Why Are New York City’s Streets Always Under Construction?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
A utility company has an agreement with city and pays the city on those terms to move the facility when told to do so at own cost (gas lines are exempt because they are international lines). It also must pay contractors when working near those lines for the discomfort they cause.
Utilities don't just have conduits or pipes running down, but also manholes and chambers, and some of them are huge. I once came across a 90' x 60' x 40' underground substation. These chambers cause other utilities to avoid them by switching lanes and going to the sides. These switches cause greater infrastructure density, or more pipes in an area.
For places like manhattan, telephone company requires more conduits and wires in every street than any where else. Some companies insist in a conduit just for themselves, like Amazon AWS to run their own services. Parallel to that are electric lines that require large pipes for the huge area it serves. Same goes for gas main and the next annoyance e.g. Steam, which is difficult to move around.
If the city were to come and build something, pretty much everyone has to move things around. This is what causes a significant spaghetti buildup. Eventually, it becomes virtually impossible to locate or record location of everything. Add to that the age of records and the frequent loss of records.
Designing utilities is an art of patience. Constructing around them is far worse. Recording them is poorly done. I was very peculiar about accuracy of records but even I had to sometimes wing it. And I am pretty sure few take the time to painstakingly record and draw stuff like I did.
Problems like this make me imagine that all utilities should be placed vertically in a chamber easily accessible and maintainable. But that is naive.
Still loved the place though! :)
One day I asked one of the workers why they keep tearing open the same part of the road, why couldn't they just replace everything that is broken in one go?
He told me that they often do find and fix the problems, but sometimes they can't find them and give up, or sometimes they do and only kind of fix them. Other times they do fix the problem, only to have another in the same area. He also said sometimes an electric guy will mess up the plumbing, etc. And they aren't allowed to touch and telecom stuff. He said that sometimes some crews will just cut out his work, or cut into their pipes, drill and bolt into their pipes or riggings, causing leaks, etc.
I'm sure at some level this keeps these guys busy but its a wonder we haven't been able to come up with some kind of better system or way of doing things in all these years.
And if a worker were to look at how some code changes just looking at the files modified, he would probably notice that we keep tearing open and modifying the same piece of code many times, he might ask why can't we just fix all the bugs at once.
Streets I imagine would be very different depending on what's underneath.
Yeah, most software is a bit more complex than underground utilities. But the latter are far from the same, and I'd argue it's actually much more difficult to prod, examine and debug what's going on underneath an active roadway than it is to debug a bit of software, for example.
Just spend 20 minutes looking at/reading ladder diagrams, an organizational method electrical control systems. You'll learn that you pretty much 1 for 1 programming logic (that first motor controller you look at is the same as hello world, and algorithmically it's somewhere between 6 and 12 if statements).
I've heard there exists a dramatically better system but I think the technology got classified as secret many decades ago. One day it shall be declassified and we might see some very substantial progress in this area.
Others find the prospect of standing on a hot crowded train that runs late and smells like urine less appealing.
I assume you have not ridden the subway in decades.
Travel-wise, It was the best option for me, but I totally sympathize with anyone wishing to avoid the experience.
I commute on the 8 ave line every day and I've never been on a train without A/C.
Apple maps can show you how long it takes to travel by subway.
Also a monthly pass for as many subway and bus rides as you want is about $115.
Overall it's a miracle public utility that you don't appreciate as much as you should until you've left the city, but that July/August trip is a sweaty mass of humanity no matter how you crunch it.
And that's assuming you're in a walkable place. Many cities aren't built for it, and walking 30 minutes in 102 degree heat in Texas isn't a good option.
But, the worst part about the new subway cars is that the robotic johnny cab voice doesn't have a weird accent. I actually enjoy the strange unintelligible squawking in a Brooklyn accent, drenched in the electromagnetic feedback of unshielded motors. Mostly because the robotic voice never has anything to useful or relevant to say, and if someone's going to say something pointless, I'd rather not understand it, and hear some kind of funny accent.
