rbrome

This is a solved problem with PSDs. All PSDs I have seen around the world have crash bars on the track side just like any emergency exit door, that let the doors swing open. Usually all panels have this, even ones that are usually stationary (the non-sliding parts). You can see this if you look carefully at the PSDs on the AirTrains here in NYC. As for escaping from platform to tracks, that's generally not something you want to happen. The tracks are always a dangerous place for people. I don't believe the tracks are currently considered a viable "emergency exit" for fire safety purposes, so in that sense there will be no change there. Although I'm sure PSDs could be fitted with emergency door releases on the platform side if that were deemed necessary.

Proposals. FYI, the word you're looking for is proposals, not proportions.

Yes! Correct! With MetroCard, the seven days started whenever you started using it, and with OMNY that is changing to only start on Monday. That is a bummer. This is where you lost me because you seem to be directly contradicting what you said above. Are you saying you spent all $33 in one day, on Wednesday? Not that it matters, because with MetroCard, the only "threshold" you "reached" was whether you were getting a good deal on what you had already purchased. With the OMNY fare cap, you're never getting a bad deal, you're just paying per ride, or getting a better deal thanks to the cap. You seemed to be suggesting that the fare cap meant you could spend $33 over five days and then get seven days of free rides after that, spending $33 for 12 days of rides. That would be crazy. Why would the MTA do that?

I'm afraid I don't understand where you're getting this idea. It has never worked that way here, and I've never heard of such a scheme being implemented anywhere.

But if "on Wednesday you reach to $33" then you probably started using it a few days earlier, so it started then, not on Wednesday. "7 day unlimited" never started when you reached $33 worth of rides. It starts when you... start using it. When it's "automatically upgraded to unlimited", it's retro-active to include all the rides you've taken since Monday morning. That works out just like a 7-day unlimited MetroCard that you started using Monday morning. Where you are correct is that the fixed Monday-Sunday timeframe is a new limitation. It means someone who's only in town from Thursday to the following Wednesday probably won't be able to save any money with this, whereas they might with the old product. But at least they aren't going to buy a card and then get screwed; making it an automatic upgrade makes it something people just don't have to think about. If you're a local who rides every day, the Monday-Sunday thing won't make a difference. It seems to be designed for such people. The other thing is that I haven't heard any word yet on a monthly unlimited option with OMNY. If they eliminate that in favor of just this weekly cap, that will be an effective fare hike for some people.

Huh?! 7 days unlimited means all rides during that seven days, not just the ones before or after you reach the $33 threshold. That's how it's always worked, and how it will work with the new program. No change there. The only new limitation is that the 7-day period always starts on a Monday. That does make it a shitty deal if you're a tourist in town, say, Thurs.-Wed.. But not for your example. If you use the subway every day, it's the same deal as before. There are two new advantages: You don't have to plan and specifically buy an unlimited card in advance. Just use OMNY. It's automatic. If you take fewer rides than expected, you won't get a raw deal. Before, if you bought an unlimited card and only took a few rides with it, you were still out $33. Tough luck. But now you will just automatically be charged per-ride. No sweat.

The gov't did change the rules recently on the allowed scope of airport rail projects. It might be allowed now. But I do think the MTA operating that part makes much more sense. They did run a dedicated airport express service once before, but I don't know if they have any appetite to do it again. It might not even be feasible to interline that way and maintain desired service levels on the existing lines.

First, as I said, hiring the in-house talent would ultimately be cheaper. Leadership just needs to understand this and lead. Second, the status quo in simply unsustainable. Costs for capital projects have been rising faster than inflation. At the current rate, the MTA won't be able to afford any expansion in a decade or two. Something has to change. I absolutely reject this brand of NY Exceptionalism. I'm thinking of cities like London and Paris. They're even older, almost as dense, and have strong unions. If NYC isn't comparable to those cities on construction costs, something is seriously broken here, and I refuse to accept that as inevitable. To just throw your hands up, say NYC is unique and nothing can be done, is to guarantee our infrastructure will remain woefully inadequate. It's a great way to ensure NYC remains exceptionally shitty.

