It's Time to Fall in Love with Stuffy, Crowded Subways | Hacker News Reader

It's Time to Fall in Love with Stuffy, Crowded Subways

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1 pointmartey7 comments

Article seems to imply that since a highly inefficient monopoly, on which thousands were forced to rely on and pay handsomely for, is simply going to turn off service for a year and a half, that's when you'll find out how wonderful it really is. Traveling to other places with better, working systems won't do it. Having our system simply fail to function, though, will.

I think the focus on New York City's L line closure is the least important part of the article. Far more important is the idea that standard public transit (subways, buses, etc.) is more efficient than any new solution (Uber, Lyft, scooters, hyperloop, some future autonomous taxi service) because the former serves more people.

Most of the people on this site don't have significant personal experience with the NYC subway. I think that if you are going to write a comment making claims that are directly contradicted by the article (e.g. you state the NYC subway is a "highly inefficient monopoly" when the article calls it a "success"), you should cite reputable sources that also contradict it.

Take a look at the subsidies that the MTA receives from the state and city. Add to that the money consumers spend on the service, and divide by number of rides. Now ask yourself why this number is more than it costs a person in Dallas to drive across the city in his own car, listening to his own music, and sitting in comfort while the air conditioner is set to his precise desires?

Since Dallas has a completely different population density and size than NYC, you're making an apples-to-oranges comparison. Do you have data that using the MTA costs more than having a car in NYC?

One can never perfectly compare two cities, can they? And I can't compare cost of car ownership in NYC with and without existence of a government subsidized subway.

But if you measure dollar spent per passenger mile traveled, the MTA is incredibly expensive.

Yes, but you can compare the cost of car ownership in NYC versus the cost of relying on the subway. I think the fact that New Yorkers think the L line closure is so momentous belies the idea that they would prefer to eliminate their "government subsidized" subway and all buy cars.

> But if you measure dollar spent per passenger mile traveled, the MTA is incredibly expensive.

Incredibly expensive compared to what? The article explicitly claims that public transportation like the MTA is the most effective way to transport large numbers of people around a dense city. I haven't seen anything in your multiple comments that suggests differently, other than a throwaway reference to Dallas (a city whose metropolitan area has a third of the population in a larger land area) and repeated suggestions that the subway is somehow bad because it is publicly funded.

I would love to see actual data that private transportation (whether Uber, Lyfts, taxis, shuttles, charter buses, etc.) are more effective or efficient that their public counterparts. I don't think that your complaints about the MTA are properly engaging with the article's thesis.

You're beating the wrong horse. I'm not arguing against public transport per se, but against the idea that the MTA resembles any kind of efficiency. Compare to Hong Kong, Singapore, Santiago, Chile, or really almost any other subway on Earth. The waste is incredible.

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