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With Uber and other ridesharing services becoming a common transit option for some D.C. residents, we wanted to get a sense of when someone might substitute an Uber trip for a Metrorail trip. To do this, we plotted data on travel time and cost, creating a visualization that shows whether Uber or Metro is faster, and at what cost, for 114 different trips between Metro stations. By adding in the time it takes to wait for a Metro train or Uber, walk to the Metro, or sit on a delayed train, we can see how a person's decision might change depending on their circumstances.
The trips we analyzed include trips between the city and the suburbs as well as trips within the city.
[...] We found that for longer trips between the center of the city and the suburbs, Metro tends to be both more cost-effective and quicker than Uber. But for trips within the city that require a Metro transfer, Uber is often quicker than Metro, especially when Metro wait times are long, like on weekends, or when there are delays. While Uber's regular service tends to be much more expensive than Metro, Uber Pool makes some Uber trips nearly as affordable as Metro.
Did they factor in the need for a pack train, 3 days' provisions, and sherpas to get up and down the stairs in the Metro?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @03:22AM (19 children)
from recent experience: late at night on a weekend. The stupid Metro doesn't run after midnight, so Lyft became the only viable choice to get home from the airport.
In fact, weekends in general, even in the daytime, can be a time when Uber/Lyft become more attractive, because of single-tracking delays, construction outages, etc. The DC Metro is nearly a disaster on weekends.
They should repeat this study for the NYC subway, which apparently has gotten just as bad as DC's. I was just there and ran into major problems with service outages there as well.
What both systems need to do is fire all their management, and hire the Japanese to run these systems (and Amtrak too, while they're at it). You just don't see any problems like this at all on Japanese subways or trains. Americans simply have no idea at all how to run an efficient train service.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Wednesday October 18 2017, @03:45AM (1 child)
<sarcasm>But SafeTrack is over, delays are a thing of the past now!</sarcasm>
I totally agree that the weak hours and even weaker weekend service ruins it. Better make sure you catch that last train! It leaves at 11:30pm! Nobody does anything after then, anyway.
Yeah, Metro gets on my nerves. I wish we had a serious subway system like NYC.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @02:26PM
NYC's subway is breaking under the strain too. We don't need a system like that, we need a serious subway system like the one in Tokyo. However, we'll never have that because we're not Japanese, we're dumb Americans who can't figure out how to run an efficient public transit system, and most of us are so stupid we think public transit can't work or is "socialism".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @04:04AM
Tokyo's mass transit is very good, but it is wrong to think it is problem-free. It's also a bit unfair to compare a system supporting the most populous city in the world with, well, any other city. Tokyo can afford to have routes like the yamanote line that basically have a train going both directions at every station all the time because the ridership is there.
Some problems come from the fact that there is no unified system: several different rail companies run the various lines basically independently. For example, at least 4 companies have local mass transit connections at Shinjuku, but nowhere in the station will you find a single map that shows them all (with the sole exception of Toei Subway and Tokyo Metro which share a map). Each company has its own fare structure, although at least they all use the same payment card system.
I also find many of the stations themselves in Tokyo are difficult to use, mostly due to poor signage. Seoul is much better in this regard, which has the best station maps and signage I have ever seen anywhere.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday October 18 2017, @04:40AM (7 children)
I think the problem is even simpler. These mass transit services aren't valuable enough to run efficiently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @07:18AM (6 children)
Who imagined that the reaction of khallow would be NOT be a rejection of public transit?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 18 2017, @01:27PM (5 children)
Second, airports are a great example of public transit that works just fine in the US - in large part because they mesh well with the dominant forms of transportation used in the US (particularly, the automobile).
Third, the real problem with most mass transit schemes is that they don't actually solve the problems that need solving. The most important thing is peoples' time. And way too often, particularly in the US, mass transit schemes waste peoples' time at the expense of low value stuff like slightly reduced CO2 emissions or securing votes for the next election.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @02:24PM (4 children)
Do you honestly think people could get around Manhattan if they all suddenly switched to owning their own cars? Are you really that dense?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @03:19PM (1 child)
Yes, yes he is. He even "corrects" the statement about him NOT rejecting public transit. Reading comprehension not so much, lengthy essays of bullcrap? Not a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 18 2017, @06:42PM
And yet, I still hear noise from the peanut gallery.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 18 2017, @06:41PM (1 child)
A lot of people already get around by car even though they don't own one (remember, the ride hailing thing!). Or they could move out and not have that problem somewhere else.
