15 ms·

What Would It Take to Fix New York’s Subway?

113 points by thisisit 9y ago

randomerr 9y ago
New York doesn't have enough money to get it done. The politicians are too busy paying for all the election promises they've made over the last 50 years. And they absolutely need to cut the bureaucracy (code word for 'unions' and 'government agencies') that are deeply entrenched in the government. I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out. BTW: If you disagree please talk out your points.
- zeep 9y ago
  Are you saying that if the subway was bad enough, it would have been an election promise to fix it?
- Nelkins 9y ago
  We have enough money, if we get our costs under control. Our capital costs (and operating costs...actually everything) are much higher than most other cities/countries. Some good analysis here[1], in addition to this series the NY Times is running. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/
  - closeparen 9y ago
    New York isn’t a greenfield project. There’s a massive legacy system with decades of maintenance debt. Of course it’s going to be more expensive to fix than to maintain an already-maintained system.
    - Nelkins 9y ago
      That may be technically true, but we should be comparing ourselves to other countries that have had to tackle the same problems. Consider the Paris Métro[1], which is even older than the NYC subway system (1900 vs 1904). They have much better service, lower capital and operating costs, automated trains, etc. We need to take a hard look at ourselves and stop using NYC exceptionalism as an excuse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro
      - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
        It also doesn't run 24/7. That's the triumph (and huge complexity multiplier) of the nyc subway system. Having a always on (for some value of always) transit system is a big draw but also a maintenance nightmare.
        Retric 9y ago
        Being 24/7 just takes redundancy. If you have 2+ lines from A <> B, you can single track them during low demand times and with care take any part of the system offline without shutting down. NYC density increases costs in some ways, but it also makes means they can spend far less to maintain roads / street lights / etc. On top of that the high average and median earnings means NYC has an enviable tax base.
        chimeracoder 9y ago
        > Being 24/7 just takes redundancy. If you have 2+ lines from A <> B, you can single track them during low demand times and with care take any part of the system offline without shutting down. Not all lines have four tracks (some only have two), and even for the ones that do, running trains while work is going on means incredibly slow and delayed service.
        bdhess 9y ago
        I don’t think you understood what parent meant by “single track”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working
        chimeracoder 9y ago
        > I don’t think you understood what parent meant by “single track”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working I understand what they meant; I'm explaining that even when running trains on dedicated tracks (e.g. the local line is shut down for maintenance, but the express line still runs), it causes delays that many find unbearable. Running trains in both directions on a single track would degrade service even further. At that point, it may very well just be better to shut the entire line down temporarily, which is what they generally do.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      So is London’s, and they manage to move almost as many people each day for half the money.
- perfectstorm 9y ago
  I'm curious how much money is needed. Why is it that Japan, Hong Kong and most developed European cities have much better rail transportation ? I don't think money is the only issue. NYC is probably one of the richest cities in the world and yet you say they don't have the money to fix this ? I know construction in US is expensive but it can't be that bad.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    NYC is rich but has very different priorities than other cities. It even operates its own forgien intel service. It is a city dedicated to servicing luxury real estate and the people who own it, neither of which care one iota about subways.
    - bobthechef 9y ago
      Sounds to me like it needs to shift around some of those priorities.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
      You are wrong. Luxury real estate in NYC is dependent on the transit system, and gentrification tends to follow subway lines. The value of a NYC apartment is related to the proximity to a subway stop. This is why, for example, the new 2nd Ave. subway line ends where it ends -- the next planned stop is in a neighborhood that has not been gentrified, while the existing stops serve several luxury developments.
      - majormajor 9y ago
        I think you and the person you're replying to are using vastly different definitions of luxury real estate. Add a few zeros. :)
        sandworm101 9y ago
        Yes. Most of NYC real estate only exists to support the real luxury units, the top 1-5% with massive profit margins. A great many units are actually built at a loss to support the construction of the penthouses. Such not-luxury units only exist as a result of zoning. Google "poor door" to see the extreme physical manifestation.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Sadly I agree with most of what you said. Unfortunately I think the cards are stacked against progress here. People like to site the deplorable state of the NYC Subway in the 1970s as evidence that the current situation can be fixed. However investment was made in the system back then before it reached a tipping point and it took over a decade of investing to get out of that. Now after 20 years of underinvesting this needs to be done against the backdrop of a population boom and ridership explosion. >"I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out." Unfortunately this is even harder to fix than the MTA. Its not just the long-standing culture of corruption in Albany, but its the culture of corruption from City Hall, the MTA's contractors and MTA's Union. Of course just fixing the governance structure of the MTA would be a great start but when you look at how this structure actually works you might be forgiven being cynical: https://www.city-journal.org/html/who-runs-mta-15281.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/who-runs-mta-15281.html
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing, but it's important to point out that fixing/upgrading the system comes from the capital budget, and the promises you're describing are paid out of the operating budget. The debt service for the former, is earmarked, by law, from the latter, which clocks in at 16% according to recent figures[0]. And we might have larger capital allocations if there weren't the ongoing and very generous salary scales, heavy use of overtime, and pension obligations. The question I have is, why were things like the Hudson Yards station, work on the perpetually delayed 2nd Avenue subway, Fulton St. station renovation prioritized over the core signal and preexisting aging track infrastructure? [0]http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Budget%20February%20Financial%20Plan%202017-2020.pdf http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu... (page II-1)
  - gsnedders 9y ago
    > The question I have is, why were things like the Hudson Yards station, work on the perpetually delayed 2nd Avenue subway, Fulton St. station renovation prioritized over the core signal and preexisting aging track infrastructure? Which gets votes? Renewing existing infrastructure is something nobody understands.
    - nine_k 9y ago
