Full Shutdown of L Train to Be Halted by Cuomo | Hacker News Reader

Full Shutdown of L Train to Be Halted by Cuomo

nytimes.com

118 pointscribbles177 comments

The press conference had lots of details. Last I checked no recording has been posted.

The old plan called for replacing all of the bench walls along the length of both tunnels. Bench walls are the short concrete casements which house the cables needed to power the train and provide communications. Replacing them was necessary because of leakage to the cables which corrodes them. It would have been a total gut removal.

The new plan is to 'rack' the cables along the walls, which will improve access and be way cheaper. It's some kind of hanging cable system. Some of the bench walls are damaged, so they will be removed or patched on an as needed basis. Otherwise they are obsolete, so the important bit is that they don't fall onto the tracks. There will be sensors to monitor for problems with the remaining benchwall.

These techniques have been used in new tunnel construction outside the US, but never to rehabilitate an existing tunnel. It seems like a much needed improvement over the old plan which will have less costs and inconvenience.

>It seems like a much needed improvement over the old plan which will have less costs and inconvenience...

This is true. (Along with everything else you posted.) At the same time though, all of this will mean less money for contractors. I have no problem with that, just wondering how much resistance this thing will meet? Because I know a lot of entities out there were banking on making a lot of money off of MTA lines in the near future.

There will be plenty of money, at least for this initial contract. The full-shutdown contract was already issued, which will either lead to lots of legal wrangling as the MTA cancels the contract, the mother of all change orders that drives up the cost, or a little bit of A and a little bit of B.

The better engineering is certainly a plus, but the time to have brought this up would've been two years ago when they started talking about all this in the first place. Cuomo has been the governor for a better part of a decade, this reeks of political oppurtunism.

I agree that it would have been better to plan it right the first time, but would spin this a little differently:

The governor shouldn't have had to get involved at all, but I think it's good that he did. I wonder about the planning process that made it necessary. Something was screwed up there.

If this is opportunism, more of that, please, rather than letting bad plans go through.

You might already be aware, but the MTA was founded by NY state and much of its management is nominated directly by the governor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au...

It's a corporation distinct from the state government but the governor still influences major decisions, whereas the local government doesn't have any direct control.

My not so wild guess is that the politicians and government employees (and their unions) are too cozy with the construction unions.

Public infrastructure projects in general seem to have above market costs and NYC is sort of notorious for problems in this area. (e.g. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...)

The subway is governed by brinksmanship, and is set up so that the governor can have as little or as much perceived influence over the subway as is convenient.

The governor pushing the MTA to complete the Second Avenue Subway on time: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/nyregion/second-ave-subwa...

The subway was then found not to have completed safety testing in the sake of opening "on time": https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/nyregion/second-avenue-su...

The governor lambasting fare hikes that are largely the result of his administration underfunding the agency, and blaming it on "waste" by his own administrators: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-cuomo-mta-f...

In fact, this most recent thing happened after he decided to interrupt subway service in this tunnel for a photo op two weeks ago, despite the fact that his agency has known about it for almost three years now. http://bedfordandbowery.com/2018/12/watch-gov-cuomo-sample-t...

  It's some kind of hanging cable system.

Here's how cabling is done in some parts of the London Underground system: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-cables-on-a-station-wall-o...

The Saint Petersburg metro does the same thing since they frequently deal with moist and wet conditions in the tunnels.

I wonder what the loss of space on one side will mean operationally. I often see people on both sides when they're doing work.

Also tickled me that they're just going to leave the existing cabling in place. It's like physical tech debt.

The whole thing did somewhat come across like a hacky patch though. Although I do have to wonder how feasible it would have actually been to remove all the benchwall (which is attached to the inner lining) without damaging the inner lining.

That said, if the hack works long enough to keep it up until all those AmazonBux buy a new crossriver tunnel, then good on 'em!

Hacky patch through or in-place incremental refactoring? (Honest question, my knowledge of the subway in general and this plan in particular are limited to the comments here)

this is classic example of how U. S. infrastructure projects are slower and more costly than other countries.

Other countries would shut this down and build then reopen, inconveniencing many. We will spend more and keep this going longer instead.

Another great example is on 101 freeway in california they just finished replacing a bridge in palo alto. They did not shut the freeway down while it was literally replaced from underneath the cars. It took 3 years and caused horrendous traffic daily. I wonder how fast it could have been done if they shut down 101 entirely on that stretch.

i know it’s easy to complain about how long these things take, but what would you rather have?

Is that what they were doing? OMG that's pure insanity. Traffic in the South Bay and going to the east bay through Dumbarton SUCKED because of that.

I'm not familiar with the alternate routes there up north. But I know in Los Angeles, shutting down the 101 essentially shutters the doors of many businesses. Employees simply can't get to work. So I'm not sure it is desirable to shut a road down rather than cause huge delays.

Let's just say there may be other factors to consider besides net project cost. Like, say:

- The economic strangulation of entire neighborhoods

- Disrupted access to health care and educational opportunities

- Disrupted access to one's place of employment (for a great many people)

- All of these disproportionately affecting, you know... lower income folks (and not so coincidentally, communities of color).

- The spillover affect of all of the above on the regional economy as a whole (and hence -- on tax revenues available to the same governments who need to fund this construction in the first place).

Stuff like that.

But that's exactly the problem -- local governments are powerless. They can't fix the BQE due to opposition from Brooklyn Heights community groups. Can't build skyscrapers south of Atlantic Terminal because they'd be too close to the community gardens. Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building".

These are all valid concerns but taken together and they prevent anything from getting done. Good intentions, bad results.

>Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building".

Are we now considering "lower Manhattan" to be south of 30th?

That's actually a bigger definition that I usually use. I typically cal 14th or Houston the cutoff.

I'm a Houston and below kind of guy. Once the streets lose their numbers, its lower Manhattan (and I get lost).

I find that argument compelling, but I still vote 14th. That's where the west side starts to curve in and the streets stop being rectangles.

