But there is one type of delay that’s gotten exponentially worse during that time: a catchall category blandly titled “insufficient capacity, excess dwell, unknown,” which captures every delay without an obvious cause.
This smacks of corruption or of elements of society deciding that systems aren't going to simply work anymore. The population of New York City when I lived in Queens was 7.3 million when I lived there in 1989. The subways pretty much worked back then. The figure for population of New York City in 2017 I found was 8.5 million. Population increase can't account for the difference. There must have been considerable systemic decay.
NYC's transit mode share for commute trips is above 50% [1]. Of the additional 1.2 million people, this means that this population growth probably produced at least 1.2 million additional daily rides, since 50% of the 1.2 million rides the subway twice a day, to and from work.
1.2 million additional daily riders is about double the entire Washington Metro daily ridership and triple that of BART's daily ridership! Indeed, 1.2 million daily riders is about equal to ridership on the Lex! So I disagree with your conclusion that "Population increase can't account for the difference". This sort of ridership growth would have destroyed any other comparable system in the US. If anything, it's amazing that the NYC subway hasn't fallen apart more than it already has.
The ridership was higher in 1948 and there was no crisis of sardine packed trains and crowded platforms then. MTA is intentionally running the system below capacity to cut costs.
That is very true. I rarely commute during peak hours, and the trains are just as packed at these off-hours because the headway drops off like crazy after the peak time. That's just cost-cutting. The system can run with rush hour frequencies at 2 in the morning if someone is willing to pay for it. (Yes, at some point you have to do maintenance; for that a reduction of frequency is perfectly reasonable.)
There are also plenty of places on the system where longer trains could be run. A trains are 600ft long. C trains are run on the exact same tracks with 480ft trains. Nothing feels worse than boarding a C train that's packed because you know there's nothing stopping the MTA from running longer trains there. They claim they don't have the equipment for this, which may be true during rush hours, but it's a complete lie during the rest of the day. There are plenty of 600ft trains ready to go just sitting in the yard.
For some context in case anyone was curious: according to old news articles, the average weekday ridership in 1989 was ~3.7 million rides per day. It is ~5.7 million rides per day now. Ridership in the past few decades has increased faster than the population. One factor cited in some analyses of this phenomenon is the significant decrease in the crime rate relative to the 1980s and 1990s, but that is likely not the only contributor.
Yes. Even if you think the complaint is mathematical pedantry, the original sentence still uses a big fancy word wrongly when it could have used simple ones correctly.
Both "...quickly gotten worse..." and "...gotten much worse..." are sharper.
Do take congestion into account; something that can run perfectly smoothly at 90% of capacity may severely struggle at 96% and basically grind to a halt by 99%. It’s not linear.
(I am not stating that congestion plays any part in it, but you can’t simply write it off.)
This smacks of corruption or of elements of society deciding that systems aren't going to simply work anymore. The population of New York City when I lived in Queens was 7.3 million when I lived there in 1989. The subways pretty much worked back then. The figure for population of New York City in 2017 I found was 8.5 million. Population increase can't account for the difference. There must have been considerable systemic decay.