Wouldn't this have worked for a service cut?

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

The doomsday cuts of June 2010 were a bit too many and a better idea should be implemented that would save more money. The idea is shutting down the subway system late nights. In other words trains now run 18/7 instead of 24/7. This would work because it saves the money that would be spent operating the system during those hours. Also the ridership on most lines late at night does not justify running them add on to the fact they're running slow. The time trains are not running can be used for trackwork and maintenance which would allow for a cleaner, more efficient system when it is running and thus avoiding weekend G.O.'s which are a headache to riders. Also major cities like Tokyo, Shanghai and Moscow do not run their trains 24/7 and 2 of those cities doubled our ridership total in 2009. If busier more populated cities shut down the subway late at night why can't New York do so? What makes the MTA so special and DUMB?

 

The question is should the MTA have shut down late night subway service as a service cut and thus reducing other cuts that were made?

[Grand Concourse]

I do agree about the idea to shut down parts of the system at a time, but sadly a city like this, that's impossible. Plus you'd have to pay lots of overtime to b/os to drive bus shuttles to replace the segments shut down, which would be more expensive.

 

In a perfect world, the system could be shut down for a few hours once a week or month, but it'll never happen with the demands of the city the way it is. What would be nice is if there was a culture [like in Asia] where the people respects their system and keeps the station/trains clean by cleaning up after themselves and not leaving a mess behind [yeah good luck with that]. Something like that, but again, only in a perfect world.

[Trainmaster5]

Just tell me how the hospital, sanitation, postal, deli, produce market, and yes, transit workers, are supposed to get to work during the overnight shift. You may not realize it but not everyone lives within walking distance of their job. You also fail to realize that the people operating your am rush hour trains and buses frequently report to work before 4 am in the morning to prepare service. What about them ? Your produce workers must be at work so the deliveiries can go out before sunrise in many cases. Tell me how you plan to accomodate the overnight and early am workers with your plan.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

Just tell me how the hospital, sanitation, postal, deli, produce market, and yes, transit workers, are supposed to get to work during the overnight shift. You may not realize it but not everyone lives within walking distance of their job. You also fail to realize that the people operating your am rush hour trains and buses frequently report to work before 4 am in the morning to prepare service. What about them ? Your produce workers must be at work so the deliveiries can go out before sunrise in many cases. Tell me how you plan to accomodate the overnight and early am workers with your plan.

 

Simple, run buses with slight increases in service for high volume bus routes. Only buses scheduled to run late night before the cuts would be utilized.

[SubwayGuy]

Buses are extremely inefficient compared to subways. Those people need to get to work QUICKLY. Also what happens when someone has a commute that isn't doable with just two buses...in your world are you going to make them pay a second fare?

 

Slight increases in service? Even 20 minute headways for buses during overnights are not going to cut it, not at all. Most bus routes run 40-50 minute headways overnight and many are shut down entirely. Your plan would simply not work. I swear the people who criticize overnight subway service never actually even ride it so they don't know how much it IS needed in this city. For the millionth time, this will NOT work. AND it will hurt city businesses and therefore tax revenue by KILLING nightlife which is a big income generator.

[Kamen Rider]

Please, watch the Nazi Banksters Crimes Ripple Effect at http://jforjustice.co.uk/banksters

[Trainmaster5]

Simple, run buses with slight increases in service for high volume bus routes. Only buses scheduled to run late night before the cuts would be utilized.

 

Your bus is going to take me from Wakefield, Queens Village, Far Rock, or Canarsie to Hunts Point, the Farley P.O., Jamaica yard, Jamaica LIRR and yards, or Metrotech or Wall St in how much time ? The overnight bus service in most boroughs was inadequate, or non-existent BEFORE the last service cuts. It averaged about 45-75 minutes btwn buses on many routes in the outer boroughs where the workers actually live. It sounds like you want them to make a 2 hour or more commute one way. What about that ?

[RTOMan]

Simple, run buses with slight increases in service for high volume bus routes. Only buses scheduled to run late night before the cuts would be utilized.

 

Another poster in Transit Fantasy Land...

 

People need to get where they got to go quick and taking a bus is NOT a quick way to get anywhere in New York City at anytime.

[LRG]

Simple, run buses with slight increases in service for high volume bus routes. Only buses scheduled to run late night before the cuts would be utilized.

 

It costs more money to run a bus than it does to run a train. In a city like this, cutting trains at night will never happen.

[Guest lance25]

Since everyone here mentioned why it would be difficult for late night commuters, allow me to chime in on the other proposal from the original post: overnight maintenance. There will always be weekend and midday track work, even if the subway was shut down overnight. Wanna know why? It's because people don't want track workers' lights shining through their windows in the dead of night.

