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Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

NYC is proud of its 24/7 subway service. Tell a NYer another city’s subways are better because of XYZ and they’ll shake their fist and say “but we have 24/7 service and they don’t!”

But I can’t feel part of the reason for the NYC subways many woes is because of the 24/7 service and the lack of maintenance and cleanup.

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I gotta agree with this.

If I'm waiting at 2am for a subway in NYC for 1 hr, versus waiting 6 hours for the first subway to kick back in if it's say, 12:01am in Japan or South Korea? Then IMHO it's better to just eat the cost, take a taxi, feel the burn of $100 to get home vs. say $2-4 for a 3am subway ride, and give the NYC MTA subway system time to work on repairs, renovations, additions, etc.

24 hour subway leaves no time at all to do any maintenance.

I really, really, really really really wish that NYC would just straight up plagiarize Japan or South Korea for their metro systems. Even their "next stop" displays are far superior than what NYC currently has.

One can dream...

NYC recently replaced some of their subway cars with brand new ones.

I’m in Seoul right now as I type this. Was in Taipei a few days ago too. The brand new NYC subway cars are already filthier than the older Seoul and Taipei ones.

I lived in Taipei for about 3 years. Technically it's against the rules in both the NYC metro and Taipei metro to eat on the train. Technically it's a weakly enforced rule in both places. A lot more people eat on the train in NYC than Taipei.

I would also say the behavior extends to more than just eating.

I don't know why they don't at least put a trash can on the train. If people are going to litter anyhow why not at least provide the off chance that hey they might toss their leftover food into the bin, instead of letting it roll all over the train for the next 16 hours. It's like the great ashtray removal in the last few decades. People aren't going to quit smoking because you took away the ashtrays, they will just toss their cigarettes on the ground where there used to be an ashtray.

Fire risk. Someone will toss a cigarette but in there and the next thing you know the train is on fire.

And this being NYC, you know it’s bound to happen sooner or later.

I once ate hamburger on an intercity train (Namba to Wakayama) in Japan because I hadn't eaten all day.

The train was parked with its doors open awaiting for departure time.

Just as I was taking another bite of sandwich, someone walks into the cart, sees me eating, and turns around and walks right out to walk over to the next car.

How do I know it was me?

There were only 2-3 people in the entire cart.

Guess I should've known better.

If you were eating a basic (nothing exotic) rice ball (onigiri), they would not look twice. Can you guess why? Smell. (You also did not mention if fries were included.) My advice: Eat the hamburger on the platform and take the next train. Or, try something with almost no smell.

It's common to see parents feeding onigiri to their kids on the train, even if it is "technically" (the best kind!) against the rules.

And if they were eating durian, everyone else would gang up on them and throw them off the train.

Even a durian crazy country like Singapore explicitly bans them on public transport, definitely won't blame the Japanese :)

I never thought of it before, but I don't think there is any food you can buy at Japanese station-platform kiosks that really smells. Very different case in Korea. On long-distance trains, there is always that guy with a bag of dried octopus...

Sometimes I’d shop around for a car or two for a perfect, heaven mandated seat for me, when the train isn’t leaving soon anyway.

It should be no big deal, unless people are really keeping distance from you and standing in the next blocks of seats. That happens, like, a man with garbage bags is grumbling nonsense. Bags of fries and 551 takeouts at 5PM usually won’t trigger that… just appetites :p

    Technically it's against the rules in ... the NYC metro

This is incorrect. Google something like "can i eat on the nyc subway?" and you will find many articles telling you what is and is not allowed on the NYC subway. Eating and drinking is allowed. A NYTimes article from 2017[1] says the main reason to allow eating & drinking on the subway is for children who ride the metro to school. Many eat their breakfast on the train. There is a real public health concern that, if eating on the NYC subway was banned, many children would not eat breakfast before school.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/nyregion/mta-reconsiderin...

I stand corrected. This is probably a more authoritative source, though:

https://new.mta.info/document/36821

But do note this:

> (f) No person shall bring or carry onto a conveyance any liquid in an open container.

