MHV9218

They didn't plan out fleet changes in advance? Surprised they couldn't have just shifted beforehand with the pick.

This really is going to seem like such a no-brainer when we consider the endless number of passenger injuries over the years, and the fact that we gave up the operational flexibility of single, Protestant, and eventually Catholic-married sets so many years ago. When you have modern consists like the 188s that comprise so many B- and C-cars, really becomes silly to have the safety risk of chain-link car gangways.

Hey, with the way the 211s are going, we could have the record-setting SIRT R44s and R46s for another 5 years. Never say never!

Has anybody figured out what the hell was happening with the C/R during this incident? This one seems almost as bad as that 8th Ave T/O letting his girlfriend operate...

Honestly, another remarkably astute analysis from VG8. What the hell is happening around these parts! Another note is that we're still seeing a massive correction in the divide between the goods economy and the service economy. Covid led to a total collapse in services-spending and a massive increase, particularly after stimulus checks, in goods-spending. That was true around the world, not just in the US, which is why every major developed country is seeing inflation rates just as bad as ours, if not worse. The supply chain has been thrown completely out of whack, and there's plenty of demand for say, the plates you eat your guacamole on, and the avocados you use to make it, but not so much for the Mexican restaurant downtown you used to go to. That's part of, as VG8 is saying, the shift in remote vs. in-person work and travel habits that's going to be ongoing for a while. This correction is going to take a little time, and it's clear we have a lot of companies that are, if not openly greedy, at least unbothered by the opportunity to make a few extra bucks of profit and chalk it up to inflation. Oil companies' profit margins are incredible right now, and they all feel they got burnt by the low price of oil a year or two ago, so they're not exactly going to discount barrels any time soon. And let's not forget the destabilizing of food and oil supply chains thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So you have all these factors coalescing at once, but given the general strength of the economy and historically low unemployment rate, we're definitely not in a true recession, or even that close to one – even if Powell has to keep hiking interest rates by a considerable amount for the next few months. I do think we're going to look back on the period of relatively 'free money' and say, wait, why didn't we accomplish anything more ambitious during that time? Infrastructure projects, already expensive, are getting pricier by the second. There's a lot that we could, and should, have pushed to do when lending was so cheap. But that's another can of worms...

And it kept the old sticker on the door too. How about that...looks like it's the late 80s all over again.

7596 running the FARE REQUIRED P/R code on the 55 today. Wonder how many buses still have that.

The 7th Ave really shit the bed today. At least I got block tickets for the next couple of days!

Do you still have to make ADAs on the buses with automatic announcements? I was riding a 55 today that clearly had a probie driving, dragging the line like hell, kneeling completely at every stop, stopping on green lights, and he was calling out ADAs even after the automated ones rang out. These are on the subway too for the DC police. I heard the idea is to entice people who are tourists to NYC, and NYC gets lots of DC tourists/visitors/family members. Kinda convoluted if you ask me.

So they sent the 9500s and 9600s by mistake? That's uh...impressive. Would kind of check out since the 9400 swap happened while they were being delivered, whereas the 9500s and 9600s had been at Quill for a minute...

Constantly, and then everybody complains that they wasted money and hired consultants lol...

Did anybody actually read the article? Typical know-nothing Post article churned out by some consultants getting seven grand an hour. The complaint here is that the system of redundancy exists, but they don't think the back-up generators are hypothetically strong enough? So they can improve them, big deal. It's good they looked into this having learned their lesson from the old system. Anyway, everybody knows the reason the transition to this new site has been slow has been because of covid. Take away the global pandemic, yes, things would have moved there. But generally speaking there's no reason not to invest in modernizing and centralizing DOB infrastructure.

Maybe a little juice left in the battery lights?

At what point are we accepting that the XDE40 and LFS HEV order assignments in Manhattan have changed and this isn't just a temporary re-arrangement for training crews?

Cause it's up on One Forty-Sixth St. And you've got Tuskegee on One Hundredth.

Hey, even a broken clock makes a smart post twice a day!

And again, re: those locked doors – R46s were delivered with passenger-accessible emergency bypass switches to open the doors. Those were removed and plated over. To me, that's a mistake.

"Most would just prefer to not take the subway." Some people would prefer not to.

Was wondering why I was seeing KB LFSes and such coming in off the Manhattan Bridge. Figured there was some sort of bustitution in the works.

Eh, an awful isolated incident is, on a statistical basis, less damning than a larger number of individual incidents. But definitely isn't good for people's perception of the subway.

The C/R still has a remote switch, but given there's no emergency intercom, useless in a situation like this. The cars were delivered with a defeat switch at each end so that passengers could unlock in an emergency, but those were removed (as were the fire extinguishers). Yeah, but removing the emergency switch was a really stupid idea.

Always thought it was dumb as hell to have the end doors locked on cars. There used to be a switch to unlock them but the brain trust at the TA removed that too. Now, people get trapped with a madman while he shoots the car up.

My understanding of this was always that 'trains closer together' was supposed to suggest the optionality of running more trains, should needs demand. Of course, they never really increased the fleet enough or reduced the spare ratio to get to that point, but it seemed to me that was the premise. But to your point, did tph on the L or the 7 meaningfully increase since CBTC beyond the bounds of what was possible before? I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I would assume the answer to that, as you suggest, is no. And as you say, it seems like the peak demands during rush hour are going to be suppressed by a meaningful amount for at least another couple years. I remember the initial consultant estimates that the MTA would only reach 90% of ridership after a few years, and that seems borne out to me.

Subways are not great now, but they're better than they were a few months ago, I'll say that. West 4th is a complete living hell after 8pm, and permanent Night of the Living Dead on the lower level at the ends of the platform, but besides that... Knock on wood, but I haven't personally felt unsafe, just disappointed and frustrated – stepping over people passed on the steps, etc. Now, I feel a little different about women on the train at night, I have some more concerns about them riding alone. Generally thinking, the whole thing is just sad and a failure of strategic planning. Adams needs to have a plan to open shelters or SROs and provide housing before booting everybody out. Otherwise, he just shuffles them from station to station and wastes everybody's time. Same goes for the raids above ground. They accomplish nothing until there's housing to replace the street. Provide some safe beds, and we get somewhere. Not to mention that the drug problem is as bad as ever. I called in EMS/PD just on Sunday (street level) for two overdoses, dispatcher was asking me if I had narcan and I'm thinking no, lady, thank god my life is not at the point where I carry that... Young guys too, couldn't have been more than 20 or 25, midday afternoon.

I have to think at this point those buses are semi-permanently placed there, stickers and regular runs and all. Sort of like the BT&E buses before they got organized by depot.