It's not you, it’s them.
May 22, 2017 2:05 PM   Subscribe

According to the MTA’s own data, New York City subway delays were up some 332 percent between November 2012 and November 2016. The crisis points to larger, systematic and political upheaval, along with real technical issues like " aging cars and track equipment, new cars that struggle to perform as well as well as older ones, and an ancient signaling system, with parts dating back to Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency." Last Monday, the MTA introduced a 6 point plan that they think will help.
posted by roomthreeseventeen (37 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Apparently part of the problem is dead bodies found on train cars. What the hell.
posted by corb at 2:44 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


"... subway delays that have Big Apple commuters close to their breaking point."

What does the "breaking point" look like? What option do commuters have but to put up with these issues? The subways were far more dysfunctional in the 70s and 80s. Those who had to ride, rode, and those who didn't abandoned the train for more expensive alternatives.
posted by Modest House at 2:45 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't imagine it's worse than Toronto. In 2014, I quit a job with 2 months notice--partly leaving because I hated the transit commute and could walk to the new job. From Jan 1 to March 1 I kept a manual log of each time I got kicked off a bus, subway, or streetcar due to vehicle/system malfunction or "short turn".

Was surprised/not surprised to discover it happened on 88% of my commutes. On one trip, that was supposed to consist of a single transfer (one Subway and one Streetcar ride), I was kicked off 4 vehicles before deciding to walk home the final 4km.

What does the "breaking point" look like? What option do commuters have but to put up with these issues? The subways were far more dysfunctional in the 70s and 80s.

Again, I can only speak for Toronto, but it's definitely worse now than in the 70s/80s/90s.

In my eight years at that job, there were many, many days I walked home the entire 12km from work just not to be faced with the potential for more frustration.
posted by dobbs at 2:59 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


Some ideas the agency is toying with include station agents telling passengers where to stand on the platform to get the next train or adding color-coded markings to show them.

If you ride the subway for any amount of time you come to know where the doors end up when the train stops. So you wait there. At stops that you're not used to you look at the yellow paint on the edge of the platform. Where it's worn are where the doors end up.
posted by Splunge at 3:11 PM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


What does the "breaking point" look like?

I was on a 1 train last week (because there was no express service for the rush hour commute downtown, awesome). Literally every person in my train car audibly groaned every time we slowed down between stations, which was often. A bunch of people just sat down in the middle of the car. When we got to Rector Street, the conductor told people they could "transfer to Wall Street." Which, if you're a New Yorker, you can assume means walk across the island to Wall Street. If you aren't, well, there's no transfer there other than your feet. The whole thing is a cluster, every day.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:22 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


I feel like a big problem in America in general is that we've under-spent on infrastructure for so long (see also DC) that we're now in the shitty position of having to spend a ton on things that are kind of invisible. Meaning that transit spending is going to look less effective for a while ("you mean we okayed these huge bonds and didn't get anything for it???" ...well, stuff didn't get worse, but it's harder to get excited about that).
posted by en forme de poire at 3:23 PM on May 22, 2017 [32 favorites]


It's also a problem with American politics in general -- even in blue states, the state government is usually unreasonably hostile to its biggest cities, in a way that you don't seem to see in a lot of other countries.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:26 PM on May 22, 2017 [26 favorites]


If you ride the subway for any amount of time you come to know where the doors end up when the train stops. So you wait there. At stops that you're not used to you look at the yellow paint on the edge of the platform. Where it's worn are where the doors end up.

With tourism as crazy as it is these days, some significant percentage of daily subway riders don't know this. I know that many of the people I see on my daily commute have no clue what's happening.
posted by nevercalm at 3:28 PM on May 22, 2017


(see also DC)

It's true, all of our transit funding goes towards updating the "__ Days Since a Fire on the Metro" board (unclear where it actually goes as the counter is perpetually set at 0).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 3:29 PM on May 22, 2017 [9 favorites]


I'm sure it'll all get fixed by lowering taxes on the rich.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:35 PM on May 22, 2017 [26 favorites]


A wonder from a past age, which the empire in its decadence now lacks the ability to construct and can barely even maintain, even in one of its more-functional metropolises...
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 3:58 PM on May 22, 2017 [31 favorites]


I know that many of the people I see on my daily commute have no clue what's happening.

