NYC Transit

If you're going to post this you may as well explain WHY they are doing it. The homeless on the subways has been a growing problem for all of our current mayors tenure. Just another issue he made himself blissfully ignorant of. Now with no one riding the subways they homeless, many mentally unstable, have taken over and leave the cars trashed and soiled. This shut down is being done to clean the cars but also as a way to save money. Apparently only 10,000 people are riding the subways 1am-5am these days which means it would be cheaper to buy them all cabs. It didn't have to be this way, one more massive failure by our city and state leaders.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
If you're going to post this you may as well explain WHY they are doing it. The homeless on the subways has been a growing problem for all of our current mayors tenure. Just another issue he made himself blissfully ignorant of. Now with no one riding the subways they homeless, many mentally unstable, have taken over and leave the cars trashed and soiled. This shut down is being done to clean the cars but also as a way to save money. Apparently only 10,000 people are riding the subways 1am-5am these days which means it would be cheaper to buy them all cabs. It didn't have to be this way, one more massive failure by our city and state leaders.
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Lets be honest. This happened because the Daily Mail ran front page photos three days in a row. Thats the only reason anything was done.
 
Reznor said:
Hard to compare to any other US system as it's dwarfs all others.

NYC Metro is great in terms of accessibility (at least in Manhattan and Brooklyn). Rush hours trains (similar to any major metro) can be completely packed and face delays. Crowding is definitely more so than we are used to in Boston.

In terms of cleanliness, I would say 4/5/6 is one of the cleaner lines/cars. Some of the older trains, stations can be gross, though not that different than some of the MBTA stations. But there are many more riders than other cities/networks. Subway runs 24 hours and is mostly safe, even at 3am.

Uber is doing a number to the supremacy of the yellow cabs in NY. While ubitquitous, their business is plummeting. Likely similar to cab trends in Boston, SF, etc.

Of course, I think London and Paris are far superior to NYC metro in all regards, but that's a different debate/tangent.
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London tube is roughly as massive as NYC Subway, but way more confusing to figure out with all their weird branches. NYC is much easier to figure out once you get the hang of it. Itself a feat given how big the system is.
 
The craziest thing about the subway shutdown is stated in the second to last paragraph of this Gothamist article, "...Because transit workers still need to access the system at all hours — and since there’s not enough space in the rail yard to hold all of the cars, anyway — the trains will continue on their late night schedules, rumbling through the city while they sit all but empty, waiting to be cleaned."

so the trains are still running, empty. They just dont want the homeless allowed in them anymore.
 

Whee!!! The lemony-stink R179 subway cars are yanked from service yet again. This time for randomly de-coupling mid-trip...which is, um, a really really bad thing. Your Social Security-eligible R32 overlords will fucking live forever, New Yawk.


This isn't even an all-new car design that Bombardier has somehow managed to fuck up nine ways to Sunday. The -79's are lightly-evolved R160's (which are in-turn lightly evolved R143's), whose separate Alstom and Kawasaki batches have somehow managed to reliably roam the subways for 14 years without randomly self-destructing at the drop of a hat like BBD's newest handiwork. It takes special achievement incompetence to net these results from a tried-and-true build template. Great jerb all around, guys.
 
I bet UV will shorten the life of plastic interior parts (seats, window gaskets). Good thing there's so much stainless steel in a lot of them.
 
Arlington said:
I bet UV will shorten the life of plastic interior parts (seats, window gaskets). Good thing there's so much stainless steel in a lot of them.
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If they are using UV-C it may not be too bad on the plastic parts. (Newest technology, also not too bad for the people operating the systems.)

If they are using older UV-A or UV-B technology, it is bad news for the plastic parts, although they should have UV inhibitors in the plastic/elastomers due to partial outdoor service of the equipment.
 
The MTA announced subway ridership reached 1,047,493 Tuesday, surpassing the million mark for the first time since March.
 
www.nytimes.com

Subway Platform Barriers Will Be Tested at 3 N.Y.C. Stations

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had resisted calls to add platform barriers, will begin a pilot program amid outcry over safety in the transit system.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

"The program at the three stations will cost more than $100 million, said Janno Lieber, the transportation authority’s chair and chief executive."
$100 million-plus for three sets of platform screen doors is absolutely bonkers. Costs like that are exactly the reason we can't have nice things in this country.
 
JumboBuc said:
www.nytimes.com

Subway Platform Barriers Will Be Tested at 3 N.Y.C. Stations

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which had resisted calls to add platform barriers, will begin a pilot program amid outcry over safety in the transit system.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

"The program at the three stations will cost more than $100 million, said Janno Lieber, the transportation authority’s chair and chief executive."
$100 million-plus for three sets of platform screen doors is absolutely bonkers. Costs like that are exactly the reason we can't have nice things in this country.
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Honestly, I would expect a significant portion of that to go towards the enabling infrastructure. Admittedly, I don’t know exactly how they work, but I imagine there’s a certain amount of signaling upgrades so that all trains on the line can communicate with the platform edge doors something like “I am now stopped and correctly aligned; now opening doors, simultaneously open yours” and vice versa. It’s notable that they picked stations and platforms serviced by exactly one service… and MTA is an order of magnitude bigger than the T. The 7, the only A division line with a station getting doors, alone currently has 416 cars assigned. That’s more than the Red and Orange lines combined. If the infrastructure is made available by these pilots, presumably the marginal cost for more platform screen doors on each line is more reasonable… but even so, a few million per station actually doesn’t sound too extreme for something like this.
 