THIS THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY SYSTEM WITH AN
IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE MTA. KEEP YOUR
VALUABLE BELONGINGS OUT OF SIGHT. PROTECT
YOURSELF. STAY ALERT, BE COURTEOUS AND HAVE
A SAFE DAY.
Yeah, boy, I sure do hate my morning commute, just ankle-deep in shit, while the Robot Overlords whip the Poles and Italian immigrants bloody.
The problem is, they only have ten or fifteen pre-sets, and all of them are useless.
Seriously people, if you need warning of those things maybe just stay at home until you've grown up a bit.
When I'm on a tube platform, if I'm looking at the upcoming trains, I don't need to be reminded that I shouldn't smoke or that there's Rugby coming up at the weekend.
I love NYC, and spend a few weeks there a year, but it always amazes me how natives argue that the MTA (and really all of Manhattan) doesn't smell like piss.
I remember having this argument with them when crossing the street on garbage day in June or July. In addition to the background rotting garbage smell, some steam chimney thing in the crosswalk was basically spewing hot piss vapors. They were immune.
When we were young gutter snipes, we used to jump the wooden turnstyles, and if the cops chased us, head into the tunnels. We then spent our youth exploring the tunnels (the old station just off DeKalb Ave.). I miss those tokens with the 'Y' punched out in center! They cost 0.35 cents, and you could ride the subway to Coney Island, and still have money left for a slice of pizza when getting home by end of day when you started out with a $1.25 or so.
I was just visiting in January 2016, and it seemed great to me, and I am coming from having lived 8 years in SE Asia. I still go home 1 or 2 times a year to Brooklyn and Manhattan. Still I am amazed at the Hong Kong MTR. The cars don't have doors between them, so you can see all the way down to the front and back. They have sliding doors on the platforms, so no jumping in front of an oncoming train! Very clean too. Hong Kong is very vertical, and lot of wiring is alongside buildings in exposed trays or bundles. I am not sure about the rest of the infrastructure. Don't get me started on Vietnam or Indonesia. I have photos of electrical 'routing' that would give a NYC union electrician a stroke!
Queens has subways too, bro. Used to live in Astoria, never once drove a car. I think I took the m60 into Manhattan like once.
But then I think about the construction crew down the street from me, in Philadelphia, that didn't properly fill in and tamp down the trench they dug for a new sewer line. "Just fill it with some stones and dirt, and throw some Home Depot black top down on it," the foreman said, I imagine.
The thing grew, and became a gargantuan pothole. Eventually the city fixed it, and granted this probably has everything to do with the contractor in question, and I've seen larger construction companies doing things right, but I'm convinced we could eliminate a lot of potholes if crews just did the job right.
http://www.sbz-online.de/Cache/GENTNER/10024/0609-01-OPT1_Mz... https://hausmannskost.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/risseg.jpg
> But unlike Paris or Tokyo, where tubes and wires are usually bundled inside a cavernous sewer system or tucked underneath sidewalks, much of New York’s underground infrastructure lies within five feet of the asphalt surface.
> Last year, the [transportation department] issued 223,271 permits, about half of them to utility companies.
What do you propose that they do, though? Ideally we'd build a utility-only tunnel like Paris or Tokyo, but there's no space. You have the subway further underneath, and the sidewalks have basements.
Without a massive overhaul requiring eminent domain or a fire, the only solutions are better construction techniques, which they're looking into.
It falls back on evolving into something like the movie 'Brazil' with all of the ductwork ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Works-Anatomy-City-Kate-Ascher/dp/014...
Another great book is "Underground" by David Macaulay. Beautiful, breathtaking drawings.
EDIT: Just clarifying that it is not as simple as starting at one end and painting to the other and back again - simply that I have heard that there is always someone with a paintbrush or spray hose somewhere on the bridge working away.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is also mentioned, but the fact they chose for that one is that it is "affectionately known as The Coathanger".