It's true that there are numbers between Houston and 14th but they no longer necessarily make any sense. Consider the corner of W 4th St and W 13th St for example--that shouldn't exist.

That's just quirky West Village stuff. I'd actually love to find a book on the history of why they abandoned the 90 degree corner and went off the grid pattern just for that small section.

When you go east of 6th things are still screwy south of 8th because of NYU and Washington Square Park. Then along Bowery / 4th Ave (!) things are screwed up again. It ends up being between 1/3 and 1/2 of Houston to 14th street that isn't a nice neat grid.

At the end of the day it's arbitrary but I'd say the core grid part of the city is from 14th to 96th. Even within that it isn't perfect, for example Broadway goes whatever it feels like going, but mostly you aren't going to get lost there.

I'm not saying it's a great situation.

Just not a "crazy" one.

Can't redevelop lower Manhattan because everything between Houston and 30th is a "historical building".

You know perfectly well this isn't true. Not even half of the lots in that area meet that description.

The main reason you "can't" just rip up and re-develop Lower Manhattan is... it's already one of the most sensibly built places on the planet - and so "redeveloping" anything beyond selected corners of it would basically be pretty stupid.

Oh and plus the fact that it's already owned and the land is like really expensive and stuff.

local governments are powerless.

Also nowhere near true, but whatever.

> it's already on of the most sensibly built places on the planet - and so "redeveloping" anything beyond selected corners of it would basically be pretty stupid.

What? Almost everything between Midtown and Downtown is a 4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal? It's why they're redeveloping old office buildings in the Financial District to be apartments -- it's one of the few spots in lower Manhattan that allow high density housing.

> You know perfectly well this isn't true. Not even half of the lots in that area meet that description.

I was being slightly hyperbolic but the effect is the same. The strict height/density restrictions are intended to preserve the "historic" neighborhoods.

Almost everything between Midtown and Downtown is a 4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal?

4-5 stories (at 2-4 apartments per) is quite good density, actually.

Not when it's artificially restricting supply. It's good density for a mid-size city, terrible for a city as large (and growing) as New York.

It's quite natural, actually.

And it's what you'd call a tradeoff, not a one-way restriction.

I actually have no idea what is informing your thinking here, on both counts, its like you are just making stuff up as you go along.

>Not when it's artificially restricting supply

Wrong. You are neglecting the very non-artificial fact that bedrock depth has always been the main limiting factor for that part of Manhattan between Midtown and FiDi, or more so that its only because of the uniquely solid and deep bedrock under FiDi and Midtown that skyscrapers exist here at all. If they could have built skyscrapers there, they would have. As building technology permits, gradually, they are. Regardless, the housing that does exist is simply not as you describe. When was the last time you spent any time in New York?

>It's good density for a mid-size city, terrible for a city as large (and growing) as New York.

The area we are talking about, between FiDi and Midtown, holds over 250k housing units for close to half a million people. 75% of those units feature 20 or more units. That's a range of about 100-150 people per acre. Manhattan overall contains 70k residents per square mile, across all boroughs its 27k per sq. mile, the highest density in America. That's not including office space, or the daily working and visiting population which is easily double that. Even Brooklyn has over 3x the density of Chicago and almost as many people. Its not Tokyo, but it sure as heck isn't Indianapolis, not even close...

Btw, we aren't ants. Quality of life is a thing and building density not to mention aesthetics and history are huge factors to the desirability and livability of the city. Go to Hong Kong if you want to live in a cage with 20 other people to a room in some modern-industrial neo-commie-block. You are basically picking on the only parts of the city with any actual character or beauty that anybody with a clue would want to live or visit and saying they should be destroyed because you ignorantly think that the most densely populated city in the country needs more housing density? Talk about artificial factors.

Not in Manhattan. They could be 10x the size and still get filled.

The point is that when you're looking to redevelop, you go after low-hanging fruit -- like, for example, low-rise / brownfield industrial districts where the industry and people left decades ago and would otherwise never be coming back in great numbers. Like say the waterfronts in Brooklyn / Queens (which are of course exactly the areas the city is focusing on).

You don't just seize and destroy neighborhoods that have been thriving and integrated for 150+ years, like the East Village for example. Which seems to be what you're proposing.

(BTW I say "seize" because what you're proposing would never happen alone on any significant scale without eminent domain).

> (BTW I say "seize" because what you're proposing would never happen alone on any significant scale without eminent domain).

How so? Landlords would jump to sell their rent-controlled buildings to developers who are champing at the bit. City programs are the only thing preventing development from happening.

Landlords would jump to sell their rent-controlled buildings to developers who are champing at the bit.

This is wishful thinking, on a number of fronts.

For example one does not simply "sell" (meaning, in the context of proposed redevelopment: purge all the tenants from) a rent-controlled building in NYC. Or even an existing coop or condo building, for example.

I fall pretty close to the maximal end of the YIMBY spectrum but there are real tradeoffs between the 4-5 story walkups and giant towers.

Central Paris has a residential density higher than NYC despite composed almost entirely of 4-5 story mixed use walkups. There are lots of reasons that this is a pretty ideal, human scale existence.

Those 4-5 story walkups in the East Village have a population density of 113,000 per square mile. If a half of NYC had the same density, our population could be 16 million people which is 2x the total population in NYC.

If the greater NY metro area (13,000 sq mi) had the density of 4-5 story walkups in the East Village we could house 1.5 BILLION people or many times the entire population of the United States. Of course all of this assumes linear scaling which is entirely inaccurate but the point is that 4-5 story walkup density is entirely sufficient to meet housing needs.

The challenge is getting other neighborhoods to 4-5 story walkup equivalent density.

This comment rings true to me. Old cities in Europe are not very developed vertically but they all have those old 5 stories building with internal courtyards etc that are NICE to live in because they foster community and knowing your neighbors. I with SF and the bay area had more of those.

I agree. Wall-to-wall European style large blocks with 5-6 stories and inner yards are by far my favourite type of urban area. It's pleasant to the eye, and results in dense enough population to allow viable first-floor businesses and public transport with tracks (tram/metro).

