10 ms·

NYC Subway Rat Detector

85 points by agomez314 3y ago

solardev 3y ago
It's not really a rat detector, just a crowd-sourced rat map from in-app popup surveys.
- atlasunshrugged 3y ago
  What are humans if not rat detectors?
  - solardev 3y ago
    Involuntary rat feeders?
  - gaoryrt 3y ago
    Brilliant!
atlasunshrugged 3y ago
We have the same issue in DC (even in government buildings) and desperately need a solution. I keep wondering if we can just go old school/Istanbulian and have more community cats, which I think would be enjoyable anyways but may end up producing some different problems.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Cats don’t work against big urban rats
  - LeafItAlone 3y ago
    The solution then is obviously bigger cats
    - solardev 3y ago
      Or tastier rats
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        It’s not a lack of interest. They’re just hard to catch and fairly dangerous.
    - havblue 3y ago
      Obligatory Simpsons reference on how to get rid of pigeons with lizards. Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend. Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards? Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse? Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas! Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
  - zelias 3y ago
    Clearly the time has come to introduce a large number of rat-eating snakes to the underground urban ecosystem
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Fix the food supply and the rats will go away.
  - cj 3y ago
    Picture of trash bags on the streets in NYC. Not sure if this is the primary food source, but it certainly can't help. I've never been in a city that routinely piles as much trash on public sidewalks as NYC. (The picture below is common to see, sadly it's not a journalist picking the worst image they can find) https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/03/22/trash-city-new-york-is-filthy-and-the-fault-is-government-inertia https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/03/22/trash-city-new-york-i...
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      It is specific to new York. They don't have back alleys with dumpsters. Everything is left out on the curb in bags for pickup daily.
    - TremendousJudge 3y ago
      I heard that they don't have trash containers like other cities because it would take away parking space. Is there truth to this claim?
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        The first part yes, the second part mostly no. It would be an immensely complicated project, well into the 10s of billions, to do this in New York, and most New Yorkers actually don't mind living in filth. As a project, it will take a mix of parking, road space, sidewalk space, and bike lanes.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        The trash would take up less space if it was in a container, so I don't think that argument makes sense. Container is probably cheaper as well since it is less work to empty. Just looked at New York in street view and I see trash bags lying on the streets taking up parking spots, a small container would take up less space.
- IIAOPSW 3y ago
  NYC already has this. Its called a "bodega kitty". As in the cat that the owners of the local bodega (corner store) keep on premise for exactly this purpose.
artursapek 3y ago
There are rats everywhere under your feet in NYC. You can't see 99.9% of them.
standardUser 3y ago
I live in Manhattan and I see rats pretty often on the streets and in the subway. But to be honest, they have never caused me any problems. They'd obviously be a big problem if they got into people's homes or businesses frequently, but that actually seems very rare. It makes me wonder, other than people thinking they are gross, what is the primary problem caused by rats in NYC? They have a reputation for spreading disease, but what pathogens are actually spread to people from rats these days?
- jrockway 3y ago
  I think you can see how big the actual problem is when looking at how solved the problem is. Since the problem isn't solved and life goes on, it's probably not a huge deal. (Bed bugs are probably similar. They really freak people out, but they don't spread disease and many people don't even know that they're being bitten, so they're everywhere. People being freaked out doesn't justify a more expensive response. That said, mosquitos do spread disease and aren't exactly eradicated, so maybe my heuristic is wrong.)
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    The heuristic is off. Urban rats are a vector for Leptospirosis. The only thing those three (rats, bedbugs, mosquitos) have in common is that they reproduce faster than we can kill them and they hide well.
    - neom 3y ago
      According to this there are less than 200 cases of Leptospirosis a year in the US and most of them are in Hawaii. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629868/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629868/
      - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
        That's because people have learned to keep their food where rats can't pee on it. Doesn't mean they are not disease carrying.
marviel 3y ago
Side comment -- on first blush, I just really like how friendly the design is here. Never used transit -- but may check it out next time I'm in NYC.
- thecyborganizer 3y ago
  You can use Transit App in many cities around the world other than New York! It's a great piece of software, I rely on it heavily when navigating unfamiliar transit systems while traveling. https://transitapp.com/region#all-regions https://transitapp.com/region#all-regions
- Mister_Snuggles 3y ago
  I've got a love/hate relationship with Transit. The data is very accurate. I think they take the data that the transit agencies publish then layer on their own algorithms. Whatever they do, the predictions of when the bus will show up are really, really good. The UI changed a while back and I really, really hate the UI. It feels like it would be more at home on Android, but I'm not an Android user so it just feels 'wrong'. I really hate the Transit Royale thing, but only because my city decided that paying $75k[0] to make transit information more accessible to everyone wasn't worth it. They did, however, spend $70k[1] to do a podcast series about zoning. To be clear, the folks behind Transit deserve to get paid, this is a dumb decision on the part of the City. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/third-party-transit-planning-app-no-longer-free-for-edmonton-riders-1.6792206 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/third-party-transit-... [1] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-paid-70000-for-zoning-podcast-making-space https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-paid-70...
- bgribble 3y ago
  Over the past couple of years the MTA's real-time data has gotten much, much better. Most stations have screens showing when the next train(s) are arriving, including signs outside the station near entrances. (now are they always working, that's a different question). I live in Brooklyn and my local train (C) is one of the worst for reliability. It comes every 6-15 minutes during commutes, so it's important to know exactly when the next train is coming so you can hurry (or chill, if you have already missed the train!). https://mta.info https://mta.info is the "horse's mouth" and, while it's not a great UX, I much prefer it to going to any third-party repackager's app or site. Just for finding your way around the city, no need to look further than Google Maps on mobile, which gives clear and reliable subway directions, including scheduled service interruptions. The only asterisk on that is that temporary service interruptions are not always taken into account for finding directions, but mta.info will always set you straight.
atkailash 3y ago
[dead]
weinzierl 3y ago
I attended a talk recently about LoRaWAN, because I was interested in equipping my (kinda off-grid) house with temperature sensors for the winter. To my surprise LoRaWAN mousetraps seem to be a quite popular application. Eyeballing from the map I'd say it was right after street light luminance sensors. At the talk they also had a wide range of sensors on display, including the mouse traps, which was quite interesting to see. Unfortunately they were no live traps, only the traditional design, just with a wireless network connection.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  This is so funny. Some time ago (2015 I think) I picked up my first Beaglebone Black board and the only application I could think of was a mousetrap activated detector. Some of my mousetraps were up on floor joists in the basement so it was hard to see if a mouse was caught or not. Add a makeshift switch (a push pin on the mousetrap and some wire) and after writing my first basic Android app, I could make a BLE connection to the beaglebone to check the mouse caught status. I think at one point I expanded it to serving a web page since I had an Ethernet jack nearby.
wkat4242 3y ago
I think rats are cute. But cockroaches, yuck...
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
I think maybe the developer shared this a month ago as a Show HN: ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37742481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37742481
sabujp 3y ago
Take data from the rat subway detector, overlay it with the # of restaurants/grocery stores in a given area, and i'd bet you'd find a pretty good correlation. Follow the (thrown away) food.
caseyross 3y ago
Here's the data on a map, since for some reason the article didn't include one: https://felt.com/map/NYC-Rat-Observations-Oct-2023-via-Transit-app-43yKvJ4CRti1j9CEdMXrSqC?loc=40.7188,-73.9336,11.41z&share=1 https://felt.com/map/NYC-Rat-Observations-Oct-2023-via-Trans... (You can toggle the layers to switch between no/some/many rat data. Sorry about the colors, best I could find. More purple = higher frequency of rat observations.)
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  Nice job with Felt

