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Comment by spike021 | Hacker News Reader

I find this situation incredibly interesting as an outsider.

I live in the SF Bay Area where we have a Muni "subway", if you can even call it reminiscent of one and BART. They're both absolutely awful, between not having good/expansive coverage/timely service. A plethora of issues plague both.

Both times I visited NYC this year I took the subway everywhere. Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station; the trains were pretty much all clean without odd (read: nasty) smells. And, of course, the routes go all over Manhattan rather than just through, say, Lexington or Park Ave (like how SF's Muni basically converges and mainlines under Market St.).

I found NYC's subway a pleasant improvement. Yet I keep seeing articles about how it needs to be fixed.

Just interesting to spectate as an outsider.

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Conversely: tons of people here in Vancouver complain about our equivalent systems (the Skytrain, usually), whereas people I know who've visited from New York are blown away by how clean, fast, and efficient it is. Trains that come every 90 seconds, no garbage on the tracks, bright, open, airy stations (most are above ground on that line).

NYC is a model of public transit from the perspective of ubiquity, feasibility, and ridership, though, and that's pretty key.

We also visited the SF Bay Area, and it was confusing as hell. The BART? The Muni? The buses? The cable cars? Who uses what? How do we get around? I need different passes? Oh, the tap card works? What's even going on?

I found the BART was very reminiscent in a lot of ways to Montreal's Metro system, but the MUNI (we took the J line? I kept calling it the JUnit, to my wife's annoyance) and it was 'fine', but only because we were a few blocks away. It felt very… rustic. Unmaintained. The raising/lowering stairs thing was a neat solution though.

In short, NYC being better than SF isn't a high bar, but I think we should all be happy that we live in cities that have such transit systems at all. Many large cities in the US don't even have public transit systems that can get people anywhere with any efficiency.

> Trains that come every 90 seconds

It's remarkably hard to get reliable numbers on train frequency in subway stations worldwide. However, it is generally believed that the only system in the world that gets headways smaller than 100 seconds/train is the Moscow Metro at 90--95 seconds per train = 38--40 trains per hour (tph), followed by the Jubilee line of the London Underground at 100 seconds/train = 36 tph.

While it's easy to find no shortage of sources that say that SkyTrain in Vancouver can "theoretically" run at 75 seconds/train = 48 tph, the more optimistic figures of its actual peak frequency look like 108 seconds/train = ~33 tph. Some sources I found (including the official schedule) suggest 150 seconds/train = 24 tph.

Isn't the problem with vancouver's system the lack of coverage? And overcrowding during rush hour?

Yes. The coverage is quite poor and doesn't service certain high traffic areas at all, like UBC. The solution has been to increase bus coverage which can only take you so far.

The trains are very popular, and during rush hour there might not be enough room on the train for everyone to get on.

The trains come every 3 minutes during peak hours, and less often during non-peak hours, as much as 15 minutes.

From what I noticed, the trains were not very long. Only about 3 or 4 cars. In other cities they are 10+ cars long. Are they long in rush hour?

> I found NYC's subway a pleasant improvement. Yet I keep seeing articles about how it needs to be fixed.

Decades of underinvestment means that it's not as good today as it was ten years ago, or as good ten years ago as it was a few decades before that.

That said, even with all its problems, the NY metro area still has far better and more extensive public transportation than any other metro area in the country. Over a third of all subway stations in the country are located within New York City's city limits, and that's not even counting the three separate commuter train options, Amtrak, bus service, or Staten Island railway.

Living in NYC, I haven't driven a car in 3 years and haven't even renewed my driver license for 2. I still manage to go hiking during summer weekends and skiing during the winter. Accessibility really isn't the issue.

I think it's optics more than anything. NYC residents pay a ton in taxes and get little back. Our state taxes get moved upstate and our federal taxes go to poor states. I really think it's just trying to put pressure on our representatives to be a bit more "selfish" as to what happens with our taxes.

Not to be flip, but those who live in the nyc (ny) burbs subsidize your mass transit, as do businesses in the burbs.

Though dated, a 2011 Rockefeller Institute study claimed nyc paid out 5% more than it got back to the rest of the state while the burbs paid out 10% more. Per capita, they claimed nyc paid out $34 more while the burbs paid out $311 more).

Income based financing schemes almost always fail in nonhomogeneous environments to be 'fair.'

> Not to be flip

I grew up in Scarsdale, your comments definitely aren't foreign to me.

