New York Isn’t Special
A week ago, we published a short note on driver-only metro trains, known in New York as one-person train operation or OPTO. New York is nearly unique globally in running metro trains with both a driver and a conductor, and from time to time reformers have suggested switching to OPTO, so far only succeeding in edge cases such as a few short off-peak trains. A bill passed the state legislature banning OPTO nearly unanimously, but the governor has so far neither signed nor vetoed it. The New York Times covered our report rather favorably, and the usual suspects, in this case union leadership, are pissed. Transportation Workers Union head John Samuelsen made the usual argument, but highlighted how special New York is.
“Academics think working people are stupid,” [Samuelsen] said. “They can make data lie for them. They conducted a study of subway systems worldwide. But there’s no subway system in the world like the NYC subway system.”
Our report was short and didn’t go into all the ways New York isn’t special, so let me elaborate here:
- On pre-corona numbers, New York’s urban rail network ranked 12th in the world in ridership, and that’s with a lot of London commuter rail ridership excluded, including which would likely put London ahead and New York 13th.
- New York was among the first cities in the world to open its subway – but London, Budapest, Chicago (dating from the electrification and opening of the Loop in 1897), Boston, Paris, and Berlin all opened earlier.
- New York has some tight curves on its tracks, but the minimum curve radius on Paris Métro Line 1, 40 meters, is comparable to the New York City Subway’s.
- The trains on the New York City Subway are atypically long for a metro system, at 151 meters on most of the A division and 183 on most of the B division, but trains on some metro systems are even longer (Tokyo has some 200 m trains, Shanghai 180 m trains) and so are trains on commuter rail systems like the RER (204 m on the B, 220 m on the A), Munich S-Bahn (201 m), and Elizabeth line (205 m, extendable to 240).
- New York has crowded trains at rush hour, with pre-Second Avenue Subway trains peaking at 4 standees per square meter, but London peaks at 5/m^2 and trains in Tokyo and the bigger Chinese cities at more than that. Overall ridership, irrespective of crowding, peaked around 30,000 passengers per direction per hour on the 4 and 5 trains in New York, compared with 55,000 on the RER A.
New York is not special, not in 2025, when it’s one of many megacities with large subway systems. It’s just solipsistic, run by managers and labor leaders who are used to denigrating cities that are superior to New York in every way they run their metro systems as mere villages unworthy of their attention. Both groups are overpaid: management is hired from pipelines that expect master-of-the-universe pay and think Sweden is a lower-wage society, and labor faces such hurdles with the seniority system that new hires get bad shifts and to get enough workers New York City Transit has had to pay $85,000 at start, compared with, in PPP terms, around $63,000 in Munich after recent negotiations. The incentive in New York should be to automate aggressively, and look for ways to increase worker churn and not to turn people who earn 2050s wages for 1950s productivity be a veto point to anything.
Pedestrian Observations 
Why is the labor leadership in the union so virulently hostile to automation? They’re not even trying to just get job security in exchange for automation, instead going for the political ban.
Why wouldn’t they? They’re labor aristocracy, and they get paid far in excess of what anyone else can get without getting a degree or getting another job with public-sector blue-collar union productivity (with the seniority not transferring between unions). Might as well ask why someone who owns a $2 million house in coastal California is NIMBY.
You upper middle class symbol manipulator biases are showing again. Why shouldn’t the staff having to put up with the likes of you get paid well?
Not to disagree with the overall point, but a few clarifications:
NYC’s minimum curve radius is 36.6 m and 34.2 m for switches, less than 40 m.
NYC’s trains are only atypically long for European cities, which are smaller (the more comparable in population cities of Moscow and Istanbul also have longer trains), and would be pretty common lengthwise in Asia.
Throughput peaked at 52,500 pphpd in the 53rd St tunnel in 1989.
It’s just awful the way democracy gets in the way of omniscient railfannery.
The legislature can override a veto with a two thirds vote. I suspect and don’t care one way or another that “nearly unanimously” is more than two thirds. I don’t want to expend the effort to ferret out what happens if the Governor doesn’t sign. Likely becomes law. It’s unfortunate democracy will thwart your omniscience. Truly a pity.
I think you misread what Alon said — in this case the railfans and democracy are on the same side.
It passed without much of a debate; if it’s vetoed, an override might still pass but not not cleanly.
Clap harder
Do you, or do you not, actually care about the fact the building and operating a subway in NY is currently significantly more expensive than in other, peer, cities, and that as a result NY does not have as much subway as it could otherwise have?
This bill addressed a technical issue. It was passed by elected officials who don’t use the subway, were not bothered by the fact that no other US or foreign assembly ever passed a similar bill, and did not perform any cost-benefit analysis. We know why that was the case. There are no NYC, federal or foreign studies demonstrating a safety benefit, and the assembly could not discuss costs without having to explain how they were planning to cover them. The bill will benefit its sponsor, the conductors union, who not incidentally is known for its outsized efforts in favor of its favored candidates for the NYS assembly itself. In summary, a small group of people are helping themselves out of the public purse. It’s truly a pity that you don’t see anything wrong here.
The bill addressed the people who actually use the subway and want a conductor on board to do all the other stuff a conductor does besides open and close doors. It’s just awful the way democracy works. Gumming up the way technocrats think things should be done. Terrible. Bordering on appalling.
This is not what happened. NY subway users are arguing against the bill (“Transit advocates push for single-person subway crews to save $450M” on 1010wins).
UK commuters agree with Alon’s “New York is not special”. They experienced repeated strikes against driver-operated doors. South Western Railways saw 74 days of industrial action between 2017 and 2020 with cancellation of 800 trains/day. Note that SWR was not eliminating any position. A guard (conductor in US parlance) would continue to be scheduled on every train. SWR simply wanted the train to run in the rare instance when the guard was not showing up. The unions refused “in the name of safety”. Never mind that a UK and Europe study by George Bearfield, Visiting Professor of Rail Safety at the University of Huddersfield Institute of Railway Research show “that the number of fatal and major incidents involving passengers boarding or alighting trains are highest for trains with both driver and guard when entering or leaving unstaffed platforms, where driver-only trains have proved to be slightly safer”.
