The rebirth of NY subway

Today, nine month after the London Underground exuded the CEO of their failed underground to plant the seed in NY, drastic changes were born, and the subway services that were known to be not-so-good, were officially reborn horrible.

At last, NY subway realized that regardless of the quality of service or lack of it, passengers have no choice or say – just like in London.  What are passengers going to do, walk?

So now that MTA has declared a deliberate deterioration of services, we can only ask why did wait so long? Didn’t we know that reducing the quality of a monopoly increases profit? Couldn’t we have come up with it ourselves? After all, unlike old style companies that were responsible for multitude of stakeholders – employees, debt holders, the community – it was America that reinvented the modern company as an entity responsible for its shareholders alone.  So why did we need to import our own ideas from the socialist continent?  

By the way, I hope that the drastic service change was not a surprise to anyone, as the writing was on the wall.

Nice words for bad trains

In a previous post: http://ranfuchs.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-york-subway-way-to-no-hope.html I indicated that having lived in London for years, I find the NY subway – despite all it’s problem – superior to the London underground.

That said, there is one thing more efficient in the London system – the announcements. For instance, while in NY they’ll announce: Ladies and gent. As you exit please mind the gap between the platform and the train. The British will simply call: Mind the Gap.

But being more economical with their words is not a good reason to copy their train system, and I am still horrified that the new MTA management feels that "New Yorkers should be able to expect the same type of customer experience riders enjoy in London.”

So lets the English keep their nice ways with words, and find someone who knows how to run trains to copy train systems. Japan may be just the place to learn from.

New York Subway – the way to no hope

Having just moved from London to NY, let me tell you that while New Yorkers love to complain about their Subway, taking the subway here is a leisure ride in comparison to what the London commuters have to suffer every day.

At least when you take the subway in NY, you hope that you'll eventually find yourself at your destination. When you take the Tube (this is what in London they call their subway) you don’t.

The air-conditionless experience of the steaming soup of bodies, which in the summer often boils at over 100 degrees, can only be compared to an overcrowded Turkish bath before anyone has taken a shower. And the physical closeness does not add to the feeling of intimacy or friendliness. London underground is a violent place, in which beating and stabbing are commonplace.

So I wonder what Jay Walder – the new chairman of the NY subway, who until recently managed the London underground – meant when he said that "New Yorkers should be able to expect the same type of customer experience riders enjoy in London.” Because while there are still a few things we may want to learn from the English, running trains is clearly not one of them.

A joy ride in the London Tube