Today’s Headlines

  • The MTA’s Innovation Allergy Has Stalled Subway Platform Doors (Transport Politic)
  • Related: Subway Service Delayed Yesterday by Man on the Tracks (Post, DNA)
  • More on the Bus Turnaround Coalition’s Rider Woes Campaign (News, NY1, AMNY)
  • NJ Transit Has No Contingency Plan If Hudson Tunnels Go Offline (WNYC)
  • City Council Considers E-Hail Cap and Yellow Cab Medallion Bailouts (Post)
  • Someone Crunched the Data on When Citi Bikes Are Faster Than Cabs (Todd Schneider, Gothamist)
  • Bike New York Asks Lhota to Relax Bridge Path Riding Restrictions (AMNY)
  • DNA Covers DOT’s Incomplete Fifth Avenue Plan
  • Countdown Clocks Installed at Park Slope Bus Stops (Bklyn Paper)
  • Hit-and-Run Driver Kills Man on Van Wyck (DNA); Motorcyclist Dies in St. Albans (News)
  • Victory for Albany Corruption: Appeals Court Tosses Skelos Conviction (NYT, Politico)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

  • Joe R.

    The article on platform doors missed a very important fact. The MTA has a poor track record of maintaining equipment. Escalators and elevators often are broken, sometimes for months. If we installed platform doors, I’ve little doubt the same thing would happen, to the detriment of service. Before we even consider it, the MTA needs to show it can reliably maintain its infratructure and trains.

  • Larry Littlefield

    “Train doors being located in the same place is difficult to achieve with a mixed fleet of trains featuring doors in different locations.”

    Knowing it might want to go with platform doors someday, why does the MTA keep shifting from offset doors (better for loading!) to doors directly across from each other and back? Is it a union thing — not reducing the need for conductors? Management incompetence? Politics? What is it?

    The trains are supposed to stop in the same place every time. If they did so, and if the subway car doors were in the same place every time, then floor to ceiling walls could be built everywhere the doors are not — at a minimal cost, with no technology at all! This would reduce the area of the platform where people could fall/be pushed/jump to the tracks by perhaps three-quarters! And people could be taught to stand away from those limited open areas.

    Here are platform barriers from 100 years ago.

    http://railfanwindow.com/gallery2/v/TempByDate/album225/IMG_4195.jpg.html

    They could be replaced by a solid wall with an electronic eye at each opening to detect intrusions. You know, the kind they have had at supermarkets for the past seven decades. The platform side of the walls could be used for advertisements and art installations — it’s where people are likely to be standing around, and thus more valuable than ads in subway mezzanines.

    NO MOVING PARTS! The MTA’s bad record of maintaining high-use equipment is irrelevant!

    I’ll bet MTA contractors would be willing to install them for just $500 million per platform, or $1 billion for a platform with trains on both sides.

  • Andrew

    Knowing it might want to go with platform doors someday, why does the MTA keep shifting from offset doors (better for loading!) to doors directly across from each other and back?

    You keep saying this as if it were true. It’s no truer now than it was four months ago: http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/05/26/todays-headlines-2637/#comment-3326689964 (and downthread)

  • Andrew

    The article on platform doors missed an even more important fact: that the overwhelming majority of platform doors are at stations that were designed from day one to have platform doors.

    What percentage of stations with platform doors worldwide are more than 25 years old? Over 99% (all but four) of New York City subway stations are more than 25 years old.

    Which systems have installed platform doors at old stations? Paris Metro is the only one I can think of. There may be a few others, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. (The nearby London Underground has platform doors on its Jubilee line extension, which opened in 1999 with platform doors in place, but there are no platform doors and no plans to install platform doors on the older portion of the line, part of which opened as recently as 1979.)

    And most other systems don’t have the challenges posed by the unique degree of interconnectedness found in New York.

  • AnoNYC

    Here’s one more reason to be afraid of de Blasio 2.0

    https://nypost.com/2017/09/26/heres-one-more-reason-to-be-afraid-of-de-blasio-2-0/

    “To the many reasons why New Yorkers should fear giving Mayor Bill de Blasio a second term, add this one: congestion pricing..“

  • Larry Littlefield

    So all the doors on cars purchased since 1980 are in the same place?

    I don’t think so. But if you say they are, fine, why can’t the MTA install the simple barriers I indicated above?

  • AMH

    There was also a massive disruption on Lex Av yesterday evening. For an hour and a half, 5 trains were running via 7th Av and 4 trains were running local with major delays, reportedly due to a ConEd power failure at 59th St. Can’t find any news about that.

  • AMH

    “Congestion pricing, then, is a fake solution to a real problem. Real solutions would include limiting bike lanes to parks and returning traffic lanes to their original purpose.” Ugh.

  • Andrew

    So all the doors on cars purchased since 1980 are in the same place?

    No, that’s not what I said. What I said is that “all A Division cars built since 1988 and all B Division cars built since 1990 have identical door spacing.” (1980? Where did you come up with 1980?)

    I don’t think so. But if you say they are, fine, why can’t the MTA install the simple barriers I indicated above?

    Because (a) there are 2788 subway cars from before 1988 still in service, and (b) your “simple barriers” would greatly increase the risk of drags becoming fatal, while at the same time delaying service whenever anything (an airborne newspaper, the foot of a passenger standing close to the platform edge, etc.) passes between the barriers.