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Comment by subweigh | Hacker News Reader

for a stint i lived on the nyc subway system

one night i woke up flying across a subway car before slamming into one of the vertical hand poles

i was sitting, sleeping, facing the direction of travel and someone had pulled the emergency stop

it was 3am so the only people on the train where fellow transients

this fact must have been prominent in the mind of the person conducting the train because immediately they got on the comm and yelled, 'WHO THE FUCK PULLED THE EMERGENCY STOP?!'

the absurdity of it all helped me ignore the pain in my shoulder

i always slept with my back to my momentum after that night

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How many others were sleeping on the train?

If lots, how was that allowed to happen? If few, why not more?

train? unsure, the car i was in... maybe 2 other transients?

more nyc subway information than you'll ever need:

- nyc has a globally rare subway in that it is 24hrs

- you need to be sitting up to sleep on the train, if you lie down you can be removed (was so told by a cop when i was first arrested for sleeping on the train that this is 'the law')

- subways run the full length of a track, then back, then swap drivers

- when a driver swaps they have to remove everyone from the train so all transients get up and go across the track to the next train that is waiting to drive off

- the two longest trains: ORANGE(D,1h-1h15m before driver swap), RED(2,1h30m-2h before driver swap)

- meaning you could get about ~1h30m of uninterrupted sleep

- that was until i discovered the L train is driven by software and the conductor is there as a failsafe

- as such there is a different driver procedure and you can run the train back and forth all day all week without being removed, thats eventually how id get 8h+ nights

someone down thread said 480$/mo for tickets, but id rarely pay

> why not more?

i wondered the same thing, its warm, even in winter, and heavily populated, protecting you from assaults

im unsure what percentage of people without places to sleep choose the subway, but there are some options

there are shelters, but after my experiences there: caging you in or out after curfew, once shut a lawlessness among the people, being placed in rooms with territorial long termers, structurally and hygienically questionable building; i decided id rather risk the street

but it was a winter with a foot of snow on the ground so i tried to sleep in a decommissioned subway stop where there were others sleeping but was woken up by the blunt end of a cop's foot

when i explained i thought it was okay to sleep here because i saw others doing the same the cop responded, 'that guys been there 7 years, get the fuck out of here kid'

hostels at the time cost about 30$/nt for a bunk in a room with 40 people, in brooklyn, so out of my price range but once i got a job i would stay in one once a week to take a shower

> how was that allowed to happen?

compassion, human decency, empathy

i jape, though thats why, im guessing, most riders accept it as a reality

but its probably more to do with poorly handling government resources to address the issue that some people need to sleep sitting up on a subway to have a warm place to rest

I appreciate your story and hope you're doing better now. I wonder why there's so little done about not only homelessness, but simply shelter. The homeless don't want to get in the way of people and the people don't want the homeless to get in their way. Yet the side with the resources doesn't seem to care to do much about it.

This is the fundemental reason urban places vote for social programs (Democrat) and rural places vote against them (Republican). Homeless people on subways don't affect people that live on farms. The rural urban divide is rational self interest manifested in politics.

No, it’s not. You’ll find plenty of dirt poor rural people that would benefit from entitlement programs just as much and they still vote Republican.

Similarly, Vermont keeps voting in Sanders despite there not being homeless issues there.

Dig deeper.

First let's dig more shallow. Op asked why we don't do anything if everyone involved wants something done. The answer is we vote for it and we do do something. It just so happens the severity of the homeless problem is in equilibrium with political will. Now to dig deeper.

>You’ll find plenty of dirt poor rural people that would benefit from entitlement programs just as much.

The big difference is in an urban area even the non homeless want to solve homelessness because it's a public nuisance that directly affects them. See any thread here complaining about sf. In rural areas poverty is a much more private problem.

As for Vermont, you're cherry picking. By and large it is undeniable that the Republican/Democrat divide follows an urban rural line. The exceptions are parts of the deep South (where the racial divide is more prominent), and parts of the coasts where liberalism is so dominant even the rural areas are blue. I don't know the mechanism for the latter, but if I had to guess I'd say a big part of the rural population in those areas aren't farmers but retired professionals living in mcmansions. I know people like that but let's not get into anecdotes.

I'm going to double down here. It's not just attitudes on entitlement programs that are influenced by rational interest among urban and rural residents. Literally every hot button political issue can be understood in these terms.

Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime. Owning one is deeply impractical and police response times are fast enough that you don't need one. In a rural area guns are still practical and police response times are slow.

Take endowments for the arts. Guess where the all the state subsidized art ends up. Hint: it's not Topeka Kansas.

Want me to keep going?

So it sounds like a more distributed government is a good idea. Metropolitan areas living as city-states, with rural areas having their own rules and laws. Both having separate budgets for local issues.

Speaking of which - if cities and their urban populations want to solve homelessness, why can they not do it on a city-by-city case, locally? A tragedy of the commons type issue, where a city that takes care of the homeless better will have more homeless people heading there?

This is a great idea! Maybe restructure the nation as some sort of constitutional republic where the federal government holds limited power (foreign trade, interstate commerce, defence) and the states are left to run day to day matters themselves. We should form a party we could call ourselves Republicans.

I kid but this has been a known problem for two thousand years. The solutions are continually rediscovered, reimplemented and then ignored by later generations that "know better".

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."

- Aristotle

You could do what the EU does, and make the upper house consist of the state governors. That way, for the upper house to approve an increase in federal authority, they actually have to vote to move power from themselves, as individuals, to the lower house (this is a part of why the EU is relatively unimportant compared to the constituent EU nations).

That's the way the Senate was (essentially) until we explicitly changed it with the 17th Amendment.

Except that senators were not popularly elected, but elected by the state legislature (so corruption was easier). Sending the governors themselves to DC would shift powers back to the state (a good thing, imo), but governors wouldn't have much time left for governance.

I think we could improve upon on current system by adding a vice-governor to the governor's ticket, and subjecting the ticket to the popular vote. Then the governor could send the vice-governor, his popularly elected subordinate, to Congress, which would help shift power back to the states. As it currently stands, senators do not feel a need to pay heed to their states' governors.

I'd say the power to leave is also a nice feature, it forces the larger government to provide some sort of value and not step on too many toes or risk being disbanded.

Imagine if California was free to regulate all of healthcare for itself. They could write whatever socialized medicine program the voters desired all while not burdening the people of Texas with the cost who perhaps prefer a free market solution of some kind. As different states implement different programs people would be able to vote with their feet as to what was the better deal, causing states to compete with one another to offer the best deals to its population.

States are too small to effectively implement what they want? That isn't a problem as they can contract with each other and if that goes south look to the federal government to resolve the dispute.

Still wrong. Maricopa county voted for Trump in 2016 and barely went Blue in 2018 despite being a massive city and not being in the colloquial “racist South” to which you refer.

You’re too shallow in your assumption that everyone wants free stuff from the government and only votes against it when they don’t benefit.

>Take guns for instance. Guns in cities are synonymous with gun crime.

Boring trope. Owning a gun in any Texas city isn’t a problem at all, including Austin, which isn’t exactly a conservative stronghold.

Very interesting facts. Hope you're doing better.

Thank you for such a thoughtful reply.

May I ask why you didn't go to a homeless shelter? NYC is legally required to provide beds to everyone who needs one.

What do you mean allowed to happen? You pay the fare, no one is checking on you. Of course, some people go overboard and set up camp (blankets, shopping cart, etc), but even taking up space and carrying bulky items isn't prohibited AFAIK, I've put my feet up and carried luggage with me. Just aren't a lot of rules down there.

As far as why not more, it's not a great place to sleep...

> You pay the fare, no one is checking on you.

In London, you'd get woken up at the end of the line, and a valid ticket for unlimited travel back-and-forth is fairly expensive — around £13 ($16).

Or maybe there's some other reason, but I hardly ever see homeless people sleeping on metro trains.

A significant number of homeless people in London sleep on night buses. It's warm, it's reasonably quiet on the top deck, there's full CCTV coverage and the weekly fare cap is £21.20.

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/londons-homeless-boarding-ni...

The subway is a flat fare, $2.75 no matter how long you ride or how many transfers you make. Not to mention it's really easy to get on without paying.

As for why you're allowed to stay at the end of the line -- it's probably a mix of liberal policy, lack of manpower, and general "not my problem" attitude.

It's because there is no "end of the line". It's just another stop. These things are essentially infinite loops.

Not all of NY subways are loop lines right? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway#/media/Fi..., I can't identify a loop line in the NY system at all, not like Beijing that has a couple (line 2, line 10), and of course Tokyo's inner city rail loop lines.

