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NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tekla 3y agoWho the hell has the free time to bother report rat sightings to 311.
- otoburb 3y agoExactly -- this chart exhibits massive undercoverage bias for the actual proxy measure (number of daily rat sightings), except the skew in this case likely means the actual value is much higher. Somehow, I'm thinking that this won't come as a surprise to any NYC resident.
- bagels 3y agoI was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.
- RandallBrown 3y agoThe purpose is so that garbage trucks can collect the trash. NYC has very few alleys.
- mschuster91 3y agoOther large cities manage to have trash bins on wheels to collect trash without making it a garbagefest for the rats and other vermin.
- tekla 3y agoGood thing that NYC doesn't have a large driving population that might as well threaten to start riots if they lose free parking spots
- otoburb 3y agoThere was a NYT article recently asking this very same question[1] with some background information about the pecularities specific to NYC which make the problem more complex. Obviously, this could be fixed, but would likely meet with fierce resistance from many constituents. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-trash-rules.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...
- mschuster91 3y ago> but there’s also a growing number of bins chained to bike racks and sewer grates to prevent people from stealing them. This is fucking wild. Who in their right mind steals trash bins? What would one even want to do with trash bins?
- nsp 3y agoAs someone who lives in Brooklyn and moved into a place where I was responsible for trash a couple weeks ago, it took ~1 week for someone to swipe my rolling trash bin, graffiti it, burn a couple holes and leave it a few blocks away. No idea why, but it definitely made putting bags on the street more appealing
- jerrysievert 3y agomy recycling bin got stolen multiple times in Portland, but mostly because they are handy totes. locally, garbage companies (not sure if just some, or all) scan the barrels and verify they are both at the right address and paid before picking them up.
- RandallBrown 3y agoAnd most of those cities have alleys to store the trash bins. It's a problem, but it's not such a big problem that anyone wants to actually solve it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Symbiote 3y agoThe options seem to be: - Sacks of rubbish left on the street, potentially for many hours (e.g. café closes at 18.00, rubbish is left outside until collection at 05.00-07.00). London has this in some central areas. [0] (took about 3 tries to find this.) - Individual bins (usually with wheels) for each property, which must be left at the front of the property. It can seem excessive if there's not much space to store them, you end up with a road cluttered with bins. Many towns in Britain have this. Literally the first place I looked [1]. - Almost-individual bins. I saw this somewhere I stayed in Sweden, where one house had the recycling bin, and the next had general waste, and so on. Half as much bin clutter on the street. - Larger bins, shared between several properties. Much less street space, much less effort for collection. [2] (also London). In many cities in Europe these take up one parking space on each street/block. - Larger underground bins, which are neatest but presumably the most expensive solution. [3] [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.522472,-0.1188006,3a,75y,50.85h,84.27t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sd7iBgWBz-MuwMkkGcIxSvg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i39?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@51.522472,-0.1188006,3a,75y,50.... [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8093732,-1.5728046,3a,75y,109.13h,91.82t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sWBbvkRCPBZM3-NAanLhxOQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DWBbvkRCPBZM3-NAanLhxOQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D208.28204%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8093732,-1.5728046,3a,75y,10... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4893475,-0.1432088,3a,90y,223.5h,75.09t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sd4LN4JX-_CQ64duYnI2SiQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4893475,-0.1432088,3a,90y,22... [3] https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers
- Quinner 3y ago- Also in NYC (Roosevelt Island) have every building hooked up to pneumatic tubes and suck it all into a central collection location. https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roosevelt-island-sucks-away-summer-trash-stink https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roos...
- otoburb 3y agoI think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings. Even in the suburbs, residents of single-family houses typically need to bring their garbage/recycling bins to the end of their driveways. I think the only time that this isn't the case is when there's a special contract for certain isolated apartment buildings or complexes where the rubbish is stored in larger garbage dumps for the sanitation crews to pick up.
- BadHumans 3y agoThere is a difference between a garbage bin and a pile of garbage. NYC has piles of garbage bags just on the street.
- otoburb 3y agoNYC has both, because I generally consider compost a type of garbage and that is definitely stored in bins and hauled to the sidewalk, at least for the buildings that have opted into the composting program.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aetherson 3y agoNew York City only recently got the memo about putting garbage into bins. (Really!)
- bagels 3y agoNot being sarcastic. Every other place I've been uses containers (wheeled bins, cans, dumpsters) to prevent rats and to make collection cheaper. What is the purpose of piles?
- djtriptych 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sethhochberg 3y agoThis is (at long last) rapidly changing: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/nyregion/nyc-trash-containers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/nyregion/nyc-trash-contai... DSNY is pushing hard on getting all trash containerized. Food-related businesses were required to start last summer, all commercial trash's requirement hit just a couple of weeks ago, and residential is rolling out.
- tetromino_ 3y agoThe bags of garbage are a historical relic. The city allowed trash in bags during as an emergency measure during the 1968 garbage collectors' strike: the metal trash bins were overflowing and garbage on the street in bags was better than garbage on the street raw. The strike ended, decades passed, but the rules were never updated until the last couple years when the city has finally began strongly incentivizing, and in some cases mandating, bins.
- screenoridesaga 3y agoThat explanation sounds real, but it isn’t. Really weird, why make something like this up?
- tetromino_ 3y agoI did not make it up; I read it at 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... (see "Hooked on plastic" section in the article). If you believe that this account is wrong, I am interested in hearing the true story, and seeing some sources if you have them.