The union’s safety concerns evaporated when the SWR guards were offered a 37 instead of 42-hour week but have resurfaced here and there. The December launch of the 7 billion Pound East-West Rail faces being delayed over the same issue.
The Citizens Budget Commission isn’t all New Yorkers. And I suspect have more than one axe to grind. WINS is the all-news station which means they were heard. And even though they managed to get heard on one of the most popular radio stations in Metro New York few if any people got the urge to contact their legislator.
It’s a pity you don’t like the way democracy works.
For decades, OPTO trains ran on NYC subway tracks with 3 to 5 cars and without safety issues or public complaints. Well aware of this fact, the Albany assembly passed the bill prohibiting these operations without public debate and without cost-benefit analysis. You are telling me this is how democracy works. I thought this was an example of banana republic practice but I am not from NY so what do I know?
If they don’t care about conductors why are there multiple videos explaining where to stand, on the platform, if you want a conductor? I’m sure they do all sorts of other things people value. The yokels from the hinterlands can complain bitterly about how confusing it all is when they are told, by the conductor that the yellow trains are on the other set of platforms.
Just because you don’t want conductors doesn’t mean other people don’t. Or that they have been mesmerized by some nefarious cabal of villains. The unions along with other people successfully lobbied to have the legislature to have conductors on all the trains. It’s too bad democracy didn’t give you results you like. Just tooo tooooo bad.
If you believe that, besides the Transport Workers Union, someone lobbied to have a conductor on the 42nd Street Shuttle, I have a bridge to sell you.
Un huh, sure, the evil communistist TWU was the only force acting on the stalwart True Conservative Real American ( tm ) legislators who nearly unanimously voted for the legislation. Which variety of voodoo do they use to achieve that? Or is it mind rays? Perhaps you should send them your instructions for tin foil hats.
Yes, the TWU was the force lobbying for the bill 4873 voted discreetly by the NYS Assembly on June 9 and the Senate on June 13. The public was not informed of the vote in the press or online before the vote. The NY State Transportation committee did not have a public hearing. The first public comment came when the Effective Transit Alliance declared its opposition on July 2nd.
Nobody talked about it. Yet the legislature passed it almost unanimously. So you are going with the TWU mind-ray explanation not voodoo. Okay.
The TWU has the will and the politicians’ numbers. Plain old tech, no mind rays needed.
Constituents communicating with their legislators is how it works.
It’s a pity the proletariat hasn’t risen up in righteous indignation after CItizens Budget Commission and the Effective Transit Alliance warned them about the great injustice. Apparently they don’t care as much as you do. Pity democracy isn’t working the way you want it to. Truly truly too toooo toooooo bad.
We don’t agree on the meaning of democracy. Democracy is classically seen as a mean to settle issues through civil debate while you seem to reject civility. Presenting the issue as the people against the technocrats is unconvincing when neither New Yorkers nor technocrats were consulted. Furthermore, many of New York State practices are illegal in other democracies.
Neither France nor New York are “right to work” jurisdictions, but for opposite reasons. In France, right to work is a given, and the exceptions to this right found in a non “right to work” state like NY are unthinkable. The US concepts of closed shop, union shop, agency shop or union security agreement have no French translation, while the status of exclusive representative of MTA workers gained decades ago by the TWU recalls medieval fiefdoms. In France, unions are like political parties. Membership is voluntary and optional. The various unions reflect the diversity of the workforce, and local or national associations represent public transport users. This diversity prevents one party from shutting down the debate by pretending to represent all workers, and users for good measure.
I understand that sometimes legislatures get bamboozled by special interest groups. And sometime, even without bamboozling, the outcomes aren’t what I want.
You seem to think that when it’s not what you want it’s a vast conspiracy of dastardly evildoers. Or mind rays.
Who gives a fuck? What do your pontifications on French labor law have to do with the New York State Legislature?
They have been since 1959. The Citizens Budget Comittee isn’t made up of Canadians. They are New Yorkers. As are, I hope this isn’t a surprise, TWU members. And Effective Transit Alliance members. And the staff at amNY and the New York Times. Just because the legislature didn’t poll all of them immediately before voting doesn’t mean they can’t petition for redress of their grievances now.
I do hope this isn’t a revelation. While the legislature can pass legislation it can also repeal it. Or amend it. Or pass conflicting legislation. All without your help.
Alon’s work is based on comparisons between what is happening in the US and elsewhere. If you don’t like these comparisons, what are you doing on pedestrianobservations.com ?
@dralaindumas
I’ve been reading and commenting for maybe a year now, a relative newcomer, and @Richard Mlynarik informed me on, like, week 4 that adirondacker12800 has been a troll for decades.
Best not to engage with someone who doesn’t argue in good faith.
I haven’t expressed an opinion about the comparisons. Other people seem to have found cherry-picking. Which isn’t an opinion, it’s facts to be discussed. Theirs discussion not mine. I haven’t expressed an opinion about conductors either. Speculated on what other people feel but I haven’t said what I think about conductors.
The people of New York heard about Alon’s work. They decided to ignore it. They have been hearing about one person train operation …. for a very long time. As Alon acknowledges in more than one place. They decided they want a conductor. Even though:
Whoopdeedoo! Deciding an issue on technical details isn’t democracy.
Deciding an issue, after hearing about it, on and off, for decades, based on feeling, is how democracy works most of the time. It’s too bad the legislature ignored omniscient railfannery but they are vaguely engaging in democracy not technocracy. Too too bad the downtrodden strap hangers didn’t rise up in revolt once the details were revealed. Just too bad the outcome isn’t what you wanted. Too, tooooooooo bad.
Alon, and others like the Citizens Budget Commission and myself, have criticized the NY State law banning OPTO. This engagement is not as you stated “bordering on appalling”. This is how democracies function. Your own words, “It’s a pity you don’t like how democracies work”, “Truly too toooo tooooo bad” best apply to your attitude.