      "Renewing existing infrastructure" as in "not canceling L train", or "R trains running without problems", etc? That could get some votes. BTW 2nd avenue subway should be seen as "less crowded green line trains", which matched popular demand rather well, and it did work, to my mind.
      - gsnedders 9y ago
        > "Renewing existing infrastructure" as in "not canceling L train", or "R trains running without problems", etc? That could get some votes. But people expect it to keep working as it does today, as far as I can tell. It's about expectations, not realism.
      - betterunix2 9y ago
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out. We're tired of it, but New York government is not a democracy. The two ruling parties have passed an complex network of laws which, in effect, mean that officials are accountable only to the political party, not to their constituents. Case in point: one of the largest advocates of eliminating business service was Silver (a Democrat), despite the fact that his constituents were almost entirely dependent on bus service. When he was finally convicted of corruption, people were shocked - not shocked that he was corrupt (everyone knew - it was completely conducted in the open), but shocked that he was actually going to be held accountable to it. Unfortunately, the conviction was overturned on appeal due to a technicality - a law had been passed which narrowed the definition of corruption, meaning that the things he was convicted for were no longer criminal offenses. We can't vote them out when there's literally no one to vote in, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have a gentleman's agreement not to compete with each other seriously, the same way Comcast and Time Warner Cable do. New York is literally the most corrupt state government in the country[0]. Nothing short of a series of multiple federal court rulings will change that, because both parties benefit from it, and neither has the incentive to change it. [0] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/elaine-phillips/new-york-has-been-most-corrupt-state-decades/ http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...
  - Danihan 9y ago
    >We can't vote them out when there's literally no one to vote in, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have a gentleman's agreement not to compete with each other seriously, the same way Comcast and Time Warner Cable do. And people wonder why Trump got elected. Pervasive desperation for anyone who might actually shake up the system.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      > And people wonder why Trump got elected. Except he lost by something like 8:1 in NYC. Why? Because the folks in NYC knew he was as crooked or worse as the swamp he claimed he would drain.
  - 9y ago
cft 9y ago
Privatize it. Like it was originally built.
- gotofritz 9y ago
  London Underground was privatised, then the government had to step in to rescue the firm that went bankrupt...
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    Fine. Sell it to some investment firm, let the new owners run it with zero empathy, pay off whoever they need to pay off to kick out the union, reduce headcount, cut benefits, sell off assets and all the other things you expect and investment firm worth anything to do when it acquires something. Then in a decade when that becomes untenable and the public demands the state take back over the state takes back over and inherits a much different and more workable mess than it has at present. The hole is very deep. There's no way out that isn't slow and painful.
  - jblow 9y ago
    Tokyo subway is privatized and is very very good.
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      What works in Japan may supremely fail in US. This article looks promising, but then think about the disaster that is the private ISP industry or the red-light camera industry in the US. The US is bad at privatization, we tend to turn it into exploitative subsidies of crony capitalists. http://marketurbanism.com/2010/12/22/japanese-transit-and-what-it-can-teach-us/ http://marketurbanism.com/2010/12/22/japanese-transit-and-wh...
- comicjk 9y ago
  Who would buy it? The system has $40 billion in debt, plus pension obligations, plus union contracts. The only way to make money on this privately would be declaring bankruptcy and hoping for a good settlement.
hahla 9y ago
If Philly had a subway system as connected as NYC I would be happy.
- bobthechef 9y ago
  The connections aren't the problem under discussion. The problem is that it's a crumbling subway system that is having trouble operating at the capacity the city requires. For a city as rich as New York, you would expect something much better.
  - spyspy 9y ago
    > having trouble operating at the capacity the city requires. It's not just having trouble. The capacity the city requires is far beyond what it's currently running at. Meeting current demand would've meant planning for it two decades ago. Anyone who lives here will tell you that the subway is wildly unreliable. Huge time gaps between trains, train cars that are dangerously overcrowded, random line shutdowns, local trains randomly going express and vice versa, straight up train direction reversals, "signal problems", "mechanical issues", sick passengers who can't get medical help because there's no medical staff in that station, "police investigations", etc are all part of daily life here.
    - mancerayder 9y ago
      Yes, all of this. It bears mentioning that prior to 2015 it was not this bad. In the early 2000's it was common to easily get a seat. I recall the main lines that seemed crowded were the 456 line. Around 2008 or 2010 they canceled a few lines, reduced bus service, and more. To me what smelled fishy was that the prior year, they had a budget surplus and gave everyone free trips on a Christmas weekend. Add to that there were less homeless back then, and then complete the picture with the number of homeless people sprawled out in a heap on several seats on a crowded train, and you start to see how people are questioning why they live here. What's interesting to see is sometimes during rush hour, and if you see a train car that seems less crowded you avoid it either because a) it's summer and the A/C died in that train car b) you have a homeless or crazy person harassing people or sprawled out, except exuding an unusually strong odor that day.
CoolGuySteve 9y ago
I still don't understand why the signal system takes so long to upgrade. Can't they install most of the new system while the old one is still working on the same tracks? And isn't digital signalling available from contractors that have already done the work in other cities?
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  No downtime. The system runs 24/7/365.
  - CoolGuySteve 9y ago
    I'd believe you if my local R line wasn't shut down every weekend for the next year.
    - lr4444lr 9y ago
      Precisely my point: no regularly scheduled downtime to do these things results in major outages when the situation gets too bad to ignore. Same with the impending L-train shutdown.
  - strictnein 9y ago
    Is it impossible for them to schedule downtime?
    - smelendez 9y ago
      They do. They do some work on nights and weekends, and some lines have shut down and will shut down for periods of months. The L train (Manhattan to Brooklyn) is scheduled to shut down for over a year to do residual repairs from Hurricane Sandy's flooding. But it's a major pain. The system is at capacity many hours of the day, as are surface roads, and some points in the city are only near one line, so there's no easy way to get people where they need to go when their train can't run.
  - nine_k 9y ago
spike021 9y ago
