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Comment by jdhn | Hacker News Reader

Can ridership in NYC really plummet? It's not like everybody there has a car that they can take to work.

This claim I found really confusing. The subway has been more crowded the last 5 years than I've ever seen it; that's an anecdote of course, but if you search "NYC subway crowding," you'll see the MTA has been claiming that the subway is more crowded than ever these days. Not sure how they explain that discrepancy.

As for the alternative options like Lyft and Uber they mentioned, those are only viable for privileged upper middle class commuters, so it really can't go that far to explain a claimed drop in ridership. And it's just crass to claim that there's a statistically measurable number of fare jumpers.

The 60 minutes video posted in another comment claimed that ridership was near a 70 year high, I believe

EDIT: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mta-why-has-the-nyc-subway-gone...

And it's just crass to claim that there's a statistically measurable number of fare jumpers.

Genuine question: why is that? I'm not familiar with the mechanics of the NYC Metro area, but I'm familiar with SF's BART, which certainly claims to have statistics on this -- about 22,000 fare jumps a day, as compared to around 433,000 trips per weekday, meaning about 5% of riders are freeloaders. (They claim this costs about $25M a year.) The San Francisco Chronicle did their own reporting on this, and at the very least it backed up the assertion there were a statistically measurable number of fare jumpers.

Ahh those extrapolations. Just like MPAA and their piracy spiel. Multiply 22`000 * 365 days * $3 and you get their $25M. Except a lot of those people simply would never pay the actual fare and the cost of moving additional weight is negligible, so the number is way inflated.

They wouldn't pay the full fare anyways? Would they... take cheaper transportation?

You're comparing people who pirate media that they'd never have actually bought to... people who take BART trips for free that they've never have taken otherwise? You're going to have to work harder to make this comparison work for me, sorry.

I suspect a lot of the decrease happens at night. Late trains are a bit of a Russian roulette. If you're going from Brooklyn to upper Manhattan, it might be faster and more reliable to share a car with friends or strangers.

"The subway has been more crowded the last 5 years than I've ever seen it"

There was an article in the New York Times in May, titled "How 2 M.T.A. Decisions Pushed the Subway Into Crisis" that claimed higher ridership is not the main cause for the recent decline:

> For years, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority told us that rising ridership and overcrowding were to blame. Yet ridership actually stayed mostly flat from 2013 to 2018 as delays rose, and the authority recently acknowledged that overcrowding was not at fault.

That statement doesn't contradict yours (shakes fist at well-qualified statement), but I found it surprising when I came across it and I imagine others might as well.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/09/nyregion/subw...

Seems unlikely to plummet to ruinous levels. Ridership has risen by 800 million people since 1990, but there's fewer miles of track and only a few dozen cars. It seems that the system is strained well beyond its limits and that it might be possible that having fewer people use the subway might allow a chance to fix it? The issue seems to be largely administrative based on every article I've read. There needs to be an agreement by everyone on what how to move forward, and then for that plan to be implemented uninterrupted until its completion. But good luck with that since the mayor of NYC is basically a governor and the governors of NY always seem to butt heads with them.

> and only a few dozen cars

Did you mean to say "a few dozen more cars"?

yes. good catch. They've only ADDED a few dozen cars in that time.

What rail got destroyed since 1990?

It's not so much that the rail itself was destroyed, but that the tunnels and stations have been closed for various reasons. Usually it's down to either a new replacement station being built, consistent signal issues, or some other passenger safety concern. Of course there have been closures due to the maintenance gap, but those aren't the bulk.

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