Stlin said:
It’s notable that they picked stations and platforms serviced by exactly one service… and MTA is an order of magnitude bigger than the T. The 7, the only A division line with a station getting doors, alone currently has 416 cars assigned.
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They also picked stations and platformed serviced by services with assigned fleets of identical cars. Some of the B Division (lettered services for those unfamiliar with that system's internal jargon) services mix fleets of 60-foot and 75-foot cars which have different door spacing between the two lengths, so they avoided the headache of trying to make the platform doors compatible with two different door positions (if indeed that's possible at all). It's not a forever problem given that the MTA's effectively given up on ordering 75-footers, but until they're purged (or at least the two types are fully separated) they're another problem to deal with.
 
Brattle Loop said:
They also picked stations and platformed serviced by services with assigned fleets of identical cars. Some of the B Division (lettered services for those unfamiliar with that system's internal jargon) services mix fleets of 60-foot and 75-foot cars which have different door spacing between the two lengths, so they avoided the headache of trying to make the platform doors compatible with two different door positions (if indeed that's possible at all). It's not a forever problem given that the MTA's effectively given up on ordering 75-footers, but until they're purged (or at least the two types are fully separated) they're another problem to deal with.
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Absolutely. While the L isn’t strictly a uniform fleet, having a few R160 sets mixed into the R143s, they are dimensionally all but identical. Its also worth noting that these services are the only ones operating entirely with CBTC operational or very soon to be. the 7 and the L run as the only services on the BMT Canarsie and the IRT Flushing lines respectively, which are the only NY subway lines for which CBTC has been fully implemented thus far. The E meanwhile is the only service to run the full length of the IND Queens Boulevard Line, which I believe is wrapping up commissioning it's CBTC system this winter. Having CBTC in place should actually go most of the way towards enabling my earlier cited communication with platform edge doors, but presumably they would still need to “patch in” that functionality.
 
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Stlin said:
Absolutely. While the L isn’t strictly a uniform fleet, having a few R160 sets mixed into the R143s, they are dimensionally all but identical.
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Yup, I meant to say "identical-length cars" and said "identical cars", I knew one of those lines wasn't totally uniform and still screwed up the post, thanks for catching that.

Stlin said:
Having CBTC in place should actually go most of the way towards enabling my earlier cited communication with platform edge doors, but presumably they would still need to “patch in” that functionality.
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I'd be curious to know if that's why those particular lines were chosen, or if it's just incidental (possibly because they can't mix non-CBTC cars into those fleets)
 
Stlin said:
Honestly, I would expect a significant portion of that to go towards the enabling infrastructure. Admittedly, I don’t know exactly how they work, but I imagine there’s a certain amount of signaling upgrades so that all trains on the line can communicate with the platform edge doors something like “I am now stopped and correctly aligned; now opening doors, simultaneously open yours” and vice versa. It’s notable that they picked stations and platforms serviced by exactly one service… and MTA is an order of magnitude bigger than the T. The 7, the only A division line with a station getting doors, alone currently has 416 cars assigned. That’s more than the Red and Orange lines combined. If the infrastructure is made available by these pilots, presumably the marginal cost for more platform screen doors on each line is more reasonable… but even so, a few million per station actually doesn’t sound too extreme for something like this.
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Enabling infrastructure and accessibility. It's likely with a project of this scale, ADA is triggered, and I don't know much about the stops that they're working on here, but these essentially turn into comprehensive accessibility and infrastructure upgrades, rather than a merely-adding-platform-screen-doors-project. ADA can be tricky here too - the T's platforms aren't necessarily the flattest platforms, which caused problems with the new Red and Orange Line cars' wheelchair ramps. I imagine they'll also have those issues as well in NYC, either now or in the future, whenever they upgrade their fleet with a similar boarding mechanism.
 
stefal said:
Enabling infrastructure and accessibility. It's likely with a project of this scale, ADA is triggered, and I don't know much about the stops that they're working on here, but these essentially turn into comprehensive accessibility and infrastructure upgrades, rather than a merely-adding-platform-screen-doors-project.
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Oddly two of the three pilot stations are already ADA-accessible, but one (Third Avenue on the L) is not. Don't know if that's going to trigger more work at that station or not, but if that's a consideration like it is here, then the platform door pilot's probably dead in the water because the MTA's ADA backlog is atrocious and they're clearly not ready to do screen doors and ADA upgrades simultaneously to a large number of stations.

stefal said:
ADA can be tricky here too - the T's platforms aren't necessarily the flattest platforms, which caused problems with the new Red and Orange Line cars' wheelchair ramps. I imagine they'll also have those issues as well in NYC, either now or in the future, whenever they upgrade their fleet with a similar boarding mechanism.
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The new CRRC cars have ramps?
 
Brattle Loop said:
The new CRRC cars have ramps?
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Flip-out gap fillers:
ECB9uXXX4AAjypE
 
Brattle Loop said:
That I did not know. Not entirely sure how I missed that, but it's a good feature to have (though now I'm also curious if they'd pose any problems for platform doors as well).
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I imagine not, with proper sequencing. In all systems with platform doors that I've been on, the platform doors both are wider than and open a moment before the car doors, and close a moment after. Don't know if the delay is intentional, but I assume it is. Presumably the fip out flip in is already part of the door operating sequence so you can just build that delay in if a gap filler was activated.

Also, I'm pretty sure that these as implemented here don't actually form a "bridge" per se, or touch the top of the platform. I think these instead pushing out toward / against the edge of it. That shouldn't touch the doors at all.
 
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