Usually, if a non-looping subways hit EOL, there will be a sweep and a rest period. Looping subways might just change drivers and keep going...well, it can suck when you are on a train that is retiring (in Beijing, they just dump you out and tell you to wait for the next train...).

After the Queens Blvd locals (M/R) terminate in Forest Hills, they loop around through Jamaica Yard, meaning non-revenue track. Stragglers being asked to alight is a common sight.

> Usually, if a non-looping subways hit EOL, there will be a sweep and a rest period.

Generally this is a short rest period, ~ 10-15 minutes max during peak times and 30 minutes max otherwise. Nobody's kicking you off, you can just wait until the train starts back the other way.

It's also generally the least busy part of the line.

The second greatest problem on NYC's subway for people who wish to "live" there (after rush hours) has to be the light. The fluorescent is unavoidable.

The south end of the Lexington Ave line is a loop.

Is it? I’m not sure I see that. The 4,5,6 doesn’t appear to loop anywhere as far as I can tell, nor do any of the NYC lines.

It is a loop, but passengers are not allowed on that segment. If you manage to stay on the car, you also get to take a quick peek at an abandoned station.

Ahhh, yea, in that case I believe the bottom of the 1 is as well in the Financial District. Very small loop. Always interesting to get on there because I think it's the tightest curve I've found and the trains probably at a good 6 or 7 degree tilt there. Neat stuff.

Technically, I guess, but they do hold at the terminal stop for a while, and employees sometimes do a quick walkthrough or spot check.

The motorman has to move from the back to front, if he's staying on. Or he's off and someone else is taking over. So yeah they're there for at least like 10min.

Or the train is being removed from service. That's not really going to happen in the middle of the night but definitely happens during times when they are decreasing service (after rush hour, after like 11pn)

Peak service on London Underground is done by "stepping back". You bring a train in, switch off (allowing your driving cab to become a trailing cab in a second) and step out of the cab, then another driver steps in at the far end, switches that on, and the train announces its new destination and reconfigures appropriately. You begin walking down the platform. The train leaves, but in the time it takes to stroll to the far end another one arrives, so you get in and drive that one away. Thus drivers "step back" by one train each time they do this.

Don't forget the weather. Winters in New York are brutal.

I don't know about the NYC subways, but a number of jurisdictions in the US see metro councils / transportation authorities deciding to not check tickets at all, because of "disproportionate impacts" for certain racial groups.

It seems absurd to me to advocate petty lawlessness, but the public transportation systems are all so far underwater that checking ride tickets isn't going to practically move the needle anyway.

So if you're part of a certain racial group, you don't have to pay?

I think he’s saying that if they did check tickets, there would be "disproportionate [legal] impacts" for certain racial groups.

So they don’t check tickets for anyone.

If it’s true that’s crazy.

That is indeed the argument I have heard for not checking fares / tickets, and I think was the last link I proveded elsewhere on this thread.

One of the light rail trains near me is subsidized to the tune of 30 or so dollars per ride, so it's not like catching the small percentage of evaders will actually make a dent (that's probably 6 or more times the fare cost).

But it does seem like encouraging it by doing nothing at all is a bad idea.

That can be beneficial. SLC has a silly 2 hour window for returning on a two-way ticket. Fortunately nobody seems to check the tickets on a weekend.

That's a ridiculous assertion. In most major cities, you don't buy "tickets" for public transportation (except maybe light rail). Everything is fare based (used to be token based, but have mainly switched to cards). You pay the fare, you ride the subway or the trolley or the bus until you get off. The fare is the same no matter how far you are going. Most of these things travel in loops. You get to the end of the line, it either turns around, or just goes in the opposite direction.

I suppose my use of the word "ticket" could have been swapped for "fare" but the point stands:

https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2018/09/22/judge-rules-ran...

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/424036-329673-lawmaker-wa...

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/02/washington-fare-...

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/11/02/cleveland-police-enfo...

https://ggwash.org/view/69171/a-new-report-highlights-the-st...

Those were the top of a very brief search. If I looked a bit more, I'm sure I could find more examples backing up my original claim. There's nothing ridiculous about the assertion at all.

In Shanghai, it's fare based, but the fare is definitely not the same no matter how far you're going. The fare is determined as a function of where you enter the system and where you leave, with longer trips being more expensive.

There's no time limit; one entry will let you stay in the subway system all day. But you can't just live on the trains, because they shut down at night.

