NYC Rat Sightings (Daily) | Hacker News Reader

NYC Rat Sightings (Daily)

realtime.org

82 pointskmdupree81 comments

The seasonal changes in rat count are likely due to rat behavior, but do we have any evidence that the long-term change over the years reflects an actual increase of rats rather than more people using 311 to report them?

Relatedly, Transit app is doing real-time analysis of rat sightings in the subway: https://transitapp.com/rats

Oh neat, as a Transit user, I always wondered if they were using data from those train/bus stop questions

And all the city has to do is put their trash in cans. But that would remove some parking, so they choose rats. I don’t get it at all.

Anyone from NYC know what phenomenon causes the short period up and down?

When the weather is colder in NYC, there are fewer rat sightings. But don't be fooled -- it's not because there are magically fewer rats, but instead likely due to several confounding factors such as being darker more often while people are rat-watching, colder weather driving rats to stay indoors more often, and more rain/snow/slush making the furry rodents harder to spot.

Also, people just generally being outside less often

trash (rats' food source) is usually picked up twice a week in most places in the city, it never lines up perfectly to 'half-way through the week', and sometimes the 'other' collection is 'just recycling' (less organic matter to feast on)

I'm guessing the most frequent submitters send consistent reports when they can see rats on their block going after the trash (twice-ish a week); if more people in different areas reported as consistently, it might even out (some places have trash pickup monday, some tuesday, some wednesday...) (assuming all areas have equal concentrations of rat)

Could it also be that in NYC you just put trash bags directly on the sidewalk/street? It's very unusual to see, as a visitor.

thankfully that's becoming a thing of the past

It’s funny how completely normal it is and feels like here but I’m sure it looks entirely barbaric to outsiders. I was in Chicago and frankly astounded with their alleys as if they’re from the future

They are now phasing in rigid trash containers for collection.

I live in Brooklyn and we have seen alot of construction around our block, which has also led to more rat sightings and a huge jump in trash can/bag attacks from hungry rats.

All my times visiting NYC I never saw a rat.

All my life living on the river around Boston I saw them all the time. And man they were the big ones.

I have added nothing to the discussion.

I was once standing outside a night club in Brooklyn, next to a construction site, when a rat came charging around the corner being chased by a cat. The rat smacked straight into my ankle and bounced off, briefly stunned. The cat also froze, trying to take in the situation. A split second later they charged down the sidewalk into the gloom.

The rat was so big my ankle hurt the rest of the night.

POV: you're the foreground art in a Tom & Jerry cartoon

When my wife lived in NYC she was walking home one night when there were an unusually large number of rats running around. She noticed that Fred Armisen (actor, comedian) was walking down the middle of the street next to her, and he looked at her and said something to the effect of "What's with all these rats?!".

I love Armisen. The skit he did with Malkovich about a calculator is my favorite thing ever.

He recently did a show in my city. Before the show he visited the art museum where my wife works as a curator. He spent a good amount of time chatting with the staff, and then mentioned how nice the museum was during his show that night.

Completely unrelated, but it was fairly recent and I found it super charming. He’s always been one of those celebrities I want to like.

Who is responsible for picking up a dead rat in NYC? The biggest rat I ever saw was a dead one on William St and as an alien I wasn’t really sure what the protocol was. No one else around paid any attention to it.

Call 311 or use their online form.

That would be DHMH[1] or Sanitation, maybe. You may be able to put a report in via 311, but I wouldn't count on a timely response (unless you count "a bigger rat eats the already big rat" as a response).

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

I don't think I ever saw a rat on my dozen plus trips to NYC, but since moving here several years ago I have seen more than I can count. Many of those were in 2020 when I would see large groups (5-10) roaming around at night in search of dwindling food sources.

From a subway platform, look carefully at the tracks. I'd say a ~ 75% chance to spot a furry friend.

Lived in NYC for 5 years and saw my fair share! Definitely not small ones

Strangely enough, where I saw the most rat ever (by far) was early evening around the mall in DC.

