12 ms·

Why New York Subway Lines Are Missing Countdown Clocks (2015)

136 points by BlackJack 8y ago

gregorymichael 8y ago
I live off the Carroll stop talked about in this 2015 article. We got countdown clocks last year.
- rocky1138 8y ago
  Do people still stand around outside or do they utilize the new clocks for advice on train arrivals?
  - gregorymichael 8y ago
    They don't stand around outside. You can see the ETA boarding before swiping, and again on the platform.
Eric_WVGG 8y ago
This is an old-ish (2015) but excellent article, the best summary of the myriad challenges with fixing the New York subway that I’ve read.
aviv 8y ago
I used to take the F train into the city every day for 2 years back when I lived in NY. That ride is something I miss very much... such peaceful downtime before wifi and all that.
- magic_beans 8y ago
  And what decade were you in NYC? Because the F train of the past ten years is constantly overcrowded, delayed nearly every day, and often out of service on the weekends.
  - aviv 8y ago
    I lived in NY 2003-2006
    - throwaway20148 8y ago
      Yep you left before it got bad.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > such peaceful downtime before wifi and all that How did wifi change that?
shmerl 8y ago
The countdown clocks really show the distance to the train, not the time it will take to arrive (it's more correct that it shows estimated time). I.e. it can be stuck at 5 min for 15 minutes. It would make more sense to actually show that distance in addition to the ETA.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- worldsayshi 8y ago
  The ETA tells the average passenger what they want to know. What good does knowing the distance do you? If the ETA is bad the analysis should be improved. There's little point in encouraging the passenger to try to outsmart that analysis. The designer of the system has much more information to work with. Sure it would be be nice to supply that information in some open API somewhere though.
  - Ericson2314 8y ago
    People can count stops. And they will learn what it means for their frequented stations. At unfamiliar stations just be conforted that's it's monotonic :).
    - freditup 8y ago
      Time makes a lot more sense than stops: for example, at Columbus Circle in NYC, a downtown A train that's one stop away is about 3.5 miles out. A downtown 1 train that's one stop away is less than a half mile out. Except if the downtown A train is running local, in which case it's then about a half mile out. Time, on the other hand, can be meaningfully displayed to a rider no matter what information they already know. (It's also fairly accurate in practice in my experience.)
      - shmerl 8y ago
        It's accurate as long as trains are moving. As soon as they are stalled, that time stops reflecting the real one. So showing the distance at least gives a more appropriate info, instead of showing "5 min" for 15 minutes (which is annoying).
paulsutter 8y ago
We don't need countdown clocks, we need door-to-door commutes at 200kph with no stops or train changes. The Boring Company should be able to drill around and under. The Subway is like something from a bygone era: > All track on the New York subway (and on most American rail) is broken into sections, here about 1,000 feet long. An electric current is constantly running in a loop through each section. When a train enters a section, it short-circuits the loop, which allows the system to know that the section is occupied. The signals behind it automatically turn red. > Fixed-block signaling systems, in use since the late 1800s, keep trains from getting too close to one another. The neat thing about subway signals, as opposed to the ones you find on the road, is that they actually force you to stop. When a signal is red, a footlong metal T called (appropriately) a “train stop” protrudes above the track; each train car has a corresponding “trip cock” on its wheel frame connected to the emergency brakes. If you were to drive by a stop signal the train stop would hit the trip cock and you’d screech to a halt.
- sschueller 8y ago
  Public transport will always be a loss business if you want to serve all areas and not just the rich. Private companies are always going to try to make as much profit as possible, this includes profit over safety if they can get away with it. What we need is a reorganization of the public transport sector with competent long term planning and the funds to achieve it. But as long as corruption, incompetence, cronyism and a complete lack of the public willing to pay for it. It won't happen.
  - tokyodude 8y ago
    Japan's train system is the envy of the world and is privatized. There are at least 10 different companies running public transportation in Tokyo alone. 3 to 5 in Kyoto.
    - jimktrains2 8y ago
      Don't those companies also control a lot of details development arouns stations, which essentially subsidizes the trains?
jessriedel 8y ago
The countdown clocks have been be implemented more than 2 years after the OP article came out: "After 11 years, every NYC subway station finally has countdown clocks" https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/2/16840622/mta-nyc-subway-countdown-clock-installation-finished https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/2/16840622/mta-nyc-subway-count... The OP article is still relevant for understanding the dysfunctions of the MTA.
dang 8y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10566776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10566776
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
princekolt 8y ago
> Having full-time software experts running the show turned out to be crucial. Previous incarnations of the project didn’t have a technical leader at the MTA—just old-school senior managers who would try to wrangle the contractors by force of will. The new in-house team, by contrast, was qualified to define exactly what they wanted from software providers in terms those providers could understand. They were qualified to evaluate progress. They could sniff out problems early. I think this is the most important topic in this article. Government projects cost so much and take so long because there is always a disconnect between the institution paying for the work and the institution doing the work. One can’t reliably measure the other’s capabilities and knowledge and so it becomes a murky relationship (one that is also easily exploited by persons on both sides willing to make their paychecks fatter).
- eigenvector 8y ago