85 points by agomez314 3y ago

solardev 3y ago

It's not really a rat detector, just a crowd-sourced rat map from in-app popup surveys.

atlasunshrugged 3y ago
What are humans if not rat detectors?
- solardev 3y ago
  Involuntary rat feeders?
- gaoryrt 3y ago
  Brilliant!

atlasunshrugged 3y ago

We have the same issue in DC (even in government buildings) and desperately need a solution. I keep wondering if we can just go old school/Istanbulian and have more community cats, which I think would be enjoyable anyways but may end up producing some different problems.

jncfhnb 3y ago
Cats don’t work against big urban rats
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  The solution then is obviously bigger cats
  - solardev 3y ago
    Or tastier rats
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      It’s not a lack of interest. They’re just hard to catch and fairly dangerous.
  - havblue 3y ago
    Obligatory Simpsons reference on how to get rid of pigeons with lizards. Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend. Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards? Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse? Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas! Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
- zelias 3y ago
  Clearly the time has come to introduce a large number of rat-eating snakes to the underground urban ecosystem
mschuster91 3y ago
Fix the food supply and the rats will go away.
- cj 3y ago
  Picture of trash bags on the streets in NYC. Not sure if this is the primary food source, but it certainly can't help. I've never been in a city that routinely piles as much trash on public sidewalks as NYC. (The picture below is common to see, sadly it's not a journalist picking the worst image they can find) https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/03/22/trash-city-new-york-is-filthy-and-the-fault-is-government-inertia https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/03/22/trash-city-new-york-i...
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    It is specific to new York. They don't have back alleys with dumpsters. Everything is left out on the curb in bags for pickup daily.
  - TremendousJudge 3y ago
    I heard that they don't have trash containers like other cities because it would take away parking space. Is there truth to this claim?
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      The first part yes, the second part mostly no. It would be an immensely complicated project, well into the 10s of billions, to do this in New York, and most New Yorkers actually don't mind living in filth. As a project, it will take a mix of parking, road space, sidewalk space, and bike lanes.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      The trash would take up less space if it was in a container, so I don't think that argument makes sense. Container is probably cheaper as well since it is less work to empty. Just looked at New York in street view and I see trash bags lying on the streets taking up parking spots, a small container would take up less space.
IIAOPSW 3y ago
NYC already has this. Its called a "bodega kitty". As in the cat that the owners of the local bodega (corner store) keep on premise for exactly this purpose.

artursapek 3y ago

There are rats everywhere under your feet in NYC. You can't see 99.9% of them.

