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I don't mind paying a man to sit at the head of the train even if they're autonomous. I also don't believe making all the lines CBTC are going to solve the core

I don't mind paying a man to sit at the head of the train even if they're autonomous. I also don't believe making all the lines CBTC are going to solve the core issues of breakdowns outside of an ancient signaling system. Some of the lines in NYC are still using R32 cars[1]. They were built in 1965 that is ludicrous. Granted, they were refurbished in the late 80s but that's still 30 years ago. That said most of the lines are running "newer" stock (either from the late 80s[2] or mid-2000s[3]) but the focus on signaling, while at the core of many delays, is a band-aid on a system that is fundamentally broken by way of funding EVERYTHING appropriately. While I do appreciate the wifi in stations I completely don't care about it if the train doesn't arrive. While I do appreciate the "wait time" clocks they're meaningless when they say "5 minutes" for 15 minutes then switch to DELAY. You might as well not have a sign at all. There are fundamental bureaucratic issues going on causing many of these problems and technology is not a root solution. It's a patch. You won't be able to argue with me that one of the busiest transport system in one of the richest cities on the planet cannot manage to fund serious upgrades. Also wary of politicians blaming the unions like they're the cause of everything. This is an ongoing tactic that makes sure that nothing continues to happen. They aren't the problem directly even if there's a lot of dead weight. They're, again, a symptom of higher level management problems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32/A_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32/A_(New_York_City_Subway_ca... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R62A_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R62A_(New_York_City_Subway_car... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R160_(New_York_City_Subway_car...