  As someone who works in the power utility industry - an industry that has slowly moved from monolithic, often publicly-owned monopolies to a competitive market where lots of functions are contracted out to service providers - I feel that a lot of this is symptomatic of that process. In the 'old days' when we built lots of large infrastructure projects like the New York subway, various energy megaprojects, the interstate highway system, etc. nearly all technical functions were done in-house at the government or quasi-government agency responsible. Now we have become 'leaner' and pared down many government agencies to project management only (sometimes just business management - projects is contracted out too), but it's not that easy to manage construction of a subway or a 500 kV transmission line if you don't actually have the base of relevant knowledge internally. Suddenly you have 25-year-olds fresh of out of engineering school being christened 'Senior Project Manager' and put in charge of a large, very complex technical project when 40 years ago, they would have been doing basic design and learning their trade as an engineer under the direction of a phalanx of senior engineers. Then we pat ourselves on the back for 'saving' loads of money by reducing headcount in the public sector when actual total cost of ownership has escalated. The people actually doing the nuts-and-bolts engineering and construction work have no ownership in the project because the second that contractual completion is declared it's off to the next one. Right now I am working for a power company that refuses to hire its own project or commissioning engineers, instead contracting management, oversight and quality control of its construction projects to a litany of 3rd parties. Unsurprisingly, it means very few if any people in our company have the expertise to understand what's going on when a project is off the rails. The result is endless delays while senior management wrings their hands and brings in yet more consultants to manage the other consultants.
robocat 8y ago
"They even put out a video that gleefully shows off the worst stuff. Look at how broken it is! Look at how old!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA Well made video that helps understand the interlocks - if you like antique systems!
- degenerate 8y ago
  Damn I knew it was old but seeing the operator area and control switches really sealed the deal. MTA is a living museum!
  - WAthrowaway 8y ago
    Two lines still run a train model that's almost sixty years old! You can ride it to the Transit Museum where they have it on display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32/A_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32/A_(New_York_City_Subway_ca...
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Interesting video. I'll confess I still don't understand why it's so hard to keep track of the position of subway cars in real time. I can think of any number of ways to do that more or less trivially. (For instance, they already have to run power on a third rail, don't they? What's wrong with time-domain reflectometry?) Seems that using lots of inexpensive redundant sensors would achieve the necessary fault tolerance and avoid frequent maintenance shutdowns. It sounds like they have instead elected to implement a monolithic system with a lot of expensive hardware at both the station and car levels. I guess that's how they (don't) roll in New York.
  - DougBTX 8y ago
    > I'll confess I still don't understand why it's so hard to keep track of the position of subway cars in real time. I can think of any number of ways to do that more or less trivially. That’s the source of a lot of error in project estimates, since it is trivial to come up with plans before considering the details. Phrasing it as a software project: “I don’t understand why it is so hard to find information on the internet. All of the pages are available through HTTP web servers, aren’t they? What’s wrong with just downloading them all?”
ramblerouser 8y ago
>You want fewer delays? You want realtime countdown clocks? CBTC is the answer What crap. For nearly 100 years the subway has been just fine, and after 10-15 years of corruption and mismanagement we're expected to believe the only solution is a multi-billion dollar upgrade with technology that didnt even exist the last time the system was functioning properly? I dont think lack of computer controlled trains is the problem here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subway-crisis-mta-decisions-signals-rules.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subw... 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-... >Signal problems and car equipment failures occur twice as frequently as a decade ago, but hundreds of mechanic positions have been cut because there is not enough money to pay them — even though the average total compensation for subway managers has grown to well over $200,000 a year. Daily ridership has nearly doubled in the past two decades to 5.7 million, but New York is the only major city in the world with fewer miles of track than it had during World War II. Efforts to add new lines have been hampered by generous agreements with labor unions and private contractors that have inflated construction costs to five times the international average. New York’s subway now has the worst on-time performance of any major rapid transit system in the world, according to data collected from the 20 biggest. Just 65 percent of weekday trains reach their destinations on time
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  The subway hasn't been "just fine" for the past 100 years. Up until the '80s disinvestment was the norm, to the point where pieces of elevated track were literally falling on people on the streets below. It takes a long time to correct 50+ years of deferred maintenance, and we're not out of the woods yet. Fewer miles of track is a legacy of that time period, as subway replacements for demolished elevated lines never came, and then elevated lines had to be demolished because they were a safety hazard. As far as construction costs go, the problem is actually that the MTA is not involved in construction union negotiations at all, and the firms are more than happy to oblige the unions and pass on the cost to their captive consumer. The barrier to entry for new firms is quite high due to byzantine NYS bidding rules as a result of '20s era reform, and even if you could have a new firm start up they'd be hiring from the same pool of workers; it's not as if specialized construction workers can be hired on visa. 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-... > At the heart of the issue is the obscure way that construction costs are set in New York. Worker wages and labor conditions are determined through negotiations between the unions and the companies, none of whom have any incentive to control costs. The transit authority has made no attempt to intervene to contain the spending.
aj7 8y ago
Uneconomically high salaries, and uneconomic job security provide a powerful incentive to slow down projects.
hansthehorse 8y ago
I grew up in NYC back when a normal family could live in Manhattan. I always wondered why they didn't suspend service between midnight and 5AM on weekdays for scheduled maintenance. Move half the maintenance people to midnight shift so avoid all the overtime they pay now. Not mentioned in the article is that the NYC subway system is controlled by Albany, not NYC.
buffaloo 8y ago
Why hasn’t some kid with a couple Raspberry Pies and a laser and sensor guerillaed up how to sense when the train is X distance from some stop and heading this way - with some mailing list of people to text when the train approaches?

