Speed

Our commutes need to be sped up to improve our quality of life and public health. Not only would it allow us to be more efficient, and allow our cities to be more sustainable, but it could even help increase social capital, giving us more time for family, friends, and neighbors. NYC has the highest population density of any major city in the US, and has more people than 40 of the 50 U.S. states. We need the subway to work well.

Now that MTA leadership is prioritizing speed again after many years of ignoring delays and denying worsening service, performance is improving. The right indicators are being analyzed. Most significantly, the MTA is taking steps to speed up the operating environment.

Truthfully, most performance issues today just require NYCT to care more and work more efficiently. Throwing more money won’t necessarily help, especially if the right priorities aren’t identified and incentives aren’t improved. There has been a lot of questionable activity at the MTA in the past, such as providing false data, trying to hide data from the public, and incorrectly blame problems on external factors.

The subway was designed primarily for speed. It was built right below the street, because it would be faster for passengers to access. Express tracks skipped stations, rather than serviced all stations, because capacity was sacrificed for speed. Most of the network was built underground to free up capacity on the street above, and not wreck real estate values with excessive noise, taking away light and air. (Most elevated railroads were eventually demolished because they were deemed obsolete, and falling apart; elevated structures that weren’t demolished were enhanced in order to support the heavier weights of subway cars, and connected with the system, with longer platforms. Unfortunately, New York has lost many rapid transit assets over the years, deemed decrepit, obsolete, and a blight to real estate values.)

Contrast these early 20th century decisions with today’s decisions, to build deep stations, far below the surface of Second Avenue and Hudson Yards, in order to satisfy NIMBYists. The Second Avenue Subway will not have express tracks, the MTA told me, because “the avenue is not wide enough”, though Fulton Street in Brooklyn is narrower and has express tracks on the IND Fulton line. The 7 extension, which already leaks, did not include the construction of a station shell at 10th Avenue. And the LaGuardia AirTrain is being built to Citi Field and the US Open, the opposite direction of the CBD, which will not save time, because it was deemed easier than building through communities, or extending the Astoria Line to LGA. (Though, the public-private partnership rebuilding LaGuardia is quite efficient, and should be less wasteful than other Port Authority endeavors, because there are incentives to control costs. Also, airports tend to be revenue-positive, due to all of the parking fees, airline fees, retail, ads, and so on and so forth.)

New York’s subway is one of the most complicated in the world. It runs 24/7, under some of the densest and oldest built-up areas in the US. Unlike most networks, many services have multiple merges, leading to a lot of flexibility, but also complications if schedules are not followed; a delay on one service cannot be easily isolated from other connected services. Schedules account for crew availability, union rules, merges, times of day, frequency, rolling stock, power constraints, and many other factors, dictating running times and speeds.

We used to dream big. The City built numerous station shells throughout the system, planning for the future, such as South 4th Street in Brooklyn, and the upper level of Second Avenue in Manhattan. Due to the foresight of leaders in the 19th century, New York developed a grid, enabling better traffic flow that would later translate to greater speed and efficiency underground, on a series of subway trunk routes, built without much need for eminent domain. But, our political economy has dramatically changed. If we keep building this way, without thinking about the long-term, our region will gradually become less competitive, less connected, and more balkanized into sub-regions that people can actually commute to, while still having a few hours at home to be with their friends and families.

So instead of striving for “reliable” service, we should strive for fast service; after all, reliably slow service shouldn’t be the goal. Faster service connects our region of 20+ million, bringing everyone closer together. And it does it more efficiently too, with faster service meaning fewer trains, less overtime, and more capacity. Plus, higher speeds are also not necessarily less safe. In fact, increased safety allows for increased speed; modern CBTC signaling allows for faster L and 7 service, and the IRT local tracks originally had no signal system, but it was quickly installed so crews could operate faster. Plus slower service means people abandoning the subway and driving, where they are more likely to get into an accident.

Besides, most signal infrastructure isn’t as old as one may assume (very little actually dates to the “1930s“). It is the underlying signal design scheme that’s regulating train movement which is outdated on most lines. And all the signal modifications since the 1990s added to that system which is causing significant problems with delays, variability, and “overcrowding”. The same is true for rolling stock; even the oldest subway cars were mechanically and electrically replaced not too long ago, and subway car delays only account for around 3 percent of total delays.

So most delays are not due to a “crisis” of infrastructure failures but due to operational and design issues, largely unneeded safety and disciplinary policies, human error and other problems that don’t require significant funding to solve – just honest leadership that doesn’t lie and mislead the public. Overcrowding is not the root cause; the trains are slower, and not from incidents but from decisions slowing down the railroad – so blaming the public for overcrowding isn’t correct, especially when overcrowding isn’t necessarily a result of increased ridership. (Overcrowding can be caused by many factors, and though ridership levels contribute to crowding as well as other customer-related incidents, more often overcrowding is a result of poor service management. The subway can be quite crowded even with ridership levels dropping if service is managed poorly.)

And if the MTA lies to the public, they surely lie to each other, confuse each other, and force their staff to deceive and make top brass look good. All this time spent messaging takes away from time solving problems, but when good incentives don’t exist and there is no bottom line, dishonest people can thrive all whilst not admitting or solving any root problems and isolating themselves from reality.

But, the subway was operated well in the past and it can be fast today as well — faster than ever before. Andy Byford is working hard to fix the culture, and service is improving.

Support Fast Forward, and advocate for speed!