
The Case for the Subway - pdog
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/magazine/subway-new-york-city-public-transportation-wealth-inequality.html
======
bgentry
The major issue with any plan to fix the subway is that MTA can no longer
build cost-effectively. This was highlighted by the NYT just last week:
[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)

It costs them $1.5B-$3.5B per mile of track in NYC, while other global cities
do it for a tenth of the cost.

One glaring example of mismanagement of funds:

 _The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the
platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the
Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs
that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials
could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there._

If they can’t get the costs down to the same range as the countries whose
systems they envy, how can they compete?

~~~
istorical
This should be obvious to anyone who's ever lived in NYC. It feels normal here
to see 5 MTA employees in orange safety vests standing around watching one guy
putting safety cones around a puddle.

~~~
bluGill
Having been in construction I question if that obvious thing is really waste.

Of course if it really is 5 people watching the one guy put of cones that is
waste. However most constructions jobs are let the machine work for 10
minutes, then you need 5 people for manual labor for 5 minutes before the
machine works again. While it is true you have 5 people standing around
watching the machine work 2/3rds of the time, there is nothing else that they
could do and be back in 10 minutes so it is most cost effective to pay them to
do nothing 2/3rds of the time.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Having been in construction I question if that obvious thing is really
> waste.

Read the linked article. You'll see that it truly is waste.

> The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the
> platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to
> the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700
> jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors.
> Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there.

For just one project, that's 200 paid $1,000/day to do nothing. $73
million/year wasted, just for _one project_.

~~~
WoodenChair
In what world are construction workers paid $1000/day? That's an exaggeration,
but your point stands.

~~~
bgentry
The $1,000/day figure comes directly from the NYT article quoting the head of
construction at the MTA. This is the paragraph after the one I quoted
previously:

 _Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything,” said
Michael Horodniceanu, who was then the head of construction at the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs transit in New York. The
workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long
they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000
every day._

~~~
nasredin
>Nobody knew what those people were doing, if they were doing anything

I just can't help but smile and remember the scene from The Sopranos of some
wiseguys seating in lawn chairs at the construction site eating pastrami
sandwiches... but in a tunnel this time!

------
andrewla
> New York City’s subway, meanwhile, is falling apart. If you are a regular
> rider, you know this firsthand. But even if you aren’t, it has probably
> become difficult to ignore all the stories about the system’s failure: the F
> train that was trapped between stations for close to an hour without power
> or air conditioning, the Q train that derailed in Brooklyn, the track fire
> on the A line in Harlem that sent nine passengers to the hospital.

I am a regular rider, and there are very few facts and a lot of anecdotes
thrown out here. I do not think the subway is falling apart -- there are
always problems, but in general, I see incremental improvement; we see more
newer cars as the old ones phase out, and we're getting train arrival
information throughout the system. Crowding is a problem as demographics
shift, but trains run frequently during rush hours. From what I hear, the L is
the worst for overcrowding, but most of the other lines handle the capacity
fine.

The problems that we continually have with broken switches and rerouted trains
and shutdowns, etc., don't seem to have gotten worse, but are just a perennial
problem. I can totally see why it has been hard to fund it, because despite
articles like this trying to stir up things, things really don't seem to be
getting worse. That's not to say things are great -- you only have to ride
another subway pretty much anywhere to see what you're missing out on. But the
NYT's attempt to paint the subway as being on the precipice of a disaster
rings false and only serves to hurt the cause of improving the subway by
creating an air of alarmism.

~~~
ixtli
I am also a long-time resident and consistent subway rider and I agree with
the above. The subway DOES need a massive cash injection to allow it to
perform to the standards we'd all like. The city also DOES need to reconcile
the fact that it costs 10x the amount as any other city to repair because of
inflated labor costs. It is NOT "falling apart" in some Fallout-style
postapocalypsis. If we need to convince people that the sky is literally
falling to get them to care then nothing is going to change and certainly not
for the better.

~~~
pcurve
I've been riding the subway for decades. I would say compared to couple
decades ago, NYC subway is a lot better.

Yeah it smells like piss on Time Square platform during heat of summer and
compared to subway systems in Europe, Japan, Seoul, the station looks like
half-baked boondoggle.

But hey, I've been saying Hi to the same piece of dust ball on ceiling pipe
since 1996 thanks to MTA's total refusal to vacuum what's over your head.

I've watched that dust ball blossom into a fine young lady.

I may even propose to her this year, all thanks to MTA.

~~~
m_fayer
Another regular rider here who often uses the system outside of rush hour. And
it has gotten way worse after Sandy. People keep saying that it's not so bad
during rush hour, as if we shouldn't expect a 9pm ride to be any better than a
stressful crapshoot. I don't get why we should have such low standards.