>4-5 story walkup, how is that ideal?

As you go beyond 5 stories the construction methods required to support the building change. (this obviously is an engineering consideration, you can get a little higher with good engineering). Thus this is ideal because you cannot get denser without increasing the costs to residents. For the poor a small apartment in a 5 story building is as cheap as you can get (this is just equal share fixed costs and ignores supply/demand, taxes, and all the other considerations that go into rent prices). We can build taller of course but the per unit rents must be higher to support the increased construction costs.

The EV / LES designations always seemed particularly perverse to me. These neighborhoods were built at the highest density possible at the time in order to provide cheap housing for immigrants. Visually blocks vary between dull and outright hideous.

The best to honor the history of those neighborhoods would be to build and build and build until units became affordable again.

Especially since it all used to be just the LES. The EV as such was (largely) a creation of the real estate industry.

Local government is very powerful, especially in NYC. One of the features of democracy is that voters have influence over what their government does.

When you think back to the days when US governments had the ability to do everything, consider the downside. You get "great men" like Robert Moses who bulldoze everything and destroy communities, or build highways to make it difficult for "undesirable" minorities to travel.

Plenty is getting done in NYC.

Plenty is getting done in NYC.

Indeed, the changes in the last 15 years (due almost entirely to government intervention -- mostly at the city level) have been quite profound. The idea that local government is "powerless" is simply disconnected from reality.

These are all valid concerns but taken together and they prevent anything from getting done. Good intentions, bad results.

As someone who follows closely the real estate press news and has some sense of zoning controversies (and for what it's worth own a building), I think your comment is full of hyperbole and false commentary.

There's massive development at the new "Essex Crossing" in the LES. There's massive development at Atlantic Terminal at the edge of downtown Brooklyn / Cobble Hill. Along Broadway in Brooklyn, in between the Bushwick and Bed Stuy border, tons of development. "Broadway Triangle", at the bottom of Williamsburg, tons of development. 1000 units coming online on Flushing Ave at the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg. Everything I just said is not "low density housing". It's medium and high density.

Astor Pl and along Bowery has existing construction, and even more planned! Hudson Yards..

I could go on and on but your comment is hugely misinformed. The controversies in NYC around "NIMBYism" are NOT the same as California, with ideas around single-family homes and such.

Suggested media sources in the future:

therealdeal.com

newyorkyimby.com

ny.curbed.com

Finally, density comes at a price. When those people leave their high density housing, where do you think they go? When they take a shit and flush the toilet, where do you think that goes?

The density has made much of Brooklyn a nightmare commute as it is -- it takes a year to build a 12 story or whatever building, but it takes decades to upgrade our shoddy infrastructure.

> There's massive development at the new "Essex Crossing" in the LES. There's massive development at Atlantic Terminal at the edge of downtown Brooklyn / Cobble Hill. Along Broadway in Brooklyn, in between the Bushwick and Bed Stuy border, tons of development. "Broadway Triangle", at the bottom of Williamsburg, tons of development. 1000 units coming online on Flushing Ave at the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg.

You know what the common theme here is? They're all poor or working class neighborhoods without the political organization to fight back against redevelopment. You know the only reason that they would bend over for the L is because of the trendy Williamsburg $$$.

You know what the common theme here is?

The only common theme I see here is that you never seem to acknowledge the gaping flaws people have identified in the arguments you're making. Instead you just keep changing the subject.

If there's something in particular you'd like me to respond to, I will. Otherwise this isn't a constructive comment.

Essex Crossing and Atlantic Terminal are poor?

There's no political will? There's political will for affordable housing, which is related to housing density. Hence the zoning changes are attached to below-market rates for 20-30% of the newly-built units. Next there's plenty of political organization with varying opinions - some want more, some want less of this development. It's all trending towards more.

Most of the stuff being redeveloped is re-zoning to residential to something that wasn't. Pfizer for Broadway Triangle, Rheingold in the case of that project, Essex Crossing was empty lots, Pacific Park unused / commercial stuff...

I'm done replying piecemeal to someone's emotive factual errors. I sent you some links in my previous comment to explore. I don't do "Reddit" style emotive discussions.

> Essex Crossing and Atlantic Terminal are poor?

Yes? Essex Crossing is right near the LES NYCHA and was not at all a nice area until very recently. Furthermore, saying "Atlantic Terminal" is misleading -- they're not developing Fort Greene and Park Slope but that messiness up towards Fulton.

> I don't do "Reddit" style emotive discussions.

That's fine, although this is a forum for discussion. I'm not sure what you want here.

The way forward is to fix the problems, mostly corruption and might-as-well-be-corruption, that lead to NYC being the single worst place on the planet for public works projects. Not to throw up our hands and stop building.

NYC being the single worst place on the planet for public works projects.

I'm not sure what the way forward is, and I wouldn't begin to know how to fix the corruption problem. But I do know that blatant hyperbole like the above can't possibly begin to help.

No rail project anywhere has spent even close to what the MTA is spending per km on either the second avenue subway or east side access.

I suppose you could say somewhere like Syria is worse because they can't even try, but it seems a pretty defensible statement.

No rail project anywhere has spent even close to what the MTA is spending per km

Eyeballing figures for certain other modern projects in comparable cities readily indicates this simply isn't true.

Well, Van Ness as an example - couple businesses are already shutting down because you simply can't see them behind the fences. Others are doing ridiculous sales and anything they can to get noticed. I only saw 3 months ago official city signs labeling the businesses hiding behind green-tarp-covered fence.

I almost feel like it would have been better to shut down Van Ness north of city hall entirely, and leave the sidewalks wide open and unfenced. Or only allowed bus traffic.

The proposed border fence with Mexico is $23 million a mile. China can build a mile of high-speed rail for $30 million.

China will have 25,000 miles of HSR before the first part of the California HSR is completed.

How much of that price comparison is driven non-direct factors?

In other words, is it a function of efficiency in project management or cost-of-living?