[checkmatechamp13]

I don't know about the lines of the NYC Subway system late at night, but I know that a lot of lines can get pretty full at 10 PM - 11 PM. I went on the PATH last night and in both directions, at 12 midnight, the trains had a seated load in both directions. I even took a bus (the X10) and it had a seated load (I know it means a lot more for a train than a bus). The point is that a lot of people use these lines at night and would be inconvenienced by bustitution. A bus is a lot slower and, all things being equal, you can't fit 500 people on a bus.

Also, there is a cost to shutting down the subway at night. You have to clear out the station, make sure nobody pays their fare after the last train for the night leaves, and you have to take all of those extra trains out of service, meaning you have to inspect them more thoroughly for sleeping passengers, etc. Also, you need that extra yard space to store the trains, and the additional buses that you need for the bustitution (buses are slower than trains, meaning you need more buses per route than trains).

Not to mention, there is no way a bus driver would want to make a long trip like Far Rockaway-Inwood or Jamaica or Norwood-Coney Island.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

This is the wrong attitude for New Yorkers to have about this topic. Virtually EVERY other major city shuts down subway service for the late night hours and we do not. What makes NY special? NOTHING does.

 

Tokyo has double our population, double our subway ridership and is the economic capital of the east. Yet they do not run trains 24/7. When the trains do run they perform amazingly well. The 5 hours of rest the trains get each day reduce wear and tear which reduces car breakdowns.

 

It's not just Tokyo. Other major cities in Asia shut down the subway during late night hours. Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur just to name a few others do not run around the clock subway service but have systems that are way more advanced and cleaner than ours in NYC. These cities have just as much economic weight and demand for business as New York City. If they can do it we can do it. It's time we play FOLLOW THE LEADER in New York City because our system SUCKS compared to what's out there. We need to implement strategies that are used in these other cities like NO late night subway service. Whoever doesn't see this must not want a better subway system and must want 1 in every 5 trains to show up late.

 

Late night service can come back when trains are AUTOMATED and less costly to operate but until then only use the subway when absolutely needed.

[iGeMiNix]

Then, move out, or tell every New Yorker in the city to go with this idea. Also, have you ever rode the at night, it is literally packed even at 2AM. Imagine that crowd on buses and how pissed they would be. Of course, if it was doable, it would be okay, but considering how it is here, it is hardly going to go a week without people being pissed off about it. Implementing an idea like this in this day of age is a lot harder then it is from the past where people are used to it at this point.

[checkmatechamp13]

The thing is that a lot of these Asian systems are younger than our NYC Subway system. Also, even if their economy is doing great without overnight service doesn't mean it can't do better. Maybe their economy would be even better if people knew that they could be called into work at 3 AM and have a cheap form of transportation to get them there, or maybe businesses would have more of a reason to stay open 24/7 if they were served by a 24/7 subway system. Of course, if the subway were to be closed at night, the system would be better maintained, but NYC is a city where most people would rather have a train that gets them from place to place than a clean system where the trains don't always run. Like I said, shutting the system down late nights would hurt the people who depend on transit the most because they are forced to wait 20 minutes for a train and make extra transfers because only bare bones service operates at night.

[LRG]

This is the wrong attitude for New Yorkers to have about this topic. Virtually EVERY other major city shuts down subway service for the late night hours and we do not. What makes NY special? NOTHING does.

 

Tokyo has double our population, double our subway ridership and is the economic capital of the east. Yet they do not run trains 24/7. When the trains do run they perform amazingly well. The 5 hours of rest the trains get each day reduce wear and tear which reduces car breakdowns.

 

It's not just Tokyo. Other major cities in Asia shut down the subway during late night hours. Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur just to name a few others do not run around the clock subway service but have systems that are way more advanced and cleaner than ours in NYC. These cities have just as much economic weight and demand for business as New York City. If they can do it we can do it. It's time we play FOLLOW THE LEADER in New York City because our system SUCKS compared to what's out there. We need to implement strategies that are used in these other cities like NO late night subway service. Whoever doesn't see this must not want a better subway system and must want 1 in every 5 trains to show up late.

 

Late night service can come back when trains are AUTOMATED and less costly to operate but until then only use the subway when absolutely needed.

 

What makes you think we should shut down our subway like the rest of the other cities do? Like another poster here said, it's not that easy just to shut down the system overnight. Hell, it wasn't easy for workers to go on strike back in 2005, they couldn't just abandon trains like that, they had to dump passengers at the terminals, take them to the yard or layup spot, and then walk off the job.

 

Keep thinking that the system should shut down overnight...that will never happen in a million years. If anything, late night frequency should be reduced to 30 minutes, if you ask me.