I find this situation incredibly interesting as an outsider. I live in the SF Bay Area where we have a Muni "subway", if you can even call it reminiscent of one and BART. They're both absolutely awful, between not having good/expansive coverage/timely service. A plethora of issues plague both. Both times I visited NYC this year I took the subway everywhere. Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station; the trains were pretty much all clean without odd (read: nasty) smells. And, of course, the routes go all over Manhattan rather than just through, say, Lexington or Park Ave (like how SF's Muni basically converges and mainlines under Market St.). I found NYC's subway a pleasant improvement. Yet I keep seeing articles about how it needs to be fixed. Just interesting to spectate as an outsider.
- slededit 9y ago
  A tourist won't have the same view because you are unlikely commuting from the Burroughs at rush hour.
  - neuromantik8086 9y ago
    Commuting from Plymouth Township, Michigan is indeed quite hard.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    In general, transit as observed by an occasional visitor often traveling off-peak tends to a lot different from a daily commuter depending on it to get to work during rush hour. There are probably exceptions but most people with a daily commute find plenty to complain about in just about every city.
- BlanketApple 9y ago
  Were you riding during peak hours (7-10, 4-7)? That's when it tends to get really bad - even minor delays cause massive backups, because the trains are essentially running as close together as the (outdated) signaling technology allows. Once a delay happens, there's no way to catch up other than just waiting for peak hours to pass and catching up during off-peak time. That being said, it's still a huge step up from pretty much every other city's metro system (save for maybe DC). It's just that it's gone from being a 8/10 to a 7/10, compared to every other city's 3/10.
nimbius 9y ago
Apparently an act of congress wouldnt be an uphill battle if history is to be any teacher... http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/president-ford-announces-won-bailout-nyc-1975-article-1.2405985 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/president-ford-announces... service runs very well in NYC (anecdotally), but compared to cities like LA or Phoenix their trains are the haggard burro's of times long gone. Sad to say but I feel the only thing that will improve the quality of this service over time is cascading system failures similar to what BART is experiencing. Politicians are gleefully divorced from the concept of public transportation in their largest city, so until the NYC Subway begins to impact titans of industry and their ability to call upon the masses to come to work on time, its likely to remain a grisly reminder of just how real living in america can be. A culture shift might not hurt either, although full disclosure im not entirely steeped in the culture of the big apple. Here in Los Angeles, extending our purple line train to the tune of four billion dollars seemed like a generally wise investment to everyone; the tax passed easily.
a-dub 9y ago
Why are they talking about moving stairs? Why is this first on the list? What is this madness? The stairs don't need to be moved. They simply need to add more brand new lines and stations and invest in infrastructure to improve reliability. That's it. The NYC Subway is not "broken" because the stairs are in the wrong place. The NYC Subway isn't even "broken."
- beisner 9y ago
  Moving stairs is likely the only thing in the article that has a possibility of happening... NYC politics is broken. Nobody is willing to spend money on important projects, the incentives for politicians simply focus too much on the short term. Changing the geometry of the stations at certain bottleneck points could have a significant effect on delays caused by overcrowding. I've noticed this sort of thing during rush hour, where a train has to sit in a station for an extra few minutes as people push in.
- niftich 9y ago
  I'm actually happy they listed something as "trivial" as station configuration first. The list is full of things that are either politically fraught, or are already in progress and just take of a lot of time. Reconfiguring individual stations may be a big win, because they come with only a modest one-time cost (y'know, sixty-to-a-hundred million, also known in the US as "cheap"), but result in immediate and appreciable gains in particular spots. The nature of these projects makes them easy to brand, boast, and sometimes fund, and you can do them (largely) independent from other, large-scale things you have in the pipe that will take years to come to fruition.
ChrisBland 9y ago
The more I think about our future with self driving cars/busses; I wonder at what point will subways no longer be needed? If you look at the capital cost of a new bus compared to the cost for the operator(s) who work it, we could greatly increase our fleet of bus services simply by removing the driver. If that and the cost per mile falls under $1/mile for uber and the like, I don't think we have a massive need for subways anymore.
- francisofascii 9y ago
  You could be right. The key for making this work is creating more dedicated bus lanes which can then act like a small above ground train.
  - ChrisBland 9y ago
    That is exactly what I believe will happen.
- crisdux 9y ago
  I tend of think along those lines as well for most sprawled cities. But I don't think that will be true of dense cities like nyc that need mass rapid transit. Even with increased capacity that AV's will allow, roads don't have the capacity to move the millions of passengers during rush hour.
- crocal 9y ago
  Subways will remain in dense city centers because they offer capacity that cannot be matched with buses. Driver or no driver is irrelevant. Your argument probably will hold true for regional trains and high speed trains, though. The travel time will be quite similar if you factor in the time to and from the railway stations.
- bluGill 9y ago
  subways are useful even with self driving cars just because they are another level. A self driving helicopter could replace a subway, but ground level cars eventually get into congestion. Of course we can build bridges, but a subway is just a train underground so that doesn't apply.
HorizonXP 9y ago
Andy Byford just left as CEO of the TTC to take this challenge on. He’s a more ambitious man than I, to actively seek to try to fix the NYC MTA. I wish him luck and wish we did more to support him while he was here.
- etimberg 9y ago
  Totally agree! He was able to accomplish a lot at the TTC with pretty tight resources.
mancerayder 9y ago
The theme is often money, but here's where I think NYC (and the U.S.) get it wrong, and how other countries like the UK and France get it right. I'm no civil engineer or government contract negotiator so I'd love to be corrected here, but here goes. The U.S. prides itself on local government, private industry and so forth, public-private cooperation ideally leading to more money efficiency since private companies 'care' and governments are 'wasteful'. Great. However, some problems I've noticed here: -- Local government is actually more inefficient. The ARC project cancelation which would have already dug a tunnel under the Hudson river between NYC and NJ in the biggest commuter hub in the country was canceled because three government organizations, NY State, NJ State and the Port Authority, couldn't agree on funding and were playing politics. The NJ governor (Christie) later allocated the moneys to lower the gas tax before his re-election campaign as well as for highway repair -- MTA, the parent organization that runs the NYC subway system, is said to be woefully underfunded and so forth. Yet, the Port Authority, a totally unrelated organization FUNDED BY TAX MONEYS AND PUBLIC TRANSPORT TOLL COLLECTIONS, spent $4B to refurbish a single station and erect a dinosaur skeleton and called it the "World Trade Center transit hub." While the subway system this transit hub is attached to is utterly