I've been in Florida for almost five years now. When I read articles like this I have to think I got out just in time.
posted by Splunge at 4:17 PM on May 22, 2017


But also door markings aren't some exotic, expensive innovation? When we were in Tokyo and Kyoto last year, lots of stations had them. It was incredibly helpful and seemed to make the on/off shuffle so much more efficient. Especially for clueless tourists like us.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 4:24 PM on May 22, 2017


Compared to BART in SF where the doors are about a mile apart, NYC subway cars have a ton of doors, especially the newer ones, so you're never all that far from a door. People usually seem to organize themselves fairly well as the train pulls in. But I rarely ride at rush hour, so I don't know what horrors lie there!
posted by moonmilk at 4:30 PM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


Apparently part of the problem is dead bodies found on train cars. What the hell.

Daily ridership on the NYC subway is 5 *million*. US death rate is 800 per 100K per year. Probably around 100-200 per year for the straphanger cohort. A subway ride can be a non-trivial part of a person's day. That's still a lot of deaths, and consider that homeless and other marginal persons in poor health are some of the heaviest users of the system. In some ways it's a surprise there aren't more than they seem to have (one every few days, it appears).

Yeah, outside the tourist stops I can't see door waymarking or whatever making much of a difference. The real problem is that some of the lines are simply at maximal capacity. They've already stripped many of the seats out of cars to accomodate a few more riders per car, but that only fiddles with the overall limit. (The other thing is that modern subways and tram systems often have platform walls with doors to funnel riders into the cars, but it's almost impossible to retrofit that onto an existing system unless you have a way to carefully manage car length and resultant door position, not to mention that NYC has more subway *stops* than some systems have *cars*.)

As far as delays I did experience a few while living there for just under two years -- and experienced a comparable number of delays on the CTA while living there nearly two *decades*. This seems concerning.

we've under-spent on infrastructure for so long

As a general proposition this is true. Transit advocates point to two issues -- first, the separation in the US political system of capital investment and ongoing maintenance. We often can't keep up what we build because the funding mechanisms are so different and constrained by vastly different political frameworks. Second, land value capture as a funding mechanism is difficult in the US political system, although it has begun to work well in other countries. Basically, some means of targeting property tax (or sales tax) increases to the transit that made them possible. Putting it all on riders or taxpayers is a sure bet to underfunding, or systemic collapse in the long run.
posted by dhartung at 4:51 PM on May 22, 2017 [6 favorites]


Knowing where to stand on the platform won't help you if some investment banker dudebro with a backpack the size of Sandusky is standing in the doorway and blocking you from getting further inside to where there are like five empty seats that no one can get to because of this jackass
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:09 PM on May 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


> I can't imagine it's worse than Toronto.

I guess some people just can't ever be happy, even when they get to ride the “utopian journey of the future."

the
TTC
is
the
Worst

posted by The Card Cheat at 5:20 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


The general issue of the lack of support for infrastructure spending in the United States aside, this particular NYC problem is squarely the fault of Governor Cuomo. There isn't any debate about this, except from Cuomo himself.

The MTA that runs the subway is a strange state-county-city beast, but is ultimately controlled by the governor. Don't take my word for it, listen to Governor Cuomo himself (from January 23):
On NY1 last month during his Second Ave. subway victory lap, Gov. Cuomo asked: “Do you know who runs the MTA?” then answered his own question: “The governor has the majority of members. I’m going to step up and take responsibility.”
Of course, as the links in the FPP show, Cuomo is singing a different tune these days as problems mount (from the "systematic" link):
Frustrated by a week of bad news about the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Gov. Cuomo on Thursday opted to suggest he doesn’t really control the agency.