> those who live in the nyc (ny) burbs subsidize your mass transit

The problem I see with this is that I struggle to consider it "your" mass transit. Both the MTA and Metro North are owned by the state. One of them has 300k daily riders, the other has 5.5m daily riders. 150k of those MN riders end up in the city everyday, so both groups are using state owned products, one group is potentially using BOTH (I always did when I commuted from Westchester to the financial district). The 4 commuter lines combined (NJTransit, PATH, LIRR, Metro North) have 1/3 the total daily ridership of the subway, but get almost double the amount of subsidies from state coffers. Growing up, I can count the number of parents who didn't commute to the city on both hands. Being wealthy enough to live in the suburbs doesn't mean your money is generated there. The median income in Scarsdale is $250k. I doubt that Scarsdale Flowers is the one lifting that average, so the people being taxed for it are the ones who actually use it anyway. I realize this is only one of the suburbs, but it's the one I'm personally familiar with.

> Income based financing schemes almost always fail in nonhomogeneous environments to be 'fair.'

I'm definitely not arguing for it. In fact, I usually argue against it. I'm just pointing out why I think the argument is being made, given that the subway isn't in as bad shape as the news makes it sound.

> Not to be flip, but those who live in the nyc (ny) burbs subsidize your mass transit, as do businesses in the burbs.

The MTA spends a disproportionate amount of money on the MetroNorth and LIRR, compared to its ridership. In terms of mass transit specifically, it's the city that's subsidizing the suburbs, not the other way around.

Yet I have heard horror stories of how it was so run down in the 70's and 80's that people were afraid to even take it at all.

Isn't this a case of people glorifying the past? Are there objective metrics that demonstrate service quality has degraded (reduced train frequency, reduced amount of seats, etc...)?

It was really terrible in the 70s when the city went bankrupt. Then it got better, and now it's getting worse again.

The state took over the subway system when the city went broke. The MTA is a state agency.

> Are there objective metrics that demonstrate service quality has degraded (reduced train frequency, reduced amount of seats, etc...)

Yes, there are, and the NYTimes has reported that data in previous articles from this same series.

Said article https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/28/nyregion/subw...

I didn’t live in NYC during that era, but from my understanding it was a personal safety issue (gangs), not a mechanical safety issue.

I can emphatically state that five years ago, there was much less over crowding, more frequent trains, and less delays.

Because 100+ years ago someone saw the right path forward and they forced this into existence with political power. How can this be done today? Elon Musk comes to mind. Humanity seemingly has to be forced forward by a visionary backed by power.

> Because 100+ years ago someone saw the right path forward and they forced this into existence with political power. How can this be done today? Elon Musk comes to mind. Humanity seemingly has to be forced forward by a visionary backed by power.

New York's current problem is that it already has too many elected officials with power that is completely unchecked and uncheckable by voters[0]. I'm not convinced that the solution to that problem is to have another person whose power is completely unchecked and uncheckable by voters.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15988458

The NYC subway system is orders of magnitude better than anything else in this country, absolutely. This also means that pretty much everyone relies on it to get around every day---so we have to hold it to a much higher standard. If the subway were as bad as it is in SF, the whole city would more or less stop functioning entirely.

> If the subway were as bad as it is in SF, the whole city would more or less stop functioning entirely.

And SF is far better than say LA or Denver as far as public transit. I think you nailed it perfectly though, being “the best” carries a lot of responsibility and the MTA isn’t honoring that.

True, the SF public transit story is abhorrent, so I can see how NYC would seem much better to a SF local. But if you come from nearly ANY other developed country on the planet, the situation in NYC would seem abhorrent. I have been on roughly 40 transit systems across the world, and the NYC subway is hands-down the least reliable. This is including Soviet-era systems in eastern Europe.

In terms of ridership, London, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, etc. are all comparable to NYC, some are just as old (e.g. London, Paris, Tokyo), and none are as broken.

Were you riding during peak hours (7-10, 4-7)?

That's when it tends to get really bad - even minor delays cause massive backups, because the trains are essentially running as close together as the (outdated) signaling technology allows.

Once a delay happens, there's no way to catch up other than just waiting for peak hours to pass and catching up during off-peak time.

That being said, it's still a huge step up from pretty much every other city's metro system (save for maybe DC). It's just that it's gone from being a 8/10 to a 7/10, compared to every other city's 3/10.

I moved to NYC a year ago and have the same basic feeling as you. Could the subway be improved? Obviously! But New Yorkers don't realize how good they have it compared to the rest of the U.S. [0] If a train takes 10 minutes, they're annoyed. Meanwhile, scheduled headways of 20 minutes are the norm where I'm from -- on the one light rail line that goes through the center of town.

