Stockholm’s deepest subway station is also an ecological wonder
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
Even a google image search reveals photos much like on altas obscura: vast tastefully designed cavernous space dotted with but a few token humans.
It seems suspiciously clean and well maintained compared to NYC metro. Floors polished, no screaming lunatics, no cracked, floors, walls, ceilings. I am willing to bet it doesn't even smell like pee and vomit? Where are the masses?
I don't know why NYC and BART have to have those issues.
So you end up with the classic 'privatise the profits, socialise the costs' setup.
I don't understand why people can't see that some public spending is an economic force multiplier.
I mean US infrastructure is notoriously bad for a developed economy, you have thousands of bridges that need massive remedial work to make them safe by modern standards.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/structural-deficient-b...
The reasons behind this poor efficiency are complex and no one really knows how to fix it.
Here is an interesting article on the NYC Subway System. It's obviously about one small slice of US infrastructure but the general story is the same.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
A lack of spending is not the problem.
Also, incidentally, since you mentioned "privatise the profits", it's worth noting that the Stockholm subway system is operated by MTR Corporation, a for-profit corporation based on Hong Kong.
It’s also worth noting that the MTR Corporation is majority owned by the Hong Kong government and, at least in Hong Kong, operates on a strict SLA where they are fined for delays.
Except that New York and California - the locations of NYC's MTA and SF's BART are both overwhelmingly Democrat strongholds.
Neither are Republican places. This is true at both the city and state level, which is where the control and funding for these metros comes from not the federal level.
Wrong about NY. Albany's government might as well be from another planet compared to NYC. They currently have a Republican controlled Senate.
And it is the state-level that usually hamstrings the MTA. 2009 was a particularly bad year in which the MTA budget got raided [1] and the government was in a deadlock [2].
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2010/03/09/albany-didnt-cut-the-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_New_York_State_Senate_lea...
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/10/why-tokyos-pr...
Your first link completely supports my point:
>"A plan to shrink the state budget by $2.7 billion to keep New York from going broke was passed by the Legislature on Wednesday."
That would be the same Democrat-controlled since 1992 state legislature that passed that budget plan.
Furthermore the Governor appoints 6 of the 17 seats of the MTA board. And Governor Cuomo is a Democrat from NYC(Queens.) And the the Mayor another Democrat gets to appoint 4 seats. Thats 10 of the 17, for a majority.[1] Let's also point out that New York state has had a Democratic Governor for the last 11 years as well. So those board seat decisions have been by a Democrat for over a decade now.
That certainly seems like a healthy does ofDemocrat influence doesn't it? Maybe do a little more fact checking before telling people they are wrong.
And to be clear the context of my comment was in response to the OP who was insisting that the sad state of mass transit in NYC and SF is because of Republicans and that simply not true as both parties are equally to blame. Failure to fund infrastructure is failure by government period. Reductionist partisan finger pointing is what those have failed us would like us to believe.
[1] https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_State_Legislature
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/nyregion/who-runs-new-yor...
In my admittedly limited experience the Swedes are really good at shared public spaces.
But first and foremost, no one from New York calls it “NYC Metro.” It’s The Subway, and it’s operated by the MTA. So, already your comment has the ring of someone who doesn’t live in New York. And to go one deeper, The Subway hasn’t smelled like that since the mid 1990’s. Most of the tourist stations “Disney-fied” by Giuliani get power washed every single night, after midnight, during the gravyard shift, to eliminate the smells of humanity.
It’s still very old, very dirty, very inefficient, slow, crowded, and peppered with tourists, homeless people, pickpockets and weirdos all at once.
New York has more going on than many other cities, and is as dense as it is diverse, and it’s been that way for at least 100 years (or at least the subway has), and that’s a somewhat conservative time frame, but
Other cities aren’t like that, and some of it is due to strict policing. Not always though. Some of it has to do with climate, sunlight and weather, or in social terms, the implicit understanding of the expectation of one’s peers.
In lively cities, when transplanted people lose a sense of expected behavior among strangers, behavior loosens up. Some cities have a specific reputation as being a destination for the specific reason to either lose or find one’s sense of self. New York is one of those places.
I think that it's possible to do better. I question why so many cities allow their public spaces to decay to such a low level while others seem to cherish their spaces.
I’d advocate for more reliable trains, in the same way I want the elevator to show up as soon as I press the button. Of course I want that instant gratification, but the atmosphere of the subway, on the other hand, I find to be a less urgent concern.