This is the typical cognitive dissonance. Going from complaining about the lack of incentive to run an efficient subway system to complaining that the subway is essential. This is how classic rent-seeking behavior on the public side works. Make a crucial bit of infrastructure and then do the minimum to keep pulling those public funds. They have no incentive to do better because voters like you knuckle under. The subway needs to run, hence, it is allowed to run poorly.
Now, maybe it is worthwhile to maintain Manhattan Island at current population densities and maybe the subway is necessary to make that work. But we're seeing a common failure mode of public transit systems. Namely, that they're mostly for show. Actual benefit to passengers is a lower priority.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @08:02PM
>A lot of people already get around by car even though they don't own one
That's different. When you use a cab/Uber, you don't have to worry about parking. Everyone having a car in Manhattan is already unrealistic because the streets can't handle the volume, but the other issue is parking: where the hell is everyone going to park? Your comment seemed to imply that everyone should have personally-owned cars, suburbia-style. It's simply impossible in a city as dense as Manhattan, for both reasons (parking and volume).
As for why the subways in this country are run so poorly, I think there's more to it than that. The problem is that we as Americans simply don't know how to actually govern, and we don't know how to elect people who can govern properly. Just compare to many other countries with effective public transit: Japan, Germany, even the UK. They don't have all the problems with horribly-run public transit that we do. My opinion is that it's our culture. Just like backwards 3rd-world nations like Afghanistan or Somalia aren't going to have effective governance anytime soon because their culture is utterly dysfunctional, we have the same sort of problem here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @07:12AM
I like the method they use to stay on time.
They hire people [google.com] whose job it is to get the last person boarding all the way into the car--even if the person ahead of that guy is blocking the way.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 18 2017, @01:37PM (6 children)
Haha, no, in NYC that's snafu [wikipedia.org]. At least it is if you're travelling in the wee hours. The system carries millions of people everyday, and on some turns the rails take so much wear they literally have to replace them every night. (it's for that reason I think NYC should copy Montreal's brilliant subway system, whose trains run on tires not on rails.) During the day service returns to schedule because the MTA would be skinned alive if they totally screwed up the commute.
Late at night Uber and Lyft are a boon, because the traditional yellow cabs hover outside the clubs. That's fine if you're at a club, but if you're somewhere else doing something else it can be slim pickings. No pickings at all if it's raining.
Biking is a surprisingly viable alternative now. Unless you luck out and get a cab right away or your planned subway line is not fubar and you catch a train right away, cycling will get you where you're going faster, unless you live far out on the outer edge of the outer boroughs like Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, or Manhattan. The City Bike Bike-Share system is there, too, if you don't have your own bike.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @02:23PM (5 children)
Your description of the MTA is incorrect. I was reading an article about this a couple weeks ago. The MTA is having a LOT more trouble than it used to just a couple years or so ago, and the article posits that the reason is ridership: it's gone up steadily, and the system now just can't cope with it any more, plus the system is old and not maintained that well. Basically a case of the hair that broke the camel's back. Ridership steadily rose but MTA didn't plan for it properly with enough upgrades. And when I had trouble a couple weekends ago, it wasn't the wee hours just yet, only about 10:00PM - 10:30PM IIRC, not late for a weekend night in NYC by any means.
Biking sounds it's getting better there, but personally I wouldn't be comfortable biking in NYC: drivers are extremely dangerous and aggressive, and there's just too much traffic and too many cars, and there's either no bike lanes at all, or they're not separated from the road, in all but a few select places from what I've seen. The city really should just close off half the side streets to motor vehicles and make it a more walkable/bikable city. Cars are a scourge in a city that dense, and no one really needs them between public transit and cabs.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 18 2017, @04:00PM (4 children)
Ridership has grown a lot over the past two decades as the city recovered from the financial devastation of the 70's and 80's. It is not new that service disruptions occur. It merely feels new and catastrophic when it happens to you, as it did. I ride the MTA every day and there is no perceptible difference from what has been the case for 20 years. Claiming the system is falling apart and the MTA can't cope with the current level of funding means the MTA union wants more money again, after having jacked the fares up to $2.75 from $2 last time. If you fall for that story it only means you're new here.