Nice follow-up. During my short research, I was surprised to see they make a specific carve-out for drinks from an open container! I guess it makes sense, as the train might stop on short notice. Also, if you really think about it, it is weird to travel on a train drinking something from an open container(!). It would normally have a lid/cover.

I’ve generally understood open containers to include drink containers with lids, at least for legal restrictions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-container_law

> The possession of cans, bottles or flasks or other vessels containing an alcoholic beverage could potentially result in a violation of open container laws.

> To be “open”, in most cases, means that some of the contents have been removed, the seal is broken, the cap is off or the alcohol is otherwise readily accessible.

Even the wording above makes it sound as if interpretations can vary, though.

> There is a real public health concern that, if eating on the NYC subway was banned, many children would not eat breakfast before school.

Why is that a public health concern? Not eating breakfast is completely normal. Many children already don't eat breakfast.

Exactly.

Maybe the problem with many things in the US is that institutions that should not be dealing with certain issues are forced to deal with them by various interests.

The MTA should not be in the business of ensuring schoolchildren are fed. Nor should they be in the business of being adhoc homeless shelters.

Ezra Klein just wrote an article on this exact topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/opinion/democrats-liberal...

Thank you for sharing this. That was an informative read. I’ve seen Ezra’s name around before, but I’m not familiar with what he’s known for.

not eating breakfast isn't healthy, thus making it a health concern

the health of the children of a community is a public concern of that community

> not eating breakfast isn't healthy

In what sense? It has no adverse effects. Are you worried about spiritual pollution?

in the sense that not eating breakfast does indeed have adverse effects on children

You technically have to pay to use the NYC subway too. You're also technically not allowed to smoke crack on it.

Or just nap in a capsule for 4 hours before taking the first train home.

NYC subway is basically a situation where the horse stable owners got their industry codified into the law. For example, there is a pension earning position on each train that is merely responsible for closing the doors, because this was needed with the technology of the time a century ago, but the transit workers union has ensured this good paying job will not be eliminated now that we have came up with ideas to solve the operator closing door issue (like a platform mirror). Now labor costs are twice as high for no good reason to run a train, since NYC subway needs to run them with two people while other transit agencies can run them with just one, or entirely autonomously even. Chances are there are a lot more positions like this, completely vestigial at this point, adding to overhead, but to be preserved seemingly until the end of time so that no one is told the bad news that their job no longer exists.

I know about the duo-operators in MTA. Before I came to NYC I didn't understand it either.

After I moved here and saw how violent and hostile people are towards the train, I actually came around on the duo-operations. If MTA doesn't do that it's likely many many people will be crushed by the doors, and you'd get a lot of broken trains.

I never saw as many riders actively breaking the train doors in eg. Japan/HK/DC/Seattle/SF subway.

>If MTA doesn't do that it's likely many many people will be crushed by the doors

Train doors look ominous, but are designed in a way to not seriously harm a human in a way.

Not the ones in NYC. I am telling you they hurt a lot more than ones say the Yamamoto Line's. I know people who got deep bruises from them.

The MTA train operators will aggressively chomp the doors closed on passengers attempting to hold the door for their friend or squeeze themselves into an already packed train.

That said, the NYC subways have far bigger issues than passengers getting bruised from aggressive door closing. Problems that don’t exist in many other countries.

Like slashings. Or being pushed onto the tracks in front of a train.

I still don't understand why that takes a separate job. Most other subway lines the operator does this too, even barks on the PA and sounds an alarm over the problem door, as well as has an internal camera they can switch on to see inside the car, but you don't need a second staffer because by definition the operator is no longer driving while doing doors at the station. MTA on the other hand has decided it needs to pay at least one person to sit and do nothing at all times during the train operation: the train operator who does nothing while the door operator futzes at the station, and the door operator who does nothing while the train is traveling.

That reminds me of the SNCF train workers in France who are retiring at 52 because of the "dangers" of operating the trains (from when they had to shovel and breath in coal to keep them running). The fact that they can shut down so much of the country when striking has made it very hard to change.

    24 hour subway leaves no time at all to do any maintenance.