136 points by BlackJack 8y ago

gregorymichael 8y ago

I live off the Carroll stop talked about in this 2015 article. We got countdown clocks last year.

rocky1138 8y ago
Do people still stand around outside or do they utilize the new clocks for advice on train arrivals?
- gregorymichael 8y ago
  They don't stand around outside. You can see the ETA boarding before swiping, and again on the platform.

Eric_WVGG 8y ago

This is an old-ish (2015) but excellent article, the best summary of the myriad challenges with fixing the New York subway that I’ve read.

aviv 8y ago

I used to take the F train into the city every day for 2 years back when I lived in NY. That ride is something I miss very much... such peaceful downtime before wifi and all that.

magic_beans 8y ago
And what decade were you in NYC? Because the F train of the past ten years is constantly overcrowded, delayed nearly every day, and often out of service on the weekends.
- aviv 8y ago
  I lived in NY 2003-2006
  - throwaway20148 8y ago
    Yep you left before it got bad.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> such peaceful downtime before wifi and all that How did wifi change that?

shmerl 8y ago

The countdown clocks really show the distance to the train, not the time it will take to arrive (it's more correct that it shows estimated time). I.e. it can be stuck at 5 min for 15 minutes. It would make more sense to actually show that distance in addition to the ETA.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
worldsayshi 8y ago
The ETA tells the average passenger what they want to know. What good does knowing the distance do you? If the ETA is bad the analysis should be improved. There's little point in encouraging the passenger to try to outsmart that analysis. The designer of the system has much more information to work with. Sure it would be be nice to supply that information in some open API somewhere though.
- Ericson2314 8y ago
  People can count stops. And they will learn what it means for their frequented stations. At unfamiliar stations just be conforted that's it's monotonic :).
  - freditup 8y ago
    Time makes a lot more sense than stops: for example, at Columbus Circle in NYC, a downtown A train that's one stop away is about 3.5 miles out. A downtown 1 train that's one stop away is less than a half mile out. Except if the downtown A train is running local, in which case it's then about a half mile out. Time, on the other hand, can be meaningfully displayed to a rider no matter what information they already know. (It's also fairly accurate in practice in my experience.)
    - shmerl 8y ago
      It's accurate as long as trains are moving. As soon as they are stalled, that time stops reflecting the real one. So showing the distance at least gives a more appropriate info, instead of showing "5 min" for 15 minutes (which is annoying).

