Some thoughts on when NYC last opened new subway stations | Hacker News Reader

Some thoughts on when NYC last opened new subway stations

secondavenuesagas.com

21 pointsjseliger23 comments

I am a NYC native that left for the warm weather of Los Angeles. The city has a long way to catch up to pretty much every city of its size, but he has done more in the past year than NYC has done in decades.

It is hard to critique the NYC subway since it does cover a lot of ground and it is 24/7. I have been to cities like Tokyo, and I still prefer the subway (commuter and long distance trains is another matter). Only one company, one fare, very simple.

"Can we add transit on par with European counterparts?"

Has the author ever been to Europe? The NYC subway is far bigger than the London Underground. A really quick search found the following comparison:

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/travel/infograph-the-nyc-subw...

That article is a bit odd.

It has a graph of fare prices which shows the LU as being absurdly expensive.

It is expensive, but not that much (about half). I've seen single digit numbers of people using paper tickets, and most of those were probably travelcards.

No-one pays the cash fare, we use Oyster (smart card). The cash fare has been artificially inflated in price to force people onto the smart cards.

Yet another clueless articles bemoaning the lack of investment in subways. I'll just link to my previous comments on this topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10979537

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247109

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11242655

The tl;dr; is that the costs for the MTA are 10-50x more than every other major city outside the US. The solution is to shut down the MTA, fire all the employees and bar them from ever working for any government agency again, and and replace them with Spanish, or Indians, or Hong Kongians, or French workers, all of whom who seem to be able to build subways at very reasonable prices.

Benjamin Kabak is almost certainly well aware of the bloated costs of the MTA.

Nobody seriously disagrees that MTA costs are ridiculous, but it's a messy dilemma; most likely even at current costs, things like the Second Avenue Subway and the Utica Avenue Subway are well worth building.

You're also glossing over the point he makes that our prioritization is inane and quite possibly insane – programs like building nicer ferries for LGA or building an AirTrain that's slower than current options do almost nothing to help things, and is much more a matter of local and regional politics than MTA inefficiency per se.

I highly doubt that someone who has been writing extensively about the MTA for almost 10 years is "clueless".

You make a good point that the cost per km is exorbitant and needs to be reined in, but comparing the costs of a 10-15 year old system to one that is 100+ years old is probably not the most accurate comparison.

The Budapest metro is 6 years older than the NYC subway. The Tokyo metro is also 90 years old, as is the Barcelona metro.

High density rich cities like Hong Kong do it cheaper. Sprawling low density cities like Delhi do it cheaper. Ancient systems like London, Paris and Budapest do it cheaper. Shiny modern systems like Singapore do it cheaper. Cold places like Malmo do it cheaper. Hot places like Mexico City do it cheaper.

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r... https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...

The question isn't why one specific city is cheaper than NYC. The question is why every single city outside the US is vastly cheaper than NYC. The only place that even comes remotely close to US prices is one line of the London metro.

You're exactly right that any "bemoaning" article is clueless unless it also acknowledges financial reality.

E.g. here's another one: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/World-Trade-Center-Tran...

Yes, it's a "hub", but surely they could have rebuilt it for under $3.9 billion.

One of the sad things about 'zero interest money' is that we aren't using that to save the taxpayer millions by investing in real infrastructure improvements. It doesn't help that infrastructure costs are the only construction costs that cost more in real dollars today than they did 50 or 100 years ago.

Agreed. Infrastructure development doesn't really play well given US politics today. The right distrusts any non-military government spending, while the left is more interested in entitlements and social programs.

Least you (NYC) have some big projects going on (long island rr to grand central).

http://gothamist.com/2015/11/04/east_side_access_photos.php#...

All we have in Boston is a couple of new trolley stops in Somerville and even that is in question. They stopped building mass transit here in the 80s. The North Station South Station connector was killed because the big dig cost two much, and despite lobbying from 2 former governors hasn't got off the ground.

Infrastructure is not popular. Though with more and more of us living/working in Cities, critically important.

I always thought a heat map around cities with commute times to downtown would be an interesting project.

That heat map should be entirely doable with just the Google Maps API, right? That would be pretty interesting to see.

Meanwhile in China: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/SHM_evol... (Shanghai Metro 1993-2015)

Are there any other visualizations like this? The growth of poor developing countries into something resembling a modern one is insanely fascinating

There's one visualization [1] for the Taipei Metro's growth [2] in Taipei, Taiwan/Republic of China.

[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Taipei_m...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_Metro

The time has probably passed for this, but I did wonder a few years ago if a New Deal style government program would have been worthwhile. Vast unemployment, crumbling infrastructure... those two things could go a ways to fixing each other.

That's what the stimulus package of 2009 was sold as. Then it turned out that seven-eighths of it went to various government cronies or to allow states to put off their pension obligations one more year. There were also, as I recall, complaints that spending on infrastructure projects would unequally benefit men over women.

The cluelessness of this article is beyond words.

New York City has one of the most amazing transit systems of any city in the world, and most of it is at least 100 years old.

By focusing on stops and forgetting to mention the dozens of large projects taking place in the NYC transit system, he makes it sound like nothing is changing.

Here's just a small list off the top of my head:

1. new Penn Station

2. Yes the 7 train to Hudson Yards

3. Yes, the 2d avenue subway (which has been in the offing for 100 years)

4. new East River tunnels

5. new ferry system (including 18 new ferries announced today)

6. new Select Bus Service

7. new New Jersey tunnels

8. repairing East River Bridges

9. new tunnels for LIRR service to Penn Station

As systems age they get bogged down with stale infrastructure. We need to give our local governments political cover for hitting the simcity 'delete' button. Until we collapse the pipes & tunnels that aren't working we won't be able to build the ones we need.

A midwestern state is considering reducing their total highway miles based on declining usage stats. This is a really brave stance considering the cultural bias against it.

I live off the 1st Ave L stop (Stuy town). Take the L during rush hour and you'll see exactly what I deal with every day.

I'm all for the 2nd Ave expansion, however I think that something needs to be done about over-ridership with our existing infrastructure. As Brooklyn becomes more gentrified, the L (and others) will only get worse. Queens, I'm looking at you Astoria, is only going to get worse.

And I think they want to shut the L train down for a bit to fix the tunnel (Huricanne damage..). Thats not going to be good for anyone in Brooklyn.

Not just a bit: 18 months in both directions, or 3 years of single tunnel shutdown. Pretty horrible for anyone who depends on that train.

I can't see why anyone living in non-JMZ Williamsburg would renew their lease this year, unless they're biking regardless of weather conditions.

Sounds like the plan is to wait for the tunnel to have more serious damage, then just down the tunnel for 4 years to fix it as an emergency. /s

You can't just ignore maintenance because it's hard, doing that just means you chose to do it when it's even harder.

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