Simple comparisons can hide a lot of confounding factors.

China is beating all other countries in high speed railway construction. And they really need it too. With the massive population they have, cars and planes are not enough for people to travel/work in their economic centers.

Keep in mind the median Chinese income is under $2700 (and average a little over $3000) [0]. That's a huge part of why its cheaper to build things there - labor is an order of magnitude less expensive than in the US.

[0] https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2018/january/incom...

I’m simply pointing out the world’s second largest economy is able to do things that the world’s largest economy can’t.

I’m sure there are lots of reasons. I doubt the salaries are the only explanation.

With these advantages it’s quite likely that their ability to build infrastructure will enable them to take the number one spot in the world

They're already the number one spot in the world, their net purchasing power is higher than the US. Their nominal GDP being lower than the US's is an economic choice made by their government to keep growth happening. This said, China will never be a rich country in the way the US is due to it's incredible size.

It's one of the advantages of an all-powerful government.

The project itself benefits from labor+scale. They are able to scale manufacturing by declaring the size and scope of the project. Similar to what the US did with road-construction... hundreds of contractors appeared to manage interstate projects as it was a well-known, decades long effort.

The other factor is that the political environment in China allows for cheap, low friction seizure of land and homes.

The US is capable of doing the same thing -- we did it for 50 years to build the interstate system. What is missing today is the will at the Federal level to invest billions. States lack the ability to borrow/print sufficient funds to build like this at scale.

Turns out slavery, limitless debt, unfettered authoritarianism, and rampant abject poverty has its advantages when it comes to completing major infrastructure projects. Who knew.

How much of the $30 million is labor and how much would that labor cost in the US?

Good question, but it still is misleading. Because labor is cheaper in China they tend to hire people to do what machines would do in the US. 100 men (for hormonal reasons you would need a few more women but otherwise they work just fine) with a shovel can dig a hole as fast as one man with an excavator. When labor is expensive you go with the excavator, when labor is cheap the humans are cheaper because they maintain themselves.

Other countries would just build a new tunnel

Is there an example of another country undertaking a project like this?

Also, "just dig another tunnel" is not a simple proposition in Manhattan, ridiculous cost of the Second Avenue tunnel aside.

You are dammed if you do, and you are damned if you don't.

It is a political time bomb no matter who is in charge regardless if the damage was done by an Act of God (Hurricane Sandy).

The L Train's shutdown was going to occur for 15 months. That's a long time. I don't doubt that it was necessary, but i'd be livid if i lost my main commute for 15 months.

On the flip side, if its going to take 15 months with a full shutdown, it's going to take forever with a partial/slow service.

What do people think about a slow of service, then going into a full stop of service with significant communication? People would be nudged to find alternates and spill over isn't going to overwhelm alternate routes.

The article says the new plan will take 15-20 months. Sounds like a big win to me.

One thing to remember is that the Canarsie Line had years of partial shutdowns between 2004 & 2010 to install new signalling & operations technology.

> What do people think about a slow of service, then going into a full stop of service with significant communication? People would be nudged to find alternates and spill over isn't going to overwhelm alternate routes.

At least in the Brooklyn part, they previously shut down the M to beef it up to be able to handle the new riders. There has been ton of advertisement of the whole process, and descriptions about what to do instead. People have been planning around this for a while.

In other words, that's what's already happened.

> I wonder how fast it could have been done if they shut down 101 entirely on that stretch.

I worked with a contractor for Cal-trans 25 years ago. I'll give you an answer.

One month.

That's how long they said an overpass takes if you pre-stage everything and then shut the freeway down and work 24/7 till done.

They also say everyone just deals and local businesses don't go under when business slips for a month. But there is a lot of economic damage when construction goes on for years.

Edit: Old SF native mentioned to me that West Oakland went under during the BART construction because people couldn't get to their jobs for years. And the Castro switched from a working class neighborhood to a gay neighborhood because workers had trouble getting across Market. Workers left, gays moved up from Polk St.

They've been replacing highway bridges in MA in much less time. They prefab and build up the new bridge next to the highway, then shut the highway down for a weekend, tear down the old bridge, roll the new bridge in place, anchor, and the highway was ready for use the next Monday morning. Rinse and repeat for the other direction.

They did 14 bridges in 10 weekends, cf. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/12mayjune/...

Wasn't there an overpass over I-5 in Seattle that got replaced, maybe ten, fifteen years back, due to fire damage from a truck fire? (please don't stop under an overpass if your vehicle is on fire!)

I think that took a month or two to replace but the actual bridge work I thought only took about a week and a half. Can't seem to find it on Google. Anyone remember when that was?

Something like that happened in Oakland, CA in 2007. Took 26 days to repair.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputa...

Oh my. That’s a bit more drastic. In the case I’m thinking of the span never failed but the engineers didn’t trust the steel anymore. They closed the overpass and replaced one span.

This happened in the MacArthur Maze area in Oakland:

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/A-MAZE-ING-His-reputa...

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/us/30collapse.html

>They did 14 bridges in 10 weekends

Meanwhile the invoice from the state police billed for 14 whole weeks of traffic detail. I'm sure that's just a typo on their part... (For anyone unaware, state police billing for hours that were never worked is a recurring scandal that happens every couple years in MA.)

Public works projects are generally treated as a "feeding trough" so to speak in MA. It's good to see them getting done faster though. Fingers crossed that they eventually decide that fixing the commuter rail is cheaper than paying Keolis to be the scapegoat.

There's no where to stage anything at this particular bridge in Palo Alto

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4525982,-122.1278058,3a,60y,...

The satellite view is helpful: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4527175,-122.1282551,157m/da...

Southbound there isn't much room. Northbound, seems like there is space directly adjacent to the bridge.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.4529936,-122.1276526,3a,60y,...

That area you see in Sat is part of the bridge they were rebuilding; the frontage road.

This doesn't track perfectly as its a road not a train, but similar enough to be worth mentioning.