paulsutter 8y ago

We don't need countdown clocks, we need door-to-door commutes at 200kph with no stops or train changes. The Boring Company should be able to drill around and under. The Subway is like something from a bygone era: > All track on the New York subway (and on most American rail) is broken into sections, here about 1,000 feet long. An electric current is constantly running in a loop through each section. When a train enters a section, it short-circuits the loop, which allows the system to know that the section is occupied. The signals behind it automatically turn red. > Fixed-block signaling systems, in use since the late 1800s, keep trains from getting too close to one another. The neat thing about subway signals, as opposed to the ones you find on the road, is that they actually force you to stop. When a signal is red, a footlong metal T called (appropriately) a “train stop” protrudes above the track; each train car has a corresponding “trip cock” on its wheel frame connected to the emergency brakes. If you were to drive by a stop signal the train stop would hit the trip cock and you’d screech to a halt.

sschueller 8y ago
Public transport will always be a loss business if you want to serve all areas and not just the rich. Private companies are always going to try to make as much profit as possible, this includes profit over safety if they can get away with it. What we need is a reorganization of the public transport sector with competent long term planning and the funds to achieve it. But as long as corruption, incompetence, cronyism and a complete lack of the public willing to pay for it. It won't happen.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  Japan's train system is the envy of the world and is privatized. There are at least 10 different companies running public transportation in Tokyo alone. 3 to 5 in Kyoto.
  - jimktrains2 8y ago
    Don't those companies also control a lot of details development arouns stations, which essentially subsidizes the trains?

jessriedel 8y ago

The countdown clocks have been be implemented more than 2 years after the OP article came out: "After 11 years, every NYC subway station finally has countdown clocks" https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/2/16840622/mta-nyc-subway-countdown-clock-installation-finished https://ny.curbed.com/2018/1/2/16840622/mta-nyc-subway-count... The OP article is still relevant for understanding the dysfunctions of the MTA.

dang 8y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10566776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10566776

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

princekolt 8y ago

> Having full-time software experts running the show turned out to be crucial. Previous incarnations of the project didn’t have a technical leader at the MTA—just old-school senior managers who would try to wrangle the contractors by force of will. The new in-house team, by contrast, was qualified to define exactly what they wanted from software providers in terms those providers could understand. They were qualified to evaluate progress. They could sniff out problems early. I think this is the most important topic in this article. Government projects cost so much and take so long because there is always a disconnect between the institution paying for the work and the institution doing the work. One can’t reliably measure the other’s capabilities and knowledge and so it becomes a murky relationship (one that is also easily exploited by persons on both sides willing to make their paychecks fatter).

eigenvector 8y ago
As someone who works in the power utility industry - an industry that has slowly moved from monolithic, often publicly-owned monopolies to a competitive market where lots of functions are contracted out to service providers - I feel that a lot of this is symptomatic of that process. In the 'old days' when we built lots of large infrastructure projects like the New York subway, various energy megaprojects, the interstate highway system, etc. nearly all technical functions were done in-house at the government or quasi-government agency responsible. Now we have become 'leaner' and pared down many government agencies to project management only (sometimes just business management - projects is contracted out too), but it's not that easy to manage construction of a subway or a 500 kV transmission line if you don't actually have the base of relevant knowledge internally. Suddenly you have 25-year-olds fresh of out of engineering school being christened 'Senior Project Manager' and put in charge of a large, very complex technical project when 40 years ago, they would have been doing basic design and learning their trade as an engineer under the direction of a phalanx of senior engineers. Then we pat ourselves on the back for 'saving' loads of money by reducing headcount in the public sector when actual total cost of ownership has escalated. The people actually doing the nuts-and-bolts engineering and construction work have no ownership in the project because the second that contractual completion is declared it's off to the next one. Right now I am working for a power company that refuses to hire its own project or commissioning engineers, instead contracting management, oversight and quality control of its construction projects to a litany of 3rd parties. Unsurprisingly, it means very few if any people in our company have the expertise to understand what's going on when a project is off the rails. The result is endless delays while senior management wrings their hands and brings in yet more consultants to manage the other consultants.