It's a shame NYC 311 doesn't include attachments from reports. I'd love to create a ratty version of https://poolette.pages.dev/

Why would someone ever make this?

This is a very nice website! I would love some Baye Area graphs.

this is fun. thanks for making it!

Can I get a San Francisco poop graph?

Who the hell has the free time to bother report rat sightings to 311.

Exactly -- this chart exhibits massive undercoverage bias for the actual proxy measure (number of daily rat sightings), except the skew in this case likely means the actual value is much higher.

Somehow, I'm thinking that this won't come as a surprise to any NYC resident.

I was surprised when I visited to see piles of garbage left out on the sidewalks, seemingly with no purpose other than to breed rats.

The purpose is so that garbage trucks can collect the trash. NYC has very few alleys.

Other large cities manage to have trash bins on wheels to collect trash without making it a garbagefest for the rats and other vermin.

Good thing that NYC doesn't have a large driving population that might as well threaten to start riots if they lose free parking spots

There was a NYT article recently asking this very same question[1] with some background information about the pecularities specific to NYC which make the problem more complex. Obviously, this could be fixed, but would likely meet with fierce resistance from many constituents.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...

> but there’s also a growing number of bins chained to bike racks and sewer grates to prevent people from stealing them.

This is fucking wild. Who in their right mind steals trash bins? What would one even want to do with trash bins?

As someone who lives in Brooklyn and moved into a place where I was responsible for trash a couple weeks ago, it took ~1 week for someone to swipe my rolling trash bin, graffiti it, burn a couple holes and leave it a few blocks away. No idea why, but it definitely made putting bags on the street more appealing

my recycling bin got stolen multiple times in Portland, but mostly because they are handy totes.

locally, garbage companies (not sure if just some, or all) scan the barrels and verify they are both at the right address and paid before picking them up.

And most of those cities have alleys to store the trash bins.

It's a problem, but it's not such a big problem that anyone wants to actually solve it.

The options seem to be:

- Sacks of rubbish left on the street, potentially for many hours (e.g. café closes at 18.00, rubbish is left outside until collection at 05.00-07.00). London has this in some central areas. [0] (took about 3 tries to find this.)

- Individual bins (usually with wheels) for each property, which must be left at the front of the property. It can seem excessive if there's not much space to store them, you end up with a road cluttered with bins. Many towns in Britain have this. Literally the first place I looked [1].

- Almost-individual bins. I saw this somewhere I stayed in Sweden, where one house had the recycling bin, and the next had general waste, and so on. Half as much bin clutter on the street.

- Larger bins, shared between several properties. Much less street space, much less effort for collection. [2] (also London). In many cities in Europe these take up one parking space on each street/block.

- Larger underground bins, which are neatest but presumably the most expensive solution. [3]

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.522472,-0.1188006,3a,75y,50....

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8093732,-1.5728046,3a,75y,10...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4893475,-0.1432088,3a,90y,22...

[3] https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers

- Also in NYC (Roosevelt Island) have every building hooked up to pneumatic tubes and suck it all into a central collection location.

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/26/539304811/how-new-york-s-roos...

I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings.

Even in the suburbs, residents of single-family houses typically need to bring their garbage/recycling bins to the end of their driveways. I think the only time that this isn't the case is when there's a special contract for certain isolated apartment buildings or complexes where the rubbish is stored in larger garbage dumps for the sanitation crews to pick up.

There is a difference between a garbage bin and a pile of garbage. NYC has piles of garbage bags just on the street.

NYC has both, because I generally consider compost a type of garbage and that is definitely stored in bins and hauled to the sidewalk, at least for the buildings that have opted into the composting program.

New York City only recently got the memo about putting garbage into bins.

(Really!)

Not being sarcastic. Every other place I've been uses containers (wheeled bins, cans, dumpsters) to prevent rats and to make collection cheaper.

What is the purpose of piles?