My daily experience on the NYC Subway is that it's an incredible marvel. [1]

[0] There was even an article on r/nyc earlier this year about how New York shouldn't get Amazon's HQ2 based on the access to transit requirement. The article argued that the transit is too bad here. That's -- that's so absurd as to be almost beyond belief.

[1] An enormous caveat here: I can walk or bike to work. I do use the subway at peak hours fairly frequently, but I'm not reliant on it or held hostage by it, as many others are.

I think many New Yorkers realize how bad it is in the rest of the US. HOWEVER! In NYC, the subway is essential, and many people don't realistically have any other option. Especially if you're in the outer boroughs. Even worse, there you also don't have the luxury of walking over to another line if yours is heavily delayed. Walking is too far, and biking is only recently slowly becoming a reasonable alternative.

There are people in every city who don’t have any other option. What those people do in places like St. Louis is transfer between multiple buses on much worse commutes than the ones you’re imagining on a packed 7-train.

I think what’s actually different, if we’re honest, is that middle class people have arranged their lives to rely on the train in NYC, and they’re a more vocal (or at least more likely to be heard) constituency.

Sure, but that's another way of saying the same thing. Because by "no realistic option" GP means, in effect, "no option that middle class people would stand for".

If you build a transportation infrastructure that's good enough for middle class people to rely on then middle class people will come to rely on it, and if you don't then they won't.

No argument with that. It’s good that the residents of New York are holding their representatives to account. It’s also simultaneously true that wild hyperbole about NYC not having adequate transit to support HQ2 is just that.

I’m making the pretty boring argument that we shouldn’t get carried away.

A tourist won't have the same view because you are unlikely commuting from the Burroughs at rush hour.

In general, transit as observed by an occasional visitor often traveling off-peak tends to a lot different from a daily commuter depending on it to get to work during rush hour. There are probably exceptions but most people with a daily commute find plenty to complain about in just about every city.

Commuting from Plymouth Township, Michigan is indeed quite hard.

I had the same reaction to this article. It's incredible how horrible SF's system is, and yet, the articles are always about New York's subway. If someone did an in depth comparison of the two it would be incredibly eye opening. The system in SF is garbage.

Thank god we'll be getting a new mayor.

You'd think with all those SV billions floating around, there would be enough tax dollars to improve the transit infrastructure.

My thoughts exactly.

As a non-US tourist I find the NYC subway dirty (there was trash on the lines that nobody picked up in weeks), and terribly undocumented (few or misplaced info panels and directions). It’s also very crowded at peak hours but that’s understandable I assume.

As a EU import, I understand. Actually, most of the city is quite dirty, relatively. It's probably even a US issue. Non-rich neighborhoods simply don't get to spend much on anything serving the public, including upkeep. This goes for much of NYC as well, despite it being a 'rich' city.

The information on schedules and changes due to maintenance are overwhelming for a tourist. At nights and in weekends especially, there are often trains being rerouted in very creative ways. Though all of this information is posted, it's often hard to understand for a non-local. It often mentions station names, which mean nothing to you if you don't live here (and even if you do it's not always obvious). Luckily the locals are always happy to help you with directions, contrary to popular belief, so just ask away!

BART is honestly not as bad as people make it out to be. It's fast - really fast. People overlook that. And it's super frequent during rush hours. MUNI trains do have cleaner and nicer cars but they're so slow above the ground. MUNI buses on the other hand are always stinking.

However, what I uniformly hate about all modes of public transportation in the Bay Area is the casual, lethargic passengers who take their sweet sweet time to get in and out and clog the doorways. New York on the other hand was extremely courteous (in my limited experience) by on boarding and off boarding as quickly as they can.

BART was the first modern transit system. Computer control. Active suspension. Solid-state motor controls. Card-based fare collection. Air conditioning. All new technology. All special-purpose. It took over a decade to get all that debugged.

Now it's antiquated, and keeping those one-offs going is hard. It's easier to maintain old electromechanical systems like NYC's than 1960s electronics like BART. The NYC stuff is mostly standard General Railway Signal equipment, with some Union Switch and Signal stuff. Many railways worldwide used those components. Siemens sells compatible relays.[1]

Think of where you'd be today if your transit system ran on OS/2. The NYC transit system is still running hundreds of computers on OS/2. It was the best system at the time.

[1] https://w3.usa.siemens.com/mobility/us/en/Documents/F1-F60%2...

Depends on time of day and the weather. Rain, rush, weekends, weekend nights - oh boy. You have to plan in advance, and be familiar with alternatives or you can really get stuck.

There are two basic issues with the NYC subway:

1. Due to lack of good management and a number of structural issues, building in NYC costs about 5 to 10x more per km than other built-up cities. (E.g., $2.2 B per km in NYC vs. $230 M in Paris.) Source: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...

