Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

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I do not live in NYC, so please correct me if I am wrong, but both can be true at the same time.

Looking specifically at the NYC subway, they are both over-spending and under-spending at the same time. In a nice example of the Boots Theory[0], they are spending money by the boatloads to keep the dating infrastructure working. A lot of it dates back to the 1930s, and it is impossible to get replacement parts. A newer system would be far easier and cheaper to maintain - but in the short term replacing it would be an enormous cost.

This is made even worse by it running 24/7. Without a maintenance window, doing proper preventative maintenance is pretty much impossible.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

I never heard of the Boots Theory before now, but I don't think it applies to the MTA. They buy the top of the line. And will build their own parts if it doesn't exist. It's not unusual for subway cars to run for millions of miles and last decades. The R32's were deployed in the 1930's and lasted until the early 2000's [0].

I am a New Yorker, and have seen the MTA do maintenance at night or over a weekend. Or, if things are desperate, during the day.

I don't know the real issues either, but always assumed politics played a big part.

[0] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R32_(New_York_City_Subway_car)

> They buy the top of the line. And will build their own parts if it doesn't exist. It's not unusual for subway cars to run for millions of miles and last decades. The R32's were deployed in the 1930's and lasted until the early 2000's [0].

That doesn't seem to contradict th idea that they've spent far more money maintaining obsolete equipment when buying new would be cheaper overall. (Not really "boots theory" though).

It’s worth noting their entire switching infrastructure is human run mechanical switches and the tech are dated enough the MTA can’t even reliably know where a given subway car is. By comparison, most subway systems have a computerized switching infrastructure with real time computerized tracking of cars, saving quite-literally millions of man hours a year of work.

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