In case anyone thinks this is a joke, it's not. The MTA pays the Transit Workers Union massive sums of money when they use technology they use which does a job otherwise performed by a human, even when it's been standard practice worldwide to automate that job for decades.
One example, from tunnel boring:
> The critics pointed to several unusual provisions in the labor agreements. One part of Local 147’s deal entitles the union to $450,000 for each tunnel-boring machine used. That is to make up for job losses from “technological advancement,” even though the equipment has been standard for decades.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
The person in the middle's job seems to be operating the doors and making sure the train is berthed correctly, but all you have to do is put a line where the front of the train has to line up and the driver can do it. As for the doors, it's not like the driver has much else to do when in the station.
Because the TWU penalizes the MTA financially for technological advancement. They are incredibly powerful, mostly because neither the MTA nor the state government which oversees the MTA bother to keep costs in check.
There's no reason the L couldn't be completely automated, with zero employees per train. As described elsewhere in the thread, the person operating the train doesn't actually have to do anything at the moment; the entire process is already automated.
There's also this weird thing where, while the train is sitting there waiting to return the opposite way back to Brooklyn, they close all the subway doors except one in each carriage. It doesn't prevent people from getting on.
I won't go into details, but if the conductor wants to exit
the train and leave the doors open at the terminal, he needs
to walk to the next car at the last stop in order to open
the doors, which is why there's a short delay before they
open. If the doors open immediately at the last stop, then
it means the train is either going to go to the yard, or the
crew is going to manually key open one door per car (which
is only done if the train is going to sit there for at least
10 minutes, and helps the air comfort system).
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kx5fa/iama_new_york_c...
I think it's funny that the train's computer knows it's the last stop and announces that fact to the passengers... but the conductor has to manually override some sort of system before he or she can exit the train.
My understanding is that it's to keep the subway cars relatively climate-controlled. Especially in the summer, it's better not to let all the cool air from the AC leak out the open doors.
Nothing to do with a union, but keep trying to shoe horn that in.
As alluded to in the article, the TWU has been fighting very aggressively against the reforms for most of the issues documented in this article.
Safety is already worse in NYC than other areas.
It all hinges on if the safety concerns are valid.
You're actually going to accept the reasoning they give uncritically and at face value?
Of course they'll frame nearly everything in rhetoric of safety, because politically that's the equivalent "but think of the kids".
Of course, when you actually look at it, it's obvious that the TWU has spent the last several decades fighting actual safety improvements (including those that are SOP at the other Big Four systems), because their only interest is in protecting their members' jobs.
As linked elsewhere in this article, if the MTA tries to introduce newer and safer machinery, the TWU actually extracts a "technological advancement" fee to compensate them for the missed job opportunities, in an attempt to disincentive them from adopting new technology.
The TWU is literally putting passengers' lives at risk because their only goal is to extract as much money as possible from the MTA, and they don't actually care about the end state of the subway system.
That question should be directed at you. It should be obvious this is a nuanced and complex issue.
Why would anyone trust an internet-rando and a single article?
You accept what appears to be a one-sided view. Do you believe that should increase or decrease your trustworthiness?
I'd like to know what's actually wrong in NYC so I can prevent the same in my own city.
I don't know where you get "one-sided" out of any of this. I responded to a claim that the problems in this article have nothing to do with unions, pointing out that the union for MTA workers has been the main driving force against solving the problems described in the article. Between the information in the article, the other information linked elsewhere in the comments here, and some basic Googling, that's all pretty easy to verify.
If anything is "one-sided", it's the original claim that I refuted.
> I'd like to know what's actually wrong in NYC so I can prevent the same in my own city.
Rampant corruption. The TWU isn't the only source of that corruption, but it's foolish to pretend they're not a significant part of it.
Instead of blindly speculating on what could be true, when you've already said that you're not familiar with the topic, how about doing your research on the facts and learning why this is what's actually true.
You started off with a claim that was directly debunked by actually reading the article. Then you pivoted to speculating (but not substantiating) the existence of information that could hypothetically make your original statement a little less incorrect.
At this point, the only foolish thing is pretending that you're contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way.
You can't expect the development and deployment of efficient automation in an environment where it's impossible to fire the existing human operators. Or where firing them would be just as expensive as keeping them around doing nothing useful.
OP complained about a driver slowing down and speeding up. TFA explained it. There's no magic.
Your viewpoint is staunch, one-sided, and brought no new information. That point of view sounds questionable.
If MTA were a private company, it would have gone bankrupt long ago. But we accept that public services should sometimes be subsidized at the public expense. That subsidy should go toward making the service cheaper and more available to the public. But public sector unions capture some of that subsidy to get higher pay and benefits for public sector workers than those workers would get in a private company.
One of those times the doors smashed into a person walking out on crutches.