------
imbusy111
Makes me think of how the San Francisco Bay Area could have been an even
greater city than New York, the next capital of the world, if not for it's
failure to expand and modernize the public transportation system and,
obviously, the housing crisis.

~~~
xyhopguy
maybe if they weren't so vulnerable to climate change. My money is on
Portland. Good climate projects, tons of natural resources, strong urban
growth boundry restricting sprawl. If the state ever figures it's shit out
Portland would boom.

~~~
rootusrootus
Portland has no idea how to deal with the growth we get now, much less
anything that would qualify as a 'boom'. Traffic is frequently terrible with
no real plan in place on how to deal with it. The canned answer is 'more bikes
and light rail' but that's clearly not going to cut it.

Plus, houses are already getting quite expensive here, largely due to that UGB
you mention. Unless we're willing to compromise on that (and as a long-time
resident who appreciates being able to reach something like wilderness pretty
easily, I hope we do not) then pretty quickly we are going to have SF-level
housing problems.

~~~
Frondo
"due to that UGB" ...

Man, developers always say that, and it's simply never been true. There's so
much undeveloped land still within the UGB, and so many opportunities to build
densely close into city limits--a lot of which is happening, but a lot more of
which could still happen.

Portland does have a big housing problem, it's true, but the solution isn't in
opening up the UGB--it's in getting more good jobs, and encouraging more
entrepreneurship, so that folks can actually afford to buy the condos going up
all over that city.

~~~
rootusrootus
Maybe I wasn't totally clear on my point about the UGB. I believe it to be the
primary reason houses are as expensive here as they are. Sure, there are still
some places to build within the UGB, but if you want your little slice of
suburbia (single family home, a bit of grass around it) then space is tight
enough to drive up the price quite a bit.

~~~
brewdad
Housing is expensive in inner Portland. In the suburbs, prices are still quite
reasonable. My house, a mile from MAX and 4 miles from "large tech employer"
would cost 2x-3x in SE Portland. We love our 10 minute commute and still take
advantage of Portland's foodie scene pretty much every weekend.

------
ryanianian
Comments seem to focus on inefficiencies in the system, but I think that
misses the point: the subway adds incredible value that only real-estate
developers see.

Sure there is waste/bureaucracy/corruption in the system, but the bigger point
is that the economy isn't setup for the MTA to profit from its own success.

Being close to the subway increases property values massively, but none of
that value sees the MTA's bottom-line or repair-fund.

This was shocking to me and one that seems like an easy fix - a "subway tax"

E.g.: charge a T% subway tax for any sales over $D within X meters of a subway
station.

Somebody smarter than me would figure out the right values for (T,D,X) and
other incentives. (Maybe less if you're adding affordable housing, maybe more
if you're a corporation, maybe say the funds can only be used for capital
projects, ...)

This encourages the MTA to add more stops and make repairs to encourage more
sales close to the stops. Win-win.

~~~
raiflip
This is a great point, but also if the MTA builds a subway which increases
land value, then the city will get an increase in property tax as the property
value has increased, thereby effectively getting increased tax revenue from
the subway.

Nonetheless the point you make is valid, and I think either there needs to be
a separate specific property tax linked to the subway increasing value, or a
portion of the property tax increase from a stop being built needs to be
earmarked for the subway. Probably the former.

~~~
ryanianian
Agreed. What I dislike about using general-purpose property-taxes is that
_everyone_ pays them, not just those close to the subway, and not just those
buying new homes at $$$ market-rates. Long-time property-owners who bought in
the 60s can see huge property-tax bills that sometimes exceed original-
purchase-price on a yearly basis. Exclusively targeting those who (1) buy at
recent market rates and (2) are within a "favorable" distance to a subway stop
seems (to me) to be a fair way to extract some of the benefit provided by the
subway to help pay for it.

------
pdog
_> Now, no matter the cost—at least $100 billion—the city must rebuild it to
survive._

Why are transit-build costs so much more expensive in New York compared to
other major international cities?

The cost of new underground railway is between $400 million and $700 million
per mile in cities like London, Tokyo, and Berlin.

The Second Avenue subway in New York cost $2.5 billion per mile, which is five
times the average elsewhere in the world.

~~~
twobyfour
The Times did an article on that last week.

~~~
boylan
Yup - [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)

There were at least 200 people making $1,000/day to do nothing. That's $73
million/year in pure waste on that project alone.

------
twobyfour
The subway needs a case made for it? You'd think it would be obvious that NYC
can't function at its current size without the subway. And that's even before
you get into the benefits in terms of sustainability, transportation access
for those who are less well off, real estate values, and all that jazz.

