Even if varying door locations were the problem... Tokyo has many lines that share rolling stock among 3 or even 4 separate rail companies, and they still have platform doors. There are just a lot more doors in the station than on each train.
There simply is no interest or money for platform doors in NYC. Even though people fall onto the tracks and are killed, even though many stations suffer from capacity problems because there aren't enough safe places to stand, even though people holding train doors delays every train multiple minutes a day... we're simply allergic to the concept. I've never even heard it seriously proposed.
> You could make the test station one of the L train stations that's going to be closed for two years and install them at a super leisurely pace. (The L is basically completely isolated from the rest of the system, and already requires special rolling stock for CBTC. And it's going to be closed for two years for other repairs.)
This actually was a proposal. It was recently killed in favor of bringing elevators to Union Square, a major subway complex that is not ADA accessible. Which is really why they haven't caught on as a serious engineering proposal; the list of things that would be much better value for money is long, such as systemwide ADA accessibility, CBTC signalling, replacement of rolling stock, refurbishment of dilapidated, water-damaged stations, etc. You could easily come up with $50B worth of upgrades, extensions, etc. before platform doors became a priority. And they're not even that feasible.
> There are just a lot more doors in the station than on each train.
Got a source for this? This is intriguing because I've never heard of something like this. But this also introduces the complexity that the right doors have to open at the right time, lest a blind person walk into a gap between trains and die. Which is a lot to ask from an agency that can barely maintain something as mundane as elevators and escalators.
Without any doors, nothing stops people from walking into a gap between trains and dying. So adding doors (even too many doors) isn't going to make the situation any worse. It'll make it better because there will be fewer gaps, even with too many doors all opening at once.
Do they not? The R62 and R142 cars are both the same number of doors and of the same length [1] [2], and the moving platforms at some stations would, I think, require the doors be in approximately the same spot, no?
> The Eastern Division still uses old rolling stock like R42s from time to time.
Yes, but the R42 and R143/R160 have the same overall length and door count (and the spacing appears to be the same as well) [3] [4]
As an aside: it’s quite frustrating that the measurements given on the datasheets are of varying frequency.
[1] https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/cars/sheet-r6...
[2] https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/cars/sheet-r1...
[3] https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/cars/sheet-r4...
[4] https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/caption.pl?/img/cars/sheet-r1...
In R62s, doors are parallel to each other on each side of the car. [1]
However, it was found that because passengers like to crowd at doors, passengers wishing to exit from either side would just crowd in the same place.
To ease crowding, the NTTs have wider, offset doors, so that not everybody is standing in the same place [2]
The gap fillers at Union Square are very long, which is why they can line up with multiple door positions. [3]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R62_(New_York_City_Subway_car)...
#/media/File:R62_interior.jpg){kind=link}
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R142A_(New_York_City_Subway_ca...
#/media/File:Empty_subway_in_NYC.jpg){kind=link}
I read this as “IRT Eastern Division and BMT Eastern Division”, and was very confused what the IRT Eastern Division was, but I think you mean all of the IRT? Indeed, the IRT (except R188) would require similar door locations already because of the moving platforms at some stations.
> I've never even heard it seriously proposed.
There were apparently budgeted funds in the 2014 Capital Plan [1], but it was just designs.
[1] http://web.mta.info/capitaldashboard/allframenew_head.html?P...
There are some valid concerns, but I often feel the first reaction tends to be quite negative.
Maybe it doesn't make a comment people feel would be worth writing to say "great, let's do that here too!"
Just shove all the old trains on a single line for now and install the platform doors on that line in the 2030s.
Untangling the lines is not possible, partially because the system was designed to provide as many one seat rides as possible, and partially because the current subway is a patchwork mashup of three separate, competing subway systems; if you were to separate the lines, some trips would just not be possible via transfers, and most transfer complexes would not be able to handle the amount of passengers changing trains.
To answer how many cars are not compatible, that would be 2025 subway cars out of a total of 6148 (at least according to Wikipedia.) Of these, 625 were built in the late '80s and are not due for retirement til the 2030s. To put that in perspective, the late '80s fleet is bigger than the entire Boston T rapid transit fleet (Green and Silver Lines not withstanding)
So about a third of the fleet is incompatible right now. I assume the problem is equally bad in both A division and B division (fat trains and thin trains for those reading along).
The track sharing doesn't seem like a huge deal in my proposal. Services usually don't share track across trunk lines. I can't think of any platforms that are shared by trains on different trunks. As an example you could probably get away with enforcing A/C/E are new cars only. Worst case you delay installing the barriers on the shared track segments. There's also the obvious solution of using the L and G as the system test case (yet again). MTA should take the opportunity while the L is shut down anyway for the Canarsie tunnel repair clusterfudge.
You're right that it would reduce operational flexibility a bit. In theory service reroutes should be uncommon enough for this to not matter. But you and I know better. If I were to draft this as a serious proposal I'd look at reroute probabilities, come up with some way to estimate the cost incurred by inflexibility, and optimize the installation of platform walls to balance this cost constraint.
* 2/5 - Flatbush in Brooklyn, White Plains Road in the Bronx
* E/F, M/R - Queens Blvd
* A/B/C/D - Central Park West
* F/G - Culver
* B/D/N/Q - South Brooklyn
* J/M/Z - Broadway (Brooklyn)
> There's also the obvious solution of using the L and G as the system test case (yet again).
The L was considered for a platform door pilot during the shutdown. It was shelved in favor of bringing full accessibility to Union Square. IMO platform doors are quite far down the list for things that we could spend billions of dollars on, rather than full accessibility, or speeding up CBTC, or what have you, especially given the complexity vs benefit ratio.
You could replace the rolling stock, but all of it is in good operating condition, and the last of the oldest cars with non-compatible doors would be retired in the 2030s.
Air conditioning is also a huge challenge; traditionally, New York's subway has been cooled using the piston effect of trains, with frequent grates open to the surface to draw in air. With air conditioning those large, frequent openings are now a curse.