Bravo! I hope they keep up the good work.
Sisyphean, because in a democracy people can ignore the technocrats. I hope there was little weeping, gnashing of teeth or both, that, apparently, few if any people were inspired to do anything. Even after the dazzling numbers were promulgated to the populace.
I wrote “Gumming up the way technocrats think things should be done.” I was speculating that technocrats are deeply disappointed that the expositions weren’t compelling. Appalled. Even though they collected numbers, lots and lots of numbers. Probably even have charts and graphs and PowerPoint presentations. Maybe even twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was.
The legislature can be unimpressed with the numbers. So can the public. Or blithe-fully have the information go in one ear and out the other. Or ignore all of it. You do understand that none of them are your mommy and they don’t have to pay attention?
They can even agree with some or all of the points. Yet have other goals. For instance, could agree conductors cost $450 million a year. And at the same time want one on every train, opening the window and pointing at the sign on the platform. That people who want a conductor look for, so they know where to stand. Because they have other goals. Other than saving money or being like all the kewl kidz without conductors. Or both.
It will make the charts and graphs and PowerPoint presentations very very sad they were ignored. Perhaps even despondent. Woeful the brilliance goes unrecognized. And unappreciated.
I hope you understand that people can have motivations other yours. It’s a pity the outcome wasn’t what you wanted. That’s the way it works. Sometimes you get what you want. Sometimes you don’t get it. If the results are always what you want it’s not a democracy.
… I remind Alon regularly that there are many kinds of technocrats. There are the valiant crusaders of the Citizens Budget Committee or stalwart advocates of The Effective Transit Alliance. There are people who want all-highway-all-the-time. And BANANAs. And tree huggers. Apparently none of interest groups were moved by the awesome numbers. Perhaps it’s mesmerizing TWU mind rays disabling their motivation. Could just be that they don’t care. Apathy is an option in a democracy.
“What conductors do” post 1990 = “draw salary” + “game overtime” + “draw pensions”.
That’s it. That’s all there is to it.
Oh my God, you left out the quote that drove me bonkers:
I suppose it’s par for the course in American politics these days. Everything is vibes and data means nothing.
The conversation on socials and in the article comments from bill proponents was similar: the subway is a Waffle House and needs train crew, literally, to break up fights and evacuate the cars.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the favorable coverage given that the Times is allergic to consulting academics when writing about transit. Their congestion pricing coverage was absolutely absurd and blatant in its bias.
Same is true here, the civil service comes from the Chinese imperial system and that was all based off literacy not data as literacy was the most important skill in 8th century China before it became widespread.
Nicely ask the NYPD to patrol the subway, following the general principle that transit vehicles are just pieces of sidewalk that move. (A “pedestrian accelerator”.)
As a stretch goal, negotiate with the unions that conductors who wish to continue their careers there can transfer ~half of their seniority into the police union.
They do patrol the subway. And supposedly the buses. Ferries. The aerial tramway to Roosevelt Island. …
@Basil Marte
The city Transit Police was merged with the NYPD and became their Transit Bureau in 1995. A Bureau is a major office within the NYPD (Patrol and Detectives are two other well-known ones). The Transit Bureau has the responsibility for policing the subway. This is not to be confused with the Transportation Bureau, which is responsible for public safety on roadways.
The MTA has its own police force but it’s much smaller, and the two organizations do operate jointly in certain areas.
There are also a number of other city and state agencies with sworn peace officers that may get involved with a crime on a transit service.
We love to have our law enforcement fiefdoms here.
In any event, converting conductors to peace officers is easier said than done. The primary responsibilities are not alike, and really what would happen is job losses through reduction of positions. And that is what has the union entrenched. Although I do wonder about Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s plans to have a mental-health response force (either new or enlarging those that exist already — there are a couple of city agencies responsible for mental health and homelessness) to substitute for NYPD patrolmen having to deal with the mentally ill as the default response, and how that might affect this issue.
If you read or listen to the news, the public perception of the biggest threat to safety is the mentally ill and homeless. And while perception isn’t necessarily reality, both the reality and the perception have to be addressed to entice riders back to a system that they might avoid for either reason. I recall both reading about the history of the subway here and here and a recent visit to the NYC Transit Museum. Absolutely fascinating.
Thanks for the explanation!
My current working hypothesis has become:
“Doing police job stuff” is also not the job of police any longer.
If you’re AMERICAN HEROES 9/11 9/11 and if your union has massive quantities of infliuence to slosh around, buying politicians (they’re so cheap! incredible return on investment) and buying legislation, because your union is incredibly well-funded because your union’s entire purpose is perpetuating overtime abuse and (super super early!) retirement pay — bankrupting the local juridiction if ncessary, absolutely certainly defunding other government programs — then THERE IS NO INCENTIVE OF ANY TYPE FOR YOU ON THE POLICE TO DO BOTHER DOING POLICE WORK.
If you own your boss is fully paid for and owned, you write your own work description. And that description is “draw a ridiculous salary, run up overtime, take it easy, do some casual violence zero-personal-consequence from time to time, retire, draw a massive pension, then maybe get another not-doing-police-stuff “job” after “retirement” and rack up another pension or two.”
Why investigate property crime at all? Why write red-light traffic tickets? Who needs that shit?
The police are, fundamentally, permanently on go-slow strike, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. You and what army?
Addendum/correction: those “totally not police” who are not responders (e.g. “mental health”) but are totally-not-patrolling (which should be understood to include the conductors) largely function by “preventing” (not quite the right word; classical is “deterring”, which is perhaps even less correct) the disorderly behavior in the first place. When it works, this is clearly preferable. (Of course, the same is true of actual police. Hence the common request of police reformers to please do foot patrols and “community policing”. This explicitly in opposition to mostly only responding, and the rest of the time doing car patrols.)
Richard: most of this sounds very similar to the “labor aristocracy” problem with e.g. transit drivers — “the union’s entire purpose is perpetuating overtime abuse”, “retirement pay potentially bankrupting the local jurisdiction”, etc. (Ahem, for politicians who treat e.g. mayorship as a stepping stone to higher offices and don’t plan to be around 10+ years from now, this commitment is personally ~costless, unlike paying today.)