A fire took out a section of I-85 in Atlanta in March 2017. By May 2017, it was carrying cars again...one month ahead of schedule.

https://www.wabe.org/how-have-i-85-repairs-happened-so-quick...

They did Mullholland over the 405 in Los Angeles in a weekend.

After the 1989 earthquake, despite significant work being needed in multiple damage areas, Highway 17 was reopened in something like 8 weeks.

It sounds like some software war room meetings. Everything is oversubscribed and if you have to take one thing down for maintenance (even a redundant thing) turns into the apocalypse.

One system starts emitting 50% more traffic and everything else falls over because everything is running at 80% of capacity all the time.

We're trying to combine our multi-region and failover efforts and I just know it'll take about a week for us to have all data centers running at more than 1/n of capacity. And then instead of having no war room when one data center goes offline we'll have one when anything hiccups.

You should have 1/(n-1) capacity in each region to support any region going down, if n is number of regions. https://youtu.be/q1klRdPh-V8 Or hit me up if you wanna chant more about this stuff - it is a passion of mine. (And we’re hiring...)

Is this really a classic example when the article states:

The alternative plan was recommended by a panel of experts convened by Mr. Cuomo, who called the new design a “major breakthrough’’ that had been used in Europe but had not been tried in this country.

“What these people have designed is the first of its kind in the United States of America,’’ said the governor who was joined by the engineering experts who had come up with the plan.

If you want some semi-reasonable and informed commentary, the Twitter account 2nd Avenue Sagas is good: https://twitter.com/2AvSagas. It's more honest and direct than most overly deferential media coverage.

If you're up for an additional dose of stupidity, consider the fact that London shuts down the Underground completely (with a few exceptions) every single night for maintenance and repairs. Every inch is inspected each 48 hours.

Why the MTA can't do this kills me and partially explains why people screamed bloody murder about a complete shutdown. The signaling system alone is held together by the equivalent of tape and chewing gum.

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/3/29/17176200/new-york-subway-sig...

If I was in his shoes I would have just said, "Either deal with the loss of the L line, or agree to tolerate a less than 24/7/365 operating schedule." Alas, the L is the only line I know of which uses PTC, which is designed to alleviate some of these issues.

There is no third option.

BART gets shut down every night for maintenance inspection, everyone complains about how you can't ride BART at night.

You can't win.

The winning condition isn't to get zero complaints.

NYC has been shutting down particular lines for maintenance on nights and weekends (as needed) as a regular thing over the past few years. (And while I can't speak for London, the US systems that take night-time breaks hardly use them to inspect every inch every night -- they include DC, where negligence has been chronic enough that partial shutdowns to deal with it are stretching into weekdays.)

Because it was done on an 'as needed' basis, the distinction I would make is that these shutdowns (IIRC) were to deal with acute issues. A more regularized schedule, where shutdowns are part of normal operation and are documented well in advance might lead to a situation where problems (like those on the L) are less frequent to begin with.

The MTA doesn’t do this because people actually depend on the subway at night.

Getting around London after the underground is shut is incredibly inconvenient, and even they have been moving the most important trains to all-night service.

Yes, but maybe convenience has to suffer? What (for example) if a monthly shutdown happened? Is there any model of regular maintenance outage you could "countenance" instead of just saying "but that is inconvenient so it shouldn't happen"?

What if it was done one line at a time weekly?

Seriously: do you think there is no model worth exploring here?

Yes, but maybe convenience has to suffer?

So, no buttered roll for you on the way to work in the morning because the bakery staff couldn't get to work at night.

The bodega on the corner is closed anyway because the morning people have to do the stock because it the overnight staff couldn't get in.

Garbage trucks block your way because the garbagemen couldn't get to work overnight.

There's no morning news because the thousands of people behind the scenes couldn't get to work over night.

The cleaning crew in your office vacuums while you're on the phone because they couldn't get to work at night.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who work overnight in New York City. Nine-to-five stopped happening in New York in the late 1700's.

And yet people live in London and Paris and lots of other cities without 24h tubes 365. Seriously: you cannot conceive of a night service using buses? That's how Melbourne works around tram and train failures.

Your examples are not convincing.

You do realize that the L was closed every weeknight (22:45 to 05:00) as well every weekend, from circa Oct 15 through Nov 30 last year [1]? And yet people got their bread and newspapers, and the world did not go under. Comments like yours are hysterical hyperbole.

For the record, the JMZ are running close enough to the L that, while an inconvenience, for many people in the Williamsburg/Bushwick/Ridgewood area, it is a viable alternative. The L isn't everything.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.gothamist.com/amp/articles/...

MTA runs 24 hours. Lots of people take it at night. I do all the time. Shutting it down at night would be an incredible inconvenience.

You can avoid traffic at night so driving / busses are more viable replacements.

24/7 operation means higher costs and more random failures.

Driving is not a viable replacement in NYC. You would need a car. Most people don't have 'em, and even though traffic might be light there's still nowhere to park 'em.

I was more thinking Taxi / Lyft than just a personal car. That covers occasionally being out late, working the night shift means you can take the subway one way and just take a bus back.

Taxi/Lyft are waaay more expensive than the subway. Unlimited subway/bus is $116.50 per month. Taxi/Lyft could easily be $50/day or more depending on how far out you live. This is not a viable alternative for most people.

Sure, if your doing this daily the bus is a much better option. Without a running subway you would expect relatively increased bus service.

But, for the occasional trip the cost benifit tradeoff of the city saving vast mounts of money and reduced delays is worth a few people being inconvenienced.

The point is that this is a daily commute for many people, not just the occasional trip. NYC is a 24/7 city and there are substantial night shifts at all sorts of different businesses, very few of which are making enough money to swing a daily hired car.

At which point a bus is a 100% viable option.

Too bad they can't cross water on their own (you know, Manhattan being an island and all that).

> can’t cross water on their own,

Ahh, did not realize you where trolling about a world without bridges. I mean wtf dude, the inefficiency from running a 24/7 subway reduces the city's ability to afford more bridges.