blattimwind 8y ago
These all look like they're made in the 70s, including the supposedly modern R160.
rayiner 8y ago
It's not a question of whether "one of the richest cities on the planet" can "fund serious upgrades." It's how much money are New Yorkers willing to throw into a system where it takes several times as much money to do the same thing as other countries? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-.... New York is rich, but so is London. Based on that wealth, there is a certain amount of money New Yorkers are willing to pay for subway service. If it costs twice as much to do the same thing, half as much service will get purchased. (Indeed, it's worse. Crappier subway service reduces demand, which decreases the money available to fund it.) Costs are the fundamental problem with the MTA (and D.C.'s WMATA), and those are union problems, not management problems. If it cost Lenovo twice as much to build the same laptop as Acer, Lenovo would simply cease to exist. Transit systems generally cannot go bankrupt for political reasons, but they can decline to a state of government-funded life support where nobody uses them except people who have no other choice. (See, e.g., the transit systems in most cities outside NYC/Chicago/DC/Boston). Consider: > France’s unions are powerful, but Mr. Probst said they did not control project staffing. Isabelle Brochard of RATP, a state-owned company that operates the Paris Metro and is coordinating the Line 14 project, estimated there were 200 total workers on the job, each earning $60 per hour. The Second Avenue subway project employed about 700 workers, many making double that (although that included health insurance). This is a large-scale problem in the U.S. Our public services suck, which means that they turn into safety nets instead of something that are broadly used by the population. In turn, people have limited willingness to fund them (because people naturally are less willing to spend money on safety nets versus something they also use and benefit from). Unions aren't the only reason for our public services sucking, but to the extent they drive costs out of alignment with what is the case in other countries, they're a big part of the problem. If you can buy less service with the same amount of investment, that's a problem. One of the things that's happened in the last 30 years that nobody talks about is that Europe became far more market oriented, and their unions adapted. Anti-union rhetoric in the U.S. yielded a very different result, with most private unions dying out, and the public sector unions that survived remaining a bulwark of the "old way" of doing things.
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  >Costs are the fundamental problem with the MTA (and D.C.'s WMATA), and those are union problems, not management problems. Managerial corruption causing cost overruns like this does not even tangentially involve unions: "The New York City subway system has continued to deteriorate, rankled by massive delays, misspent funds, and widespread claims of corruption. On Friday, the feds confirmed the corruption part by securing a 46 month sentence for a former employee who promised subway contractors future work in return for bribes." https://jalopnik.com/ill-be-damned-feds-indict-new-york-city-subway-worker-1823273269 https://jalopnik.com/ill-be-damned-feds-indict-new-york-city...
  - rayiner 8y ago
    What is the acale of that in comparison to paying more worksrs than you need more money than you need to? Most of MTA’s expenses are labor costs. Contracting corruption is bad and illegal, but is not what’s driving the costs.
    - crdoconnor 8y ago
      That's certainly MTA management's narrative when asked by, say, the New York Times.
      - chimeracoder 8y ago
        > That's certainly MTA management's narrative when asked by, say, the New York Times. If you're saying that the MTA is trying to misrepresent their role in their own dysfunction when speaking to the news in order to generate coverage that makes them look more favorable, then the MTA should fire their whole PR team, because they're clearly incompetent. It's pretty clear to anybody who's following the issue that the MTA and TWU have an unethically incestuous relationship, in which the TWU and MTA essentially collude to extract as much money from the state as they can while literally not even doing the bare minimum to keep things running.
        8y ago
a_c_s 8y ago
1. Each employee on a train costs well over $100k/year: going from 2 employees per train (driver & conductor) to 1 would save on the order of $200+ million dollars a year. 2. Wifi in stations is entirely paid for by the advertising portal, so that upgrade was "free" for the MTA.
innocenat 8y ago
As a person living in Osaka, Japan right now, I always find it funny reading people comment on NYC Subway. Not your specifically, but in general. In Osaka, Hankyu Railway (granted, a commuter train operator, but most if not all commuter trains service in Japan runs like subway) still runs multiple 3300 series, manufactured in 1969. They (the 3300's) actually also run into the Osaka Metro system, and you cannot really tell it's built almost 50 years ago. And CTBC... Most of the newslet says that one of the problem with old system is that it cannot accurately tell where the train is... Well, I know NYC signalling system is ancient, but not being able to tell accurately where the train is IS NOT the problem. Most of the Japanese lines (including various subways) still run on block system (though sometime with a block length of just 100m). Communication-based system is in place on some line, though, but mostly for lightly-traffic line to save on signalling equipment cost.
- eumoria 8y ago
  Yea I figured this may be mentioned, it's the same in the UK they were running very old train stock of the same vintage until (I think) this year? I know it's also not the only problem but both the Japanese and UK cartridges aren't complete shit and falling apart. Three times in the past 2 years (since I moved to the G line) the train had to be evacuated because the brakes locked on a car and someone smelled the awful burning it thinking it was an actual fire in the car. THREE TIMES. If you maintain the cartridges there's no problem at all but there are so many problems it's way beyond that. I'm a little of a train nerd (if not obvious) so I went to the train stock as an example but other underground systems prove that proper, well funded and well managed maintenance will make this a non-issue. "Proper. Well Funded. Well Managed." - Not the MTA Subway System
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    London's oldest trains are from 1972, the 1969 stuff was withdrawn by the end of 2014. But England runs older trains, and this has recently been newsworthy [1]. I think the underlying problem is the electrification of two lines has been delayed, so the newer diesel trains used on those lines are still needed, and can't (as originally planned) be used to increase capacity on the other route. It also shows that London's transport, which is directly managed by a government body, works far better than the privatized mess in the rest of the country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_rolling_stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_rolling_sto... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/03/unions-criticise-lack-of-wheelchair-access-on-major-train-route https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/03/unions-criti...

blattimwind 8y ago

These all look like they're made in the 70s, including the supposedly modern R160.

rayiner 8y ago

It's not a question of whether "one of the richest cities on the planet" can "fund serious upgrades." It's how much money are New Yorkers willing to throw into a system where it takes several times as much money to do the same thing as other countries? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-.... New York is rich, but so is London. Based on that wealth, there is a certain amount of money New Yorkers are willing to pay for subway service. If it costs twice as much to do the same thing, half as much service will get purchased. (Indeed, it's worse. Crappier subway service reduces demand, which decreases the money available to fund it.) Costs are the fundamental problem with the MTA (and D.C.'s WMATA), and those are union problems, not management problems. If it cost Lenovo twice as much to build the same laptop as Acer, Lenovo would simply cease to exist. Transit systems generally cannot go bankrupt for political reasons, but they can decline to a state of government-funded life support where nobody uses them except people who have no other choice. (See, e.g., the transit systems in most cities outside NYC/Chicago/DC/Boston). Consider: > France’s unions are powerful, but Mr. Probst said they did not control project staffing. Isabelle Brochard of RATP, a state-owned company that operates the Paris Metro and is coordinating the Line 14 project, estimated there were 200 total workers on the job, each earning $60 per hour. The Second Avenue subway project employed about 700 workers, many making double that (although that included health insurance). This is a large-scale problem in the U.S. Our public services suck, which means that they turn into safety nets instead of something that are broadly used by the population. In turn, people have limited willingness to fund them (because people naturally are less willing to spend money on safety nets versus something they also use and benefit from). Unions aren't the only reason for our public services sucking, but to the extent they drive costs out of alignment with what is the case in other countries, they're a big part of the problem. If you can buy less service with the same amount of investment, that's a problem. One of the things that's happened in the last 30 years that nobody talks about is that Europe became far more market oriented, and their unions adapted. Anti-union rhetoric in the U.S. yielded a very different result, with most private unions dying out, and the public sector unions that survived remaining a bulwark of the "old way" of doing things.