Mostly I think people are generally accepting of the fact that New York City’s subways are like an unfinished basement. It’s a moldy, musty cellar, and it’s not a destination. It’s a liminal zone.
If you want to talk about smell, consider this curiosity. One of the most irritating parts of the subway for me right now is the new cars. The bright, automated cars with the electronic conductor voice, and the light blue bench seating. [0]
These new cars have an air conditioned ventilation system miles ahead of the old cars, where you could just crack a window, and I swear to god these cars utilize an engineered odor as a crowd control mechanism. I harbor a suspicion that they radiate a strange odor on purpose so as to repel most normal people, so that no one lingers in these cars casually. It’s a unique smell. It only affects the new cars. And I only smell it inside those cars, even when they’re freshly cleaned. I suspect it’s the same tactic restaurants use [1], with artificially manufactured food aromas, but with a scent chosen to disgust.
None of the old cars smell like that. The plaform doesn’t smell like that. When the ventilation is off, and the doors are open, and the train sits in the station for 15 minutes, the new cars lose the smell. But for years, that smell has only affected the new cars. It smells like bad breath, if I were to try and describe it. Not vomit. Not urine. But more like if you lick the back of your hand first thing in the morning and smell it before it dries. That’s the closest smell. And I think it’s no accident the new cars smell like that.
[0] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/01/26/04/3093161B000005...
Stockholm doesn't have less homeless people roaming around than New York because they've been driven out by how clean everything is, it's because Sweden has a working welfare and health care system.
I'm in NYC, and the subways may be powerwashed now and then, but I have to side with the parent here: They do still routinely smell. Not just the stations, either. It's a common sight, even during rush hour, to see cars that are completely empty except for a single scruffy-looking person with plastic bags for shoes; there's a reason nobody else goes into that car.
I'm from Scandinavia, and this summer I traveled back with my American girlfriend. She couldn't get over how clean and tidy everything was. Not just the cities and roads, but also the subway stations and trains: No cracked tiles, rusty beams or random brown water dripping from the ceiling, or puddles of mysterious green matter; modern signage, electronic boards, elevators, escalators; digital ticketing; and so on. The trains zoom in almost silently, and the cars are spacious and comfortable. She said she felt like she'd traveled 20 years into the future.
While you can talk about economic factors — budgets, age of the system, etc. — my thesis is that it also comes down to cultural differences. Scandinavia isn't just clean because of wealth, or a smaller population; it's that cleanliness and tidiness is part of the culture, and it's strived at almost subconsciously at every level, from the individual to the government. That only works thanks to the homogeneity of the population, where everyone share approximately the same values. NYC certainly is not like that.
It’s not so much that the bar should be higher, so much that leaving the bar as low as it is provides a signal that contrasts the range of sky high standards New York also makes possible in other ways.
Yes, the subway sucks, but New York’s tendency is to let the full scope of humanity simply exist out in the open, as is, warts and all. This is the philosophy I take away from it.
Should the world standardize a mandatory minimum quality upon public civic spaces? If we did, wouldn’t that require cracking down on deviations from the prescribed norm? Wouldn’t that drive people out, possibly sending some to a place much worse that a dirty smelly subway tunnel? The answers to these questions aren’t cut and dry.
Secondly, there are plenty of cities with clean, "quality" civic spaces that are also have plenty of weirdness and colourful culture, including Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Moscow.
The station itself may be the deepest, but it isn't the busiest, and if you look at a map it makes sense. It's a single stop away from T-Centralan where all of the lines converge and it is the last station on the line. Leaving the station you emerge in a garden near the centre of the city, but there are other lines that will probably get most closer.
I went there in the middle of summer and honestly, the entire city didn't feel that busy in the same way London feels. I wouldn't be surprised if many locals are holidaying elsewhere, and Stockholm while a capital city, isn't at the top of the list of city destinations.
Also, shameless self-promotion and photos, but a friend challenged me to blog my trip and post online, click here for photos: https://consto.uk/2018/07/16/interrailing-into-stockholm-day...
The metro is quiet, even during rush hours, people keep to themselves in their own seats, there are no cracked floors, walls or ceilings (at least on most of the stations I've been to and I think I have been to a good 70+% of them).
It doesn't smell like pee nor vomit and there isn't people shitting on the escalators (like I saw at Jamaica Station when I went to NYC for the first time, it was one of the first sights I had after leaving JFK).