Somehow I suspect that if Shanghai can shut down the subway overnight, New York, with half the ridership, could handle doing so too, so the question "why is this allowed to happen" seems valid.

Because 24 hour train service is a massive convince that reduces car dependence and drunk driving.

Why does Shanghai metro shut down at 11pm? So early. Impossible to have a fun night out.

In nyc they have multiple tunnels for the same line, so one can be maintained while the other is active. Cities that shut down their metro do their maintenance then, because their lines don’t have a backup track.

Not sure about Shanghai, but in most countries there are (generous) time limits associated with fares, measured from first entry. Obviously this isn't enforced "in flight", but the gate will not let you out when you try to leave and you'll need to explain to staff why you've just spent 4 hours traveling one stop -- since odds are you actually went somewhere else and jumped the turnstile both ways.

I don't think there is a limit in Shanghai. A few years back there was a heat wave and the subway stations were full of people who just came to hang out where there was air conditioning.

Jumping the turnstile is... not common.

Shanghai subway closing at 11pm or earlier is a huge inconvenience, especially for destinations on Pudong side where distances between locations are quite big. It is generally a big (positive) deal when a subway announces it can do late night services.

NYC-style flat fare systems are actually quite unusual outside the US. Most of the world uses some type of zone or distance fares.

Zones are used for the light commuter rail service that connects to counties external to city limits.

Inside city limits, the distances travelled are so compressed (even interborough), that most trips are less than ten minutes of actual train ride.

Once you start dealing with zones, you also have to start operating on fixed schedules. The New York City system does have time tables but they don't really operate to the minute. The listed times are mostly just targets. More important is the frequency of trains, back to back trains (double capacity) with five minute frequencies during rush hour, and graveyard has 20 minute frequencies, everything else aims for ten minutes between each individual train.

Again, most people are travelling less than 45 minutes on trains set for 30MPH speed limits.

(Manhattan is only 20 miles long)

Hong Kong is significantly smaller than even Manhattan and still employs distance-based fares quite successfully.

I can go from my local station to the CBD (2 stops, around 5 minutes) and it costs roughly US$0.60; another 5 stops on the same line to get to my favorite restaurant bumps the journey to about 12 minutes and costs me ~$0.90. Crossing the harbor from Hong Kong island to the Kowloon peninsula takes less time but actually costs more (almost $1.50) thanks to tunnel fees.

On a side note, public transit timing is one thing that has been irrevocably ruined for me by living in HK. On my usual travel routes the train frequency is typically 2-3 minutes and during rush hour it’s on the order of 30 seconds - the next train often enters the platform just as the last car of the previous train leaves. Granted it does shut for a few hours each night, but even the other top Asian metro systems can't match it.

When I used to spend a lot of time in NYC (before moving to Asia) I had no problem with the subways; now it’s a significant consideration for me when thinking about moving.

I think that the gap between trains and the number of trains per hour is different. I can believe that there are sometimes merely 30 seconds between trains, but train frequencies don't really exceed, let's say, 50 trains per hour (and this is being very generous) because of a combination of signalling constraints and the need to reverse the trains at the end.

You're correct, but this is a mostly academic distinction on a network like Hong Kong's. The gap between trains is a much more important human metric, and it changes based on where you are in the network.

An example: you could fill as many trains as you could physically fit on a track coming from Central (the CBD) during rush hour; a train every 30 seconds or so is crucial to keeping things civil on the platform. As you get farther from Central, utilization falls until you reach a terminal station, where the time between trains can be more like 2-3 minutes without any problems. Through clever signaling you can achieve a much higher perceived throughput on the busiest stretches without actually running more trains.

In the Netherlands all public transport (from city buses you only use for one minute to intercity trains to the other side of the country) use the same chip card. You scan it where you enter the bus/tram/metro/train and scan it where you leave, you pay depending on distance travelled. The buses use GPS to calculate your cost.

> Once you start dealing with zones, you also have to start operating on fixed schedules

Why would that be? Plenty of cities with zonal systems (eg. London, most if not all Chinese metros) have turn-up-and-go high-frequency metros.

It's usually fine for high frequency metros, particularly in peak times with more trains, but time-based zone fares aren't always reliable in other cases.

For example, in most of Switzerland and probably Germany that uses unified zone systems for everything (intercity trains, local buses, boats, funiculars, etc.) the frequency of most train routes is nowhere near those of a typical bus.

