A Peek Inside New York's Subway Redesign Plan

http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/07/a-peek-inside-new-yorks-subway-redesign-plan-cuomo/491798/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29

by jseliger • 10 years ago

38 68 10 years ago

citylab.com

typetypetype• 10 years ago

New cars and polished stations. but I don't see anything about improving the actual infrastructure with more tracks, better signaling, etc. I guess we hope that those sorts of improvements are happening but are not interesting enough to write about?

parent54465• 10 years ago

I don't have sources available on my phone, but I believe it is something they are actively working on. The problem is it's just so much more expensive, takes a long time, and doesn't affect public opinion as much.

The Wikipedia article "Signaling of the NYC Subway" has a lot of information.

lg• 10 years ago

i know they are working on this. but as a member of the subway-riding public, far and away the number 1 thing I have a strong opinion about is delays, which almost always are blamed on "signal problems"

bko• 10 years ago

Do we really need wifi and USB ports on the train? There are already a lot of wifi access points on the platform, but it requires clicking on a prompt to agree to T&C which is an extra step many don't bother taking.

I'm reminded of TVs the Taxi and Limousine Commission mandated to be placed in all yellow/green cabs in NYC. It's always dubious improvements that people often don't ask for. What people really wanted was more availability as evidenced by the success of Uber. I imagine in regards to train service, New Yorkers would settle for cleaner, less smelly stations and more regular service, especially on the weekends. But I guess that wouldn't get as much press coverage.

AznHisoka• 10 years ago

As well as functional clean elevators in more stations.

More seats (trains like the R maximize seat/space ratio while trains like the 4/5/6 don't)

Also ban bums from sleeping on trains.

pavel_lishin5• 10 years ago

Also ban bums from sleeping on trains.

I think there's likely already a law against it, it's a matter of enforcement. And I for one have a hard time being mad at someone sleeping on a train at night during the winter time; shelters aren't fun places, they fill up and have stringent requirements, and for many of them, the alternative is freezing to death outside.

egypturnash• 10 years ago

They gotta sleep somewhere. All the shelters are full.

giarc• 10 years ago

The option of USB ports on the trains is likely such a small percentage of the overall cost, but it likely gets enough people thinking "The MTA is thinking about things that matter to me."

astrodust5• 10 years ago

They cost almost nothing and can help people out when they're in a jam, so why not?

I just wonder how long it'll take before they're all broken from people inserting their connectors backwards, or before they become an anachronism since they're the wrong type of USB.

dforrestwilson• 10 years ago

^ This one trillion times.

Make the general experience better rather than lipstick on a pig.

parent54465• 10 years ago

Personally I find on-train connectivity to be very useful. And if you read the rest of the article, those features are really just in addition to the various other improvements, like wider doors and (of course) just having more trains in general.

I imagine the USB and WiFi were just a small, trivial add-on they planned since they're already blowing money on new train cars in the first place. It doesn't cost too much, makes your train ride a little nicer, and gets the MTA better press and reputation.

In the end I don't see any problem with it.

lbotos• 10 years ago

Do you live in NYC? I don't expect these ports to last longer than 3 weeks. Wifi sure, but USB, charging stations are the exact opposite of what I want on a commuter train.

melling2• 10 years ago

USB-C, sure. It becomes the standard with 24 months

noobermin3• 10 years ago

Will it?

I am biased here, I have one of those fancy new macbooks, so I am worried to shit I made the wrong calculation here. But all evidence I see seems to suggest they won't.

throw7• 10 years ago

I wonder if the wifi is coordinated with LinkNYC/SidewalkLabs (that consortium providing those kiosks).

galdosdi3• 10 years ago

What a complete waste of time and money. These are all very marginal nice to haves. What people want is for their subway commute to take less time, end of story. Or for those on crowded lines like the 4/5, less crowding. Maybe ease the crowding enough that you could even reach your hands into your pocket to grab your USB device to use those new USB outlets they're hyping (there's no way you could currently on many lines during peak)

The only new feature worth a damn in that whole story is adding more countdown clocks, but even that just quantifies but does not in any way reduce the waiting time.