robocat 8y ago

"They even put out a video that gleefully shows off the worst stuff. Look at how broken it is! Look at how old!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA Well made video that helps understand the interlocks - if you like antique systems!

degenerate 8y ago
Damn I knew it was old but seeing the operator area and control switches really sealed the deal. MTA is a living museum!
- WAthrowaway 8y ago
  Two lines still run a train model that's almost sixty years old! You can ride it to the Transit Museum where they have it on display https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32/A_(New_York_City_Subway_car) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32/A_(New_York_City_Subway_ca...
CamperBob2 8y ago
Interesting video. I'll confess I still don't understand why it's so hard to keep track of the position of subway cars in real time. I can think of any number of ways to do that more or less trivially. (For instance, they already have to run power on a third rail, don't they? What's wrong with time-domain reflectometry?) Seems that using lots of inexpensive redundant sensors would achieve the necessary fault tolerance and avoid frequent maintenance shutdowns. It sounds like they have instead elected to implement a monolithic system with a lot of expensive hardware at both the station and car levels. I guess that's how they (don't) roll in New York.
- DougBTX 8y ago
  > I'll confess I still don't understand why it's so hard to keep track of the position of subway cars in real time. I can think of any number of ways to do that more or less trivially. That’s the source of a lot of error in project estimates, since it is trivial to come up with plans before considering the details. Phrasing it as a software project: “I don’t understand why it is so hard to find information on the internet. All of the pages are available through HTTP web servers, aren’t they? What’s wrong with just downloading them all?”

ramblerouser 8y ago

>You want fewer delays? You want realtime countdown clocks? CBTC is the answer What crap. For nearly 100 years the subway has been just fine, and after 10-15 years of corruption and mismanagement we're expected to believe the only solution is a multi-billion dollar upgrade with technology that didnt even exist the last time the system was functioning properly? I dont think lack of computer controlled trains is the problem here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subway-crisis-mta-decisions-signals-rules.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subw... 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-... >Signal problems and car equipment failures occur twice as frequently as a decade ago, but hundreds of mechanic positions have been cut because there is not enough money to pay them — even though the average total compensation for subway managers has grown to well over $200,000 a year. Daily ridership has nearly doubled in the past two decades to 5.7 million, but New York is the only major city in the world with fewer miles of track than it had during World War II. Efforts to add new lines have been hampered by generous agreements with labor unions and private contractors that have inflated construction costs to five times the international average. New York’s subway now has the worst on-time performance of any major rapid transit system in the world, according to data collected from the 20 biggest. Just 65 percent of weekday trains reach their destinations on time

bobthepanda 8y ago
The subway hasn't been "just fine" for the past 100 years. Up until the '80s disinvestment was the norm, to the point where pieces of elevated track were literally falling on people on the streets below. It takes a long time to correct 50+ years of deferred maintenance, and we're not out of the woods yet. Fewer miles of track is a legacy of that time period, as subway replacements for demolished elevated lines never came, and then elevated lines had to be demolished because they were a safety hazard. As far as construction costs go, the problem is actually that the MTA is not involved in construction union negotiations at all, and the firms are more than happy to oblige the unions and pass on the cost to their captive consumer. The barrier to entry for new firms is quite high due to byzantine NYS bidding rules as a result of '20s era reform, and even if you could have a new firm start up they'd be hiring from the same pool of workers; it's not as if specialized construction workers can be hired on visa. 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-... > At the heart of the issue is the obscure way that construction costs are set in New York. Worker wages and labor conditions are determined through negotiations between the unions and the companies, none of whom have any incentive to control costs. The transit authority has made no attempt to intervene to contain the spending.

aj7 8y ago

Uneconomically high salaries, and uneconomic job security provide a powerful incentive to slow down projects.

hansthehorse 8y ago

I grew up in NYC back when a normal family could live in Manhattan. I always wondered why they didn't suspend service between midnight and 5AM on weekdays for scheduled maintenance. Move half the maintenance people to midnight shift so avoid all the overtime they pay now. Not mentioned in the article is that the NYC subway system is controlled by Albany, not NYC.

buffaloo 8y ago

Why hasn’t some kid with a couple Raspberry Pies and a laser and sensor guerillaed up how to sense when the train is X distance from some stop and heading this way - with some mailing list of people to text when the train approaches?