
‘The Trains Are Slower Because They Slowed the Trains Down’ - jonathanjaeger
https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/03/13/the-trains-are-slower-because-they-slowed-the-trains-down/
======
njarboe
This article has a lot of text before getting to describing the problem.

Summary: Train wreck 1995 and a installation of a safety-first, CYA response
that slows down the trains and does not increase safety.

Longer Summary: Train wreck in 1995. Maybe driver was asleep. Start installing
new signals that not only automatically stop the trains when there is a train
ahead (good idea and already in place), but also when going over 45mph. Trains
used to go up to 55mph with no systemic problems. Drivers go even slower than
45mph because the train is automatically stopped when going faster (as you
would want to do if there was a train ahead) instead of just giving a warning
and letting the train keep going.

As more of the system gets these new signals, more of the system has slower
trains. Thus the increase of delays that are labeled generically as
"insufficient capacity, excess dwell, unknown" from about 20% of delays in
2012 to about 60% in 2017.

~~~
voidlogic
>Trains used to go up to 55mph with no systemic problems.

During the age of steam, express passenger trains regularly exceeded 55 mph.
For example, during the 1930s the Burlington Zephyr regularly exceeded 85 mph.
For example it made the Chicago to Denver run in 1934 in 13 hours rather than
the 18 hrs it takes today.

Source:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/05/stop_th...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/05/stop_this_train.html)

~~~
bobthepanda
Realistically speaking, you are talking about two different use cases here.

A long distance train benefits from very high top speeds, because it spends a
lot of time at those top speeds. Conversely, increasing the high speed of a
subway train is subject to the law of diminishing returns, since the train has
to comfortably accelerate and decelerate within the span of half a mile. With
subways, the main concern is that every single train operates in pretty much
the exact same manner WRT acceleration, deceleration, and speed, since the
headways on subways can be measured in minutes, or even seconds.

~~~
ant6n
The "super-express" on the A-train is 5.3km and takes 8 minutes, that's 40km/h
average (e.g. half of 55mph, with no intermediate stops).

------
bogomipz
This would not be the first time that the MTA has willfully deceived the
public by maintaining two sets of facts - the private set which reflects the
truth and another set of facts that are used in discussion with the public.

15 years ago the MTA was caught maintaining two different sets of books - one
internal that showed the agency had a surplus of cash and another set of books
for the public which showed the agency as being "cash strapped" and needing to
raise fares as a result. See:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/nyregion/hevesi-says-
mta-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/nyregion/hevesi-says-mta-moved-
millions-to-simulate-a-deficit.html)

The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic. It's hard to
believe it's capable of producing anything other than it's current broken
state.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _The culture of this agency is rotten and its corruption endemic_

How does one realistically reform something like this?

~~~
DiabloD3
You fire everyone.

However, if I remember correctly, they're unionized, which is why this hasn't
happened yet.

~~~
vnj23iwe
Fire everyone at Agency A for shitty behavior. Then turn around and realize
everyone at Agency B is cooking the books, so fire them. And so on.

Then turn around and realize basically every large institution humans have
ever built relies on shady, selfish, behavior and stop caring about reforming
individuals since thousands of years of policing have done jack and squat to
remove the behavior from the species.

Seriously, this forum is the worst for overlooking relevant variables (human
biology and contemporary culture as a whole) for their trite commentary,
usually rooted in nothing more than culturally acceptable bullet points.

Hundreds of years of the same sort of thinking. Still happens.

~~~
freelunch
So why does Tokyo’s system work so much better? They’re humans too, but
apparently their transit system works much better.

~~~
lmm
I don't know, but Japanese companies are notorious for _never_ firing people,
so it's very unlikely to be because they "fired everyone" as DiabloD3 was
suggesting.

------
nikanj
We, collectively, seem to accept car accidents because we think we can avoid
them with good driving skills. Train accidents leave us helpless, and we can’t
cope with that.

The whole concept of ”bad things happen to good people for no reason” is
extremely hard to bear. Somehow this reminds me of people who believe the
right diet will protect them from cancer, the right prenatal care from birth
defects, etc.