Zones aren't usually time based though, they're based on where you got on and how many zones that is away from where you are when your ticket is checked.

The flat fare is actually more progressive when it comes to transportation. In a large city, poor people generally have to travel further for work, so a distance-based fare hits them harder.

But.....they also use the system more, yet pay the same as someone who uses the system less. That's not fair either, surely.

Depends on what you mean by fair. You might ask why should they have to pay a much higher percentage of their income to commute?

Well, perhaps both approaches are unfair. Perhaps you cannot have a system that's perfectly fair for everyone. That's not to say that you shouldn't try.

I found it amazing how far a single "trip" (~US$1) on the Barcelona public transport could take you.

What a great way to generally enable the people living in the smaller towns around the city, and keep the towns themselves alive.

Yea as a NYC resident who travels to SF I’m always amazed at the cost of the BART system. Seems super shitty for low wage workers traveling long distances.

And it adds up so quick, with no unlimited option.

I guess it’d be like taking the Metro North or LIRR to work everyday but it still seems like a lot of money to me.

Denver’s RTD is zoned. The bay’s CalTrain is zoned. Atlanta’s MARTA is not zoned (it is a considerably smaller system though). Those are all my data points.

In most major cities you swipe a metro card that calculates the fare where you got on and got off, or applies zoned travel on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual rate. In some cities you can just swipe an NFC bank card. To have a 'ticket to ride' seems ridiculous.

That's not very accurate. In North America, most cities are based on a flat rate. Most cities in Europe and Asia work based on distance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

In New York, for the subway, you pay your fair (usually with a swipe card) before you even get on the platform, and as long as you don't leave through the exit gates, you're free to transfer at any stop. They have no idea when you get off, and the fair is the same no matter where you're going.

Anecdata: I've fallen asleep on a late night Metropolitan Line train heading towards Aldgate before and I woke up by myself going the other way, at Northwood. I wasn't woken by any well meaning passengers or employees, nor was I robbed of my two holdalls on the seat next to me.

$16 × 30 days would be $480/month. Expensive for commuting, but cheaper than most apartments even in the cheaper parts of the US, let alone (surely) London.

You can't really compare living in an apartment with living on a train.

Also, generally for $480 per month there will be somewhere non-moving that you'll be able to stay, such as a hostel or a roomshare apartment (which isn't necessarily legal, but common in larger cities).

It's marginally free if you've already bought a monthly pass for other reasons

What about the Circle line? :)

(Oh, it isn't run in a continuous circle anymore, after a 2009 extension to Hammersmith. Shame.)

A round trip or two on the circle line was not very popular, but popular enough, for cohorts of bankers sleeping the night or lunch off. I never did it myself.

I hope you're doing alright, frankly better, now!

This is the why I always choose the reverse seats if possible.

Of course if someone is sitting opposite to you then they’ll slam into you in case of an accident, but I still think the chances of survival are better when facing rearwards.

You're correct, on any vehicle involved in an accident you're more likely to survive with your back facing momentum.

This was scientifically proven through the work done by John Stapp[1], who attached himself to a rocket sled facing both directions and at one point became "the fastest man on earth" by breaking the land speed record at 632 mph and sustaining 46.2 g's.

His research is the reason why most military transport planes have seats facing backwards or sideways.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp

IIRC it was more like 120g's (which caused temporary blindness)

http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm

The takeaway should be "make sure you can't hit anything". Sitting with your back to the stop often helps you not go flying and hit anything when no proper tie downs are available but it's just a rule of thumb. If you have even just a lap belt your going to be better off facing forward in the event of a crash because of how the human neck works.

It's also how the cabin crew sits in a plane during take-off and landing. Passengers sit facing forward, but the crew sits facing backwards.

Find it strange that planes don't use them more often. I ended up flying BA business once and half their seats are backwards. It was quite novel, takeoff felt a bit weird but besides that no difference.

Went researching it after the flight and apparently reverse seats are far safer for injuries, especially neck and torso related.

Because motion sickness. I can absolutely never sit backwards even on a train, and plane take offs make me queezy as it is. I suspect there are people with much worse motion sickness issues

All air passengers are less safe, just so some people can be more comfortable? That is not optimal.

I would literally vomit everywhere if forced into such a configuration. At that point it becomes everyone’s problem.

Air travel is safe enough as it is.

Military passenger planes often have the seats facing aft. Even when they're the same model with the same chairs as a commercial airliner, they just install them facing aft.

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