failing apart due to repairs. A strong centralized government would have made this less likely. Fulton St Station was refurbished for the cost of 1.4B, again at the same time that signals are failing and trains are breaking in other parts of the subway system this station is attached to. How do either of these projects get away with giving billions of dollars to select contractors, to select private corporations, (st)architects and so forth? How do we ensure that someone in power didn't get in bed with one of these private developers? -- The NYC Mayor and the NY State governor fight seemingly daily over blame for the disastrous subway system. The Mayor himself is something of a scatterbrain, getting involved in issues when he gets screamed at, while the governor cares more about his constituents upstate. Both are fairly corrupt. There IS money, the money just goes to insane places due to the scattered players: private organizations, cross state organizations like the Port Authority, city governments, state governments, federal governments... Isn't this one of the reasons why NYC transit construction and repair costs are so much more than places like London, where A) the system is WAY older b) the tunnels are MUCH deeper and narrower and yet C) they override these problems by establishing new lines like the Overground, the DLR and the Crossrail. London (a city I lived in a few years) seems to be moving at a much more rapid evolutionary path than NYC, which seems like it's crumbling around us.
acranox 9y ago
What would it take to fix the subway? Money of course. Where's it come from? Who cares, just spend it. Transit is necessary. Tax the businesses that benefit from good transit. Raise the gas taxes, because driving is a luxury if you could have taken mass transit. Boston's transit is a mess too. Some of the problems can be fixed just by throwing money at the problem. The Boston subway breaks down all the time because the cars are way past service life. You can just buy new cars, and service will improve a lot. But they waited so long that breakdowns are constant. The new cars won't be here for years, but we don't need any upgrades other than buy the cars and put them on the tracks. It's seriously frustrating that these things are in such a bad state when massive improvements can come by just spending money to fix old broken stuff. Call me naive, but I just want better public services, and I understand it costs money.
- MR4D 9y ago
  After reading your comment twice, I still can't tell if it's sarcasm or not...
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    Why would it be sarcastic? NYC area is one of the wealthiest areas in the world, in large part due to the subway. Pay it its due, like Hong Kong does.
    - MR4D 9y ago
      Because the parent poster basically is ok with throwing money at it. But that won’t work. Not even close. The NY Times started this earlier this year: “Parts of the system are more than a century old; replacing everything would cost upward of a trillion dollars.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/nyregion/subway-service-mta-age.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/nyregion/subway-service-m...
      - acranox 9y ago
        You don’t need to replace everything. You can fix things. It’s probably billions still, but I still say the money should be spent. Even if it’s hundreds of billions over the new couple decades, spend the money, fix the subways. Start with essentials. Then continue maintenance while doing simultaneous improvements. Let’s be clear, if you don’t spend money you definitely can’t fix the problem. Will only money fix it ? No, but if you need to change management, change expectations, change schedules, do that. All that will cost money as will buying new cars and new signal systems and hiring crews to install the signal systems. What’s needed to fix the system is a lot of changes and they will all cost money. But the reason the changes haven’t happened is due to money. Boston’s system has certainly suffered from lack of money. Sure they have billions, but it isn’t enough. If you don’t have enough maintenance people to do the work, that is still a money problem. If you pay more for that job, more people will want to do that job, and then you can hire people to staff the positions correctly. It might take a few years for the next generation to come into the workforce, but I believe it can be done.
esmi 9y ago
As non-NYC resident the first thing I though was, "Huh, I wonder what's wrong with New York's subways?" But alas they went straight into solutions so I am still left to wonder what problems they are trying to fix and in what priority. Pretty webpage though.
- chickenbane 9y ago
  If only there were some way to find out information on the problem of New York's subways! Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-... Great comment though.
  - esmi 9y ago
    That's not what I mean. Take for example solution #1: "Redesign stations to get more people on and off trains faster." The text and graphics then goes on to explain some interesting issues with various stations but what solutions are the experts recommending to get more people on and off? How many more people per unit of time do they need to accommodate? This is solution #1, does that mean it's the most urgent? etc. etc.
- rockarage 9y ago
  Maybe you should try reading the article? from the article: "Many stations like this one are not prepared to accommodate a larger volume of passengers, even if a new traffic control system allowed trains to come more frequently." "Much of the subway’s signal system uses antiquated parts like the electromechanical relays shown above from the West Fourth Street-Washington Square station in Manhattan. Train traffic for about two-thirds of the subway system is monitored in rooms like the one shown below at West Fourth Street. Little has changed in a century. The old signal system uses a network of switches and cables along the track to keep trains a safe distance apart. The technology is outdated and expensive to maintain."
  - esmi 9y ago
    You are right. The article only claimed to provide a list of expert suggestions on how to fix the New York subway and it did that. I'm the one who wants it to be more. It strikes a chord because the suggestions offered feel like so many tech roadmap planning meetings I've been in where the technology itself is the end and not a means to an end. Without the greater context I am not sure how anyone can evaluate the suggestions to try and predict whether or not they will accomplish the stated goal. Assume the hallways were widened, all the relays, monitoring rooms and signals were updated addressing each quote you provided. Is New York's subway fixed now? Maybe it's better for some definitions of better but I digress...
andy_ppp 9y ago
I was a bit shocked by New York’s subway; you always seems to have to wait a loooong time for a train. On the London Underground the carriages are much smaller but waiting even 5 mins for a train is vanishingly rare. Tokyo has a crazy subway that guarantees to almost the second when the trains go. You can literally say exactly when you’ll be somewhere across town down to the minute and it’s nearly never wrong.
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  Completely agree. Paris, London, and Tokyo all have better and cleaner subways than NYC. But NYC is about as good as it gets in the US. Believe it or not, as nasty as NYC subways are now, in the 1970s they were far dirtier.
rayiner 9y ago
Better article with real numbers: https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-dollars-a-year-and-nobody-cares-d0d23093b2d8 https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-d.... TLDR version: when it costs you $2 to do the same thing comparable European systems can do for $1, you’re going to have a bad time.
3327 9y ago
Bring in the Japanese.