[INDman]

NYC has had 24/7 subway service since 1904, you can't expect a city to change it's habbits that it's had for over 100 years. Have you ever been on the subway at 4 or 5 AM? Some lines are packed. If you don't like it, move.

[SubwayGuy]

This is the wrong attitude for New Yorkers to have about this topic. Virtually EVERY other major city shuts down subway service for the late night hours and we do not. What makes NY special? NOTHING does.

 

Tokyo has double our population, double our subway ridership and is the economic capital of the east. Yet they do not run trains 24/7. When the trains do run they perform amazingly well. The 5 hours of rest the trains get each day reduce wear and tear which reduces car breakdowns.

 

It's not just Tokyo. Other major cities in Asia shut down the subway during late night hours. Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur just to name a few others do not run around the clock subway service but have systems that are way more advanced and cleaner than ours in NYC. These cities have just as much economic weight and demand for business as New York City. If they can do it we can do it. It's time we play FOLLOW THE LEADER in New York City because our system SUCKS compared to what's out there. We need to implement strategies that are used in these other cities like NO late night subway service. Whoever doesn't see this must not want a better subway system and must want 1 in every 5 trains to show up late.

 

Late night service can come back when trains are AUTOMATED and less costly to operate but until then only use the subway when absolutely needed.

 

So what? I don't give a f*** what Tokyo Shanghai or who ever does. Why? Because none of those cities are New York.

 

I'm sick of following Europe and Asia. It's about time America went back to being American instead of playing grabass with whatever they're doing over there.

 

There's a big reason New York has overnight service and that's because it is VITAL and CRUCIAL to our city being successful. It makes us DIFFERENT, UNIQUE, and BETTER. It makes New York "the city that never sleeps" instead of "the city that has a 1am bedtime just like the rest of them"

 

Trains will never be automated because it is not safe. I love how every ignorant "railfan" thinks that if you automate things you can just walk away from them and leave them be. Never mind the set up costs of new techology, even automated trains go bad and require frequent and expensive maintenance at the hands of highly trained electronics experts. And can automated trains evacuate themselves in the case of emergency? I sure the hell don't think so.

 

And INDman is right, if you don't like it, MOVE. There are thousands of cities around the globe that will accomodate your "i don't stay up late" lifestyle. They won't charge you high municipal taxes like NY City on your earnings either to subsidize their systems, that is if they even have one. And when you wind up somewhere at 1am in the morning, or you have a job that reports an hour away at 5am, then you can kiss the sweet night sky when you have to pay for a cab or car service to take you there.

 

The rest of us WANT and NEED our overnight service. Go ride a train at 2am, 4am, before you come in hear spouting off like some know it all punk because it's obvious you've NEVER done it. Usually it's a prerequisite that you know what you're talking about before you go talking shit.

[LRG]

^^Amen!!!

 

The day New York City ends late night service in the subway, I'm out!!! I know one day I'll be using the system late at night...I came home 12:30 one night and the train I was on was packed!!! Case in point, spare us with the "cut night service" bullshit, because we NEED overnight subway service.

[Trainmaster5]

This is the wrong attitude for New Yorkers to have about this topic. Virtually EVERY other major city shuts down subway service for the late night hours and we do not. What makes NY special? NOTHING does.

 

Tokyo has double our population, double our subway ridership and is the economic capital of the east. Yet they do not run trains 24/7. When the trains do run they perform amazingly well. The 5 hours of rest the trains get each day reduce wear and tear which reduces car breakdowns.

 

It's not just Tokyo. Other major cities in Asia shut down the subway during late night hours. Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur just to name a few others do not run around the clock subway service but have systems that are way more advanced and cleaner than ours in NYC. These cities have just as much economic weight and demand for business as New York City. If they can do it we can do it. It's time we play FOLLOW THE LEADER in New York City because our system SUCKS compared to what's out there. We need to implement strategies that are used in these other cities like NO late night subway service. Whoever doesn't see this must not want a better subway system and must want 1 in every 5 trains to show up late.

 

Late night service can come back when trains are AUTOMATED and less costly to operate but until then only use the subway when absolutely needed.

 

Perhaps you would rather live in those vibrant Asian cities and ride their spiffy systems and you are welcome to do so. I'm a New Yorker and damn proud of it. The cities you mentioned were hellholes in the mid 20th century, trying to recover from the effects of WWII. Their national governments started from scratch because there was very little or no infrastructure left to speak of. New York didn't suffer those effects and had to graft on to what they already had, which is why you have the system that's in place today. The United States federal government decided to go the highway route after WWII, that and air travel, and no state or local government had/has the resources to build the systems you so admire. Perhaps you would welcome a " Manhattan Project" scenario where the system would close down, entirely, for a 10 year period and we could start from zero and build a brand new state of the art system. Even if that was the case only the U.S. government, with a booming economy, could undertake such a massive project. BTW, never mind the financial cost, what would the workers and tourists do in the meantime? I'd like to hear more from you as I'm not trying to be critical but realistic. How would the NY metro area go about implementing a state of the art system and what would be the effects on the population if such an undertaking were feasible ?