- dtjb 3y agoYou can see this in the large outlier on Feb 12 2017, which coincided with a storm that delayed trash pickup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12%E2%80%9314,_2017_North_American_blizzard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12%E2%80%9314,_2017_N... https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-snowstorm-cleanup/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-snowstorm-cleanup/
- jareklupinski 3y agoi wish citizens could tap into the network of nypd cameras so we can run these kinds of analyses ourselves maybe the Rat Czar can help make that meeting happen :)
- psychlops 3y agoEver have rats suddenly show up in your building? I have. That's when you speed dial the city to fix their problem.
- tekla 3y agoYes, never bothered. Caught them myself.
- pvaldes 3y agoFoxes were made for that
- psychlops 3y agoVery true, but then how do you get rid of the foxes?
- lokar 3y agoFoxhounds?
- effingwewt 3y agoBut then how do you get rid of all the foxhounds? Solid Snakes, maybe? Or Lions?
- spacebacon 3y agoIn the event the lions take over a school of Tuna develops a taste for lion. They use kelp to create Tuna breathing apparatuses and establish a beachhead to launch their lion attack.
- SkepticMystic 3y agoDomestication
- 3y ago
- spacecadet 3y ago100% lol, NIMBYS
- Grazester 3y agoThere is an recently abandoned building down the street from me that has been taken over by rats(and people legally dumping outside of it). Those rats then sometimes nest in the vehicles parked on the street next to the building. Rats tend to chew through wiring harness. I am about to file a complaint on 311 about it.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoAnyone from NYC know what phenomenon causes the short period up and down?
- otoburb 3y agoWhen the weather is colder in NYC, there are fewer rat sightings. But don't be fooled -- it's not because there are magically fewer rats, but instead likely due to several confounding factors such as being darker more often while people are rat-watching, colder weather driving rats to stay indoors more often, and more rain/snow/slush making the furry rodents harder to spot.
- kfichter 3y agoAlso, people just generally being outside less often
- jareklupinski 3y agotrash (rats' food source) is usually picked up twice a week in most places in the city, it never lines up perfectly to 'half-way through the week', and sometimes the 'other' collection is 'just recycling' (less organic matter to feast on) I'm guessing the most frequent submitters send consistent reports when they can see rats on their block going after the trash (twice-ish a week); if more people in different areas reported as consistently, it might even out (some places have trash pickup monday, some tuesday, some wednesday...) (assuming all areas have equal concentrations of rat)
- xvedejas 3y agoCould it also be that in NYC you just put trash bags directly on the sidewalk/street? It's very unusual to see, as a visitor.
- jareklupinski 3y agothankfully that's becoming a thing of the past
- fluxic 3y agoRelatedly, Transit app is doing real-time analysis of rat sightings in the subway: https://transitapp.com/rats https://transitapp.com/rats
- spondyl 3y agoOh neat, as a Transit user, I always wondered if they were using data from those train/bus stop questions
- HotGarbage 3y agoIt's a shame NYC 311 doesn't include attachments from reports. I'd love to create a ratty version of https://poolette.pages.dev/ https://poolette.pages.dev/
- ghostbrainalpha 3y agoWhy would someone ever make this?
- porphyra 3y agoThe seasonal changes in rat count are likely due to rat behavior, but do we have any evidence that the long-term change over the years reflects an actual increase of rats rather than more people using 311 to report them?
- nicwolff 3y ago[flagged]
- amarshall 3y agoCan’t even make it that far on mobile Safari: > Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information).
- mathisonian 3y agoThanks for flagging this. Our server was a little overwhelmed from HN (we're a new site and haven't handled this much traffic before). We're implementing more graceful error handling and better caching to avoid this issue in the future.
- skdk 3y agoYou seem pleasant
- CephalopodMD 3y agoCan I get a San Francisco poop graph?
- Hrnrurj 3y ago[flagged]
- sharksauce 3y agoAll my times visiting NYC I never saw a rat. All my life living on the river around Boston I saw them all the time. And man they were the big ones. I have added nothing to the discussion.
- ericbarrett 3y agoI was once standing outside a night club in Brooklyn, next to a construction site, when a rat came charging around the corner being chased by a cat. The rat smacked straight into my ankle and bounced off, briefly stunned. The cat also froze, trying to take in the situation. A split second later they charged down the sidewalk into the gloom. The rat was so big my ankle hurt the rest of the night.
- tomphoolery 3y agoPOV: you're the foreground art in a Tom & Jerry cartoon
- peterleiser 3y agoWhen my wife lived in NYC she was walking home one night when there were an unusually large number of rats running around. She noticed that Fred Armisen (actor, comedian) was walking down the middle of the street next to her, and he looked at her and said something to the effect of "What's with all these rats?!".
- foobarian 3y agoI love Armisen. The skit he did with Malkovich about a calculator is my favorite thing ever.
- ilinx 3y agoHe recently did a show in my city. Before the show he visited the art museum where my wife works as a curator. He spent a good amount of time chatting with the staff, and then mentioned how nice the museum was during his show that night. Completely unrelated, but it was fairly recent and I found it super charming. He’s always been one of those celebrities I want to like.
- nestorD 3y agoThis is a very nice website! I would love some Baye Area graphs.
- ahstilde 3y agothis is fun. thanks for making it!
- pkulak 3y agoAnd all the city has to do is put their trash in cans. But that would remove some parking, so they choose rats. I don’t get it at all.