Manhattan has plenty of train tunnel river crossings with no nearby automobile crossing. Go look at a map.

"reduces the city's ability to afford more bridges"

Further, Manhattan is just not that big. Nowhere is very far from anywhere else when you step aside from the horrid congestion.

Have you ever lived in NYC? This is just plainly wrong.

Where can I get that rate? My 30-day pass is $121.

i think its because they are correcting for the commuter tax deduction. ask your HR folks about https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dca/about/commuter-benefits-law.pa...

Nope, just out of date. $116.50 was the price prior to the increase to $121.

The commuter tax deduction lets you buy the cards with pre-tax money deducted from your paycheck, which is a substantial reduction up to 45% or so depending on your marginal tax rate. Of course, because it's using pre-tax money, it's giving a bigger discount to higher earners, which makes it the opposite of progressive, which seems opposite of what's intended.

Separately, seniors/disabled people pay half fare: http://web.mta.info/nyct/fare/rfindex.htm

Turns out the monthly price was raised from $116.50 to $121 in 2017, so I'm guessing you moved here since then. I'll confess that I don't buy the monthly passes because I bike to work every day, and thus don't take subway nearly often enough to recoup the monthly costs.

There is a surprising amount of street traffic at night in much of the city.

Driving and busses are absolutely not a viable replacement for the subway in NYC, at anytime of day.

It shouldn't be a big deal to bring in a few buses to run those routes at night. Just shut down one line at a time - or whatever you want to work on. Ideally you time the traffic lights so those buses always have green and so the times are not slower.

Politicians are rarely if ever rewarded for thinking long-term. (note that this often applies to corporate executives too)

If you're up for an additional dose of stupidity, consider the fact that London shuts down the Underground completely (with a few exceptions) every single night for maintenance and repairs. Every inch is inspected each 48 hours.

It's bloody murder, as you say, to turn NYC, whose delis/bodegas, restaurants and bars stay open until 12, 2, 4 am, all night, into London, where most bars end at 11pm, and restaurants much earlier. Part of that is cultural and part of that is that service staff can't necessarily afford Uber (which was banned too, wasn't it), or taxis, which cost a fortune. Yes, the night bus, that IS something London has that NY doesn't (the buses in NYC are atrocious).

NYC would be a different city if they shut down subways at midnight. The existing maintenance is already a nightmare (and an alphabet soup of outage notices).

I agree that we shouldn't make the tradeoff that London does. I'm a NY lifer and being out in London past 10pm makes me feel like I'm skulking around in a period drama.

But bus rapid transit is real and many of the people who make this city run (my dad for many years drove a cab he picked up from a garage in LIC) already depend on buses for their last mile commute. It is entirely possible to do five years or a decade of overnight subway shutdowns with BRT supported by real enforcement and protected lanes while preserving the city's culture.

To people who want to make the case for buses and cabs, I have one question, how is this actually better?

By definition, it's still considered public transit, but you are subject to the same traffic patterns and congestion as private cars (admittedly, an additional expense).

Subways and Light Rail avoid this mess entirely. Not that there aren't still problems (Signals, PTC v Permissive Blocks, etc.) but you're much less likely to be stuck somewhere for long periods of time not moving.

The L train is frequently shut down at night and weekends for maintenance.

That's not what people are screaming about. Shutting down the L train for 5 hours, like the London underground, happens often and is OK. Shutting down the L train for 15 months is a completely different situation.

In 2003, Indianapolis completely closed the major Interstate artery through downtown over the summer to replace all the bridges at once[1]. It went pretty smoothly, faster than expected and under budget (the contractor was awarded a bonus of $1MM for every day it reopened ahead of schedule). I-65 and I-70 are pretty major arteries across the country, luckily Indy has a convenient ring interstate, 465, that most through traffic was able to utilize, as well as plenty of alternative highways for locals to use to get to and around downtown.

I don't imagine something similar would work all that well in the Bay Area, though, since there's really only two routes to take up and down the peninsula, and both are near capacity already.

Looks like they did it again last summer, to a lesser extent [2]. I no longer live in the area, so don't have any firsthand knowledge of how smoothly that went.

[1]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/04mar/01.c... [2]: https://www.in.gov/indot/3687.htm

It's crazy that the NYC transit system is controlled by the state government in Albany, a bunch of folks that pretty much don't use it at all.

You think that's crazy? Austin Texas has passed on, I think to date, since 2001-five transit improvement programs voted down by a majority of people who don't even use CapMetro to begin with (glares angrily at west Austin)-in addition to lots of other vitally needed city improvements like, new zoning ordinances-which the city punted on after five years of deliberation and planning, not to mention a good amount of money hiring 'consultants' to help City Council figure out how to write the plan they eventually abandoned (CodeNEXT)

Glares angrily again at West Austin

But hey, we have "bendy"/rapid-transit-style buses as of a couple of years ago that don't even use protected lanes, so at least we can fit more people on a gridlocked Guadalupe St during rush hour than normal buses. OH! And a toll lane on Mopac now that charges you based on how congested the "loop" is and is guaranteed to be just as congested as the non-toll lanes.

Austin Texas: A cautionary tale in applying chaos engineering to city planning.

Grinds teeth into powder

so are they voting it down because they are being taxed for something they cannot use or benefit from directly?

as for toll lanes, welcome to the the new means of permanent revenue extraction. Atlanta got them in spades including one near billion dollar installation that cannot be used if ice threatens because its nearly all bridges. people had to fight to remove tolls that were promised to be removed from GA400 years ago after it was paid off so now the state just switched to "express lanes" which is a PC way of saying toll lanes.

Having a bustling city center in easy metro access while you sit comfy in the suburbs seems like a great benefit to me. Drives up your land value while you suffer almost none of the detriments to metro-ization.

So they pay a higher tax rate on higher valued property and get nothing in return until they sell their home and move to a different city? That’s not a great sales pitch.

