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.
[...]
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.

Comments

Doesn't sound like it was the accident

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Doesn't sound like it was the accident

[Maxo-Texas]

No... roads, sewer systems, health care programs, international highways, bridges, funds for education.

Red states have pretty terrible economies because they don't invest in their citizens and they drive their best and brightest out of their states to other states.

So red states depend heavily on the federal government. States like wyoming with 280,000 citizens per senator vote themselves federal money paid for by states with 19,000,000 citizens per senator. It's atrocious.

I wonder just how low the population of these states has to go before the system breaks down.

You know, if california just paid 40,000 of their "liberal" folks to live in wyoming that would flip wyoming blue.

40,000/38,000,000 seems like a pretty good deal to me.