~~~
bernardom
This will be the hardest thing to accept about self-driving cars. If the US
goes from 37k auto deaths per year to 1k deaths, but some of those are "my
Tesla sped into a brick wall at 200mph with little Susie in it," how many
people grab the steering wheel?

~~~
maushu
For Susie parents it's basically: "A single death is a tragedy; a million
deaths is a statistic."

~~~
aetherson
It's not just that.

Look, let's say a Tesla, oh, just as a random example, careens directly into a
clearly visible truck because its cameras can't distinguish white trucks from
bright sunny skies, killing "my daughter Susie." In this hypothetical, this is
a truly autonomous Tesla, and overall, these truly autonomous Teslas are less
crash-prone than the human average.

As Susie's dad, my argument is that _this accident_ was caused by Tesla. Yes,
Tesla may have also saved some other people, under different circumstances,
circumstances which are harder for humans to deal with and easier for cars to
deal with. So what? That doesn't change the fact that Susie was killed by
their product misbehaving in a way that a basically competent human driver
wouldn't have. It's not like Tesla previously saved _Susie 's_ life, and at
least she got to live longer than she would have in the counterfactual -- it's
not like all the Susies out there in the world are all essentially doomed to
die in auto accidents today.

If Susie went to a doctor with a mild infection and he gave her an
inappropriate drug and it killed her, you had better believe that I would sue
the shit out of him and also want him prosecuted, even if in the year before
that he saved 37 other kids' lives from other illnesses.

~~~
SolarNet
But that's the difference of being against self driving cars, and a specific
model of a car (for which it's manufacturer is liable). The OP was saying, to
use your analogy, we still use doctors in the U.S. because it changed deaths
from medical problems from like 90% to 400,000 people killed every year by
accident.

~~~
underwater
It’s not about the manafacturer. There isn’t a ledger where lives saved can be
balanced against lives taken.

Lives saved is effectively transparent. If you are only acknowledged for
negative outcomes then you’re incentivised to not play the game.

------
stcredzero
_But there is one type of delay that’s gotten exponentially worse during that
time: a catchall category blandly titled “insufficient capacity, excess dwell,
unknown,” which captures every delay without an obvious cause._

This smacks of corruption or of elements of society deciding that systems
aren't going to simply work anymore. The population of New York City when I
lived in Queens was 7.3 million when I lived there in 1989. The subways pretty
much worked back then. The figure for population of New York City in 2017 I
found was 8.5 million. Population increase can't account for the difference.
There must have been considerable systemic decay.

~~~
mrbabbage
NYC's transit mode share for commute trips is above 50% [1]. Of the additional
1.2 million people, this means that this population growth probably produced
at least 1.2 million additional daily rides, since 50% of the 1.2 million
rides the subway twice a day, to and from work.

1.2 million additional daily riders is about double the entire Washington
Metro daily ridership and triple that of BART's daily ridership! Indeed, 1.2
million daily riders is about equal to ridership on the Lex! So I disagree
with your conclusion that "Population increase can't account for the
difference". This sort of ridership growth would have destroyed any other
comparable system in the US. If anything, it's amazing that the NYC subway
hasn't fallen apart more than it already has.

[1] [https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/travel-mode-
sha...](https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/travel-mode-shares-in-
the-u-s/)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The ridership was higher in 1948 and there was no crisis of sardine packed
trains and crowded platforms then. MTA is intentionally running the system
below capacity to cut costs.

~~~
jrockway
That is very true. I rarely commute during peak hours, and the trains are just
as packed at these off-hours because the headway drops off like crazy after
the peak time. That's just cost-cutting. The system can run with rush hour
frequencies at 2 in the morning if someone is willing to pay for it. (Yes, at
some point you have to do maintenance; for that a reduction of frequency is
perfectly reasonable.)

There are also plenty of places on the system where longer trains could be
run. A trains are 600ft long. C trains are run on the exact same tracks with
480ft trains. Nothing feels worse than boarding a C train that's packed
because you know there's nothing stopping the MTA from running longer trains
there. They claim they don't have the equipment for this, which may be true
during rush hours, but it's a complete lie during the rest of the day. There
are plenty of 600ft trains ready to go just sitting in the yard.

------
wccrawford
There's an attempt to make this all sound like a conspiracy, but it all makes
sense to me.

