Manhattan is mostly solid bedrock, for one.
Thus the time it takes to create tunnels below all the pipeworks cannot be overlooked, as it’s a very noisy endeavor.
Also, the NYC subway system is (or was, pre-covid) 24 hours, extensive, and was forward thinking.
The grates and vents you see today sidesteps the heat trapping of, say, the Tube (London).
It’s also built robustly because honestly, the riders abuse every feature.
- Bedrock is easier
- Every city has pipes. Including NYC when they did cut and cover.
- Arguably the 1930s IND started the trend of overbuilding. Being redundant with existing lines to drive out an already money-loosing bussiness isn't forward-thinking.
- The grates and vents and easier precisely because cut and cover.
- Elsewhere people abuse every feature less? More like the NYC subway is not in a state of good repair so the normal wear and tear is more visible.
- NYC is old. We still have steam pipes in active use, and it predates the subway. Also, asbestos. Nor is every city at the same scale.
- How do you quantify the amount of tax money that comes in, because the subway enables business? Home taxes are very low in NYC, because of the amount of money generated from business.
Rent is high near any station, unless it’s a completely run down neighborhood.
It also enables immigrants and students in a way that car-heavy cities can’t match. I know because I was this immigrant and student.
We don’t have the problem SF does, as less desirabke neighborhoods are affordable by teachers and nurses. - You know what vents attract? Trash. If not cleaned out it becomes a fire hazard.
- Abuse: Absolutely. DC and Boston trains are pristine by comparison, and I’ve ridden trains and railways in Japan.
New York is by far the worst, for many reasons.
It was even worse in the 70s and 80s, and the mindset never wentvaway.
- NYC is a brand new city compared to pretty much everywhere but the American West. We're talking about comparisons to Rome here, not comparisons to LA. And Rome is about 3x cheaper to build in than LA, which is about 3x cheaper than NYC. https://transitcosts.com/what-does-the-data-say/
Every problem you list exists in every other city in the world. The details are different, but the problem is there.
When Rome builds its line into the heart of the city, they dig down very deep; where it’s unlikely that any ancient artifacts will be found.
Meanwhile NYC has 7.4k miles of sewage lines and a lot of unknowns: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-10/nobody-kn...
This isn’t meant to be a dick measuring contest, just that it’s a city that wasn’t really planned and so progress is painfully slow.
https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/projects/open-sewer-atlas-...
Yes, there’s a lot of graft, turf battles, and so on but then has its own unique set of infrastructure challenges.
Then you have building collapses due to age or shoddy workmanship; not related to boring, but clearly a concern as they extend the line: https://ny.curbed.com/2015/3/26/9976560/explosion-leads-to-b...
NYC is dense and in Manhattan especially there’s no real business district vs residential.
It’s like code that is legacy and heavily used, with very powerful stakeholders. Retrofitting takes a lot of work and red tape.
That feels kinda arbitrary, what's considered a modern amenity, good Internet access? Public transport?
Having no clue what's below a city is really not that unique to NYC. If Rome can dig past it, why can't NYC?
> This isn’t meant to be a dick measuring contest, just that it’s a city that wasn’t really planned and so progress is painfully slow.
Which is, again, not unique to NYC. Urban planing as the proper academic field, we know it today, only emerged in the early 1900s.
That's not to deny that every place has its own unique challenges and issues, but that doesn't mean they are inherently unsolvable.
Building subway tunnels in such conditions is an equivalent of Olympic Games for engineers.
Btw, the tunnels aren’t the biggest cost of subway systems. Maybe 15-30%. I think the biggest tickets are usually the stations.
Honestly it's a miracle that skyscraper collapses are so rare.
NYC in particular has some very stringent regulations regarding blasting, allowable vibration levels, and so on. Long gone are the days of gung-ho cowboys lighting off fuses leading to piles of dynamite, massive fireballs, and the like.
Example reading: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229071708.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328666110_Large_str...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297751622_Strains_I...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315527348_Reducing_...
E: Trying to find a paper about blasting a road tunnel in Turkey under some ancient ruins. The stringent restrictions they were under and the things they did to maintain compliance were really, really interesting (as a blasting engineer) but I can't find the damn thing right now.
But consider that tunnels are created through mountains (far heavier). Done right, I doubt it’s an issue.
Ironically I think the city may shrink in the coming years, thanks to Covid and the upcoming fiscal crisis.