> What is the purpose of piles

We like to keep out-of-towners rattled.

At the cost of rats everywhere? I guess it works. At least I have an alternate explanation for why it's tolerated, even though I don't think this is a serious response.

See? You’re rattled

Where would you keep the bins? Where would people park when the bins are out? How many bins would a say 15 floor apartment building have?

> I think you're being sarcastic, but the purpose of leaving the garbage bins outside is so that the garbage trucks can pick them up, as their contract stipulates that they pick up from the sidewalk and not from inside the (numerous) buildings.

Uh. Where I live – on the other coast – we just place our trash in plastic containers. We place them on the street the same way. Garbage truck picks them up and the driver doesn't even have to get out of the vehicle. No rats, more efficient, no people cutting their hands because they are picking up plastic bags and there's glass shards in them. Nobody has to even touch the containers.

> the driver doesn't even have to get out of the vehicle

Does everyone orient their bins correctly and precisely enough for the truck's pickup device? Is the pickup device so flexible that it doesn't matter?

Perhaps surprisingly; yes. Most likely only because the population density of tertiary markets still allows it.

One week of your garbage not getting picked up will change your behaviour.

This is (at long last) rapidly changing: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/nyregion/nyc-trash-contai...

DSNY is pushing hard on getting all trash containerized. Food-related businesses were required to start last summer, all commercial trash's requirement hit just a couple of weeks ago, and residential is rolling out.

The bags of garbage are a historical relic. The city allowed trash in bags during as an emergency measure during the 1968 garbage collectors' strike: the metal trash bins were overflowing and garbage on the street in bags was better than garbage on the street raw. The strike ended, decades passed, but the rules were never updated until the last couple years when the city has finally began strongly incentivizing, and in some cases mandating, bins.

That explanation sounds real, but it isn’t. Really weird, why make something like this up?

I did not make it up; I read it at https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/03/22/trash-city-new-york-i... (see "Hooked on plastic" section in the article).

If you believe that this account is wrong, I am interested in hearing the true story, and seeing some sources if you have them.

You can see this in the large outlier on Feb 12 2017, which coincided with a storm that delayed trash pickup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12%E2%80%9314,_2017_N...

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-snowstorm-cleanup/

i wish citizens could tap into the network of nypd cameras so we can run these kinds of analyses ourselves

maybe the Rat Czar can help make that meeting happen :)

Ever have rats suddenly show up in your building? I have. That's when you speed dial the city to fix their problem.

Yes, never bothered. Caught them myself.

Foxes were made for that

Very true, but then how do you get rid of the foxes?

Foxhounds?

But then how do you get rid of all the foxhounds?

Solid Snakes, maybe? Or Lions?

In the event the lions take over a school of Tuna develops a taste for lion. They use kelp to create Tuna breathing apparatuses and establish a beachhead to launch their lion attack.

Domestication

Foxdie obviously

Just build a decent coop from the start to keep chicken safe at night, and let the foxes roam freely the planet eating as much mice, voles and rats as they can catch. They love that job.

Ms yellowkitty will develop quick the sense to keep away from its path, or show their nails, or climb a tree.

Envious. That wasn't possible in my case although I also did it myself. I killed hundreds using 30 lbs of dry ice. The city parking lot nearby had dozens of nests I mapped and sealed.

Btw, how did you "catch" them? Were they Norwegian rats?

How do you kill rats with dry ice?

Dry ice is frozen CO2. Rat nests usually have two holes, an entrance and an exit. Close one, place dry ice in the other and close the other hole to seal it. The dry ice melts and floods the chambers with CO2, no more rats.

It's considered more humane and safe than poison. Some cities use this method.

100% lol, NIMBYS

There is an recently abandoned building down the street from me that has been taken over by rats(and people legally dumping outside of it). Those rats then sometimes nest in the vehicles parked on the street next to the building. Rats tend to chew through wiring harness. I am about to file a complaint on 311 about it.

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