Biking is not yet on par with Amsterdam or Copenhagen or Montreal, but it's getting there. City planners finally got the message that people will bike more in physically separated bike lanes. Shared bike lanes are no good because taxis, delivery vans, and cops use them like double parking lanes. Again, Montreal's solution is the best because they put the bike lanes between the curb and the line of parked cars, which themselves form the physical barrier between cyclists and vehicular traffic. All it costs is some painted lines with a buffer to prevent collisions between bikes and opening car doors.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @05:23PM (3 children)
I'm not new there, I was visiting NYC for the weekend. I live near DC. I just know what I read online about the MTA, and my experience a couple weeks ago, plus my experiences a few years ago when I lived in NJ and visited Manhattan once or twice a month (where I never experienced any service disruptions).
You're right about how bike lanes need to be, but I just didn't see that much progress two weeks ago compared to what I had seen 2-3 years ago. Remember also, a lot of streets don't even have on-street parking (e.g. the main avenues); where do you put a bike lane there? The proper answer is to dig up the street and pour concrete so there's a physical barrier, but that probably won't happen any time soon (car drivers will bitch and whine about a lane being taken away from them). The city needs to get serious about curtailing automotive traffic altogether; only emergency vehicles really need to drive on many streets. And what's with that anyway? I saw a couple times where fire trucks were prevented from getting to an emergency because of the traffic, and the traffic lights. In other cities, for the last 25 years, they've had traffic lights that emergency vehicles can signal so that they turn green in their favor, so they're not sitting and waiting for red lights. Why doesn't NYC have this?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 18 2017, @07:28PM (2 children)
They have added several protected lanes in manhattan like on 6th ave i think it is. Brooklyn has a lot more. It's getting there.
Commercial traffic would be dramatically curtailed if they ever got off their butts and built the rail tunnel under ny harbor they've been planning for 30 years. Even if they did that there's only so much you can do when millions of bridge & tunnel people (aka jersey) think they ought to be able to drive into the city. I remember reading an op ed in the nytimes by one of those 20 years ago who thought they should bulldoze central park and put a 12 lane highway down the middle of manhattan from tip to tip.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @07:55PM (1 child)
Well, for the NJ people, one key point here is that they live in NJ, a separate state, so they have precisely zero input into NY politics by definition, unless you count bribery or something like that. NYC has no obligation to listen to their concerns about anything. Anyway, what I'm proposing isn't shutting down car traffic Manhattan-wide, but on many small streets to make it safer for cyclists, and to get more people to stop driving by making it more inconvenient for them. Perhaps automatic vehicle-blocking columns could be installed too, to allow authorized emergency vehicles onto these streets when necessary but keep out all the private ones. Perhaps they should also institute a "congestion tax" the way they did in London.
Ideally, they need to improve the subway system a lot (there's not enough lines that go east-west, for instance), with more trains, automated trains, and cleaner stations, and lower prices to make public transit more reliable and a no-brainer for getting around the city. Then they should somehow encourage the building of large garages outside the city (like in Jersey City or something) so that Manhattanites who have cars can park their car their for weekend trips without paying an absolute fortune, and can get there pretty easily by subway. They should also improve the links to the NJ side, with actual subways going over there instead of having to take a special train, just like they do for Brooklyn.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 18 2017, @08:44PM
Many of those things would be possible if not for the weird, weird reality that NYC transportation is not controlled by NYC. It's controlled by the state legislature in Albany that mostly comprises non-urban assemblymen and state senators. Mayor Bloomberg wanted to implement congestion pricing, but he was blocked by state legislators representing people in Long Island, Westchester, and Rockland counties upstate that want to keep driving to work in NYC. NYC wanted to extend the A line one stop so you could take the subway to JFK, and the 7 train so you could take the subway to LaGuardia, but Albany blocked them and put in the AirTran instead that costs something like $15 one-way and is only convenient to, you guessed it, people from the suburbs.
Cleaner stations would be nice, but then they'd have to ticket the hell out of people for litter and also build public restrooms around the city so the homeless and drunk people wouldn't treat the stations like restrooms.
People in Jersey can get to Manhattan without taking light rail into Penn Station. The PATH trains are basically subway trains that share stations with many Manhattan subway stops. But Jersey people don't use them. They are too wedded to their cars. They live in a car culture and cannot give the damn things up even when it makes no sense for a particular journey.
Washington DC delenda est.