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New York's Subway Is Slow Because They Slowed Down the Trains After A 1995 Accident
According to the Village Voice, New York City's subway trains are running slower because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is deliberately running the trains slower. The Village Voice obtained MTA internal documents, discovering that the decision to run the trains slower was made following a fatal 1995 crash on the Williamsburg Bridge. From the report: The subway's performance has been steadily deteriorating for many years. The authority's own internal data shows that delays due to "incidents," such as broken signals and tracks or water damage, have only marginally increased since 2012. But there is one type of delay that's gotten exponentially worse during that time: a catchall category blandly titled "insufficient capacity, excess dwell, unknown," which captures every delay without an obvious cause. From January 2012 to December 2017, these delays increased by a whopping 1,190 percent -- from 105 per weekday to 1,355. In December, one out of every six trains run across the entire system experienced such a delay. The increase has been steady and uninterrupted over the past six years.
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In 1995, a Manhattan-bound J train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge rear-ended an M train that was stopped on the bridge, killing the J train operator and injuring more than fifty passengers. The National Transportation and Safety Board investigation placed most of the blame on the J train operator, who the NTSB suspected had been asleep. But the NTSB also identified potential issues with the signal system that contributed to the accident, which it found didn't guarantee train operators enough time to apply the emergency brakes even when awake. "They slowed the trains down after the Williamsburg Bridge crash," a veteran train operator who asked not to be identified told the Village Voice. "The MTA said the train was going too fast for the signal system." As a result, the MTA, quite literally, slowed all the trains down, issuing a bulletin informing employees in April 1996 that their propulsion systems would be modified so they could achieve a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour, down from the previous high of 50 to 55 miles per hour on a flat grade. But the MTA didn't stop there, internal documents show. One of the NTSB's safety recommendations was to set speed limits. As a result, the MTA began a still-ongoing process of changing the way many signals work to meet modern safety standards.
[...]
In 1995, a Manhattan-bound J train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge rear-ended an M train that was stopped on the bridge, killing the J train operator and injuring more than fifty passengers. The National Transportation and Safety Board investigation placed most of the blame on the J train operator, who the NTSB suspected had been asleep. But the NTSB also identified potential issues with the signal system that contributed to the accident, which it found didn't guarantee train operators enough time to apply the emergency brakes even when awake. "They slowed the trains down after the Williamsburg Bridge crash," a veteran train operator who asked not to be identified told the Village Voice. "The MTA said the train was going too fast for the signal system." As a result, the MTA, quite literally, slowed all the trains down, issuing a bulletin informing employees in April 1996 that their propulsion systems would be modified so they could achieve a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour, down from the previous high of 50 to 55 miles per hour on a flat grade. But the MTA didn't stop there, internal documents show. One of the NTSB's safety recommendations was to set speed limits. As a result, the MTA began a still-ongoing process of changing the way many signals work to meet modern safety standards.
it sounds like the accident merely exposed a flaw in their signaling system. Rather than improve the signaling system (for which there was probably no money, we were 15 years into massive nonstop tax cuts) they did the only logical thing: slow the trains down.
This is yet another symptom of Americans not wanting to spend money (e.g. higher taxes) on infrastructure. The maddening thing is nearly all of those tax cuts went to the top 1%ers. Enough already. They get the best civilization has to offer. Make them pay their bloody God damned dues.
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How's the traffic this morning?
Put enough money back into the system? You mean, like, they are siphoning off revenue from the fares???
I bet we could pull up a balance sheet and it would easily show there is zero positive revenue from actual paying riders to siphon off. So what is this money to 'put back into the system'??
This reads like a shocking expose'. But if you have trouble with signalling systems, it makes absolutely perfect sense to slow the trains down until the problem is corrected.
OK, yes, they could be fixing it faster, but this seems like a perfectly responsible choice.
Cars purchased 20 years later -- in 2016 -- have a max speed of 55 mph...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Doubt that ALL cars are limited to 40 mph, maybe some older cars were for a while. Signaling system is another issue/can of worms.
This thread says that cars were capped at 55 mph after the 1995 crash, not 40 mph:
https://www.nyctransitforums.c...
You drive 2 miles? You could cycle that in less than 10 mins, 15 if you don't want to break a sweat. It would also be a very reasonable distance for a public transport system.
The subway runs an operating profit, I think it came out to something like 20 cents a passenger. However that money is "shared" with the New York City Transit side of the bus system, which runs at a loss.
If they were to eliminate the bus-subway transfers and separate the revenue pools, the subway would probably be shown to operate at even more of a profit (since a lot of people take an unofficial round trip discount by taking the subway one way and the bus back).
The option to buy better trains is not going to be supported.
The ability to rework the signal system is not something that could happen.
The trains stay safe and staying slow is the only method that supports that is not a story.
Want a good train? Invest in a great transport system.
The UK, Japan, South Korea, parts of the EU can offer great turn key rail networks for export.
Tunnel design, working air-conditioning, new systems to move a lot of people around faster.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
WINSTON!
... in the 1800s.
Naturally I wouldn't employ that solution in exactly the same way because we have better technology to facilitate the concept, but I would still enact the same concept.
The British system simply made it physically impossible for trains to enter a stretch of track unless the train in front of it or going the other way or whatever had turned in a key. The key was slotted into a signalling box which permitted other trains to enter that track. If the key was NOT turned in then further trains could not physically access that track. The switching station would literally not actuate.
Now, if you did it today, you'd use computers and sensors and encryption... etc... but the concept would be the same. If a train currently holds the "key" for a bit of track then you can't have that key and you can't access that track. You could have the trains automatically brake if they entered track that hadn't been vacated yet... you could turn off the third rail to make it extra fool proof... and you could have the brakes default to an ON state in the event that the third rail was disabled.
Yes yes... engineering problems with what I said. Engineering solutions always have problems... even good engineering solutions.
There are problems with a hydro electric dam and an automobile and a jet aeroplane. The trick is solving those without losing the utility of what you're attempting to do. Point is that this isn't actually that complicated.
The system I conceptualized is damn near foolproof if executed competently. You could have drunk, high, sleeping train operators, going down the track at whatever speed the track/trains can handle, without any crashes into other trains.
Its possible. We can do it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There have been automatic speed control systems in subways since at least the 60's.
There has been fully automatic subways lines operating since at least the 80's.
It's not a technology problem.
Lowered speed has more impact than you might imagine. It means that rails are occupied longer, that following trains have to wait longer, that they might miss time slots, which in turn means less trains and thus the ones running being more crowed, which in turn causes them to have longer waiting times at the stations. Time schedules on a highly occupied rail system are very finely tuned, and even a small lagging behind schedule ripples through the system and causes more lagging elsewhere.
Exactly this. NYC as it is today is not sustainable without both investment in transit infrastructure, and also getting the cost structure under control (more difficult in NYC than many other places due to entrenched union rules/benefits and the much higher cost of living compared to most of the U.S.).
Nonaggression works!