> Vegas also doesn't have a subway system, which was cited as why it spread so rapidly in NY.
There's no real evidence to support the thesis that the MTA was a primary vector of spread in NYC. Granular data of infection rate by neighborhood is spotty, but the data that does exist doesn't show any clear trends towards increased infection rates nearer subway lines. And the borough with the highest infection rate is the borough with the least transit ridership, and the borough with the lowest infection rate is that with the highest transit ridership...
Yes, the subway is the correct answer. That's how this virus spread like wildfire in NYC. Second reason could be the elevators in the tall buildings (there are plenty of those).
The NYC subway seems to have a pretty unique local microclimate though. I don't know if it's just the lack of regenerative braking or if the close proximity to the iconic steam heating network is also playing a role in this, but compared to most other subway networks, the MTA feels like a living history museum - even if you close your eyes, block your ears and only take in the air. The influence of air heat and moisture on virus spread is quite complicated (evaporation ends some droplet classes, condensation ends others) so it's quite possible that some subway systems are much worse spreaders than others.
These attempts to claim that crowded subways have nothing to do with the spread in NYC are bizarre. If there's no problem spending upwards of an hour with many other people in a small enclosed space, then the entire concept of social distancing is useless.
Living in proximity to a subway line doesn't necessarily mean you spend more time on the subway than people who live further away, nor does it mean that you use the subway more. Subway commuters who can't afford to live close to a subway line probably live further from their workplaces, too, which would mean they spend more time on the subway and have more transfers between lines. Those people may then carry germs back to their neighborhoods.
The subway is a shared space with poor air quality and many hard surfaces that are touched by many people every hour.
The blog post you are "citing" tries to draw conclusions by zip code in a map that is not granular enough to support the claims. You yourself acknowledge this so I'm not sure why you use that blog post as evidence.
Also, Jeff Harris (the MIT professor who wrote the paper with which the blogger disagrees) is a doctor as well as being an economist. That doesn't mean he is infallible, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss his thoughts.
> You and I have had very different experiences with the subway over the last year
"The average American commute crept up to 26.4 minutes in 2015" [1]. In New York City, the "average one-way commute [is] almost 36 minutes" [2], with "a major gap" being in the realm of "12 minutes of delay" [3]. Compared to mean American traffic delays, New York at its worst is many other cities on a good day.
... what this all forgets is how scary the initial wave looked in NYC. I remember the subway being downright spacious in the 1990s and early 2000s, sometimes sitting across from a model or seeing an illegal vendor going from train to train selling hooch or illegal DVDs. By 2019 it was getting crazy crowded most of the time and they were not kidding when they told you take off you backpack and you could get pretty compressed sometimes.
With global connections to every airport on Earth, NYC picked it up fast and it just exploded, maybe one person in a subway car could infect hundreds of people directly. They had no idea how to treat it and they were pulling up refrigerator cars to nursing homes. It is no wonder people freaked out.
If you are living further out it looked quite different (what is a safer activity than going for long hikes in the woods or riding horses?) but for the "elite" in big cities things looked pretty dire at the beginning.
Sure, let's compare it per station. According to Wikipedia, NYC has 5.2 million daily riders and 472 stations [1] for an average of 11,000 riders per station per day — over 26x more than the Las Vegas Loop stations have been accommodating. Even if you adjust for population differences (LV ~600k, NYC ~8m) the Las Vegas Loop does significantly worse.
You end up walking a lot in NYC, too, it isn't some panacea. I had a ~25 minute walk from the N train to my apartment in Queens when I lived in New York.
> Second Avenue Subway is closed you can take the Lexington Avenue Line
It's funny that you picked this as an example, because the 2nd ave subway has yet to open even it's very short initial segment, and the 4-5-6 (Lexington Ave line) is the least redundant part of the whole NYC subway system. It's the only north-south line on the East side, and it carries more people per day than the entire subway system of any other North American city.
Once they build out the 2nd ave subway to the bottom of the island things will be redundant...but that's decades away. (They won't even start construction on the second phase, which only takes it up to 125th st, until 2020.)
You point generally applies to the rest of the system, though.
> The question you almost always want to answer about the relationship of the subway to the surroundings is "where is the nearest station entrance" which the system map cannot and should not answer. Any other question about that spatial relationship is essentially trivia, as far as a transit system map is concerned.
Do you actually live and work in New York? I'll assume not, and your attitude proceeds from ignorance of the situation.
Suppose you work at 1 Pierrepont Plaza (former HQ of Hillary Clinton's campaign, bit of trivia there) and you want to go to Nakamura Ramen on the Lower East Side. You have a subway station right outside the door with the 2345R train, but you'd be a fool to take any of those instead of walking the extra five minutes to Jay St Metrotech for the F.
You are at Broadway - Lafayette St, and you wish to head to the Flatiron Building. The nearest subway to that is the R train. You can take the 6 and transfer at Union Square... but really, you should just walk from the 6 train at 28 St.
You are staying in Fort Greene. The nearest stop is Fulton St (G). The next nearest stop is Lafayette (C). Even if you are headed to Columbus Circle (ABCD1), you might find yourself better served by by walking to DeKalb to catch the B or the Q, which are acceptably close, have more frequent service, and bypass lower Manhattan. (If you are going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you will instead walk to Nevins.)
You work at Union Square and live in Williamsburg. A signal problem -- residual damage from Hurricane Sandy when the tunnel was flooded -- prevents the L train from operating. What are your options for getting home today?
Your proposed universal norm actually makes a lot of sense ... for hybrid commuter rail / metro systems, such as the DC Metro, or BART, where questions like these are only minor and occasional. It is far more ambiguous for NYC.
Imagine a scenario where your child is surrounded by sick people in a subway during winter and all of them are coughing and sneezing. Heard of crazies pushing onto the subway lane? Or the extreme humidity these days that make the subway atmosphere like a baking oven where your child is constantly crying in agony and discomfort. Yes that would make NYC subway dangerous and disease prone for the safety of the child.
I regret to inform you that the NYC subway has many more problems than you experienced. Before the pandemic I traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan and problems were common. Much more common was just random slowdowns, sitting between stations, etc. that makes it a lot more difficult to know when you'll arrive at your destination.
> Out of probably 40-50 subway rides, only a handful were delayed either in-tunnel or while I was waiting in the station
You must not have had to come from Brooklyn to Manhattan during commute hours. Daily (or multiples times a day even) occurrence in that case. I’ll still gladly take MTA over Muni/BART any day, but NYC could definitely learn a thing or two from Hong Kong or even London’s subway systems.
There's no real evidence to support the thesis that the MTA was a primary vector of spread in NYC. Granular data of infection rate by neighborhood is spotty, but the data that does exist doesn't show any clear trends towards increased infection rates nearer subway lines. And the borough with the highest infection rate is the borough with the least transit ridership, and the borough with the lowest infection rate is that with the highest transit ridership...
(Source cite: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/15/the-subway-is-...).
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