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Comment by wwarner | Hacker News Reader

$19B for a new signaling system? A true "sweeping overhall" will include a hell of a lot more than that. There was a times article a few weeks ago that sketched out a much more ambitious overhall, and pegged the price at $100B, which still sounded low to me.

I'm a subway commuter, I really love the subway system, and my emotions want to invest in it. And we should plan big. I think the greater NYC area could double or triple in population as the world grows and be more stimulating and productive than it's ever been. I guess my honest question is whether the subways are a prerequisite for that outcome, or if more WeWorks, satellite offices, telecommuting and suburban financial centers are more sane.

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My answer would be to remember that subways serve a purpose beyond just commuting to work; they provide a means to travel easily across a city for recreation, leisure, and cultural activities too.

There is much value in providing the means for citizens to enjoy the breadth of opportunities their city provides, rather than making it difficult for them to leave their immediate neighbourhood.

> they provide a means to travel easily across a city for recreation, leisure, and cultural activities too

There's an economic advantage to this to. In London we recently (last year?) made parts of the underground 24/7. It's estimated that this is going to add £138m to the London economy annually [1].

Public transport investment is almost always hugely beneficial to the area in many different ways.

[1]https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2017/august...

Genuine question - how could it possibly cost $100B to upgrade a "signalling system"?

> Genuine question - how could it possibly cost $100B to upgrade a "signalling system"?

Widespread corruption drives up costs for all MTA projects. https://nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-cons...

Long story short, everyone sits on their ass and pretends to be borderline incompetent while clocking overtime to take longer than normal to do anything routine.

Why? Because, gee, it'd really be a shame if some of these buildings happened to fall down and go boom, on account of some kind of cave in... Wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

That means we gotta go real slow, and be real careful, but hey, if you think youse can do it faster, hey why not grab a shovel and help us dig some of these ditches. They ain't gonna dig themselves, is they?

Oh, oh, sorry, I didn't realize you was wearing your expensive clothes on account ah some kinda hot date tonight! By all means! Don't let us holds youse up!

We'll just goes back down into the catacombs and dig another dungeon for ya. No problem, boss!

It shouldn't cost that much, but signalling is surprisingly expensive because pre-computerised signalling systems rely on large amounts of heavy equipment installed trackside, and trains can't run without coherent signalling. So changing it can only be done in small pieces, small parts at a time, yet labour and equipment must be constantly available. For this reason the productivity of railway workers is quite low but unavoidably so; they spend most of their time just waiting for tracks to clear.

The $100B proposal was a complete overhaul, including the signaling system, major reworking of subway station, track improvements etc. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/magazine/subway-new-york-...

His proposal, which hasn't been fully released as of this writing at least, seems to have other modifications as well. The article mentions at least bathrooms and elevators. He also plans to complete this overhaul in 5 years - previous estimates had suggested it could take 50 years. That sounds ambitious, and i'm guessing there must be significant cost associated with completing it relatively quickly.

Current population of NYC: 8 million or so?

Figure that with your belief that NYC could handle more, let's say 2.5 times that, to get 20 million riders of the system.

$100 billion / 20 million riders = $5000 in capital expense to upgrade the system. That's a lot of riders going on a lot of subway rides to recoup that!

Subways are mostly important in terms of positive externality, though. The differential in wages between a job in Manhattan and an equivalent job in the outlying parts of the city can be quite large. The money saved by not requiring a car to live in New York is tens of thousands of dollars. The additional property value that subway accessibility provides is in the billions of dollars. The subway averts several billion dollars worth of gridlock and the ensuing air and noise pollution. And so on and so forth.

Without the subway New York would, quite literally, be unlivable. The following scenes were from the traffic pandemonium that resulted after Hurricane Sandy closed all subway crossings of the East River:

Waiting in line for a replacement bus shuttle - https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/35/9c/02359cce293b989333b2...

Traffic while the subway was down - https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/121031090241-18-sandy...

I don't deny that subways in NYC are an overall benefit, or that it can be tough to fully capture in numbers its usefulness.

But somehow the money has to be paid back, or else there has to be a consensus that "we won't get the money back directly but it is a good thing to do for NYC" with NYC taxpayers then picking up the slack.

Even leaving aside the other myriad economic benefits of the subway and the fact that your numbers are off even by the standard of fuzzy back-of-the-math envelope (you should consider tourists and commuters who live outside of the city but work in the city, which will balloon that number significantly), $5000 a head isn't all that much. At $2.75 a ride (and the price goes up every few years), that's roughly 1,800 rides, which if a rider rides twice a day every day (fairly common for New Yorkers) means that $5000 will be recouped in two and a half years.

My math isn't off at all:

NYC subway stats, 2016

5,655,755 (weekdays, 2016) 3,202,388 (Saturdays, 2016) 2,555,814 (Sundays, 2016)

Stats include ALL riders including tourists and commuters etc.

This when NYC population is ~8.5 million in 2016.

Note that the $5000/head is just for the additional capital expenses.

Your math doesn't cover all the other expenses the subway system would incur, like wages, power, maintenance over the estimated 2.5 year period you mention.

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