This amusing video from Adam Sacks and some of his colleagues at the Upright Citizens Brigade has been making the rounds today. While the language gets a little colorful during the final 30 seconds, I love the idea of a bunch of frustrated commuters trying to coax a reticent into the station. After all, every New Yorker has had that experience where an incoming train faces red signals in full view of everyone waiting on the platform.
Setting aside the humor of an anthropomorphic shy train and a situation familiar to millions, subway delays are a huge problem. In its board materials yesterday, the MTA released statistics on delays, and the causes are diverse. Over-crowding and slowdowns caused by workers on the track lead the way along with right-of-way delays. Sick or unruly customers cause a large number of slowdowns as well. Of course, with nearly 5.4 million weekday riders, delays are bound to happen, but that doesn’t make them any less tolerable or annoying.
In fact, just yesterday morning when signals problems had the some East Side trains running up the West Side during the a.m. rush, I was reminded anew at how annoying delays can be. I got into Grand Army Plaza just as a 2 train pulled in, but then we sat. When we moved, we crawled due to “train traffic ahead of us.” It didn’t ultimately slow us down too much, but the perceived pace of the train led to irate groans throughout my subway car.
Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have tried to put some weight behind those things that most irk transit users. Framing it as a way to study perception and behavioral adaptation to “unreliability” in public transit, three professors have submitted a paper of their findings. Only the beginning is available online for free, but Angie Schmitt at Streetsblog offers up a top line summary. So what are the factors that most annoy transit riders? Drumroll, please.
1. Delayed on board due to transit vehicles backed up or problems on the transit route downstream.
2. Experienced long wait at a transfer stop.
3. Missed departure due to wrong real-time information.
4. Unable to board or denied boarding due to crowding.
5. Delayed on board due to emergency or mechanical failure.
6. Experienced long wait at origin stop.
7. Ran to stop but the bus or train pulled away.
8. Delayed on board due to traffic.
Basically, these can be summarized as “delays” and “waits.” Now, it’s hardly insightful to say that transit riders don’t like to wait and they don’t want to be delayed. New Yorkers will love the subway if the trains showed up every 90 seconds 24 hours a day with no downstream problems ever, but that’s just not the way reality works. The real question is how to fix it.
The authors of the UC Berkeley study were focusing on the Bay Area with an eye on buses, but the same issues apply to subway systems too in a way. There, shared ROW traffic isn’t an issue, but the transit agency is still viewed as the culpable body when it’s their fault and also when it’s not. Is the answer patience? More frequent service that exceeds real demand but better aligns with rider expectations? Or are we too far down the rabbit hole to figure it out?
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