“I have representation on the board,” the gov told reporters. “The city of New York has representation on the board, so does Nassau, Suffolk, Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland, other counties, OK?”
I may be a little bitter about this issue because, on top of the general worsening subway issues that have caused me to miss meetings and all sorts of personal headaches, that asshole was out here basking in the glory of the new Second Avenue line stations in January after personally stepping in to ensure they opened as scheduled, yet last week when one of the entrances of the brand-new 86th Street Q station entrances was closed for vague reasons neither he nor anyone else was anywhere to be found.

What option do commuters have but to put up with these issues?

Not vote for fucking Cuomo ever again, for one, especially not for the presidential run he's so obviously positioning himself for.
posted by Sangermaine at 6:04 PM on May 22, 2017 [18 favorites]


We shoulda never got rid of streetcars and built huge multi lane highways.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:05 PM on May 22, 2017 [4 favorites]


It does look like the the subways in NY and Toronto suffer from a similar problem - politicians willing to spend billions on line extensions that make voters notice, while at the same time refusing to spend millions maintaining the lines they already have. Both of these lines have archaic signaling systems, which slows down the system by forcing a vey large distance between trains to avoid accidents. But the work required to upgrade involves either doing the upgrade in tiny segments on evening and weekends, or doing the unthinkable and shutting down entire lines for months to get the work done. Either way, that work should have been done decades ago.
posted by thecjm at 6:22 PM on May 22, 2017 [3 favorites]


It does look like the the subways in NY and Toronto suffer from a similar problem

I don't think I've ever shaken my head as hard and fast as when I heard that NY recently hired Adam Giambrone to marshal their new streetcar service. He's the former chair of the TTC and, in my experience, and I've lived in Toronto for almost 50 years, the system declined furthest and most rapidly under his watch.
posted by dobbs at 6:28 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Technology that dates back to FDR can't be all bad. It just doesn't have an app.
posted by rhizome at 7:25 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


a friend of a friend proposed creating flyers (or possibly wearable buttons) with Gov. Cuomo's number on them and using every stalled train and delay announcement as an opportunity to get passengers to use some of that fantastic new below-ground cell service to deluge his office with calls pointing out that he has been chronically underfunding the MTAs capital plans for basically his entire service as governor.

it would be kind of rich if the same citizen-driven push to get regular voters to call their elected representatives to reject the president's agenda that has also thrust the governors name into the realm of 2020 possibilities also brought a flood of constant angry phone calls from straphangers complaining about wonky-but-very-relevant transportation budget issues.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 7:34 PM on May 22, 2017 [9 favorites]


NY recently hired Adam Giambrone to marshal their new streetcar service

He's Toronto's local equivalent to Anthony Wiener. Young, ambitious golden boy who couldn't keep it in his pants. You're welcome to him.
posted by thecjm at 7:47 PM on May 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


He's Toronto's local equivalent to Anthony Wiener.

Not really. I know Adam, and that's a bullshit comparison.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 8:42 PM on May 22, 2017 [2 favorites]


dhartung: "Yeah, outside the tourist stops I can't see door waymarking or whatever making much of a difference. "

But it is super cheap to install so probably worth it even in non tourist areas.
posted by Mitheral at 10:15 PM on May 22, 2017


FWIW, I've become extremely pessimistic about surface light rail (streetcars, trams, etc.) as useful mass transit in America. As typically implemented, it's the worst of both worlds: a local bus on skis that can't go around obstacles and that takes forever to accelerate/brake. Rail and car traffic just don't mix well.

