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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I checked out their Twitter feed a couple days ago (had to reroute due to a broken rail at Wall St. and wanted to see a picture or something of the broken rail). I was amazed how polite and helpful they are to the most irate customers. It really does seem that the social media team calms down a lot of angry people.

Meanwhile, I am surprised at how desynchronized their various data sources are. I check mta.info before I go on a subway trip, and did that this morning for my commute to work. Delays on the 4 and 5, but none on the 2 and 3. I go down to the 2/3 platform and there is an announcement playing saying that the 2 and 3 are delayed (for the same reason given on mta.info about the 4/5; signal problems at Borough Hall). The website apparently didn't get the message. At least I had cell service while waiting...

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The worst part about mta.info is that it'll show scheduled work on lines, but it doesn't show closed stations - so the C looks like it skips 86th but not 72nd, when in actuality 72nd is closed for repairs and you ain't getting on or off a train there. If you need to plan a trip, you have to check at least two places.

Yeah, the updates are honestly pretty bad.

For that broken rail incident, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten home. The announcement said Clark St. was closed, which is my station... but I am pretty sure, in retrospect, that they meant that there would be no Manhattan-bound trains at that station because they're being rerouted over the 4/5, but I think Brooklyn-bound trains were not being rerouted (as that rail wasn't broken). They were very unclear, and so I just took an alternate route. They could have been completely clear, but chose not to.

(I'll also point out that they provided walking directions from Clark St. to Borough Hall... but they provided directions to the actual Brooklyn Borough Hall, not the subway station with the same name. Oops.)

>It really does seem that the social media team calms down a lot of angry people.

Great, they've mastered spin. People are angry for good reason. Don't calm them down, fix the damn trains, now. This is just more of the MTA's endless bullshit.

Unfortunately, it isn't that simple.

I have noticed on my commutes that there are times that I simply can't arrive at work. If I'm commuting at an unpopular time, it takes 15 minutes. If I commute at a popular time, it takes 20 minutes. This makes me either 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late, depending on the time I expect to arrive.

The reason the trains take a different amount of time is because when the trains are crowded, it takes a long time for people to get on and off, so the train has to sit in the station longer. This delays the train behind, and so on. A new signal system or better tracks isn't going to fix this problem. It's the human factor of "I want to arrive exactly at 9am, 9:01am isn't acceptable" that's slowing everyone down.

Nonsense.

Other train systems manage exactly that. In Japan being even a minute late isn’t acceptable. This isn’t some impossible fantasy thwarted by human nature.

Your comment is exactly what I’m talking about. The MTA has managed to train us to accept this awful state as unavoidable and natural. Don’t buy their bullshit.

Seconds matter in Japan's rail system [0]. Leaving early is (usually) a bigger problem than leaving late - but I doubt anyone was clamoring to get on the train in those last 20 seconds. But in the event a train runs late - get a 遅延証明書 from a station clerk.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42009839

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