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The number of metro stations is too big, they are so close that taking 1 stop ride is meaningless, walking is as fast. This makes metro very slow. But the number of RER lines is very low. Both are not very reliable - I mean the number of nines in 99.[here]%. I'm not even sure it's above 99% in Paris. Other than the strikes, I've had more problems with metro/subways in a year here than over 17 years in Moscow. Random unannounced station closures, someone forgets things on a station and a line stops for an hour, etc. And the strikes are a bad joke, why are they legal!? With the strikes, average reliability is < 95%.

I really like how NYC has local/express sharing the same infrastructure. Manhattan has near the same height as Paris (Peripherique), yet it's possible to travel all the distance with 5 or so stops.

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> why are they legal

Worker strikes arent something you can legislate away unless you're going to start forcing people to work, which is, uh, let's say widely frowned upon.

If you want to end strikes, you'll need to convince workers that showing up is in their interest.

Banning striking need not involve forced labor. See the US government's response to federal employees striking: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Con...

Sure, but the original question was why is striking legal. Firing people for striking isn't the same as criminalizing it.

If you're responding to my statement of "can't legislate it away", then I suppose yes you're right that is an example of being able to do that and I should have worded that differently, but the key there is that it only works if your threat convinces the workers to return. Which, according to that Wikipedia article, it didn't entirely and their staffing levels didn't fully recover for a decade.

In Denmark you're only allowed to strike under certain circumstances, and primarily strikes happen every three years when collective agreements between unions and employers needs to be renewed.

This makes strikes a rare happening, and usually very predictable.

See: https://tema.3f.dk/bjmfimmigrant/new-in-denmark/are-you-allo...

When your employer is the government and you can vote out your bosses, why do you need a union and strikes?

Your premise is wrong because there are many people in the voting population who do not work for the government, let alone as members of the same working group. E.g, a bus drivers union can't on their on their own dictate who the mayor is.

The metro in Paris had an objective of more than 96.5% of reliability in 2018 according to https://actu.fr/ile-de-france/paris_75056/du-rer-b-ligne-13-... (in French)

All lines fulfilled this objective except line 4, with 96.1%

AS for RER, there is an official governemental website that gives the numbers: http://www.qualitetransports.gouv.fr/les-chiffres-de-la-ponc... (in French) The most reliable one in 2020 is the A with about 94% of reliability and the worst one was RER B in March, with 78.9%.

All these numbers are very very low, when you consider that this is essentially how Parisian are supposed to go to and from work, get food, go to school, the dentist and so on.

The best RER gets you late around 1 every 20 trip. So once every 2 weeks on average if you count two trips per day. The worse one doesn't get you on time almost every other day !

You basically have to factor the unreliability of the transport system every single trip. This is very far from something you can count on. Even for the best lines.

> this is essentially how Parisian are supposed to go to and from work, get food, go to school, the dentist and so on

How so ? Except for work, all the other thing you describes are basically at a walkable distance. And you also have a lot of buses.

As someone living in NYC I can attest that the local/express lines are great. But I'd kill for 95% reliability! The on-time performance in NYC is somewhere around 80% and likely to get worse with the huge budget issues NYC will have post-COVID.

Keep in mind that the Paris metro has 0% reliability if you need to ride it between 2AM and 5:30AM. Or rather it is 100% reliably not running during those hours. NYC could probably boost those numbers if they could do track maintenance during guaranteed non-running hours.

I was talking about the scheduled time - when it must work, but it doesn't.

NYC can already do that: it's not uncommon for express lines to be shut down overnight for work to be completed, for example.

(the entire system is shut down overnight right now anyway)

What do you mean by "on-time performance"? I lived for 6 months in Manhattan on 112th and it worked fine. Probably one or two times my station was closed in the morning and I had to walk down to the next one.

And as someone who lived in Moscow for a long time I can attest it is the gold standard. It's the second busiest (or top-3) and just always works as scheduled. One rare thing one could rely on that comes from the government.

Info from the MTA here:

https://www.mta.info/press-release/nyc-transit/new-full-year...

I regret to inform you that the NYC subway has many more problems than you experienced. Before the pandemic I traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan and problems were common. Much more common was just random slowdowns, sitting between stations, etc. that makes it a lot more difficult to know when you'll arrive at your destination.

I'm not sure, but it looks that OTP is much stricter measure than what I meant. I was talking about: I want to change from line A to B on station X (or exit on the station X)... Station X is closed, and I learn about that on station (X-1), or even just by not stopping on the station X.

It happened in Paris more than "extraordinary" number of times, so I have to put extra 15 mins to every important travel.

OTP sounds like: the train is scheduled at 3:25, it arrives at 3.26. Correct me if I'm wrong here. But if the normal margin is 5 mins for total time of travel, making it 15 mins is not nice.

The NYC Subway has a timetable, except no one gives a shit because it has very little relation to real life.

That’s pretty strange though, I don’t think I’ve seen a subway with a time table before. It’s too frequent for it to matter in the first place, you just need to know when the next train towards your destination is coming!

Available at https://new.mta.info/schedules

If you dont have one, how do you measure performance of the system?

Various approaches.

One could make the argument that a train showing up ten minutes late vs one on time doesn't really matter to a person so long as it shows up within a reasonable time of them getting to the station and it still takes them to their destination on time. If the headways are five minutes and every single train is running at the same speed just five minutes late, this is a distinction that doesn't matter to the passenger.

It has a timetable primarily because

- due to all the merging in and out throughout the system, trains need to be in the right place at the right time or merging delays will cascade throughout the system

- for purposes of employee scheduling, you need to make sure that the right employees are in the right place at the right time; generally a train leaving a terminal is being driven by a crew that had to come in from somewhere else.

It's also still useful as a general approximation for "how long should I expect to wait for the next train". Same with the bus lines.

Isn't that a different idea than a timetable? "We're aiming for one train every 10min" and "there's a train at 12.10, 12.20, 12.30" are similar, but not quite the same. You can get your approximation without a timetable though.

Tracked vehicles require centralised traffic management and scheduling as they cannot casually overtake one another as street traffic can, and setting switching points and clearing control blocks is required for safety.

Passengers transferring to other lines or transit modes may also appreciate predictability.

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

> too frequent

Depends on the line and destination.

Paris and surroundings is a really dense region [1], which tbh makes the actual functioning of public transit quite impressive in this city.

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

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