InsideTransit

Over my many years riding the NYC subway, I like to think I’ve seen it all. From having a gun pointed at me, to watching a man take a pee off the edge of the platform, to a woman changing her clothes between two cars as we crossed the Manhattan Bridge, nearly nothing could shock me.

But today I have a video that I never thought I would see. Below is a video of a man playing with his chicken on a Bronx-bound 6 subway train. The video shows a man on the floor playing with his chicken (yes a clucking chicken) while others look on. You see, most people probably weren’t pissed that a chicken was on the subway, but that they were missing some seats!

So leave a comment, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen on the subway or bus? Make sure to note your city as well.

The NYC MTA has posted a pdf of the latest version of their proposed service cuts. The major changes are:

• W eliminated – replaced partially with Q and partially with N – I think this is a good change although I would route the N through the tunnel
• M eliminated – replaced with V – this is a railfans dream I think – I think this is a good change as well as it will provide M and J/Z riders with access to midtown
• elimination of the Staten Island Rail special train to the ballpark
• too many bus changes to note – see the PDF below 

Here’s the guiding principles the MTA used to determine the proposed cuts:

• Affect the fewest number of riders;
• Minimize the negative effects to riders (e.g., longer waiting time);
• Maintain network coverage (even if it requires lower frequency or altered routings);
• Operate service within existing service and capacity guidelines (except where otherwise noted); and
• Improve the cost-efficiency of the service provided.

You can download the service cuts pdf here.

Everyone moans and complains about how late the subways are here in NYC. But are the subway lines really that late? Subchat has posted the latest stats for on-time performance in the New York City subway system by line.

Here’s the breakdown:

1 Line: 91.7%
2 Line: 81.9%
3 Line: 85.2%
4 Line: 82.5%
5 Line: 89.2%
6 Line: 92.0%
7 Line: 96.3%

A Line: 84.5%
B Line: 91.8%
C Line: 94.6%
D Line: 89.2%
E Line: 87.0%
F Line: 76.2%
G Line: 95.6%
J/Z Line: 98.6%
L Line: 97.0%
M Line: 99.1%
N Line 91.0%
Q Line: 95.8%
R Line: 92.4%
V Line: 91.7%
W Line: 96.6%

Grand Central Shuttle: 99.6%
Franklin Shuttle: 99.8%
Rockaway Shuttle: 98.6%

It looks like the longer the line, the more often the train is late. Also, lines that share the track with other lines also seem to have poor on-time performance. Sorry to those F train riders! For reference, a train is considered late if it arrives or departs more than 5 minutes 59 seconds past the scheduled time.

Found via SubChat, can you name all of the subway stations in Manhattan? Sporcle has put together a quiz which provides you with 15 minutes to name all of the 127 stations. I was able to get all of the right answers in 9:58. Leave your scores and times in the comments.

Good luck! May the Chambers St. be with you! Now if they put together a Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens or Staten Island quiz – those would be MUCH harder!

There’s nothing cooler than transit data in a visual form. If you are like me, you will love the site I have for you today. It was created by Sha and takes NYC subway ridership data from 2006 and displays it on a map. You can check out each station and see how many people began their travels at that station. The thicker the line, the more people paid their fare at that station. You can also see the data as dots instead of lines.

As one might imagine, Times Square leads the pack. Other interesting notes:

• 17 million people started at the Main Street station in Flushing
• Beach 105st in the Rockaways only had 80,000 people use the station
• 17 million people also used the 86th street Lexington IRT station

We need more visualizations and frankly more transit data usage to both understand more about how the system works and to help passengers more effectively utilize the system.

It would be interesting to overlay 2008 data as I am sure many of the stations in Long Island City and parts of Brooklyn will probably feature much thicker lines. Imagine a global transit usage directory!

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the MTA going after application developers who use transit schedule data in their apps. It’s still a shock to me that any public agency would have an issue with outsiders trying to help them help their customers (many times for free). I wonder what Bloomberg thinks of this with all of his ads about how he is going to fix the MTA.

David Turner and Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock have put together a meetup for tomorrow evening (Tuesday) to discuss how the MTA and the developer community can best collaborate. You can find all of the details here about the event including a variety of comments about whether Google gets current data for their Maps and Transit products.

I won’t be able to make the event due to scheduling concerns and am very hopeful the group can come out with some good learnings and next steps. If the MTA wants to fix the MTA, talking to the “Internet” could be the first step.

Earlier this week, bricks and tiles fell from the ceiling of the 181th street subway station in NYC. Work has been ongoing 24 hours a day to get the line open again and I am hearing that the line should be open on Monday.  The MTA has been posting photos from the work site at 181st – I’ve posted a few of them below.

This is a perfect example of why the MTA should have a blog – to humanize the conversation of events like this ceiling collapse. Posting images on Twitter is meaningless for the majority of transit riders who would be interested in viewing the work progress. Give me a call MTA – let’s talk. Instead of a blog, we get silly television commercials telling us how Bloomberg wants to fix the MTA – how come now he wants to do it – why not any of the other years? Oh yea, it’s an election year

Here a work crane is on the tracks on the right and a meeting is being held on the right platform:

Here is a photo showing bricks from the ceiling being removed – probably to be saved:

There have been loads of people who have created alternative NYC subway maps over the years.  Kriston Lewis has put together one of the best looking and functional maps I’ve seen to-date. The lines are clearly noted, bus transfers are included on the main points, and it’s easier to follow than the current MTA subway map.

Click the graphic below to download the map – note that it’s a PDF file and is 80″x80″ in size.

Over my years riding the subway, I’ve spent countless hours studying where to wait for a NYC subway to make sure I get off at the closest point to where I need to be at my destination. Most NYC subway stations have multiple exits and multiple transfer options and knowing where to wait can mean a couple of minutes savings each day. If you are waiting for a train, why not align yourself before getting onto the train to save time at the exit?

For example, if you are on the #1 northbound and plan to get off at 50th street, there’s only one exit at the back end of the train. Moving down from the front to the back can save time when getting off.

But what happens if you are going to a new station or aren’t sure where is the best place for transferring from one line to another?

A new mobile application has launched to help with this issue. It’s called Exit Strategy NYC and is available for most mobile platforms including the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and even the Amazon Kindle. The price ranges from $2-5 depending on your device. And the Exit Strategy application doesn’t need to have Internet access to be used – this means you can use it in the tunnels of NYC.

Brother and sister team Jonathan and Ashley Wegener created the application and call their idea “platform strategy”. It took two months to grab all of the data and get it into their application. The MTA should integrate Exit Strategy NYC into the official MTA web site.

Now if they can just create an application so I know which subway lines and cars are most likely to have single women that meet my criteria – I’d pay for that!

Seriously, sometimes I wonder what is going on here in NYC. Are they putting something wacky in our water? Here we have a person (I assume it’s a person) dressed up like a bird bouncing on a seat in the NYC subway. I think it’s a bird because of the beak. From what I understand this is on the L line — I’d love to see the bird on the 7 sometime!

You know what’s funny about this is that sometimes you just need to smile and laugh – and that’s what this bird did for me today. I’d go for a bouncy ride if I saw the bird.