The unique part is the “casual violence without personal consequence”, which is mostly what I alluded to in people/activists having a poor opinion of the police. Which, with a massive heap of goodwill, is partly also a consequence of moving all the non-violent policing into “not police”. As in, if all the non-violent tasks that in other countries are done by the police were done by the police, people would have the attitude “ah yes, the police, mostly they are a boring bureaucracy where you register cars and also the bobbies in funny hats who help little old ladies and suchlike (and occasionally they call out the firearms-qualified officers but this is rare, more than half of policemen aren’t firearms-qualified to begin with and even those who are usually don’t carry)”. Whereas if you shuffle all these tasks into not-police, largely leaving only the doing-violence part within the purview of police, then of course people think “ah yes, the police, whose job is to beat up people (and occasionally do something else)”.
And of course the police officers themselves will think much the same, i.e. this setup alters the organizational culture to being blasé (or worse) about violence, completely in parallel with the complaint (I trust you are familiar with it) that the police always going everywhere in cars gives them chronic windshield perspective, so they instinctively park into bike lanes, and fine pedestrians&cyclists who inconvenience motorists but not motorists who endanger pedestrians&cyclists. (Furthermore, either responding-only or staying inside their cars and thus not engaging with people unless they pull someone over to give them a ticket, policemen only encounter two kinds of civilians: victims and criminals. Foot/bike patrol is not just about breaking windshield perspective, but also that the little old ladies sitting on their porches would say “good day, officer”. Which is to say, improve policemen’s opinion of civilians by increasing their exposure to neither-victim-nor-criminal people. Admittedly this would in some sense lower productivity, and it would certainly look much worse than that in the statistics, because if you successfully have an effect and e.g. a teen decides not to do a graffiti after all, this doesn’t create an arrest.)
@Basil Marte
What you are saying is fantasy of a level to surpass Tolkien. NYC Subway conductors do absolutely nothing in any way, shape, or form that could be considered police work or “not-police police work” or “preventing”/”deterring” disorderly behavior. Zero. Not a bit. NYC Subway conductors are in a cab in a middle of the train and press buttons to open and close doors. They do not roam the train acting as ‘eyes on the street’ or intervene in issues. They only interact with a passenger if one chooses to approach them while the train is at a station and they happen to have the cab window down. They have no idea what is happening a few hundred feet in front of or behind them.
When Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely the conductor on that train did nothing. When Jordan Neely broke a woman’s nose on the subway a few years before the conductor on the train did nothing. During the years of people on Reddit complaining about Jordan Neely harassing them on the subway many conductors did nothing.
If you want proof of how little NYC Subway staff want to address anti-social behavior or disorderly conduct, last year at the union’s request the MTA started installing deadbolts on cab doors to protect them from unruly passengers.
Google for subway conductors and intervention or crime and you’ll hear about the conductor who saved the life of a kid who was on the tracks – while off duty, which is the same as saying a regular passenger saved them, not the conductor while doing their job. Next is a conductor who was saved by a passing doctor; when the conductor stuck their head out of the cab window to check the tracks someone stabbed them in the neck, which means that if they had not been there because of OPTO and cameras to check the track the conductor would have been safer.
They have to have the window down. So they can point at the sign. The sign that tells passengers where the conductor will be. It doesn’t matter whether or not they actually make things safer. The passengers clustered around the sign feel safer. And it’s difficult to measure things that did not happen. I suspect there is a lot less hanky panky, hooliganism etc. in the car with a conductor.
And it doesn’t matter you took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, having someone who does-not-type for a living point at the striped sign make people feel safer.
The idea that train conductors could transfer to the police is equally absurd. Police make more than anyone working in operations at the MTA, so there is no way to pay for them to move, even if you transferred the budget from the MTA to the NYPD. Plus, the vast majority of conductors would never meet the requirements for the police academy (fitness, etc.).
If you think anyone in the TWU would agree to transferring half of their seniority, you do not have much experience with US public sector unions.
The correct move would have been to negotiate with the TWU for all conductors to retrain as train operators, so that staff isn’t reduced but twice as much service could be run for the same budget, which would then drive up ridership, which makes the union jobs more secure. Then negotiate to get all train operators to retrain as station staff, maintenance, or janitorial staff, so that trains could be run automated with even more service, with every station staffed and cleaned 24/7 and all the extra mechanics to take care of the extra milage run up on the cars. This might have required some swapping of union representation, I’m not sure if the TWU represents mechanics. This would mean even more ridership plus happier riders with cleaner cars and stations which makes the union jobs more secure still, and could even lead to even more jobs as the larger number of riders leads to more fares.
The Teamsters logo has two horse heads on it because they used to drive “teams” of horses to move things around. Today they use no horses (its all trucks and forklifts) but their union is almost as big as ever because that technology allows it to competitively continue to move things around, which wouldn’t be the case if they were still using horses. The United Auto Workers have seen membership crash after they fought the introduction of robots and other technology, and through conflict and over generous pensions made US automakers less competitive than foreign companies that opened un-unionized factories in the US. The TWU is setting itself up for losing all its jobs when someone figures out that you can put Waymo’s technology on a van carrying 15-20 people and riders flee traditional subway and busses for the more frequent driverless option.
Absent TWU agreement to this, the conductors should have been mostly fired at a stroke years ago, with all conductor positions eliminated except for some positions at stations with curved platforms to ensure door safety. Even powerful unions that can enforce strict work rules cannot prevent layoffs or require an agency hire a certain number of people.
Hochul should veto the bill, there is the chance that not everyone who voted for the fait accompli would vote to overturn the veto.
Fourth grade arithmetic rears it’s ugly head. again. To keep it simple a subway train carrying 1,000 rush hour passengers would need 50 wunderwagen. There isn’t enough bridge and tunnel. Or street on either side.
