Do you have any articles or analysis on the capacity of the subway lines? I'm not particularly familiar with American subway capacity but my general understanding is that legacy metro lines that use switching tend to hit capacity limits much earlier than you would expect in comparison to "soviet triangle" style no shared lines system whe…
Do you have any articles or analysis on the capacity of the subway lines? I'm not particularly familiar with American subway capacity but my general understanding is that legacy metro lines that use switching tend to hit capacity limits much earlier than you would expect in comparison to "soviet triangle" style no shared lines system where the the maximum capacity is limited purely by how fast they can reasonably enter and exit stations. With how frequent the NYC Subway is I would have expected during peak hours for it to already be at capacity but I am legitimately curious since you seem to take it as a given that it is otherwise which implies I am misinformed here!
A lot of the lines have express vs local trains. The express trains skip some stations and the stations have extra sets of tracks so these trains don't get stuck.
Of course there are some foundational problems with the subway that are hard to fix like the age of many of the tunnels and that they are deteriorating.
Do you have any articles or analysis on the capacity of the subway lines? I'm not particularly familiar with American subway capacity but my general understanding is that legacy metro lines that use switching tend to hit capacity limits much earlier than you would expect in comparison to "soviet triangle" style no shared lines system where the the maximum capacity is limited purely by how fast they can reasonably enter and exit stations. With how frequent the NYC Subway is I would have expected during peak hours for it to already be at capacity but I am legitimately curious since you seem to take it as a given that it is otherwise which implies I am misinformed here!
A lot of the lines have express vs local trains. The express trains skip some stations and the stations have extra sets of tracks so these trains don't get stuck.
There is also a lot of untapped capacity due to outdated signal technology. Basically, the signals today are very old and manual operated (more or less). The MTA is already working to upgrade the signals to modern ones that let the trains run closer together and have better reliability. Presumably the money from congestion pricing can be used for this upgrade. see more: https://new.mta.info/project/cbtc-signal-upgrades#:~:text=CBTC%3A%20Moving%2Dblock%20signaling&text=The%20section%20of%20track%20around,they%20can%20run%20more%20frequently.
Of course there are some foundational problems with the subway that are hard to fix like the age of many of the tunnels and that they are deteriorating.
Alon Levy blogged about this a couple of times:
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/02/06/the-subway-in-new-york-is-not-at-capacity/
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/10/27/new-york-city-zoning-and-subway-capacity/