113 points by thisisit 9y ago

New York doesn't have enough money to get it done. The politicians are too busy paying for all the election promises they've made over the last 50 years. And they absolutely need to cut the bureaucracy (code word for 'unions' and 'government agencies') that are deeply entrenched in the government. I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out. BTW: If you disagree please talk out your points.

zeep 9y ago
Are you saying that if the subway was bad enough, it would have been an election promise to fix it?
Nelkins 9y ago
We have enough money, if we get our costs under control. Our capital costs (and operating costs...actually everything) are much higher than most other cities/countries. Some good analysis here[1], in addition to this series the NY Times is running. [1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/construction-costs/
- closeparen 9y ago
  New York isn’t a greenfield project. There’s a massive legacy system with decades of maintenance debt. Of course it’s going to be more expensive to fix than to maintain an already-maintained system.
  - Nelkins 9y ago
    That may be technically true, but we should be comparing ourselves to other countries that have had to tackle the same problems. Consider the Paris Métro[1], which is even older than the NYC subway system (1900 vs 1904). They have much better service, lower capital and operating costs, automated trains, etc. We need to take a hard look at ourselves and stop using NYC exceptionalism as an excuse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Métro
    - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
      It also doesn't run 24/7. That's the triumph (and huge complexity multiplier) of the nyc subway system. Having a always on (for some value of always) transit system is a big draw but also a maintenance nightmare.
      - Retric 9y ago
        Being 24/7 just takes redundancy. If you have 2+ lines from A <> B, you can single track them during low demand times and with care take any part of the system offline without shutting down. NYC density increases costs in some ways, but it also makes means they can spend far less to maintain roads / street lights / etc. On top of that the high average and median earnings means NYC has an enviable tax base.
        chimeracoder 9y ago
        > Being 24/7 just takes redundancy. If you have 2+ lines from A <> B, you can single track them during low demand times and with care take any part of the system offline without shutting down. Not all lines have four tracks (some only have two), and even for the ones that do, running trains while work is going on means incredibly slow and delayed service.
        bdhess 9y ago
        I don’t think you understood what parent meant by “single track”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working
        chimeracoder 9y ago
        > I don’t think you understood what parent meant by “single track”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working I understand what they meant; I'm explaining that even when running trains on dedicated tracks (e.g. the local line is shut down for maintenance, but the express line still runs), it causes delays that many find unbearable. Running trains in both directions on a single track would degrade service even further. At that point, it may very well just be better to shut the entire line down temporarily, which is what they generally do.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    So is London’s, and they manage to move almost as many people each day for half the money.
perfectstorm 9y ago
I'm curious how much money is needed. Why is it that Japan, Hong Kong and most developed European cities have much better rail transportation ? I don't think money is the only issue. NYC is probably one of the richest cities in the world and yet you say they don't have the money to fix this ? I know construction in US is expensive but it can't be that bad.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  NYC is rich but has very different priorities than other cities. It even operates its own forgien intel service. It is a city dedicated to servicing luxury real estate and the people who own it, neither of which care one iota about subways.
  - bobthechef 9y ago
    Sounds to me like it needs to shift around some of those priorities.
  - betterunix2 9y ago
    You are wrong. Luxury real estate in NYC is dependent on the transit system, and gentrification tends to follow subway lines. The value of a NYC apartment is related to the proximity to a subway stop. This is why, for example, the new 2nd Ave. subway line ends where it ends -- the next planned stop is in a neighborhood that has not been gentrified, while the existing stops serve several luxury developments.
    - majormajor 9y ago
      I think you and the person you're replying to are using vastly different definitions of luxury real estate. Add a few zeros. :)
      - sandworm101 9y ago
        Yes. Most of NYC real estate only exists to support the real luxury units, the top 1-5% with massive profit margins. A great many units are actually built at a loss to support the construction of the penthouses. Such not-luxury units only exist as a result of zoning. Google "poor door" to see the extreme physical manifestation.
bogomipz 9y ago
Sadly I agree with most of what you said. Unfortunately I think the cards are stacked against progress here. People like to site the deplorable state of the NYC Subway in the 1970s as evidence that the current situation can be fixed. However investment was made in the system back then before it reached a tipping point and it took over a decade of investing to get out of that. Now after 20 years of underinvesting this needs to be done against the backdrop of a population boom and ridership explosion. >"I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out." Unfortunately this is even harder to fix than the MTA. Its not just the long-standing culture of corruption in Albany, but its the culture of corruption from City Hall, the MTA's contractors and MTA's Union. Of course just fixing the governance structure of the MTA would be a great start but when you look at how this structure actually works you might be forgiven being cynical: https://www.city-journal.org/html/who-runs-mta-15281.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/who-runs-mta-15281.html
lr4444lr 9y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing, but it's important to point out that fixing/upgrading the system comes from the capital budget, and the promises you're describing are paid out of the operating budget. The debt service for the former, is earmarked, by law, from the latter, which clocks in at 16% according to recent figures[0]. And we might have larger capital allocations if there weren't the ongoing and very generous salary scales, heavy use of overtime, and pension obligations. The question I have is, why were things like the Hudson Yards station, work on the perpetually delayed 2nd Avenue subway, Fulton St. station renovation prioritized over the core signal and preexisting aging track infrastructure? [0]http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Budget%20February%20Financial%20Plan%202017-2020.pdf http://web.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/MTA%202017%20Adopted%20Bu... (page II-1)
- gsnedders 9y ago
  > The question I have is, why were things like the Hudson Yards station, work on the perpetually delayed 2nd Avenue subway, Fulton St. station renovation prioritized over the core signal and preexisting aging track infrastructure? Which gets votes? Renewing existing infrastructure is something nobody understands.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    "Renewing existing infrastructure" as in "not canceling L train", or "R trains running without problems", etc? That could get some votes. BTW 2nd avenue subway should be seen as "less crowded green line trains", which matched popular demand rather well, and it did work, to my mind.
    - gsnedders 9y ago
      > "Renewing existing infrastructure" as in "not canceling L train", or "R trains running without problems", etc? That could get some votes. But people expect it to keep working as it does today, as far as I can tell. It's about expectations, not realism.
    - betterunix2 9y ago
chimeracoder 9y ago
> I don't think New York can do it until the people get tired of watching the decay and the current political machine gets voted out. We're tired of it, but New York government is not a democracy. The two ruling parties have passed an complex network of laws which, in effect, mean that officials are accountable only to the political party, not to their constituents. Case in point: one of the largest advocates of eliminating business service was Silver (a Democrat), despite the fact that his constituents were almost entirely dependent on bus service. When he was finally convicted of corruption, people were shocked - not shocked that he was corrupt (everyone knew - it was completely conducted in the open), but shocked that he was actually going to be held accountable to it. Unfortunately, the conviction was overturned on appeal due to a technicality - a law had been passed which narrowed the definition of corruption, meaning that the things he was convicted for were no longer criminal offenses. We can't vote them out when there's literally no one to vote in, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have a gentleman's agreement not to compete with each other seriously, the same way Comcast and Time Warner Cable do. New York is literally the most corrupt state government in the country[0]. Nothing short of a series of multiple federal court rulings will change that, because both parties benefit from it, and neither has the incentive to change it. [0] http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/elaine-phillips/new-york-has-been-most-corrupt-state-decades/ http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/sep/19/el...
- Danihan 9y ago
  >We can't vote them out when there's literally no one to vote in, and both the Democrats and the Republicans have a gentleman's agreement not to compete with each other seriously, the same way Comcast and Time Warner Cable do. And people wonder why Trump got elected. Pervasive desperation for anyone who might actually shake up the system.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    > And people wonder why Trump got elected. Except he lost by something like 8:1 in NYC. Why? Because the folks in NYC knew he was as crooked or worse as the swamp he claimed he would drain.
- 9y ago