You're not getting anything in return until you sell your home in any other circumstance (beyond leasing a room or the entire residence and hoping you can make a profit) anyway, what's the difference between higher property tax to pay for transit and higher property taxes to pay for, say, police pensions? Points to Chicago's property tax/pension nightmare

Maybe people would prefer the unstated third option of lower property tax.

so are they voting it down because they are being taxed for something they cannot use or benefit from directly?

I'm hesitant to say this is exactly it (or even that it's one specific thing), since--if memory serves, and I'm opening this up for someone who perhaps has a better memory than I do, there was a bond package in 2005 that wouldn't have even affected the western edges of Travis County as the Cities of Bee Cave and West Lake are unincorporated.

You say "revenue extraction" but why is it bad? Roads need to be paid for and having express lanes that convince some people to pay more voluntarily seems like a good thing.

Busses and trains aren't free (usually) so I don't see why highways should be free.

I agree. Probably the most sensible approach.

In some places the taxes on roads far outweights the cost for the gas tax/other forms meant to pay for the upkeep. Transit or general budgets keep the overflow. Probably a good idea in terms of transit funding as increased transit has a traffic clearing effect.

Nobody's saying highways should be free, but you're ignoring the fact that your federal tax dollars are supposed to be paying for the interstate highways, and the ad valorem tax, license plate fees, gas taxes and myriad of other vehicular fees you get hit with are supposed to pay for the local roads.

400 in particular was a dick move. They pitched a highway and said they'd fund it by making it a toll road, to be revoked once it paid for itself. It wasn't. Traffic backed up for miles so they could continue to collect a measly $.50 out of scope for years.

I have no problems with the new PeachPass lanes _that were constructed for the purpose_.

Stealing existing lanes of I-75 that taxpayers paid for "because congestion" and turning them into PeachPass lanes so that the well-off can pay for an easier commute while simultaneously making the rest of us who can't afford to do that have an even more congested road is folly IMO.

Also, if you ride your bicycle, rednecks in lifted trucks will push you onto the curb and shout out the window "are you trying to die?" Choose a motorcycle, people will swerve at you.

Whenever I bring up that I won't be in staying in SF, people inevitably say "oh, I heard Austin is a hot new tech hub! You're from Texas, aren't you?"

Yup. From. From. And likely never going back.

Yup. From. From. And likely never going back.

I'm a few weeks now into relocating to the midwest (which is why I still say "we" when I talk about Austin), and I've said the same thing.

Austin is a marvelous place to spend a weekend or a couple of days if you want to see a festival (I still think Nashville is the better "live music" city), but I will never live there again unless it transforms dramatically so much of their transit issues, housing issues and traffic issues, not to mention finding a city council with a backbone.

I don't think I can put it to words and have it sink in any better to someone who hasn't lived there how livid I was to see the news that council abandoned CodeNEXT. That was the move that got me packing up and forced my hand to get the hell out.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20180802/codenext-to-code-nix...

FTA: Since the first draft of the revised land-use rules was released in early 2017, CodeNext has laid bare the ideological differences between pro-density urbanists and neighborhood preservationists, who have sniped at one another for months in public meetings and through social media.

Yep. That's pretty much describes my near 20 years living in Austin to the letter. About the only thing those two groups can agree on is "build another toll road so far out of the city it takes a 20 minute drive to the eastern edge of the city limits just so you can go north to Pflugerville and not sit on I-35 for an hour and a half"

I hear you. I'm unable to even tolerate the dystopian traffic these days. Austin is going to NIMBY itself straight to hell. Eventually the infrastructure just plain isn't going to work anymore. A breaking point exists out there and they're stubbornly barreling towards it. I was born in Austin in the eighties and I can't stand going back anymore, even for a visit. I hate it there.

Austin is going to NIMBY itself straight to hell.

It's already happened IMO.

Knowing nothing of Austin politics, if West Austin keeps holding up the spending for something they won't/don't even use, wouldn't it make sense to only charge the people who actually would use it? Either splitting West Austin into its own city so they're free from the taxes, or extending the CapMetro out to West Austin so they can benefit from it, or...?

It's easy to blame those guys for not seeing the benefit you would get from the extra tax, but if you put yourself in their shoes, they probably have more pressing issues that you yourself don't even have on your radar.

It's crazier that it's paid for by the state government in Albany, with taxes collected from the entire state. The control is a side effect of that.

Seems fair, though.

40% of NY's tax revenue comes from NYC. Add in the surrounding areas (Westchester, Long Island, etc.) and non-residents who commute and you get up to 82%.

https://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2018/feb/01/r...

Interesting, although the article is strangely silent on the subject of property taxes, which are extremely high in NY. NYC and surrounding areas undoubtedly have higher property values, so perhaps the ratio holds, but the rest of the state is very very big. It may also be that property taxes don't find their way to the state coffers, I'm honestly unsure.

It's crazy that the NYC transit system is controlled by the state government in Albany, a bunch of folks that pretty much don't use it at all.

Or given the fact the integrated metro NYC system (subway + regional rail) serves a very significant number of riders who do not actually live in NYC proper --

perhaps it's not so "crazy" after all.

It serves a very significant number of riders who do not actually live in New York state as well.

Said riders almost always pay non-resident income taxes to NY as well.

The tens of millions of tourists probably don't, though.

(Now, sales and hotel taxes, on the other hand...)

It's worth pointing out that a significant number of people who live in the bronx and queens do take metro north and LIRR respectively.

If they could find the money within nyc property tax base they would be able to fund without the state government.

Many would say Albany is controlled by nyc interests and why should citizens in cities like Buffalo in western ny fund nyc projects.

Most other (international) metros are owned by private entities (which may be owned by the government (e.g. Tokyo metro which is owned by both the Japanese government and the Tokyo government)).

If you let the city own the MTA, they'll never make hard decisions because they'll be at the mercy of voters.

Private companies owning metros is actually relatively rare. Note that public transit is usually not run for a profit, since many of the benefits of transit cannot be captured by fares. (Those companies that are privately run generally make money by owning the high-value land around).

A very interesting history of the NYC subway. https://www.amazon.com/722-Miles-Building-Subways-Transforme...