Better leadership would look at how it's done elsewhere in the world. And what they would find is that the MTA's global peers usually have a large in-house team of full-time engineers and management for capital construction. When you can design these projects yourself, that greatly reduces overhead, and gives you the competency to choose cheaper alternatives and keep costs under control. The MTA should only be contracting out the actual construction.

This! I really wish NY had a few more modern elevated lines, so people could understand how quiet they can be with modern designs. We might be able to build more transit in this city, given the high costs of tunneling.

I, for one, care very little about assignments. Obviously many of you enjoy those discussions and that's great. But sometimes it feels like that's all anyone talks about in this whole forum. I mostly come here just for these specific threads about rolling stock, and yet even here, it's mostly talk about assignments. It seems like a very different discussion than that about the rolling stock itself. Has anyone considered splitting these things into separate threads?

Prosecuting and arresting are two very different things. Fare beating is still illegal and you can still be arrested for it. But prosecuting people and throwing them in jail for the crime of being poor is bad policy. This DA campaigned on this, and was elected to enact these very policies. People want this, because the data actually supports it. Just trying to appear "tough on crime" while ignoring the data is not a smart way to run a city.

And it would certainly change over time. Once this is built, there will be new opportunities for transit-oriented development. People will choose to live in places they wouldn't have otherwise, and take jobs they wouldn't have otherwise. Whole new commuting patterns will emerge over time, and it should be an economic boon to the neighborhoods it serves. And as someone else pointed out, it will provide a relief for capacity-constrained lines that do serve Manhattan, since so many trips between Brooklyn and and Queens currently require a ridiculous trek through Manhattan.

It's nowhere near 90%. But it should take half as long as cost 1/4 as much, in any sane world. There is simply a looong list of people in the private sector who have figured out how to pad contracts like this for maximum extra profit. The revolving door and contracting practices of the MTA just encourages it. There is no cost control, no incentives for cost control, and no oversight from Albany. So the contractors treat the capital construction budget like a bottomless piggy bank, and the MTA just... lets it happen. Stretching out the timeline is just one of the many ways they inflate the price tag.

WTF? Yeah... that's a totally bullshit policy. OMNY is way past the pilot/testing stage; it's launched. Not 100% deployed, but very much officially launched. They really expect everyone to still carry a MetroCard? 🤯 That's a hard no from me. If their machine is broken, that's their problem. That's the only remotely reasonable policy.

Fascinating.

Maybe. But MTA officials have been talking more like OMNY was designed to support fare capping all along. It may support it already and only wide-scale testing is required.

Can the post from 2019 be un-pinned from the top of this thread? It's really old info at this point.

Can we pin this thread? OMNY is kind of a major topic, and will continue to be for a while...

...and then the MTA would have a local example they could point to, to help convince other parts of the city that new elevated lines aren't going to destroy their communities. Since we sadly can't seem to build new underground lines for less than $2 billion / mile in this screwed-up city, elevated lines are going to need to be an option if the system is going to expand at all in our lifetimes.

It makes sense to extend or branch the W, since that is currently the shorter line compared to the N. I really think the MTA should work harder to educate communities (like Astoria) on how much nicer an elevated line can be with new construction techniques. A new elevated line built today can be dramatically quieter and prettier than the old ones we currently have. I wonder how much easier of a sell the extension would be if they also replaced the whole Astoria line with a new concrete viaduct, like SEPTA did a while back in West Philly.

There are some things that can be done on their end that help with security, like enabling newer Wi-Fi standards and disabling older, less-secure ones. But that is generally not the right way to think about it. Any public Wi-Fi network shared with other people carries some risk, unless you are using a VPN. You're absolutely correct that the relative ubiquity of HTTPS does make most things much more secure than they used to be, but... This is all false. It's closer to 90% of web sites that default to HTTPS. Public Wi-Fi carries way more risk than your home internet. And you are vastly underestimating the creativity of bad actors; they invent new ways to trick people into visiting the wrong web site every day.

We don't. Not yet. But Cuomo leaving right now is just in time to open up that possibility, and serious people are wasting no time agitating to get it cancelled. One can hope.

...where everyone can get cellular service just fine. So again, what's the point?

I don't understand how that will work or what the point is. What connects the train to the internet? There's no cellular or Wi-Fi in the tunnels. And if there were, passengers could just connect to that directly, so what is the point of putting Wi-Fi on the train?