cft 9y ago

Privatize it. Like it was originally built.

gotofritz 9y ago
London Underground was privatised, then the government had to step in to rescue the firm that went bankrupt...
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Fine. Sell it to some investment firm, let the new owners run it with zero empathy, pay off whoever they need to pay off to kick out the union, reduce headcount, cut benefits, sell off assets and all the other things you expect and investment firm worth anything to do when it acquires something. Then in a decade when that becomes untenable and the public demands the state take back over the state takes back over and inherits a much different and more workable mess than it has at present. The hole is very deep. There's no way out that isn't slow and painful.
- jblow 9y ago
  Tokyo subway is privatized and is very very good.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    What works in Japan may supremely fail in US. This article looks promising, but then think about the disaster that is the private ISP industry or the red-light camera industry in the US. The US is bad at privatization, we tend to turn it into exploitative subsidies of crony capitalists. http://marketurbanism.com/2010/12/22/japanese-transit-and-what-it-can-teach-us/ http://marketurbanism.com/2010/12/22/japanese-transit-and-wh...
comicjk 9y ago
Who would buy it? The system has $40 billion in debt, plus pension obligations, plus union contracts. The only way to make money on this privately would be declaring bankruptcy and hoping for a good settlement.

hahla 9y ago

If Philly had a subway system as connected as NYC I would be happy.

bobthechef 9y ago
The connections aren't the problem under discussion. The problem is that it's a crumbling subway system that is having trouble operating at the capacity the city requires. For a city as rich as New York, you would expect something much better.
- spyspy 9y ago
  > having trouble operating at the capacity the city requires. It's not just having trouble. The capacity the city requires is far beyond what it's currently running at. Meeting current demand would've meant planning for it two decades ago. Anyone who lives here will tell you that the subway is wildly unreliable. Huge time gaps between trains, train cars that are dangerously overcrowded, random line shutdowns, local trains randomly going express and vice versa, straight up train direction reversals, "signal problems", "mechanical issues", sick passengers who can't get medical help because there's no medical staff in that station, "police investigations", etc are all part of daily life here.
  - mancerayder 9y ago
    Yes, all of this. It bears mentioning that prior to 2015 it was not this bad. In the early 2000's it was common to easily get a seat. I recall the main lines that seemed crowded were the 456 line. Around 2008 or 2010 they canceled a few lines, reduced bus service, and more. To me what smelled fishy was that the prior year, they had a budget surplus and gave everyone free trips on a Christmas weekend. Add to that there were less homeless back then, and then complete the picture with the number of homeless people sprawled out in a heap on several seats on a crowded train, and you start to see how people are questioning why they live here. What's interesting to see is sometimes during rush hour, and if you see a train car that seems less crowded you avoid it either because a) it's summer and the A/C died in that train car b) you have a homeless or crazy person harassing people or sprawled out, except exuding an unusually strong odor that day.

CoolGuySteve 9y ago

I still don't understand why the signal system takes so long to upgrade. Can't they install most of the new system while the old one is still working on the same tracks? And isn't digital signalling available from contractors that have already done the work in other cities?

lr4444lr 9y ago
No downtime. The system runs 24/7/365.
- CoolGuySteve 9y ago
  I'd believe you if my local R line wasn't shut down every weekend for the next year.
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    Precisely my point: no regularly scheduled downtime to do these things results in major outages when the situation gets too bad to ignore. Same with the impending L-train shutdown.
- strictnein 9y ago
  Is it impossible for them to schedule downtime?
  - smelendez 9y ago
    They do. They do some work on nights and weekends, and some lines have shut down and will shut down for periods of months. The L train (Manhattan to Brooklyn) is scheduled to shut down for over a year to do residual repairs from Hurricane Sandy's flooding. But it's a major pain. The system is at capacity many hours of the day, as are surface roads, and some points in the city are only near one line, so there's no easy way to get people where they need to go when their train can't run.
- nine_k 9y ago

spike021 9y ago

I find this situation incredibly interesting as an outsider. I live in the SF Bay Area where we have a Muni "subway", if you can even call it reminiscent of one and BART. They're both absolutely awful, between not having good/expansive coverage/timely service. A plethora of issues plague both. Both times I visited NYC this year I took the subway everywhere. Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station; the trains were pretty much all clean without odd (read: nasty) smells. And, of course, the routes go all over Manhattan rather than just through, say, Lexington or Park Ave (like how SF's Muni basically converges and mainlines under Market St.). I found NYC's subway a pleasant improvement. Yet I keep seeing articles about how it needs to be fixed. Just interesting to spectate as an outsider.

