Ethics discussions often involve this sort of idea, although it's usually in terms of life-years.

You don't necessarily need to make that comparison: If you make the trains too slow many people will drive instead which is radically more likely to kill them than the train.

So you can still find that there is a speed risk tradeoff the minimizes death which is not the same as minimizing the train risk.

Worse for NY's problems is that in that decision people are probably using something like the 95-percentile trip time as the criteria: It doesn't help them if the train is fast on average since they need to schedule for the worst-likely case. The fact that the crews are playing roulette with an kafkaesque speed limiter system and risking disciplinary action should they anger it essentially guarantees that the times will be both slow and highly inconsistent.

Why do you find it sad? Everything has a cost. There are plenty of things that harm people every single day that we tolerate readily. For example, 91 lumberjacks died last year. There are way fewer employed lumberjacks than there are subway riders.

You’re right, it’s even worse than that. When public transit is constantly decelerating, crawling, and hesitating it (correctly) communicates to the riders society’s judgment that they and their destinations don’t matter. That if your trip mattered you would have your own car. It sets a waiting room atmosphere. Public transit is a purgatory for those with nowhere else to be to while away the hours. And pretty soon that’s who your ridership is and what they’re doing there.

> Life can't be reduced to (productive) time like this

Yes it can, and it's essential that we do it, because the alternative is a ruinous level of risk aversion.

The time they spend on the metro isn't necessarily productive time. Many people would be enjoying leisure with that time.