2. There is insufficient funding available, due largely to the fact that the subway is controlled by the state (not the city), which has prevented congestion pricing to be implemented. It finally seems like the crisis may cause congestion pricing to pass, which will provide a major new dedicated funding source. The plan <http://iheartmoveny.org/> is quite good and will also dramatically reduce traffic congestion.

However, until costs are controlled, we will only be able to improve our current service, not do the major expansion that large transit deserts in and around the city need.

Now compare to Beijing, which is simultaneously building "20 different subway lines, measuring a total distance of 354.8 kilometers." That will probably cost $35 B but would cost $781 B in NYC. https://www.thebeijinger.com/blog/2017/07/29/beijing-metro-u...

NYC's subway system was started before cars were widespread, and it's still the lifeblood of the city, so it has to work. When it's even a little bit off, people complain.

SF's public transit system (except cable cars which are mostly just preserved for tourists now) was built after the automobile, and as such it feels like an afterthought.

Some lines are highly delayed and more congested. I ride a few different lines a few times a month when I do business in the city and Queens. It’s definately not as good as it was at its peak, but isn’t that awful either.

Growing up in the 80s, it was dramatically more congested, slower and generally awful. So the tales of impending doom sound like drama to me.

NY politics are a carnival atmosphere right now, even by NY standards. I think these issues are getting more play as a result. It will only get worse as hostile federal policy sucks money out of Nee York.

It’s always easier to build than maintain. This happens in all institutional settings. Stuff will get worse, bonds will get paid off, and more capital dollars will be available to rebuild.

The one advantage of the 80s is you could open the windows (though there was no ac) and you could ride in the vestible between cars. Still having some risk adversion, I would generally get on/off from inside a car but had no problem reading my WSJ one handed while holding the handle. (Always ride your back to the direction of motion so braking pushes you against the door!)

I do miss some of the better exterior graffiti of the late 70s/early 80s

> Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station

You must not have had to come from Brooklyn to Manhattan during commute hours. Daily (or multiples times a day even) occurrence in that case. I’ll still gladly take MTA over Muni/BART any day, but NYC could definitely learn a thing or two from Hong Kong or even London’s subway systems.

I take the L every day from Graham to 6th at 9am. I very rarely have to wait to get on a train and the delays aren't more than just being slower compared to off-hours. I can understand a frustration trying to get on a train if you live on Bedford, I'm sure that's a nightmare. However, I simply don't understand the complaints (comparing it within the city). Maybe it's just because every other commute I've had has gone through Union Square or 42nd. Compared to those, everything is easy.

> I take the L every day from Graham to 6th at 9am.

How’s the L like during the summer on your way home? 110°+ platform temps weren’t uncommon back when I took it.

That said, I think the line you are on makes a big difference. My line (A/C) seems to have the worst trains as far as age / cleanliness of the ones I’ve been on. Way too infrequent during commute hours and when they do come they come in pairs or triplets. This causes the first train (and sometimes second) to be packed Tokyo style, which then causes delays for trains after it as it takes longer for folks to get on / off. If they just made them run consistent and more frequent (seriously 10-15min between groups of trains during commute hours isn’t uncommon), they’d not be overcrowded and not delay as much, but alas, scheduling seems to allude MTA.

As to other lines, 4/5/6 has decent trains and are pretty frequent, but horribly crowded during commute. 7 train (inside Manhattan anyway) is typically full (not too overcrowded), but frequency is sometimes a problem and I wish it was better aligned with the schedules of the lines which feed into it. 1/2/3 and N/Q/R aren’t bad in general usually. I’ve not taken the B/D/F/M/J/Z/G lines enough to have a fair opinion, but I usually seem to have one issue or another with them when I do end up on them (usually maintenance related lately).

Depends on where you live -- going through a tunnel or over a bridge adds significantly to the odds of encountering delays. Even if you live near one of the first few stops in Queens or Brooklyn you're dealing with disproportionally higher average travel time.

Yup. Any delay in Manhattan during rush hour, and the trains just pile up waiting to get into Manhattan in the outer boroughs. And in the outer boroughs, you often don't have the luxury of being able to choose from multiple lines. So all in all this means that your morning commute could last anywhere from X ('scheduled' commute time) to X + 45 minutes, occasionally even worse. And you'll probably be packed like sardines inside the cars as well, hopefully with a working AC if it's not freezing outside.

The problem is during rush hour.

Wasn't uncommon for me to be stuck for 45 minutes in the same spot.

The past few weeks it’s also maintenance closing lots of stations without any signs or it being really hard to follow the sign if it exists even as a local.

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