There were accidents. They slowed the train to improve safety.

The train is about as safe as ever. Why? Many, many more people are using than
the trains than before. It's harder to keep that many people safe, so more
caution is warranted.

The only problem I see, if it's true, is that they classified delays stemming
from maintenance under the wrong heading. And so far as I can tell, there's no
real proof of that.

~~~
arzt
More importantly, they used the overcrowding excuse as a means to raise
$800mm+ from New York taxpayers. If this capital wasn't necessary given the
problems they cited were non-existent, this amounts to fraud.

~~~
guardiangod
That's not a really fair way to put it as the signaling system is still the
root cause of the slowdown.

1\. Outdated signaling system cannot handle current load at high safety
threshold

2\. Network could not upgrade signaling system due to lack of money

3\. Network responses by slowing down critical paths and putting in more locks

4\. System capacity drops

So yeah, you still need the money to fix slow things.

~~~
kelnos
That rationale implies that your assumption in #1 is true, which seems not to
be the case.

Yes, the signals system needs to be upgraded if they want to increase the
number of trains (and their speed) on the lines, but even without the signals
system upgrades, they can still run the current loads at acceptably-high
levels of safety.

Put another way, they are slowing the trains down and increasing delays while
not actually increasing the capacity of the system.

------
smilekzs
Risking asking the obvious: What is stopping us from having autonomous
subways, considering we are almost gonna have autonomous cars?

~~~
iooi
I've said it before [1] and I'll say it again, even if I get downvoted to hell
again: Unions

NYC has some of the strongest unions in the country. Everything from hotels to
the MTA are plagued by really, _really_ strong unions that only care about
their interests -- leaving the city with a shameful transit system, in this
case.

Unions make up nearly 25% of workers in NYC[2], that's more than the double
the national average. The corruption is rampant[3] and the city is literally
powerless against them[4].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948921](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948921)

[2]
[http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20170910/BLOGS01/170909...](http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20170910/BLOGS01/170909898/labor-
unions-are-strong-in-new-york-for-now-a-supreme-court-ruling-could-cut-their-
funding)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subway-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/nyregion/carpenters-
nyc-u...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/nyregion/carpenters-nyc-union-
contract-lawsuit.html)

~~~
soperj
So really the answer isn't unions. It's corruption. Unions work in many places
in the world.

~~~
cynicalkane
Per the linked articles, unions are intertwined with the corruption. This
wouldn’t be the case if unions were politically touchable. As long as there
enough voters who will always say, “unions aren’t the problem”, they will be
part of the problem. They get money for nothing and nobody blames them.

~~~
rocqua
It is curious how unions in America behave so very differently to unions in
other places. American unions almost universally seem to be short-sighted and
completely protectionist. This isn't the case in western Europe, so it doesn't
seem to be inherent to a union.

This creates a communication hurdle between Europe and America. The
expectations of what a union does differ so much, you could say Europeans and
Americans mean a totally different thing when using the same word.

------
mabbo
I spent 5 years taking the Toronto subway (Yonge line, North York Center to
Union) every day. I noticed this interesting pattern.

During rush hour, any small delay on one train will almost certain impact
every train down the line- there's little time buffer between trains. The
bigger the delay, the more trains effected by it. The more passengers per
train, the more likely that train will have a delay- loading and unloading
taking too long, sure, that can cause a small delay. But consider events like
heart attacks, seizures, a fight breaking out- all kinds of major-delay-
causing-events that are roughly speaking a linear function from 'time
passenger is on the train' to 'likelihood of major delay event'.

If you have twice as many passengers, you have twice the odds of a major
delay. If a passenger spends twice a long on a train, you have twice the odds
of them causing a major a delay. Delays cause more passengers per train _and_
cause longer time-on-train for each passenger.

It's all non-linear. Any one tiny delay can spark a total breakdown and the
longer that delay is the more likely it will cause more in turn.

How on earth does the system ever work at all?

~~~
kd0amg
_How on earth does the system ever work at all?_

By promising a schedule that doesn't assume nothing goes wrong. Time padding
means the inevitable minor delays can be absorbed quickly, and infrequent
longer delays are recoverable.

