[grishka]

On the one hand, this sort of thing feels inexcusable to me. In my mind, the subway is the most reliable mode of city transportation.

On the other, the NYC subway is one of the few 24/7 subway systems in the world, which makes me envious somewhat. Ours closes at midnight and opens around 5 AM.

[afavour]

IMO the subway reliability issues are overblown these days. In the 2010s it was in a really dark spot but it's doing a lot better these days.

> In my mind, the subway is the most reliable mode of city transportation.

Even with its problems the NYC subway still is. Traffic is a nightmare. I have friends who insist on taking a cab to the airport because it's more reliable then end up complaining because they're still on the Belt Parkway or whatever.

[grishka]

I spent a week in NYC in 2014. Used the subway a lot, but mostly within Manhattan. Don't remember having any issues except a few stations smelling of shit and the card readers on the turnstiles being very picky about the speed of your swipe.

[busterarm]

In the 2010s it was so bad that I gave up on the subway and either walked, Ubered or took the bus everywhere.

When the MTA bus is better than the subway, things in NY are grim -- it was like the 80s & early 90s again.

The reliability has improved a bit, but the subway crime is also way, way up. So yeah, still a hard pass.

In the mid 2010s i had a reverse commute from Manhattan to Brooklyn and there was a few months where 3 days a week my full commute would take 2hr+ (midtown to sunset park) because the train just sat multiple times not moving. Especially on the bridge where it could be up to an hour just stopped.

The absolute worst time that I ever remember though was maybe in '89 or '90. The Lex-53rd st E/F station had a ton of ongoing construction and on weekends it was being used as a transfer station only that summer. All the staircases were closed and you could only get in/out via train -- this idea seems insane to me but that's NYC sometimes and especially in that era.

Anyway, my family and I were on a train passing through that station one Saturday or Sunday morning on the way to Queens and they made us exit the train inside the station as it was going out of service. Apparently a pipe had burst (I think?) and no trains were in service. The AC in the station was not working and it was maybe 90+ degrees underground. Plus water was leaking from everywhere. And there were hundreds of us trapped on a crowded, wet, dirty platform for like 4-6 hours while no trains were running and there was no way to get out.

Aside: that Belt Parkway story is why people from NY who live/work in Manhattan try to never fly out of JFK. That's the real solution. So much easier to get to EWR/LGA.

[afavour]

> The reliability has improved a bit, but the subway crime is also way, way up.

Eh, it’s all relative, I think you’re in less danger of experiencing issues on the subway than you are getting hit on the road. I take the subway all the time and have never had any problems.

[busterarm]

Subway assaults went up 3x between 2009 and 2025 and violent crime in general in the subway has had nearly a 20% spike just in the first two months of this year alone. Assaults by repeat offenders are up 2x from 2019 to 2025.

I'll take a minor fender bender every now and again over someone hitting me in the head with a brick ever.

I can't believe the suggestion is that property damage and/or low-speed collisions would be preferable to being assaulted. And I've been tapped by cars and walked away from it several times. Plus the "well it never happened to me" is just survivorship bias. Over enough decades and enough rides something fucked up on the subway _will_ happen to you eventually.

This is the kind of thinking that I left NY over.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I'll take a minor fender bender every now and again over someone hitting me in the head with a brick ever

You're more than 7x more likely to die in a car in New York than on the subway. If you're the kind of idiot that voluntarily trespasses onto the tracks, you're 2x more likely.

In 2023, 112 motor-vehicle occupants died in New York [1] "97 people were fatally struck by subway trains" [2], nearly half (49%) of which are suicides and 33% of which are accidents, almost all of which involve voluntarily trespassing onto the tracks [3]. Five people were killed by assault [4].

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bicycle-crash-dat...

[2] https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/04/11/mta-operators-subway-coll...

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40405368/

[4] https://www.mta.info/document/131556

[busterarm]

In 2023 exactly two Uber passengers died in NYC. One from jumping out of their moving vehicle onto the LIE and the other from being rear-ended by a drag racer on the Whitestone Expressway.

The alternative to taking the subway for the vast majority of NYC residents is not driving to work.

And as an Uber passenger living in NYC I overwhelmingly spent my time on roads that were not highways.

I can't find exact taxi passenger deaths but between 2019 & 2023 there were 23 passenger fatalities across all rideshare services and taxis. At least one of those was a fatal drug overdose (2022).

[afavour]

2009 was a historic low point for subway crimes. Only looking at relative numbers from then is misleading.

There were 573 assaults on the subway in 2024, up from something like 150 in 2009. There were something like 1.9 billion journeys taken that year. Avoiding the subway because of the 1 in 2,000,000 danger of assault is not rational.

Exaggerated paranoid thinking is indeed the thing that leads a lot of people to unnecessarily leave NYC.

[busterarm]

573 _felony_ assaults. Misdemeanor assault is still a thing. That includes people fighting you with their fists or groping you.

Also anyone in NY with a functioning brain knows just how underreported subway crime is. You can either get where you're going and go about your day or end it by trying to find a cop and then trying to get them motivated to even take your report.

2009 being a low point for crime should just be normal. I lived through all the bad decades in NY and you're not there yet but certainly trending towards it.

I like how multiple years of "hey why does all of this fucked up shit keep happening to me?" is "exaggerated paranoid thinking". Truly stunning and brave. Being repeatedly victimized by random crime is just a mindset, bruh.

[JumpCrisscross]

> you’re in less danger of experiencing issues on the subway than you are getting hit on the road

For what it's worth, I lived in New York for ten years and was in one car accident (cabbie, distracted by whatever phone all they're all constantly dialled into, blew through a stop sign) and zero even closer calls on the subway.