standardUser 3y ago

I live in Manhattan and I see rats pretty often on the streets and in the subway. But to be honest, they have never caused me any problems. They'd obviously be a big problem if they got into people's homes or businesses frequently, but that actually seems very rare. It makes me wonder, other than people thinking they are gross, what is the primary problem caused by rats in NYC? They have a reputation for spreading disease, but what pathogens are actually spread to people from rats these days?

jrockway 3y ago
I think you can see how big the actual problem is when looking at how solved the problem is. Since the problem isn't solved and life goes on, it's probably not a huge deal. (Bed bugs are probably similar. They really freak people out, but they don't spread disease and many people don't even know that they're being bitten, so they're everywhere. People being freaked out doesn't justify a more expensive response. That said, mosquitos do spread disease and aren't exactly eradicated, so maybe my heuristic is wrong.)
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  The heuristic is off. Urban rats are a vector for Leptospirosis. The only thing those three (rats, bedbugs, mosquitos) have in common is that they reproduce faster than we can kill them and they hide well.
  - neom 3y ago
    According to this there are less than 200 cases of Leptospirosis a year in the US and most of them are in Hawaii. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629868/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629868/
    - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
      That's because people have learned to keep their food where rats can't pee on it. Doesn't mean they are not disease carrying.

marviel 3y ago

Side comment -- on first blush, I just really like how friendly the design is here. Never used transit -- but may check it out next time I'm in NYC.

thecyborganizer 3y ago
You can use Transit App in many cities around the world other than New York! It's a great piece of software, I rely on it heavily when navigating unfamiliar transit systems while traveling. https://transitapp.com/region#all-regions https://transitapp.com/region#all-regions
Mister_Snuggles 3y ago
I've got a love/hate relationship with Transit. The data is very accurate. I think they take the data that the transit agencies publish then layer on their own algorithms. Whatever they do, the predictions of when the bus will show up are really, really good. The UI changed a while back and I really, really hate the UI. It feels like it would be more at home on Android, but I'm not an Android user so it just feels 'wrong'. I really hate the Transit Royale thing, but only because my city decided that paying $75k[0] to make transit information more accessible to everyone wasn't worth it. They did, however, spend $70k[1] to do a podcast series about zoning. To be clear, the folks behind Transit deserve to get paid, this is a dumb decision on the part of the City. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/third-party-transit-planning-app-no-longer-free-for-edmonton-riders-1.6792206 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/third-party-transit-... [1] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-paid-70000-for-zoning-podcast-making-space https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/edmonton-paid-70...
bgribble 3y ago
Over the past couple of years the MTA's real-time data has gotten much, much better. Most stations have screens showing when the next train(s) are arriving, including signs outside the station near entrances. (now are they always working, that's a different question). I live in Brooklyn and my local train (C) is one of the worst for reliability. It comes every 6-15 minutes during commutes, so it's important to know exactly when the next train is coming so you can hurry (or chill, if you have already missed the train!). https://mta.info https://mta.info is the "horse's mouth" and, while it's not a great UX, I much prefer it to going to any third-party repackager's app or site. Just for finding your way around the city, no need to look further than Google Maps on mobile, which gives clear and reliable subway directions, including scheduled service interruptions. The only asterisk on that is that temporary service interruptions are not always taken into account for finding directions, but mta.info will always set you straight.

atkailash 3y ago

[dead]

weinzierl 3y ago

I attended a talk recently about LoRaWAN, because I was interested in equipping my (kinda off-grid) house with temperature sensors for the winter. To my surprise LoRaWAN mousetraps seem to be a quite popular application. Eyeballing from the map I'd say it was right after street light luminance sensors. At the talk they also had a wide range of sensors on display, including the mouse traps, which was quite interesting to see. Unfortunately they were no live traps, only the traditional design, just with a wireless network connection.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
This is so funny. Some time ago (2015 I think) I picked up my first Beaglebone Black board and the only application I could think of was a mousetrap activated detector. Some of my mousetraps were up on floor joists in the basement so it was hard to see if a mouse was caught or not. Add a makeshift switch (a push pin on the mousetrap and some wire) and after writing my first basic Android app, I could make a BLE connection to the beaglebone to check the mouse caught status. I think at one point I expanded it to serving a web page since I had an Ethernet jack nearby.

wkat4242 3y ago

I think rats are cute. But cockroaches, yuck...

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

I think maybe the developer shared this a month ago as a Show HN: ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37742481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37742481

sabujp 3y ago

Take data from the rat subway detector, overlay it with the # of restaurants/grocery stores in a given area, and i'd bet you'd find a pretty good correlation. Follow the (thrown away) food.

caseyross 3y ago

Here's the data on a map, since for some reason the article didn't include one: https://felt.com/map/NYC-Rat-Observations-Oct-2023-via-Transit-app-43yKvJ4CRti1j9CEdMXrSqC?loc=40.7188,-73.9336,11.41z&share=1 https://felt.com/map/NYC-Rat-Observations-Oct-2023-via-Trans... (You can toggle the layers to switch between no/some/many rat data. Sorry about the colors, best I could find. More purple = higher frequency of rat observations.)

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Nice job with Felt