Also, I don't know about Toronto, but most of the big delays in Boston are
issues with equipment rather than passengers. Derailment, signal failure, etc.
should scale with vehicle traffic rather than vehicle occupancy/passenger
count, and big delays decrease how much traffic is going around at the moment.

------
the8472
Single shot timers? Exclusion locks on fixed sections of the track?

Modern control systems such as ETCS3 can allocate virtual track segments
(moving blocks) to individual trains and adjust the reserved length based on
the current speed.

~~~
afterburner
Far easier to install in greenfield (fresh) projects.

~~~
the8472
ETCS is designed for incremental rollout and upgrade of the levels. And they
require less equipment on the track too since things are mostly done
wirelessly, level 2 doesn't require signals, level 3 doesn't even require
balises.

------
dkarl
_But the 2014 study — the first time the authority had attempted to analyze
the impact of any of the revamped signals, using its improved data system —
found 2,851 lost total passenger hours per weekday could be attributed to
thirteen modified signals alone._

That's 84 person-years per year, just considering the weekday impact of those
thirteen signals. Over a lifetime a year, to save (speculatively) one life per
decade? Call me callous, but I don't think it's worth it.

------
macawfish
In Minneapolis, the mob bought and dismantled a fully functioning streetcar
system.

Same forces seem alive and well today. They just chose to invest hundreds of
millions of dollars into building a new stadium.

~~~
tomasien
I am sure those forces still exist, but the will to fix the subways in NYC and
expand it in other cities (LA especially) is stronger than ever. White flight
is either reversing or wants to reverse, and a group with increasing power
wants public transportation.

I wish we built functioning public transportation because its the right thing
to do, I'll accept it happening because young professionals demand it.

------
solotronics
I think the topic of a declining/slowly collapsing society needs serious
research. How do you definitively measure if a society is progressing or
regressing? If you measure by infrastructure the US probably hit its peak in
the 60s and has been declining since then.

[https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/](https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/)

~~~
drb91
"Progress" seems subjective and political. I posit no definitive measure of
progress exists.

~~~
solotronics
its pretty objective if you measure it in terms of infrastructure.

\- rate of new miles of roads \- rate of increase/decrease in potholes per 10
miles \- number of bridges that need fixing \- number of people on government
assistance \- percentage of population in jail \- peoples test scores on
standardized international tests

its not like things are unmeasureable... just that politics awards those who
ignore these things

~~~
drb91
Not objective at all. There are a lot of values and politics embedded in the
things you chose and the implicit direction that is healthy for
infrastructure. And it should be, because “objective” metrics are inevitable
gamed and their value is gone.

------
lg
they must have installed one of these single-shot timers on the uptown A
between 50th and 59th. it always crawls through 50th, stops in the tunnel,
then crawls into 59th. didn't used to until a couple years ago.

------
JumpCrisscross
Does anyone know of a source that competently compares costs across different
metro systems? Total operating cost per mile, per passenger-mile, _et cetera_.

------
matt_smith123
Guys like this will be running the self driving automobile infrastructure in
50 years.

------
jakelarkin
the abysmal state of their technology is completely to blame. problems
described point to an inability to monitor trains or operators in ways that
don't create massive slowdowns as knock-on effects.

------
jlebrech
wouldn't trains be the easiest transport system to add self driving to? all it
would need is throttle, and if they have access to the position of other
trains too that's a major advantage.

------
slippers
could it be that more time spent inside a train increases profit? maybe they
just want passengers looking at advertising. they are a captive audience.

------
davidf18
I live in NYC. For a couple of years I'd be reading NYTimes articles about the
system is having problems from overcrowding, yet you'd see articles that more
people took subways in the 1950's - 1960's.

Within the past few months there was a NYTimes article that stated that after
an accident in the mid 1990s (?) that they slowed the system down. Thus, the
problem wasn't overcrowding, but slowing the system down.

The system has been underfunded for maintenance. When the city went broke in
the 1970s (?), the financing was transferred to the state from the city. NY
State taxes the city but does not returned the taxed funds to the city for the
MTA. Transferring management of the MTA back to the city would help with
holding the Mayor accountable, something to think about if they want to be re-
elected.

