail against car drivers as a political bloc in order to claw back a fraction of the outsized privileged position they have in the transit infrastructure. So you may be right that it won't be politically feasible despite being less expensive than the alternative.

zanny 9y ago

Almost every Subway supports transparent upgrades during operation. In the absolute worst case scenarios you shut down single stations at night. By design almost every Subway is redundant - you at least have to have two lines, one for station bypass and one for returning trains. When you work on any Subway, you shut down one of the lines and manage traffic through the other. The NY Subway is just the most incompetent, most mismanaged, most technically indebted subway on Earth. There is no "problem with mass transit" as much as it is a problem with centralized administration of complex things, period. Anything of large scale that impacts many lives but has limited controllers to manage it is both rife for ineptitude / corruption / incompetence and easily ignored on the consumer side because of the complexity. The same issue turns up all over infrastructure - outdated bridges, power lines, internet infrastructure, water pipes. Central authorities of incompetent taxpayer dollar rent seekers run them, the people are too ignorant / ill informed about deteriorating conditions to care, legacy technical debt builds up over centuries to be impossibly large. And you won't escape them. The inverse of your scenario - rather than the car breaking down, the road collapses from age - is still wholly applicable. Car travel and vehicular routes are just as mired in corruption and bureaucracy making them a nightmare as trains. Trains breaking down is as easily solved as cars - there are maintenance stations, you take one train off, you put a new one on. The real problem is always when the tracks go bad - the centralization part. You could have a billion trains but not enough track / switching capacity to use them.

Symbiote 9y ago
In much of Europe, metro systems will shut down for maintenance for appropriate periods. This is massively cheaper than working around a live railway (especially underground), where safety would necessitate many more staff required and more interruptions to work -- if it's even permitted in the particular location. The period depends on the city. Here in Copenhagen, where the metro runs all night, they tend to shut part of a line from 00-05h on a Monday-Thursday night, and put on buses instead. Cities with bigger metro systems might not need the buses: this was the case the last time I visited Berlin, and a central section was closed overnight. London sometimes closes parts of lines at weekends, and every 2-3 years or so there is major work on a line (closed entirely) on ~25-30th December. (To be clear then: the "absolute worse case" is closing an entire line for around a week.)

Symbiote 9y ago

Balance the inconvenience of service interruptions with the cost of reducing the interruption. Engineers and other staff can work at weekends / nights / popular vacation times / public holidays, but at an increasing cost. There's also a limited total number of engineers, so it will help to have a steady amount of work (i.e. permanently employed staff).

tacostakohashi 9y ago

No, NYC's subway is particularly messed up for unique political reasons. They don't have these problems in London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore.. it's not a problem with subways, it is a problem with the MTA.

wutbrodo 9y ago

> It's something I haven't really thought much about before. The simple answer is to have redundant equipment (tunnels, tracks, cars), but few would stomach the cost. Given that your premise is that everyone is on transit, presumably some of the incredibly gargantuan subsidies that are handed to private vehicle drivers would be used. I don't know if it's the just-world fallacy or what, but people always seem to have trouble grasping truly how inefficient car travel is. In a situation where gov't doesn't heavily subsidize them (and the drivers aren't paying the high costs associated with cars), I can't imagine that the cost of redundancy equipment required for no-downtime upgrades would be un-stomachable. On the other hand, the other thing I know is that the electorate is far too stupid and far too selfish to grasp simple concepts like this: my own city has to fight tooth and nail against car drivers as a political bloc in order to claw back a fraction of the outsized privileged position they have in the transit infrastructure. So you may be right that it won't be politically feasible despite being less expensive than the alternative.