It does work for airport travelers.
https://www.supershuttle.com/ though that’s not self-driving, it requires some adulting to schedule it. While it’s not from all the places it’s from many places. To all the terminals.
The people who have probably been best at eliminating conductors/guards are the British – as we have got it down to around 25% in the London area on the mainline non long distance services which is probably world-beating. And the fight with the unions is still ongoing. They are arguing over Oxford-Milton Keynes at the moment, let’s see who wins.
They would only have to staff one station (Winslow) to be fair with the currently offered service for all stations to be staffed as all the others will have good staffing levels I think.
Is there anything run in a halfway civilised and rational way in the US?
As I recall when Paris M1 went full driverless there were 250 employees in those now-redundant positions. Some were kept for emergency responses but many transferred to other positions, possibly with the old rolling stock which was transferred to M4. I think employees were allowed to retire out and their positions not replaced but I don’t think any lost their jobs involuntarily. However the system continues to expand so there may be no net decrease, even as M15 etc will be driverless too.
the National Park Service.
It’s not the best time to be looking for civilization and rationality here. Not with Vought and Miller in charge.
In the area of mass transit, I don’t think there ever was. Even the heyday of railroads, interurbans, and streetcars had its manias, panics, and crashes. And people forget the twilight of the great passenger railroads had a major own-goal component on top of deliberately hostile public policy.
@J.G. every piece of research I have done comparing London and New York and it’s very clear that in say 1965 that New York was miles ahead of London. East of Tower Bridge there were only 3 lanes per direction of road crossings of the Thames and one pair of rail tunnels.
London also didn’t have the Victoria or Jubilee lines at that stage so the tube was much less sophisticated than now.
New York was so much advanced on all of this stuff in the mid 20th century I think.
The big challenge is that they haven’t moved on much since then.
@Matthew Hutton
I think that in a couple of instances you might be correct – but critically, in 1965, New York had already begun closing, or fully closed, north-south elevated lines on the East Side of Manhattan, and commuter rail service on LIRR and (at the time) New York Central Railroad and New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad had deteriorated significantly (this would be the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines and branches respectively); and intercity rail services on the East Coast were fast approaching the Penn Central guillotine.
City streetcars had already disappeared after the closure of the New York, Second Avenue, and Third Avenue Railways systems (thank you, NYC Transit Museum!) with the routes replaced by buses.
But overall, the transit picture was not great and on a trajectory of decline due to the deindustrialization and depopulation of city centers and the suburbanization of America as described in Crabgrass Frontier.
One might also point to the horrific damage suffered by European transit systems during the war. I don’t think it’s entirely fair, as a result, to compare London and New York as cities, in the transit realm or otherwise. New York wasn’t savaged by the Nazis for 8 months with tens of thousands of civilian casualties. New York didn’t suffer 1.2 million dwellings destroyed.
Unless I’m overthinking things (probably) and the recovery from the war had had enough time.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=Ninth+avenue+elevated+
Closed in 1940 and torn down soon after. Except for the shuttle from Jerome Ave in the Bronx to the Polo Grounds which closed in 1958.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRT_Sixth_Avenue_Line
Closed in 1938 and torn down soon after.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRT_Second_Avenue_Line
Closed north of 59th Street 1940 and the connection to the Queensboro Bridge and south of the bridge in 1942. Service to the Bronx was redirected to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRT_Third_Avenue_Line
Service in Manhattan was closed down in 1955. Service continued in the Bronx until 1972. Which isn’t Manhattan.
New York State bought the LIRR in 1965. The New York Central and the New Haven then had pissing matches over who could go bankrupt less quickly. Metro North was formed to take over operations in 1983.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Authority
I can see a rationale for a second crew member for long trains, you want to have a maximum distance between crew members and people in the train, but I’m quite confused on how the second crew member can help with tight curves – they don’t jump out to grease the tracks when the train is stuck, do they?
Tramways in Switzerland have 20 – 30 meters curves (with metric gauge) and don’t have any additional crew members…
Better than a second person on a train just get more random people trained in first aid + CPR. Everyone has a phone call, just call 911 and ensure the 911 operators can get the train stopped at a specific station where they can get several police officers to quickly. I doubt conductors are trained in safely breaking up fights anyway, so they shouldn’t do anything (police officers may not be, but at least this is their job)
Cell phones only work at the stations on the subway. If you have downloaded the app.
That is a fixable problem. Cell phone “towers” for use in buildings are very common, many companies have them. NYC should install them in all buildings where cell phone service isn’t good (not just under ground stations). They also have versions that work in tunnels – or have had them, if they don’t exist it is only because of low demand and just offering to buy them will result in them coming to market in a year or two.
It will cost millions of dollars – but this is a one time expense that will pay off quickly by not paying so many people to be on the train.
The Swiss have them in their tunnels, no app required.
London is slowly but surely doing it on the tube as well. Before that they had WiFi at the stations, but that was always hit and miss because once you connected you were leaving again.
It’s weird that cell phone coverage in urban metro tunnels (URBAN! LOTS OF PEOPLE! LOTS OF PROFIT!) could be any sort of issue at all at this point of the arc of human technological civilization. (FYI: obvs: we’ve passed the peak of that arc.)
Even in San Francisco, godforsaken provincial San Francisco, supposedly right next to “Silicon Valley”, and right in yuppie Silicon Valley commuter central zone of SF, I don’t have cell service in my own home. America fuck yeah!
But, amazingly, here in the Year of Our Lord 2025, hallelujah, no or few problems in any of the local rail tunnels, after a years of weird janky bespoke WiFi vendor comings and goings. Hard to credit, but true.
Meanwhile, New York remains Special in its own special ways. (Many of which are amazing! But none of which have anything remotely to do with NYMTA.)
San Francisco is home of NIMBY. That you don’t have cell service in your home is a political problem, not a technical problem. There were articles 10-15 years ago about how some areas don’t have service because the local government puts so many road blocks in the way. If you don’t like it you need to talk to your local government about the rules they have in place not me. Which I guess is similar to the problem of NYMTA – technically things can be done but politically it isn’t allowed and so it isn’t done.