Of course it's certainly possible you could optimize for rail instead, but you'd need politicians with real vision and spine to weather the outcry from entitled drivers that tends to erupt whenever someone prioritizes their interests below effective transit. Otherwise what you get is shit like this.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:25 PM on May 22, 2017 [7 favorites]


I'm very curious to know if marking door positions does have an effect. They do it on BART in the Bay Area and I find it annoying as often as not. People line up but multiple trains may be coming to the platform, so when the train arrives you have a hybrid line where some folks are getting on the train and some are just sort of hanging around trying to keep their relative place in line. It never feels particularly speedy relative to the miscellaneous movement that happens in NY.

The best improvement with the markings would be if you also knew how long the train would be. I can definitely see unexpectedly short trains leading to delays -- folks have to hustle from farther down the platform to make the train, and end cars get super crowded compared to the rest of the train.
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:42 PM on May 22, 2017


It's been quite a while since I lived in the Bay Area, but I would have sworn that the doors regularly don't end up at the door markings anyway, so it's all kind of hypothetical. People lining up for something other than the next train seems decidedly like user error. Obviously, there are going to be people who have difficulty knowing what the next train is for whatever reason, but in general, I recall that being information one has well before a train approached the station.

They announce (or they did) how long the trains are, but there's no real way to use that information unless you take BART every day and know where a 5-car train or whatever ends in your home station. Is marking that what you meant by "the best improvement in markings..."? But IIRC, the announcement is only as the train arrives, not on the signs with timing.

It looks like the MTA has started putting in signs for next trains on the A/C/E (or at least I'm assuming what those new colorful overhead signs are for--surely they're not just putting them in to rotate the informational posters). In some ways, given how inconsistent the A can sometimes be, I almost don't want to know. That's mostly because I can't easily bail to a C, which is what most of the ridership does when the A is having a bad day, so other people's mileage probably varies.
posted by hoyland at 4:06 AM on May 23, 2017


I feel like a big problem in America in general is that we've under-spent on infrastructure for so long (see also DC) that we're now in the shitty position of having to spend a ton on things that are kind of invisible.

This will likely be the case because it was exactly what happened in London. Successive governments in the 80s and early 90s deferred infrastructure investment into the Underground in what became known as the 'maintenance holiday'. This led to falling passenger numbers as assets and reliability deteriorated. This itself was then used as a further reason why investment couldn't be justified.

In the end, what was required to break that cycle was a combination of tragedy and politics.

The tragedy was the Kings Cross Fire in 1987. With 37 deaths and 100 injuries, highlighted just how bad both the state of the assets and staff morale and training on the Underground had become.

That finally meant that even a Conservative goverment in the middle of a process of privatizing the railways had to begin to open the investment tap. By then though, it was already clear that the delayed bill was going to be big.

Ultimately, it wasn't until Labour took power though that things really began to improve. And in a way that still wasn't actually due to the government being any better. Indeed they probably contributed to the costs ballooning even further by forcing the upgrades to happen under a Public Private Partnership model, as then-Chancellor Gordon Brown was desperate not to have the capital cost of the work sitting on the Treasury's books.

In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, the political change that set the Underground on its path to redemption was the Greater London Authority Act 1999

This did two things:

1) It created the role of the London Mayor. This was promptly won by grizzled old lefty Ken Livingstone running as an independent (in his pre-bat-shit-insane-constantly-mentioning-hitler period). The Labour government had expected to have a nice compliant London Mayor who'd quietly go along with their PPP plans and do what he was told. Instead Livingstone realised that the one thing the Mayor had real control over was transport and thus vocally fought for greater control and more money for improvements at every turn.

2) The act created Transport for London to act as a grand overseer of all things transport in... well... London.

This isn't to say that similar authorities hadn't existed before, but TfL brought together pretty much every bit of public transport in London under a unified organisation with a unified budget. The authority also reported to the Mayor not to the government.

Here a bit of history is important: The reason London, until that point, had no centralised local government was because Thatcher had dissolved the Greater London Council in 1986. Mostly because then, with the wider Labour party weak, but the party dominant in London, she felt the GLC had effectively become an insurmountable Labour stronghold and thus effectively the opposition. To be fair: she was sort of right. They'd do things like hang giant signs showing the latest jobless figures on the side of City Hall, knowing full well that Thatcher, in her office at Parliament on the opposite bank of the Thames, would see them through her window).