Typical case of totally different priorities between NYS and NYC. Cuomo obviously does not ride the subway. NYC needs to secede already

Edit: I didn't notice the price is $27 billion. This makes me angry. That's enough to make some pretty substantial "real" boring improvements that would actually improve service. According to wikipedia Phase I of the Second Ave Subway cost "just" $4.5billion. And we're going to blow $27 billion on prettier signs? Are you !@#$% kidding me? I wish I could vote against you more than once, Cuomo

Edit 2: To be fair, there is one useful feature of the new trains: More space to pack more passengers with the "open gangway" design. But the rest is a waste

mbiondi• 10 years ago

Whenever the city spends money on projects like this, you have to remember it's more about employing people than actually improving things. Look at the 2nd avenue subway - almost 9 years to build a tunnel about a mile long. And now they are saying they may not complete it in December.

untilHellbanned• 10 years ago

You didn't read well.

parent54465• 10 years ago

Did you even read the article? The trains have wider doors, flip up seats, and other features intended to fit more people and get people moving faster. It's literally the best they can do until they replace the outdated signaling on the tracks, which is an even more expensive project.

jpwright• 10 years ago

To be fair, the $27 billion includes 1,025 new subway cars (which tend to cost more than $1 million each) plus extensive renovations to 31 stations. Also, the "open gangway" design in combination with the other improvements (wider doors, collapsible seats) will reduce crowding on trains, which in turn reduces crowding on platforms and dwell time. During rush hour that will have a noticeable impact on travel times. Outside of CBTC, which would allow running more trains per hour, there aren't really other ways to make the existing system run faster.

I do think the $27 billion tag is too high, though.

galdosdi3• 10 years ago

I'm willing to exclude the new trains entirely from the criticism, except for funds which go towards new features other than more space. 1 or 2 million per car @ about 1000 cars is "only" 1 or 2 billion out of the 27 billion though.

Most of this money is going towards making the system shinier and prettier, instead of actually improving commute times for anyone

lobster_johnson2• 10 years ago

What people want ... end of story

I do want what's described in the article. So clearly your claim is not entirely accurate.

galdosdi3• 10 years ago

Obviously that's shorthand for something like "What [most] people [mostly] want" ....

Are you sure though? Let's assume it was up to you, and you had a choice between $27 billion worth of the improvements mentioned in the article -- mostly aesthetics -- versus choosing $27 billion worth of making your commute time shorter and/or making service more reliable (eg off hours).

You'd really choose the fancy signs and USB chargers over the shorter commute? Really?

mc32• 10 years ago

On paper the improvements look nice. I don't get the preservation portion. That adds cost with little utility.

Clean the stations, make them less grimy, eliminate the dark dungeon feel, dress up the load bearing beams a bit with a material where grime and soot can be easily cleaned.

Put in some women only cars on the crowded lines to prevent groping... Maybe one day get a north-south line to join the outer borough lines (a peripheral line). Most lines are in and out of Manhattan, as if people didn't move interborough.

ksenzee• 10 years ago

Is there data on whether women-only cars work? What happens when you jump on the subway at the last second and end up in one of the other cars?

noobermin3• 10 years ago

Not to mention that it stinks very much of segregation, which was said below by some posters although sarcastically.

I think the right thing to do is to attack the pervs and the criminals. That is where the actual blame lies, right?

therowaway947• 10 years ago

Women only cars - yeah, segregation on public transport is such a great idea and completely legal! /s

k-mcgrady• 10 years ago

> "Put in some women only cars on the crowded lines to prevent groping"

Rather than delay the problem so that those people can just go and grope people somewhere else how about better CCTV so they can be caught and punished.

swiftisthebest• 10 years ago

We should put in some minority only cars too! Wouldn't want that privilege to rub off.

urda• 10 years ago

Put in some women only cars on the crowded lines to prevent groping

That's straight up segregation. Not only is this illegal, it's unfair to basically the other half of the population for an additional "safe space".

hx872• 10 years ago

How about A/C in the stations for once? Or turning on the A/C when temperatures are moderate but humidity is high? With low enough temperatures and humidity, a surprising amount of grime and overcrowding becomes bearable.

jimktrains22• 10 years ago

Instead of AC, I always thought it would be fun to use the heat to do something productive (like make electricity), even if not effect, it could consume the heat?

hx872• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if using recovered heat from the subway system to generate electricity is economically feasible (probably not). In the end you'd have to eject the heat anyway, probably to the Hudson and East rivers.

ethnt• 10 years ago

On underground trains, you have to choose between air conditioning the platforms or the trains. It wouldn't be feasible (especially in old systems like New York or London) to do both because of the lack of ventilation (the hot air needs to go somewhere).