Henry, the valiant captains of industry are in charge of the very lightly regulated cell phone market. The magic hand of free markets was going to give everybody everything. It costs money to serve everywhere. The providers don’t want to spend the money. Doesn’t have anything to do with it being “not allowed”.
Wow, thanks for the Henry74splaining. I sure have learned a lot about antenna positioning in my neighbourhood today these last minutes.
Next Henry74splaining exercise: why is mobile phone service uniformly poor and outrageously expensive everywhere in the USA? (And Canada, for that matter, for related but not idenitical reasons.) Hint: it’s not San Francisco NIMBY boogeymen.
Anyway, back to the topic: provision of mobile phone service in rail tunnels is a thing that sometimes even the most backwards can manage. By luck, perhaps, but what I see is a lucky “LTE” indicator on my phone underground. New York apparently hasn’t managed this, for various reasons, none of which involve San Francisco NIMBYs, some of which might even be extenuating, and many of which probably involve Special New York Circumstances.
It’s much easier to hang fiber, overnight, when the system curls up and takes a long rest every night?
Those wacky New Yorkers have figured out that having telecom wizards splattered by a train causes rush hour disruptions so they only let them into the tunnels when the trains aren’t running?
https://www.mta.info/press-release/mta-announces-5g-wireless-connectivity-now-live-42-st-shuttle-tunnel
Up until a few years ago only Dick Tracy had personal …telecom.. Believe it or not it is possible to live without a smartphone welded to your hand.
The argument as I understand it for a mid-train conductor is that the driver needs to check that no passengers are still trying to enter/exit the train before closing the doors and releasing the break, and the length and curve of the track makes this impossible to do from the driver’s seat.
Other systems solve this problem exactly the way you’d expect: with cameras and sensors. But not in the greatest city in the world, baby.
The Zürich S-Bahn runs 300m double deck trains with one man operation…
The solution is sensors and cameras. An added benefit is that doors will autonomously start closing as soon as they notice that passenger movement has stopped, reducing dwell times which can be as low as 15 seconds.
The Asian examples and Elizabeth line do have platform edge doors to be fair.
That said with platform dispatchers at the busiest handful of stations in New York you would probably be fine.
I do think on the other hand that the per-station ridership in New York is often pretty small. The 8th biggest stop which is 34th street on the 1, 2 and 3 has only 10 million passengers a year. Even if that is only boardings, South Kensington for example in London has 30 million passengers which is 50% more. And that is far from the biggest.
Vancouver and Nürnberg don’t have PEDs (and also New York can and should install systemwide PEDs, as Paris is during automation).
South Kensington is the 15th busiest. New York had more ridership than South Kensington at each of the two Penn Station stops before corona, but ridership got hit hard and hasn’t recovered as well as it has on this side of the Pond.
From the article it isn’t just banning one man operation, but is banning one man operation *and* automation?
The bill itself doesn’t require drivers, though there might be other laws that do.
The bill says the primary job of the conductor is opening and closing the doors. This doesn’t prohibit automatic operation, but even if you have automatic doors you will still need someone on board who can open the doors even if there is nothing they do in practice.
The bill also requires two subway cars attached to an engine. So it appears to exclude any subway that is an EMU and thus doesn’t have an engine – I’m not sure how courts will take to that argument, but it is an option.
Help, I wanted to buy some trains with Jacobs bogies, how many “cars” are they?
It’s the thing sitting on top of the thing holding the wheels. Not the wheels. These days usually has an accordion pleated diaphragm allowing the things on top of the wheels to move without letting the weather in or the passengers out.
Let me be very concrete. Take a Frankfurt U-Bahn U5-class vehicle. It has six axles, grouped into two “normal” bogies and one Jacobs bogie, with two bodyshell-segments sitting over them. There is no uncertainty about the physical parameters of the object. However, there is some uncertainty as to whether for the purposes of the bill, it counts as one “car” or two “cars” (or perhaps some different number). Wait before saying “the answer is obvious”.
Take a 74 meter long four-segment Stadler FLIRT, with ten axles, grouped into two “normal” and three Jacobs bogies. If you said the U5 is one “car”, then the normal extension would be to say that this 74 meter long thing is also a single “car”. And various TGV sets have a single “car” — approaching 200 meters in length — between the two locomotives. But then very quickly you run into the problem that, should the NY Subway make it into the 21st century and buy rolling stock fitting that era, there’s a good chance it will be legally classified as too few “cars” for the purposes of this bill.
So then maybe each segment of the bodyshell is a “car” of its own? Sure… but it would be rather silly to count as “cars” things that couldn’t even stand up on their own (and in certain designs, both in the ubiquitous multigelenkwagen trams and e.g. the Integral, have not even a single wheel). Furthermore, this stands a risk of interacting stupidly with other laws/regulations. For instance, it’s quite plausible that at some point it has been passed into law that all passenger-carrying “cars” must have automatic brakes (after the local equivalent of the Armagh disaster). Well congratulations, the entirely wheel-less suspended segment doesn’t have a brake, so it’s illegal to operate! Perhaps we shouldn’t call each segment of the bodyshell a car, after all?
My point is that the bill is stupid, because it both will be hard to update (due to its political nature) and also makes legally loadbearing the idiosyncratic features of a particular technical solution. The latter would be much more pardonable in an apolitical technical regulation, exactly because it could be easily revised to fix this omission.
Believe it or not, the legislature can pass new legislation, like they just did, in 2054, when a vendor proposes something less conventional. Like they do every year. Between then and now railfans can gnash their teeth and curse the Gods that the benevolent omniscient Stadler hasn’t responded to a Request for Information. And that democracy isn’t working to their liking.
Correct. But automation is not even on the horizon whereas OPTO has been on management’s agenda for 20 years.
It’s been under discussion since they automated the Grand Central-Times Square Shuttle. Wikipedia says automation was suggested in 1959 and implemented in 1962.