~~~
keevie
And yet, no real change to the status quo of slow deterioration seems to be
happening. The louder and more powerfully we can make this (I agree obvious)
case, the better!

------
throw7
Here's hoping Byford can turn things around like Ravitch did. I can half-
picture Jamie Dimon getting on board.

------
stcredzero
_New York City’s subway, meanwhile, is falling apart. If you are a regular
rider, you know this firsthand. But even if you aren’t, it has probably become
difficult to ignore all the stories about the system’s failure_

How much of this is due to the loss of human capital?

------
dantaylor08
I jumped in here hoping this was about sandwiches.

------
CodeSheikh
Dilute unions monopoly. Bring in foreign (other states) construction/labor
force competition.

------
rdlecler1
With autonomous vehicles, will subways matter in 5–10? I can imagine a world
where we have small and very low cost electric transportation pods (no need
for most safety feature) that drive bumper to bumper, door handle to door
handle at least on some routes. Cost per mile will be much cheaper than the
subway.

~~~
nerfhammer
A single New York subway train can carry 1000-2000 people and might carry 2500
at rush hour.

There are ~14000 licensed taxis in New York. So all of the taxis in New York
could carry the equivalent of 5.6 trains. Any given subway line has about 15
trains per hour and there are 25 or so subway lines. So you could assume
there's maybe 350 trains running at any given time vs. 5.6 train-equivalents
in taxi space.

So unless self-driving pods can somehow squeeze together 60 times more densely
than taxis as well as not need to deal with crosswalks or traffic lights, the
subway has a rather large advantage here.

[https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-are-on-New-York-
subway...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-are-on-New-York-subways-at-a-
time)

[https://www.quora.com/How-many-trains-are-on-a-New-York-
subw...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-trains-are-on-a-New-York-subway-line-
at-any-given-time)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_services#Trains_per_hour)

~~~
martinald
Keep in mind 15trains per hour is really quite poor by international
standards.

Victoria line in London can do 34 trains per hour currently and there is a
plan to get it to 36 (anything further is really difficult because you hit a
physical limitation of getting people on and off trains).

~~~
nerfhammer
But as many as 3-4 lines run on the same tracks/platforms mostly in Manhattan
with some running local vs express. It's usually at least 4 platforms in a
station, with 1x express and 1x local in both directions. Remember, it's
mostly quadruple track. So it's actually more like 45/hour for express stops.

~~~
martinald
45/hour/track? Literally impossible even with world class signalling, which
the NY Subway definitely does not have. 38 tph seems to be the physical limit.

AFIAK only the L train reaches anywhere near "world class" capacity (as it has
CBTC), but is still only 26tph.

Other lines on the NY subway must be far less than that. From my experience
3-4 min headways _per track_ are pretty common, which equates to 15-20tph.
Obviously if you have both express and local then you're up to 30-40, but it
could be ~double that with modern CBTC.

~~~
nerfhammer
If you look here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_services#Trains_per_hour)

The lines with the same colors run on top of each other in Manhattan so you
have to sum them. Supposedly the 456 does get 44/hour, counting express and
local tracks together.

I agree that most lines do not have modern signaling and most do not run at
45/hour most of the time. But also you know, 24x7 and all that.

~~~
martinald
I understand the system very well :). But you could be doing 88 per hour on
the 456 or ACE if you had modern signalling. 22tph/track is really poor.

If you combined that with walk through trains you could easily get a 200-300%
capacity increase. There is a lot of theoretically low hanging fruit on the
MTA, technically speaking.

Keep in mind how screwed cities like london are which do have the theoretical
max per track and no other option but to build new subways. NY doesn't have
this problem, it just needs to use its assets way better and there is room for
at least a decade or two of further growth.

------
rayiner
It needs to be fixed, but maybe the MTA isn't the right entity to fix it.
Maybe write Elon Musk a $3 billion check with no political strings attached
and see what he can do with it?

~~~
Will_Do
I like the sentiment of this but Elon isn't the right person. He hates all
things mass transit.

~~~
bryananderson
This isn’t true. The Boring Company’s first two projects are intercity mass
transit (Baltimore-DC) and local mass transit (O’Hare-downtown Chicago).

~~~
neolefty
He seems to be angling for Mass Transit 2.0: _The Bus Comes to You_.

Is that going to work? I don't know yet. I want to believe, though.

~~~
phinnaeus
It will make things better, but I don't think it can solve anything outright.
Grade separation, which provides load balancing and a sort of fail-over route,
is the real deal.