crdoconnor 8y ago
>Costs are the fundamental problem with the MTA (and D.C.'s WMATA), and those are union problems, not management problems. Managerial corruption causing cost overruns like this does not even tangentially involve unions: "The New York City subway system has continued to deteriorate, rankled by massive delays, misspent funds, and widespread claims of corruption. On Friday, the feds confirmed the corruption part by securing a 46 month sentence for a former employee who promised subway contractors future work in return for bribes." https://jalopnik.com/ill-be-damned-feds-indict-new-york-city-subway-worker-1823273269 https://jalopnik.com/ill-be-damned-feds-indict-new-york-city...
- rayiner 8y ago
  What is the acale of that in comparison to paying more worksrs than you need more money than you need to? Most of MTA’s expenses are labor costs. Contracting corruption is bad and illegal, but is not what’s driving the costs.
  - crdoconnor 8y ago
    That's certainly MTA management's narrative when asked by, say, the New York Times.
    - chimeracoder 8y ago
      > That's certainly MTA management's narrative when asked by, say, the New York Times. If you're saying that the MTA is trying to misrepresent their role in their own dysfunction when speaking to the news in order to generate coverage that makes them look more favorable, then the MTA should fire their whole PR team, because they're clearly incompetent. It's pretty clear to anybody who's following the issue that the MTA and TWU have an unethically incestuous relationship, in which the TWU and MTA essentially collude to extract as much money from the state as they can while literally not even doing the bare minimum to keep things running.
      - 8y ago

a_c_s 8y ago

1. Each employee on a train costs well over $100k/year: going from 2 employees per train (driver & conductor) to 1 would save on the order of $200+ million dollars a year. 2. Wifi in stations is entirely paid for by the advertising portal, so that upgrade was "free" for the MTA.

innocenat 8y ago

As a person living in Osaka, Japan right now, I always find it funny reading people comment on NYC Subway. Not your specifically, but in general. In Osaka, Hankyu Railway (granted, a commuter train operator, but most if not all commuter trains service in Japan runs like subway) still runs multiple 3300 series, manufactured in 1969. They (the 3300's) actually also run into the Osaka Metro system, and you cannot really tell it's built almost 50 years ago. And CTBC... Most of the newslet says that one of the problem with old system is that it cannot accurately tell where the train is... Well, I know NYC signalling system is ancient, but not being able to tell accurately where the train is IS NOT the problem. Most of the Japanese lines (including various subways) still run on block system (though sometime with a block length of just 100m). Communication-based system is in place on some line, though, but mostly for lightly-traffic line to save on signalling equipment cost.

eumoria 8y ago
Yea I figured this may be mentioned, it's the same in the UK they were running very old train stock of the same vintage until (I think) this year? I know it's also not the only problem but both the Japanese and UK cartridges aren't complete shit and falling apart. Three times in the past 2 years (since I moved to the G line) the train had to be evacuated because the brakes locked on a car and someone smelled the awful burning it thinking it was an actual fire in the car. THREE TIMES. If you maintain the cartridges there's no problem at all but there are so many problems it's way beyond that. I'm a little of a train nerd (if not obvious) so I went to the train stock as an example but other underground systems prove that proper, well funded and well managed maintenance will make this a non-issue. "Proper. Well Funded. Well Managed." - Not the MTA Subway System
- Symbiote 8y ago
  London's oldest trains are from 1972, the 1969 stuff was withdrawn by the end of 2014. But England runs older trains, and this has recently been newsworthy [1]. I think the underlying problem is the electrification of two lines has been delayed, so the newer diesel trains used on those lines are still needed, and can't (as originally planned) be used to increase capacity on the other route. It also shows that London's transport, which is directly managed by a government body, works far better than the privatized mess in the rest of the country. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_rolling_stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_rolling_sto... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/03/unions-criticise-lack-of-wheelchair-access-on-major-train-route https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/03/unions-criti...