One track of the Grand Central-Times Square Shuttle was automated from 1962 to 1964, when a fire destroyed the demonstration train. There has been no movement, proposals, tests or work on ZPTO (zero-person train operation, aka automation or driverless) since then, so while one could say that it was discussed 40-45 years ago, it has not been under discussion since then, or anytime in the last 20 years.
At the time the automated train still had a motorman/train operator on it because the TWU threatened to strike if it ran without anyone on it.
Exactly like the Chinese “driverless” trains today. Still staffed with a driver.
I rode the automated shuttle train back in the 60’s. It really was ZPTO. The motorman sat in a car, reading a newspaper.
It was in the contract negotiations 16 years ago.
https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/mta-twu-contract-the-tale-of-one-person-train-operation/
The article says
It didn’t specify how many years “years” was.
WIkipedia says
I’m gonna hazard a guess that they were discussing it going back to the proposals for CBTC. Which Wikipedia says was planned between 1999 and 2002. Without breaking out a calculator 2005 was 20 years ago. Again, without a calculator, 1999 was 26 years ago.
I gonna hazard a guess there were discussions before negotiations concluded about having OPTO in the few places they do use it. Just because you haven’t heard about it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been discussed.
One Person Train Operation (OPTO) was in fact in the contract negotiations 16 years ago, and likely 20-25 years ago as part of CBTC . . . which is exactly what Alon said when he stated “OPTO has been on management’s agenda for 20 years”.
However the quote from Wikipedia “run under full automation with a single operator” is a oxymoron because if there is an operator then it is not fully automated. Actual full automation, Zero Person Train Operation (ZPTO), like JFK AirTrain or Vancouver SkyTrain, has not been proposed or discussed by the MTA is the past 20 years . . . which your article does not dispute because it discusses ‘OPTO’ and ‘with a single operator’ . . . and again, this exactly what Alon said above.
Okay, make the no-true-OPTO argument. I don’t do this for a living. Alon wants to. 1962 isn’t 20 years ago. 1999 isn’t though 2005 is. I don’t do this for a living and have stopped caring.
The counterargument link posted in the blogpost said, they want to block not just automation of existing lines, but also new built, like IBX
That doesn’t change that someone somewhere discussed automation before they automated the Grand Central – Times Square shuttle in 1962. Without breaking out a calculator 1962 is more than 20 years ago. Though I suppose discussing automation since 1959 is “for 20 years”. It’s also 40 years and 17 years and 454 months and three decades and almost two thirds of a century.
You appear to have cherry-picked lines in your report. What is your justiication for not listing, for example, the many urban Japanese lines with TPTO?
We included the railways we found in Japan with TPTO? Ditto Korea.
I’m sorry, including every line of the Nagoya Subway except the one with TPTO, and avoiding listing any Tokyo lines not operated by JR East, looks a lot like cherrypicking, or at least very poor research.
A sample size of ~400 is sufficient to draw a conclusion. Note that two big American OPTO systems were omitted as well: DC and Chicago. Those are more than enough to counter your Nagoya line examples. I’m sure if we dug down further into other Japanese, Chinese and European rapid transit services the exercise could be made more accurate.
But ultimately this is good enough. What difference does it make if it’s, say, 84% or 97%? What does sharpening the pencil buy you? Why not go further? Instead of just counting systems, why not on-time performance or total yearly delay minutes over system length or yearly passenger-km for T/O/ZPTO?
The answer is to remember who the audience is. Is it the union? No. Even 100% would not have convinced the union to stand down. Their leader said, publicly: No data will ever convince me; NYC is unique.
Is it the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the New York State Legislature? No. They already passed the bill. The only remaining question is whether they have the stones for a veto override, and that’s a political question, not a technical one.
The audience, then, is Hochul: a mediocre leader, defiantly uninterested in technical details, picking numbers out of a hat to substitute for calculated policy decisions (to wit 60% congestion pricing); “I asked people in restaurants for policy advice”; “My people from Buffalo are the Real Americans.” The same governor who got reelected by 6 points when she should have pulled away by 20.
Is she going to read this entire paper? No. Her aides will give her the top line and she will make a political calculation about whether the union cares enough about this to withhold or noticeably decrease support for reelection. She is facing a serious primary challenge from her lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, a talented politician who outfought six opponents in the 2018 Democratic primary for NY-19, then in the general, flipped the Republican-held seat in a race rated a tossup until Election Day. Caving to the unions might well cost her some of the support she needs from upstate, west, and Long Island; vetoing will infuriate the legislature. I don’t envy her, but whatever decision she makes will probably be the wrong one.
You are outsiders, what you say has to be right. That’s how it goes. It was very bad at getting the message across that you didn’t do a correction for the HS2 rolling stock being included in the HS2 figures and rolling stock being excluded in other countries – even though HS2 is still ludicrously expensive even correcting for the rolling stock.
And there are other flaws outside Japan. In the UK Glasgow appears to be broadly correct, however Edinburgh on a brief glance at real time trains doesn’t appear to have DOO trains for example. In the London area South West trains aren’t DOO. Also e.g. the Norwich trains or the Clacton trains beyond Colchester under Greater Anglia aren’t DOO. DLR trains also have a member of staff on board at all times even if they don’t drive the trains.
Now some of those services may be ‘driver controls the doors and if there is no guard due to sickness/delays they drive the train on their own’, but those services still have two members of staff booked on every train.
Also cities definitely do need to be in or out. If you are including London beyond the tube and beyond Thameslink and the Elizabeth line you need to include everything, so that means Great Western, Chiltern (DOO to Banbury and Bedwyn, no DOO beyond that) and London Midland (no DOO) also need to be included. Also if you are including London beyond the tube/Thameslink/Elizabeth Line probably for Paris you should at least include Transilien.
The longer distance Southern and South Eastern services to e.g Dover and Portsmouth appear to have guards as well – including the high speed services from St Pancras. Not sure where the split is.
@Matthew Hutton
To be clear, I’m not a member of TCP or Marron. When I said “we” I meant in the general sense. I don’t want to misrepresent myself.