Animats• 10 years ago

The big innovation seems to be trains with fewer seats and more standing space. That increases capacity, but few people get to sit down.

No platform edge doors, surprisingly. Many newer systems have those. But they require that the trains all have their doors in the same places, so you can't mix types of train sets.

Display signs may just duplicate info people can get on some phone app. (The MTA has an API with their train and bus position info, at least for the lines that have reporting gear.[1]) But those are cheap.

[1] http://datamine.mta.info/

pavel_lishin5• 10 years ago

Display signs may just duplicate info people can get on some phone app.

If you happen to be at a station with cellular signal or wifi.

astrodust5• 10 years ago

If you're not a tourist without a data plan. If your phone is charged. If you're the kind of person to own a phone that can run apps. If you've taken the time to install the app.

Signs are useful, people.

cryptoz• 10 years ago

Display signs may just duplicate info people can get on some phone app.

Public transit should never require ownership of a smartphone. All features should be accessible equally to everyone. Having an app is great, but you can't reasonably advocate for the removal of physical signs in public transport.

cududa2• 10 years ago

Once I'm in a large underground station I'm more likely to follow the overhead signs than rely on my phone

andrewla• 10 years ago

I believe the GP was referring to the train arrival and other dynamic signage, rather than the static signage that exists now.

Bang for the buck, it feels like getting wifi (and cellular data) into all stations is way more useful and future-proof than a bunch of displays that are going to look quaint and outdated a year after we spend billions getting them installed.

If you want to know which track is downtown, or what the stops are on the express, the existing maps and signage will get you there. If you want to know about service interruptions and arrival information (or potentially connecting train information or more detailed trip estimates based on subway traffic in the future), then unless you can understand the static coming out of the loudspeakers, you're out of luck.

It's taken them more than 10 years to get arrival signs into the stations, and (as above) they already seem very outdated, with insufficient information many times (because three display lines is not enough lines for busy stations when you're waiting for a 6). Plus most stations still don't have them, which seems absurd given that every other subway system in the world has them.

tobylane• 10 years ago

The sub-surface lines in London are about to finish changing over to new trains. These look a lot like the images in the article, differences include that the flexible area between carridges is full width and height. We have air cooling (that's not air con), cctv and wifi but no usb. Stations and crossrail will have wifi and 3/4G.

potatolicious2• 10 years ago

Echoing others' points about not requiring people to own smartphones to get around the city.

But more than that, the physical signs are superior to smartphone feeds in many ways - we already have situations where people are milling around outside stations fetching the status feed. Crowding is a severe problem with the NYC subway, and a sign that you can just glance at while walking is much more efficient than having everyone stop and check their phones.

ZanyProgrammer• 10 years ago

The new BART cars also have less seating than the current cars. Good for Oakland to Civic Center trips, not so for longer trips from Fremont ( and soon to be) points south.

pavel_lishin5• 10 years ago

I don't care about clean stations, I'd rather have stations with elevators and escalators, so the handicapped and the elderly can actually use them.

CDotDot• 10 years ago

Something as simple as the new grab bars in the middle of the car will be a great improvement. Although I'd rather it be a 3-bar split as opposed to the 2 in the mockup. That way we can still have the annoyingly frequent bar leaner and still have a place to hold on to.

kaiizen• 10 years ago

So just like Seattle's light rail cars? Just much more traffic?

noobermin3• 10 years ago

I for one mourn the fact the forces that be in my city are intent on pulling us back to 1960 transport wise.

We are poised to break 1M within the next decade, and some have been floating some form of light rail to serve the quickly growing city. Unfortunately, looking at the ten year plan published recently shows that what made it in from those discussions were...widening roads.

Good on NYC for attempting to put somewhere in the US on parity with other first world metropolises.

davidf18• 10 years ago

The most important thing that they can do besides buying more subway cars is to computerize the driving of the subways which would double the throughput. They started experimenting with this (on the L or 7 lines?) but they should implement it more quickly.

terminado• 10 years ago

Why do the new subway cars always smell like bad breath is coming through the ventilation system, even when empty and recently cleaned?

Is it some kind of anti-vagrant odor, like the repellent counterpart to Subway restaurant's fresh bread fragrance?

A Peek Inside New York's Subway Redesign Plan

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