[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-1478...
Yes, you could move the crew to work on another bridge, but why would you mess with their commute schedule, if it isn't necessary? Those that want the change of work always can move jobs to work on another bridge, or, if one company maintains multiple ones, ask their employer to be moved to a different crew.
"Empire City Subway Company (ECS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon that specializes in subsurface engineering and construction services. Since 1891, ECS has held a franchise from the City of New York to build and maintain a conduit and manhole infrastructure in Manhattan and the Bronx. ECS rents this space to telecommunications and cable television service providers."
If you want to run fiber in in either of those boroughs you need to pay Verizon. Kind of odd that a public asset is controlled by a private company. Its basically a shadow company. A 125 year old franchise?
Everyone is pretty much able to run their own lines down city streets. They just have to pay the city to lease space. They also have to agree to move the utilities when asked. And pay other contractors to work around the tightness their utilities cause.
Ecs does this management and maintenance for verizon and for all the other companies like AT&T, cable vision, level3, federal govt, tmobile, etc. Of course the other companies may also run their own conduits depending on the economics.
1. NYC is _BIG_. It's 304 square miles, which is about 17 by 17 miles. There are many places where biking is too far.
2. Subways, in contrast to popular opinion, don't go everywhere. Mainly, unless you live in Manhattan, or that's the only place where you want to go, the Subway system is quite lousy. Going from the airport to Coney Island takes an hour and a half by subway (according to Google), rather than half an hour by car. Now what happens if you have what to do in Queens, Far Rockaway, or NJ?
3. Expensive and no point. Due to #2, most NYers have to have a car, if at least for those off days when they want to leave the city or what. Once you have the car, driving it is much cheaper than taxi.
Unless if it's during commuting hours, in which case they're pretty much equal I'd say.
> Due to #2, most NYers have to have a car
Definitely not. 56% of NYC households don't have a car, the highest proportion in the US among cities. Compare to SF where 31% don't have a car. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...
That said, for such distances a moped or ebike could be much faster, while still evading gridlock that would slow a car.
It is OK to use more than one mode!
I was just dragging points around between random places on Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the difference in transit times between cars and public transit seemed pretty minimal almost everywhere I dragged the points to. In SF, there are certain well served areas where that is also the case.. but if you want to cut west from, say, Dogpatch to the Castro, it can take 2x-4x longer by public transit.
Secondly, the concentration of wealth/population is so high that even if a small minority of people drive, it still causes lots of congestion.
As a Manhattanite who prefers cars (i.e. Ubers, Junos, et cetera), it comes down to a few factors. One, cars are door to door. Two, cars are air conditioned/heated. And Three, I can take calls (and naps) in cars.
1) I used to bike for years while I was at uni. It's dangerous, and not very enjoyable in a city. It's ok on a nice spring/autumn day, but in sweltering sun or in winter or in pouring rain it's downright miserable.
2) subway - nope, because I hate being packed so close to other people. It's frequently smelly and unpleasant. Same with buses.
3) taxi - expensive, and I don't like being driven around by other people, would much rather drive my own car.
On the other hand, yes, driving somewhere is usually slower. But....I sit in my own clean environment, listening to podcasts or audiobooks, at the temperature that is fully controlled by me.
Because over here in the UK (especially in London), it feels like there's a never ending stream of roadworks being done at any one point in time. Heck, the roads themselves look like a patchwork quilt made of whatever pieces of asphalt and cement were lying around that week.
So any comparisons? Is New York worse than other cities of a comparable size? In the US or abroad?
"Ladies and gentlemen: We are being held momentarily by the train’s dispatcher..."
That's kind of subjective. Every once in awhile, the stars align, and your slow local C train is now running express all the way to your stop at 145th...
... which is great, unless you're actually really trying to get to 103rd.