slededit 9y ago
A tourist won't have the same view because you are unlikely commuting from the Burroughs at rush hour.
- neuromantik8086 9y ago
  Commuting from Plymouth Township, Michigan is indeed quite hard.
- ghaff 9y ago
  In general, transit as observed by an occasional visitor often traveling off-peak tends to a lot different from a daily commuter depending on it to get to work during rush hour. There are probably exceptions but most people with a daily commute find plenty to complain about in just about every city.
BlanketApple 9y ago
Were you riding during peak hours (7-10, 4-7)? That's when it tends to get really bad - even minor delays cause massive backups, because the trains are essentially running as close together as the (outdated) signaling technology allows. Once a delay happens, there's no way to catch up other than just waiting for peak hours to pass and catching up during off-peak time. That being said, it's still a huge step up from pretty much every other city's metro system (save for maybe DC). It's just that it's gone from being a 8/10 to a 7/10, compared to every other city's 3/10.

nimbius 9y ago

Apparently an act of congress wouldnt be an uphill battle if history is to be any teacher... http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/president-ford-announces-won-bailout-nyc-1975-article-1.2405985 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/president-ford-announces... service runs very well in NYC (anecdotally), but compared to cities like LA or Phoenix their trains are the haggard burro's of times long gone. Sad to say but I feel the only thing that will improve the quality of this service over time is cascading system failures similar to what BART is experiencing. Politicians are gleefully divorced from the concept of public transportation in their largest city, so until the NYC Subway begins to impact titans of industry and their ability to call upon the masses to come to work on time, its likely to remain a grisly reminder of just how real living in america can be. A culture shift might not hurt either, although full disclosure im not entirely steeped in the culture of the big apple. Here in Los Angeles, extending our purple line train to the tune of four billion dollars seemed like a generally wise investment to everyone; the tax passed easily.

a-dub 9y ago

Why are they talking about moving stairs? Why is this first on the list? What is this madness? The stairs don't need to be moved. They simply need to add more brand new lines and stations and invest in infrastructure to improve reliability. That's it. The NYC Subway is not "broken" because the stairs are in the wrong place. The NYC Subway isn't even "broken."

beisner 9y ago
Moving stairs is likely the only thing in the article that has a possibility of happening... NYC politics is broken. Nobody is willing to spend money on important projects, the incentives for politicians simply focus too much on the short term. Changing the geometry of the stations at certain bottleneck points could have a significant effect on delays caused by overcrowding. I've noticed this sort of thing during rush hour, where a train has to sit in a station for an extra few minutes as people push in.
niftich 9y ago
I'm actually happy they listed something as "trivial" as station configuration first. The list is full of things that are either politically fraught, or are already in progress and just take of a lot of time. Reconfiguring individual stations may be a big win, because they come with only a modest one-time cost (y'know, sixty-to-a-hundred million, also known in the US as "cheap"), but result in immediate and appreciable gains in particular spots. The nature of these projects makes them easy to brand, boast, and sometimes fund, and you can do them (largely) independent from other, large-scale things you have in the pipe that will take years to come to fruition.

ChrisBland 9y ago

The more I think about our future with self driving cars/busses; I wonder at what point will subways no longer be needed? If you look at the capital cost of a new bus compared to the cost for the operator(s) who work it, we could greatly increase our fleet of bus services simply by removing the driver. If that and the cost per mile falls under $1/mile for uber and the like, I don't think we have a massive need for subways anymore.

francisofascii 9y ago
You could be right. The key for making this work is creating more dedicated bus lanes which can then act like a small above ground train.
- ChrisBland 9y ago
  That is exactly what I believe will happen.
crisdux 9y ago
I tend of think along those lines as well for most sprawled cities. But I don't think that will be true of dense cities like nyc that need mass rapid transit. Even with increased capacity that AV's will allow, roads don't have the capacity to move the millions of passengers during rush hour.
crocal 9y ago
Subways will remain in dense city centers because they offer capacity that cannot be matched with buses. Driver or no driver is irrelevant. Your argument probably will hold true for regional trains and high speed trains, though. The travel time will be quite similar if you factor in the time to and from the railway stations.
bluGill 9y ago
subways are useful even with self driving cars just because they are another level. A self driving helicopter could replace a subway, but ground level cars eventually get into congestion. Of course we can build bridges, but a subway is just a train underground so that doesn't apply.

HorizonXP 9y ago

Andy Byford just left as CEO of the TTC to take this challenge on. He’s a more ambitious man than I, to actively seek to try to fix the NYC MTA. I wish him luck and wish we did more to support him while he was here.

etimberg 9y ago
Totally agree! He was able to accomplish a lot at the TTC with pretty tight resources.

mancerayder 9y ago

The theme is often money, but here's where I think NYC (and the U.S.) get it wrong, and how other countries like the UK and France get it right. I'm no civil engineer or government contract negotiator so I'd love to be corrected here, but here goes. The U.S. prides itself on local government, private industry and so forth, public-private cooperation ideally leading to more money efficiency since private companies 'care' and governments are 'wasteful'. Great. However, some problems I've noticed here: -- Local government is actually more inefficient. The ARC project cancelation which would have already dug a tunnel under the Hudson river between NYC and NJ in the biggest commuter hub in the country was canceled because three government organizations, NY State, NJ State and the Port Authority, couldn't agree on funding and were playing politics. The NJ governor (Christie) later allocated the moneys to lower the gas tax before his re-election campaign as well as for highway repair -- MTA, the parent organization that runs the NYC subway system, is said to be woefully underfunded and so forth. Yet, the Port Authority, a totally unrelated organization FUNDED BY TAX MONEYS AND PUBLIC TRANSPORT TOLL COLLECTIONS, spent $4B to refurbish a single station and erect a dinosaur skeleton and called it the "World Trade Center transit hub." While the subway system this transit hub is attached to is utterly failing apart due to repairs. A strong centralized government would have made this less likely. Fulton St Station was refurbished for the cost of 1.4B, again at the same time that signals are failing and trains are breaking in other parts of the subway system this station is attached to. How do either of these projects get away with giving billions of dollars to select contractors, to select private corporations, (st)architects and so forth? How do we ensure that someone in power didn't get in bed with one of these private developers? -- The NYC Mayor and the NY State governor fight seemingly daily over blame for the disastrous subway system. The Mayor himself is something of a scatterbrain, getting involved in issues when he gets screamed at, while the governor cares more about his constituents upstate. Both are fairly corrupt. There IS money, the money just goes to insane places due to the scattered players: private organizations, cross state organizations like the Port Authority, city governments, state governments, federal governments... Isn't this one of the reasons why NYC transit construction and repair costs are so much more than places like London, where A) the system is WAY older b) the tunnels are MUCH deeper and narrower and yet C) they override these problems by establishing new lines like the Overground, the DLR and the Crossrail. London (a city I lived in a few years) seems to be moving at a much more rapid evolutionary path than NYC, which seems like it's crumbling around us.