This is incorrect. The NYC subway has a huge amount of extra tracks (side tracks and local/express tracks). I would hazard a guess to say more than any other system in the world. (How many other systems in the world have so many local & express tracks? It is incredibly rare.) This allows them to run maintenance at night, while there are much fewer regular trains running. This is partly why you need to wait so long for a train between 2 AM and 6 AM. A long time ago when I lived in NYC, during these "dead hours", waiting at a station, I would frequently see maintenance trains passing through the station.

To me, the real purpose of 24 hour train service is make the city a "24 hour city" -- for economic purposes. People working late shifts in office buildings (cleaners, maintenance) or factories (food, clothing, whatever) or restaurants/bars/nightlife can all use a very cheap, albeit slow, delayed, and low quality, metro 24 hours a day. What is strange to me: Why not replace nice service with bus service? It would be cheaper to run and they could spend more time maintaining the tracks below.

Last question: How many 24x7x365 metro systems exist in the world? I struggle to think of five.

The whole system? Does the whole NYC system run? That's impressive. Chicago has 24/7 operation on the red and blue lines but the others are generally off from roughly 1-4am give or take a bit.

Certainly all lines that enter Manhattan. Even the dreaded "G" line between Brooklyn and Queens runs 24x7x365, although you will be lucky to get one train per hour. You walk faster most nights. My guess: The (single) Staten Island line might stop for a few hours.

The Copenhagen metro runs 24×7×365. It's also a driverless system.

For maintenance they'll close one track and have the other one operating for both directions in that segment (at reduced frequency)

Hat tip! I do remember riding the metro very early to go to the airport a few years ago. The fact that the whole system is driverless is amazing.

When I lived in Tokyo, and would miss the last train, I would walk as far as I could until I would give up and grab a cab. This would only happen because I was drinking out at the clubs and it would be entertaining at first, but once reality set in, it was time to grab a cab.

> once reality set in

I wonder if that's a good way to work off the alcohol. When you start using up all the alcohol in your system, you start sobering up and then sobriety allows you to view reality. :)

> feel the burn of $100 to get home vs. say $2-4

Just so you know, this is not a choice most people can even consider. Mass transit isn't just to save you on an Uber, it's a public service.

In a lot of cities where train/subway closes at night they have express bus service that take you from 1 part of the city to another and then you can take taxi from there. So with a properly planned public transport system it should not cost you $100 nor would you need to wait 6 hours.

>24 hour subway leaves no time at all to do any maintenance.

I can guarantee you that they do maintenance 24/7. Having a break in service at night might help, but the idea that a system can complete all the required maintenance in a 3 hour window in the middle of the night is a bit silly. Many repairs take longer than that.

I live in NYC and am well aware of the so-called 24/7 service. The fact is that it's 24/7 only in midtown Manhattan. If you are on the 1/2/3 or ACE or 4/5/6 lines it's likely you'd get 'For the next 3 weekends services from some outer borough station to 178th street will be suspended from 10PM to 8 AM. Please use the connection bus from blah to blah."

Even the Q line, that is less than 10 years old, went though the same hassle in Feb, and that's squarely in midtown.

The 24/7 claim is exaggerated. Just ask the 7 line folks at the Hudson Yard's end what they think of the claim.

Also, during the weekend I find taking the bus to usually be faster than taking the subway. Literally buses creeping across New York is faster trains.

That has a lot to do with which parts of the system are 4-track.

As a user I don't care if a line is 2 track, 3 tracks, or quad tracks. What I care is reliability and convinence (and price too but my company is paying for it so blah).

If you live in the Bronx, there's a good chance you won't be going home at 1AM by trains, even if the crazies don't get to you first.

The point is that if you have a four-track system, you can shut down two tracks for maintenance and still maintain service.

I think this is the comment the entire thread needs.

Not sure if I'm helping but here's my attempted visualization[0]

0: https://gist.github.com/numpad0/6e77028ab3e073e4b02f17cf50d0...

As someone who lives in a city where we have both a train network that doesn't run 24/7 but also seems to have crippling malfunction once every 2 weeks that causes delays of hours across the whole network; the number of hours that transport is shut for per day are not reflective of how many hours there are for maintenance.