That being said, I have found their work to be utterly invaluable, especially in my little corner of citizen advocacy – and as such I feel compelled to provide my opinion on accusations of data manipulation. If there was a competing database of analysis that was better, maybe such accusations would hold water. But there isn’t, so they don’t.
@J.G. I am not criticising you, I am making the point that unfortunately this research doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
If you got this in front of Hochel or Mamdani and they took it to the unions and they did even the most basic due diligence of emailing the British RMT/ASLEF unions asking if it was right about London those unions could very truthfully give an answer that it has a lot of mistakes and that for example all South West railways trains have a guard.
And if they look a bit more carefully and you are going to talk about the metro systems in a dozen cities or whatever including quite a few in Asia and you aren’t going to mention the Tokyo metro [because it doesn’t back up your point] that also looks very shifty.
There is a narrower point that is true though, elsewhere metro systems without through running [almost?] never have a guard. Additionally the RER style lines don’t have a guard in London, Paris and some lines in Tokyo – and those services often have as long or longer trains than the New York subway as well and meet a reasonable standard of safety.
@Matthew Hutton
I respectfully disagree with your conclusion that this research doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Your objection appears to be in the weeds about who is and is not an operator and what their responsibilities are. It may or may not be a fair point, but it’s not one I wish to litigate, and it doesn’t change the conclusion.
In other words, the sample concludes that fewer 6.25% have TPTO: switching some of the entries from Z to O (which, in reality, are quibbles over what “operation” means) doesn’t reduce that number. And again, it’s a sample. I do not profess to know what drove the selection criteria for the cities and services other than, presumably, a time crunch: they had to get this out there and shoved into Hochul’s eyeballs before the end of the year.
I do not think an argument that the sample is not representative is supported by the facts.
I appreciate the discussion, and for what it’s worth, the idea of Hochul doing due diligence on anything is…unlikely.
@J.G probably half of the “zero people on the train” services have someone on the train given China and the DLR and possibly/likely others, probably it’s true for Singapore and Paris. In London probably 20-25% of the mainline “one person on the train” services have two people on the train with a higher share of the missed services we aren’t talking about having “2 people on the train”.
In Paris it’s probably similar with transilien being excluded likely having two person operations and in Tokyo it’s probably significantly higher given how much is excluded there – likely well over half with two person operations.
Okay. Now add in other Z/OPTO services not included as well. Recalculate. What’s the final number?
@J.G. I think it really depends on the question.
If we limit ourselves to metro systems without through running then close to 100% of them have zero or one person operations, and in terms of the data set it could be adjusted by removing the non metro lines and including the Tokyo metro lines without through running.
If we expand slightly and include RER style lines where the figure will be pretty high then you need to certainly include the Tokyo metro lines with through running and work out which other Tokyo lines count as ‘RER’ and have a reasonable go at including those. You then probably include e.g. Maramay in Istanbul and exclude the London ones other than Thameslink and the Elizabeth line (which both to be fair have driver only operations) and you are pretty close. Probably honestly for this the true figure is close to the 6.25% given at the top there plus whatever the Japanese add to the equation. So maybe 10-15% overall.
You can go wider to the equivalent of the London area map for each city, which is more complicated to gather the data for and which will have a higher percentage of two person operation or to the equivalent of the London and South East area map for each city where the percentage of two person operation will be higher still – and also whether you include longer distance services stopping at commuter stops e.g. Reading in the London area.
For the UK specifically you can see whether services are driver only on realtimetrains for the UK by going to ‘detailed mode’ and pulling down details for the train. So that’s how I made my claims above. In terms of services in the London area it’s probably 5-10% of services having two person operations for the former map with two person operations and probably 25-35% of services for the latter map depending on where exactly you draw the line.
NYC might try what Paris did to eliminate conductors. Originally, the conductors location was at the rear of the train. They moved the conductor to the front along with the operator. They were fairly cramped quarters, especially on the Spragues.
Best question put to mayor-elect at the White House presser:
The answer should have been, even from Trump who has been a HSR enthusiast in the past (after returning from an Asian trip), is that he woulda if only the train was up to world standards for HSR.
It’s faster to fly if you lie about it. If you are flying commercial. It might be different if board Marine One at the Downtown Skyport/Pier 6 and get dropped off on the White House Lawn.
Yeah, but I suppose as mayor-elect he doesn’t yet have access to any mayoral helicopter.
Anyway next time, his new BFF will send Marine One to give him a ride. I presume Gracie Mansion has a helipad?
You don’t need a helipad to land a helicopter. There isn’t one at the White House.
Insert an innocent look here. Flying was faster back in the days when the Trump Shuttle entered bankruptcy. Perhaps that’s where the myth that flying is faster comes from. Reality never stops Republicans from spreading a good lie.
Although its true you do not need a helicopter pad to land a helicopter, there is a helicopter pad at the White House, just a well disguised one. It looks like the helicopter is landing on the grass, however, there are three six foot discs embedded just below the top of the grass, one for each landing gear. Part of the requirements for the helicopter pilots who fly the President is the ability to land to a precision of less than three feet so that the landing gear sets down on those pads.
Here’s a link to an editorial that appeared in many NYC local papers.
https://www.amny.com/editorial/editorial-subway-conductors-on-board/
The world has moved on from conductors no matter what the fishwrappers say.
The rest of the world closes down at midnight, New York isn’t going to do that either. No matter how you cook the books, threaten to hold your breath until you turn blue and whine that democracy isn’t working to your liking, New Yorkers feel that the conductors make it safer.
What makes you believe that the rest of the world closes down at midnight?
Because they do? A few of them have this amazing, recent, innovation where they run trains from early Friday morning to late Sunday/very early Monday. Then close down overnight during the week.
Well, good news for a change. Hochul will veto.
https://empire.streetsblog.org/hochul-will-veto-controversial-bill-mandating-two-operators-on-most-subway-trains
I guess when a poll that shows her up by 19 on Stefanik followed by Stefanik dropping out, she can eat into her margin to do the right thing for a change.
Congrats to you, your colleagues, and the other organizations like ETANY who spoke out.