It's been years since I read it, but as I recall, the system was built by private entities, who were gradually driven out of business when the city set a cap on the price of a fare (first at a nickel, then at a dime). When they folded one by one, they got subsumed into the MTA, and I guess at some point it was decided that it was ok to raise the price.

I live in NYC but do not use the L, I assume this means the repairs are going to take 3 times as long as they are losing 5 days a week to work on them.

I use the L every day and I'm mixed about it. The L is already the fastest and most on time train in the city. It going down would be a massive inconvenience for me, but I want the city to take steps to improving the subway infrastructure. Backing down now just to get some votes is just kicking the can down the road to another generation to deal with

As with most thing NYC transit it's a mix. It would have been a huge disruption to people travelling into the city doubling commute times. On the other hand not shutting down the line means very important repairs have to be jammed into nights and weekends. Some repairs just won't be possible within that time so it'll have to get fixed later when the damage may have worsened.

I wonder if they could just run it during rush hour on weekdays, which would open up the middle of the day and nighttime for more work.

If you think New Yorkers don't need the subway after 9am or at night, you're deeply mistaken.

Well that isn't the suggestion; the L is obviously busiest during rush hour.

During the day would be disastrous, but doing as much work as possible from 1-5am (on a line at a time, not all of them) might work. Ridership and road traffic is low enough at that time to make replacement with buses feasible.

London does this, IIRC.

Yep, and it's mostly a non-issue. It might take you a little longer to travel at that time, but there are buses that will get you anywhere you need to go (and it's partly mitigated by the fact that the roads are empty at that time of night).

It's worse than that. They have to setup a job site every Friday night and break it down on Sunday night. Think about doing a craft/construction project in your house when you don't have a dedicated workspace, most of the time is setting up your workspace.

From reading all two minutes of the article:

> The new plan could be completed in 15 to 20 months

Seems like it will effectively render the L mostly unusable and extend the project time. It's a desperate gesture to commuters who were left with limited options for the shutdown.

It's a really nice train to ride day-to-day, luckily I can walk to work door-to-door in an hour, but when I think about others' situations it's truly going to be an insane inconvenience.

But there will be way less work to do with the new plan. The old plan was to totally gut the tunnel, the new one is to hang replacement cables and patch the concrete only where needed.

Who really knows what type of negotiations have been going on behind the scenes. I personally never fully believed a complete L train shutdown could ever possibly happen. You just can't re-route that many people without creating massive chaos. Brooklyn-Manhattan subway transit is already strained as is.

What we do know is that the MTA is controlled by the NYC construction mafia and is purposefully opaque. The MTA likes to give the appearance of losing lots of money so they can get federal aid. The money flows from residents and taxpayers into the pockets of union bosses and their construction company partners in the form of extremely lucrative construction contracts.

Bloomberg would probably have handled this crisis better. The proposed complete L train shutdown was unrealistic from the start.

>"What we do know is that the MTA is controlled by the NYC construction mafia and is purposefully opaque."

No the MTA is controlled by a political mafia in Albany - the MTA board appointees are made by the Governor and approved by the legislature.[1]

>"The MTA likes to give the appearance of losing lots of money so they can get federal aid."

No the MTA does actually lose lots of money though wastefulness, incompetence, corruption and bad decision making. This is distinct from the interference, underfunding and financial machinations of the MTA made by the state. See:

https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/mta-overtime-jumpe...

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/201...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mta-blames-uber-for-decline-in-...

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/html/who-runs-mta-15281.html

How is it possible that a better and easier plan was never considered to rebuilding the tunnels? This had been in deliberation for years and they only just now decided they didn't have to? If anything this just highlights the incompetence of the city.

Apparently they originally only looked at techniques that had been used before in the US. Agreed that the big contractors and old bureaucracies such as the MTA could probably use a round of inspiration.

The city doesn't run the subway, the state does.

Because this isn't a real plan, it's Cuomo wanting to grandstand as a savior.

"Cuomo’s tunnel experts spent just an hour evaluating damage" https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/cuomos-tunnel-experts-have-spe...

This is a terrible idea, and Cuomo has been widely condemned by transit advocates in NYC. It's insane that a plan that has been in the works for years is changed at the last minute by fiat of the governor. Also that they did not coordinate with the president of the New York City Transit Authority, Andy Byford. https://nypost.com/2019/01/04/cuomos-tunnel-experts-have-spe...

> The engineering team behind Gov. Cuomo’s miracle L-train cure has little experience working on transit projects — and spent a grand total of an hour evaluating the damage firsthand in the subway line’s tunnel

The new plan is to patch the tunnel rather than rebuild, which will clearly be a shorter-term solution for infrastructure that the DOT claimed was severely degraded.

Cuomo has controlled the MTA for EIGHT YEARS and except for the 2nd Ave subway has been useless in addressing its issues. He seems to be more interested in photo opportunities than actually fixing the budget, labor, infrastructure, and service issues that plague the subway.

I'm guessing the "experts" that floated this alternative plan weren't actually transit engineers but rather real-estate developers with very specific interests in Williamsburg.

In addition to securing financial commitments from these folks for his future Presidential run Cuomo relished the opportunity to portray himself as some kind of savior. Sadly for New Yorkers none of this is at all surprising.

I wonder if this is what he got in exchange for signing the "lockbox" bill into law [0].

[0]: https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/news/21039311/transit-lo...

So the plan is to leave the unused cabling in the tunnel and plaster some new stuff further up the wall?

I hope that there is a robust plan in place to deal with the old cabling which will continue to rot and at some point will detach leading to blocked tracks or possible train damage.

Apparently they will add sensors to continuously monitor the concrete for failures.

Presumably they will be scaling back the restrictions on low occupancy cars on 14th and Williamsburg Bridge. That was going to create mayhem above ground.

If HackerNews had the funding to start its own city do you think it could/would be managed any better?

What about Google City, would you move there?

No: fritz Lang filmed both of these in "metropolis"

Huge relief.

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