Which city is this?

Probably Sydney. (Not a bad train system, but definitely in a bit of a local minimum at the moment)

Sure sounds like Boston.

The lack of maintenance is an issue, but it's got very little to do with the 24/7 service - it's set up so they shut down half of each line overnight and do maintenance on alternate pairs of tracks, which should be a fine way of working (and is the same way that e.g. European night trains work - they'll keep one line open overnight for night trains while they work on the other). It's just decades of not doing it, not having enough funding, and more generally a total breakdown in state capacity to do anything.

Taipei's subway system is explicit and clear that the nightly downtime cannot be reduced for maintenance purposes: https://english.metro.taipei/News_Content.aspx?n=034BD8E0AB8...

It's magical when you can rely on public transport in a city to work during declared hours... You move without having to think about it, like fish in water. Any unplanned downtime always throws a wrench in the plan, if they are frequent then people will prefer private transport and clog the roads.

Taipei say they need 3:30/night for maintenance i.e. 24.5 hours/week. That lines up pretty closely with London's 5:00/night 5 nights/week, i.e. 25 hours/week. So I could believe that NY needs to shut each track pair for 25 hours/week to do adequate maintenance. But they can achieve that just as well by shutting one track pair for 7:00 each night rather than both track pairs for 3:30 (indeed you can probably get more done in one 7:00 block than two 3:30 blocks).

True, but that is assuming Taipei doesn't have extra tracks factored in...

I suppose there are other reasons for redundant tracks (a train malfunctions and needs to stop somewhere while the next comes to serve?) and during the times they are in maintenance there is no slack.

New York has the only consistently 4-track subway system in the world; they have convenient tunnelling geography and built it back when life was cheap. The ROI on building a new 4-track system would never stack up today (I suppose you could argue that it doesn't stack up for NY either in terms of the cost of doing twice as much track maintenance, but I believe they do use all the capacity during peak hours so it's not like there's really a business case for dropping down to 2-track).

Interesting!

Re ROI, I never thought it had to be positive for public transport... most wins from functioning transportation seem less tangible like increased public mobility (better for economy), reduced road congestion (=> less mortality while waiting for ER or police, better air quality), mental health etc. But I guess that's USA.

I love taking the subways in NYC. They have such a rich history and it’s so easy and affordable, but yeah… it’s also incredibly filthy.

I, too, love riding in an antique tin can (likely 50+ years old) driven by a maniac and infested with rats the size of dogs. It is still the best way to get around Manhattan...

I’m no bike zealot like some here, but I make it a point to avoid the subways as much as I can in favor of biking around Manhattan.

The only time I venture underground is when it’s pouring rain.

Even dodging cars, I find it a much less stressful experience than the subways.

I fully understand this isn’t for everyone though. And not just because of cars.

> But I can’t feel part of the reason for the NYC subways many woes is because of the 24/7 service and the lack of maintenance and cleanup

Come to Boston. We don't have 24/7 service and still close lines for entire days, weeks, or months to do maintenance.

I can live with a few hours for maintenance here and there, but I generally wish my city's tram service was more continuous. I don't think they do maintenance every night and it feels like defeat to have to take a taxi just to get home after midnight.

I grep up in a city where the last train would start its route at 0:15, or 3:00 on Friday nights. The first would be at six or so.

No problems with maintenance and cleaning whatsoever. Then again no homeless either, considering it's closed for a few hours of the day.

The maintenance cycle is also amazing for nightlife. In Tokyo the majority of late night establishments are open until 5am when the trains start back up.

Not really. Plenty of times people would be willing to stay out until 1 or 2 am but they go home at 11pm because they don’t want to wait until 5-6 am.

Agree. This is classic fantasy thinking about Japan life. The "all night out" thing is something that most Japanese people only do a few times in their life, with many regrets (horrible hang over, etc.).

Agreed. I'm sure Byford knew intimately all about it. In the end, NYC's problems didn't get solved because of Cuomo.

I assume that underground lines need more maintenance than overground. Does anyone know why this is?

That’s a spare ratio/labor problem not a 24/7 service problem.

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