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

Shutting down late night service seems to be a huge inconvience to some New Yorkers. The reality is our subway system can use a huge cleansing job, some station rehab and a huge track upgrade so trackwork doesn't need to be done every other weekend. My 5 train is routinely affected by weekend work. The late night time window is a great time to clean up the system and do all of this work as it inconviences the least amount of riders. More people are riding the train during the weekend and midday hours than the late night hours. The amount of people affected by 12-9's, GO's and every other preventable delay is far higher than the number that ride the trains late night. And besides why give the homeless people another place to roam?

Nearly all subway delays are preventable. So let's start preventing them by fixing the infastructure when it effects a smaller group of riders.

[NX Express]

Shutting down late night service seems to be a huge inconvience to some New Yorkers. The reality is our subway system can use a huge cleansing job, some station rehab and a huge track upgrade so trackwork doesn't need to be done every other weekend. My 5 train is routinely affected by weekend work. The late night time window is a great time to clean up the system and do all of this work as it inconviences the least amount of riders. More people are riding the train during the weekend and midday hours than the late night hours. The amount of people affected by 12-9's, GO's and every other preventable delay is far higher than the number that ride the trains late night. And besides why give the homeless people another place to roam?

Nearly all subway delays are preventable. So let's start preventing them by fixing the infastructure when it effects a smaller group of riders.

To sum up what everyone else has said...THE GROUP OF LATE-NITE RIDERS IS NOT THAT SMALL!!! Sorry for the caps.

[iGeMiNix]

Shutting down late night service seems to be a huge inconvience to some New Yorkers. The reality is our subway system can use a huge cleansing job, some station rehab and a huge track upgrade so trackwork doesn't need to be done every other weekend. My 5 train is routinely affected by weekend work. The late night time window is a great time to clean up the system and do all of this work as it inconviences the least amount of riders. More people are riding the train during the weekend and midday hours than the late night hours. The amount of people affected by 12-9's, GO's and every other preventable delay is far higher than the number that ride the trains late night. And besides why give the homeless people another place to roam?

Nearly all subway delays are preventable. So let's start preventing them by fixing the infastructure when it effects a smaller group of riders.

 

You are just one guy. You need to get this in your head, you have valid points, but have you actually thought about if it is going to work? It seems that you tend to want to see a future but you don't like the present and always wanting to change it, if you want to change it you get many people to agree. At this point, you are pretty much just forcing your opinions on others and everybody knows in reality, it will not work. You think the late-night group is small, it is pretty huge. Like others said, people here don't sleep, unlike other countries which do and gives a reason to shut it down.

[LRG]

Shutting down late night service seems to be a huge inconvience to some New Yorkers. The reality is our subway system can use a huge cleansing job, some station rehab and a huge track upgrade so trackwork doesn't need to be done every other weekend. My 5 train is routinely affected by weekend work. The late night time window is a great time to clean up the system and do all of this work as it inconviences the least amount of riders. More people are riding the train during the weekend and midday hours than the late night hours. The amount of people affected by 12-9's, GO's and every other preventable delay is far higher than the number that ride the trains late night. And besides why give the homeless people another place to roam?

Nearly all subway delays are preventable. So let's start preventing them by fixing the infastructure when it effects a smaller group of riders.

 

Even at night riders are still ticked off because a train is rerouted and have to wait on average 20 minutes to backtrack their skipped station. You think late night riders don't have a life??? For the most part they do.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

Let's compromise. If overnight service is so necessary than come up with a better idea than saves a ton of operations money, thus reducing the deficit and also inconviences a SMALL group of riders. The service cuts that were implemented do not meet etiher reqiurement for service reduction measures.

 

I would like to see the super smart transit buff that comes up with a better alternative.

[NX Express]

Let's compromise. If overnight service is so necessary than come up with a better idea than saves a ton of operations money, thus reducing the deficit and also inconviences a SMALL group of riders. The service cuts that were implemented do not meet etiher reqiurement for service reduction measures.

 

I would like to see the super smart transit buff that comes up with a better alternative.

 

Cutting managers!!!

1. Although it's not operations (although occasionally it is) it's still MTA money!

2. It inconveniences 0 riders.