That really hurts most a lot of poor people who work odd hours.

Then suddenly they have to find a way home or two work that will be much more expensive and eat into their earnings.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but "that's really all there is to it" will affect very negatively hundreds of thousands of people in NYC.

Night buses like London, they are much more efficient when there is less traffic.

To serve much better for 99.9% commuters or serve poorly for 100% commuters, isn't that a easier decision?

i dont think it's really that simple. even it was i don't think the decision is that easy anyway.

it's important to think about who your decisions affect, even if they may be a minority (which is bigger than 0.1%). why is it okay to put more burden on the people who already have the most burden as it is?

NYC is the only city which has such requirement and have to provide subway to support them? How many other cities provide same 24/7 subway transit? why the other cities don't provide such service? The other cities don't have people work so late? How does those people commute?

This is why other cities have shitty transit. Commutes can't be looked at as the only purpose of a transit system. Especially in NY, it's the PRIMARY mode of transportation for a lot of people. Making it shitty outside of commute hours is not an option.

"This is why other cities have shitty transit."?? If NYC continue with current shitty schedule, the subway would be worse and worse, which means less and less commuters will rely on it, and eventually it will be closed as worthless. Will you be happier? As at that time, nobody will benefit. Be more practical, gentleman! We are living in 2018, there is lot of proving that we should optimize a system by reducing the bottleneck. For those 0.1% commuters, they don't nee the whole subway system to support them, they can take bus/shuttle or even uber, which will save millions of dollars for the whole system, and also improve the rush hour transit much much better.

subsidized ridesharing?

In some areas you can use commuter benefits with Uber and I think Lyft was implementing that also.

They can take the bus. Don't you have night buses?

Most bus routes in NYC only run once an hour between midnight and 5am on weekdays. Many don't run at all on the weekends between midnight and 5am.

I was actually really surprised when I first found out that subway systems in many large systems shut down at night. I live in a modestly-sized city (Dresden, Germany, ~500k inhabitants), and the local transport authority prides itself on operating nearly the entire tram network (plus some important bus services) 24/7. Just this year, they have actually increased the schedule density during weekend nights. Trams now run every 30 minutes instead of every 60 minutes (which is still the rhythm on weekday nights).

you are comparing apples and oranges, buses/trams run 24/7 with lower interval in night pretty much everywhere, subway not so much

Why though? Maintenance hours?

They are already doing this for several lines. The L wasn't running on weekends at all in November for them to do repairs.

NYC is unique in that there are LOTS of people whose working hours fall into that range and they rely on the subway. Just shutting down the whole system is unfeasible.

Please stop this unique snowflake claim about NYC :+)

It's another huge City. Besides having a horribly mismanaged public transport, it's not unique.

Except that it's, you know, the center of the universe of course. ;-)

You're sadly mistaken if you think a New York, one of the largest and busiest cities in human existence, is "just another large City", and that the solution to their transportation woes is to just lock it down and work on it.

New York is the 28th largest city, with another 10 within one million.

So while it is one of the largest, it's hardly unique.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities]

Shutting the subway down at night for maintenance and running night buses as a replacement is a pretty straightforward method that other, similarly large cities are using successfully.

it's extremely small compared to population of Beijing or shanghai for instance and Beijing shut down subway around 11PM. but yeah people in NY are the only ones working in night, common, you really believe it or you don't have passport?

NYC is unique as it's always be the center of the universe, even it's just 8M people live here, and other cities, like Tokyo/Hong Kong/Beijing/Shanghai has more population that it

The NYC subway system has more stations than any other subway system in the world. 29% more than next most station-rich system.

Would that approve anything or excuse for anything? According wiki, NYC has 424 stations, and Shanghai Metro has 393 stations. (424-393)/393 = 7.3%