I'm sure it's totally just a coincidence that changing the way the GLA works again is in this year's Conservative Manifesto

Anyway, what's important here is that the last head of the GLC had been... Ken Livingstone. Livingstone thus remembered the previously semi-adversarial relationship the GLC had with the then-transport authority in London and was thus determined not to let the same culture embed itself in TfL from the start.

Livingston thus appointed former New York MTA man Bob Kiley to run TfL - a very controversial appointment at the time.

As most long-time TfL managers will now admit though, it was Kiley who turned TfL, culturally, into a no-nonsense powerhouse obsessed with running London's transport well and thinking long-term, whilst not afraid to throw their weight around when necessary (which isn't hard to do when you've got an annual budget of about $12bn). That ethos was further embedded by his successor, Peter Hendy - candid exit interview here (warning: self-link).

I must admit I've been following the worsening situation in New York with interest, because it very much seems to be on the same curve as London was back in the eighties. As the above shows though, it took some pretty special circumstances for the London Underground to escape the under-investment cycle.

I do worry about what it'll take to trigger a similar step-change in the situation in New York.
posted by garius at 4:32 AM on May 23, 2017 [24 favorites]


Worth noting that something like this already happened in Toronto, though with human error and bad engineering as primary causes rather than a state of general disrepair. That said, it's that inquest that recommended the city and province commit to a State of Good Repair, something that still technically has a budget today but is vastly overshadowed by ribbon-cutting ceremonies for new lines to nowhere.

Apparently, we either need a) an accident that can be directly tied to the current state of infrastructure, or b) more people to die before Toronto learns the same lessons.
posted by chrominance at 7:33 AM on May 23, 2017


Me (several times a week): If you were really sincere about being sorry for the delay, you wouldn't be a recording!
posted by sexyrobot at 8:45 AM on May 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was in Toronto for a few weeks, and the TTC broke down all three times I took a train. On the plus side, that means two thirds of the train trips didn't break down, I guess.
posted by Yowser at 11:52 AM on May 23, 2017


Crain's: "After backing away from responsibility for mass-transit problems, Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised Tuesday to steer the system away from what he deemed an impending crisis—but not one of his own making ... He announced a monthlong, million-dollar "genius" grant competition for anyone with ideas to improve it, noting that he would be dead before the signal-system overhaul is projected to be completed decades from now."

What an f-you to the current MTA staff. Transit reporters and pundits seem universally unimpressed.

Post: "It’s a hail mary pass,” said Gene Russianoff, who is senior attorney for the Straphangers Campaign. "He’s hoping for a miracle to come rushing into the room."

Best Tweet:

@JakeAnbinder: It was supposed to be a $1,000 contest but then they put it through the MTA procurement process.
posted by retrograde at 4:13 PM on May 23, 2017


I'm catching up on this thread while my subway is stopped for no apparent reason in a tunnel.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 6:35 PM on May 23, 2017 [6 favorites]


Small note re: door markings, NYC subway trains don't vary in length (some lines run short trains but they're always short) and door placement is actually pretty consistent because of the pointing thing.
posted by yeahlikethat at 12:02 PM on May 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm very curious to know if marking door positions does have an effect. They do it on BART in the Bay Area and I find it annoying as often as not. People line up but multiple trains may be coming to the platform, so when the train arrives you have a hybrid line where some folks are getting on the train and some are just sort of hanging around trying to keep their relative place in line.
Speaking of Japan ("the pointing thing" in the previous comment), this problem is elegantly solved in Tokyo/Osaka (and probably elsewhere) by having separate lines for "the next train" and "the second train" on platforms at particularly busy stations. Totally amazing the first time I saw it, as a New Yorker used to "miscellaneous movement."
posted by acroyear2 at 6:57 PM on May 24, 2017


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