acranox 9y ago

What would it take to fix the subway? Money of course. Where's it come from? Who cares, just spend it. Transit is necessary. Tax the businesses that benefit from good transit. Raise the gas taxes, because driving is a luxury if you could have taken mass transit. Boston's transit is a mess too. Some of the problems can be fixed just by throwing money at the problem. The Boston subway breaks down all the time because the cars are way past service life. You can just buy new cars, and service will improve a lot. But they waited so long that breakdowns are constant. The new cars won't be here for years, but we don't need any upgrades other than buy the cars and put them on the tracks. It's seriously frustrating that these things are in such a bad state when massive improvements can come by just spending money to fix old broken stuff. Call me naive, but I just want better public services, and I understand it costs money.

MR4D 9y ago
After reading your comment twice, I still can't tell if it's sarcasm or not...
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Why would it be sarcastic? NYC area is one of the wealthiest areas in the world, in large part due to the subway. Pay it its due, like Hong Kong does.
  - MR4D 9y ago
    Because the parent poster basically is ok with throwing money at it. But that won’t work. Not even close. The NY Times started this earlier this year: “Parts of the system are more than a century old; replacing everything would cost upward of a trillion dollars.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/nyregion/subway-service-mta-age.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/nyregion/subway-service-m...
    - acranox 9y ago
      You don’t need to replace everything. You can fix things. It’s probably billions still, but I still say the money should be spent. Even if it’s hundreds of billions over the new couple decades, spend the money, fix the subways. Start with essentials. Then continue maintenance while doing simultaneous improvements. Let’s be clear, if you don’t spend money you definitely can’t fix the problem. Will only money fix it ? No, but if you need to change management, change expectations, change schedules, do that. All that will cost money as will buying new cars and new signal systems and hiring crews to install the signal systems. What’s needed to fix the system is a lot of changes and they will all cost money. But the reason the changes haven’t happened is due to money. Boston’s system has certainly suffered from lack of money. Sure they have billions, but it isn’t enough. If you don’t have enough maintenance people to do the work, that is still a money problem. If you pay more for that job, more people will want to do that job, and then you can hire people to staff the positions correctly. It might take a few years for the next generation to come into the workforce, but I believe it can be done.

esmi 9y ago

As non-NYC resident the first thing I though was, "Huh, I wonder what's wrong with New York's subways?" But alas they went straight into solutions so I am still left to wonder what problems they are trying to fix and in what priority. Pretty webpage though.

chickenbane 9y ago
If only there were some way to find out information on the problem of New York's subways! Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-system-failure-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-... Great comment though.
- esmi 9y ago
  That's not what I mean. Take for example solution #1: "Redesign stations to get more people on and off trains faster." The text and graphics then goes on to explain some interesting issues with various stations but what solutions are the experts recommending to get more people on and off? How many more people per unit of time do they need to accommodate? This is solution #1, does that mean it's the most urgent? etc. etc.
rockarage 9y ago
Maybe you should try reading the article? from the article: "Many stations like this one are not prepared to accommodate a larger volume of passengers, even if a new traffic control system allowed trains to come more frequently." "Much of the subway’s signal system uses antiquated parts like the electromechanical relays shown above from the West Fourth Street-Washington Square station in Manhattan. Train traffic for about two-thirds of the subway system is monitored in rooms like the one shown below at West Fourth Street. Little has changed in a century. The old signal system uses a network of switches and cables along the track to keep trains a safe distance apart. The technology is outdated and expensive to maintain."
- esmi 9y ago
  You are right. The article only claimed to provide a list of expert suggestions on how to fix the New York subway and it did that. I'm the one who wants it to be more. It strikes a chord because the suggestions offered feel like so many tech roadmap planning meetings I've been in where the technology itself is the end and not a means to an end. Without the greater context I am not sure how anyone can evaluate the suggestions to try and predict whether or not they will accomplish the stated goal. Assume the hallways were widened, all the relays, monitoring rooms and signals were updated addressing each quote you provided. Is New York's subway fixed now? Maybe it's better for some definitions of better but I digress...

andy_ppp 9y ago

I was a bit shocked by New York’s subway; you always seems to have to wait a loooong time for a train. On the London Underground the carriages are much smaller but waiting even 5 mins for a train is vanishingly rare. Tokyo has a crazy subway that guarantees to almost the second when the trains go. You can literally say exactly when you’ll be somewhere across town down to the minute and it’s nearly never wrong.

dreamcompiler 9y ago
Completely agree. Paris, London, and Tokyo all have better and cleaner subways than NYC. But NYC is about as good as it gets in the US. Believe it or not, as nasty as NYC subways are now, in the 1970s they were far dirtier.

rayiner 9y ago

Better article with real numbers: https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-dollars-a-year-and-nobody-cares-d0d23093b2d8 https://medium.com/@johnnyknocke/the-mta-loses-six-billion-d.... TLDR version: when it costs you $2 to do the same thing comparable European systems can do for $1, you’re going to have a bad time.

3327 9y ago

Bring in the Japanese.