York City Subway System Research Articles

Exposure to fine particulate matter in the New York City subway system during home-work commute.

The New York City (NYC) subway system accommodates 5.5 million daily commuters, and the environment within the subway is known to have high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution. Naturally, subway air pollution varies among individuals according to their mobility patterns, introducing the possibility of inequality in PM2.5 exposure. This study aims to evaluate individual and community-level exposure to subway PM2.5. We simulated the intracity home-to-work trip patterns using the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) records of 3.1 million working commuters across 34,169 census blocks in four boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx) of NYC. We incorporated the on-platform and on-train measured PM2.5 concentration data for the entire subway system. The mean underground platform concentration in the city was 139 μg/m3 with a standard deviation of 25 μg/m3, while the on-train concentration when underground was 99 μg/m3 with a standard deviation of 21 μg/m3. Using a network model, we determined the exposure of individual commuters during their daily home-work trips. We quantified the mean per capita exposure at the census block level by considering the proportion of workers within the blocks who rely on the subway for their work commute. Results indicate statistically significant weak positive correlation between elevated subway PM2.5 exposure and economically disadvantaged and racial minority groups.

Particulate matter concentration and composition in the New York City subway system

In this study we investigated the concentration and composition of particulate matter (PM2.5) in the New York City subway system. Realtime measurements, at a 1-s cadence, and gravimetric measurements were performed inside train cars along 300 km of nine subway lines, as well as on 333 platforms on 287 subway stations. The mean (±SD) PM2.5 concentration on the underground platforms was 142 ± 69 μg/m3 versus 29 ± 20 μg/m3 for aboveground stations. The average concentrations inside train cars were 88 ± 14 μg/m3 when traveling through underground tunnels and platforms and 29 ± 31 μg/m3 while on aboveground tracks. The particle composition analysis of filtered samples was done using X-ray fluorescence (XRF), revealing that iron made up approximately 43% of the total PM2.5 mass on station platforms, approximately 126 times higher than the outdoor ambient iron concentration. Other trace elements include silicon, sulfur, copper, nickel, aluminum, calcium, barium, and manganese. Considering the very high iron content, the comparative analysis of the measured concentration versus the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) is not appropriate since those limits are largely based on particulate matter from fossil fuel combustion. Health impact analysis of inhalation of iron-based particles is needed to contextualize the results presented here.

A Subway Story: Boundaries, Transmission, and Covid-19

In a brief autoethnographic vignette, I explore manifestations of the transmission of affect in the New York City subway system amid the rise of the Delta variant of Covid-19 in the summer of 2021. I relate the transmissibility of affect to the contagion of Covid-19, particularly as both are approached in the subway, a place marked by proximity among strangers. Finally, I investigate the social construction of disgust and its involvement in organizing social proximity through the movement of affect in the subway.

Statistical Data Analysis for Trackway Asset Management Using Low-Level Nonconformance Rates

Well-documented conditions of the country’s subway systems suggest that the development of a management strategy for aging infrastructure is an important asset management challenge. The purpose of this work is to address this challenge by developing a statistical data analysis approach for forecasting the aging effect on the time-dependent deterioration rate of an identified trackway cluster. The infrastructure database is the New York City subway system and the trackway that supports the delivery of service. While much focus has been given to the steel rail subcomponent of the trackway, little has been done in the way of statistical analysis on the low-level nonconformances in the support structure of those rails—namely, the invert, ties, fasteners, and plates. Though detectable, these conditions pose no risk to either safety or the serviceability of that asset, yet they do provide a certain degree of awareness that an entirely intuitive lifecycle deterioration process is underway. This paper illustrates the development of a statistical data analysis methodology using available trackway data sets for forecasting the aging effect on the system performance.

Subway Station Closures and Robbery Hot Spots in New York City—Understanding Mobility Factors and Crime Reduction

This paper takes advantage of a natural experiment involving subway station closures to examine how subway ridership is associated with the impact of robbery victimization within spatial network buffers immediately surrounding subway stations in Bronx (County), New York. The New York City subway system is the busiest in the USA, with an annual ridership estimated at 1.8 billion people. Key findings of this research include noteworthy relationships between robbery hot spots and subway stations, as well as substantial reductions in robbery frequency during temporary subway station closures, with larger reductions occurring in closer proximities to the subway stations. There was also a significant robbery pattern “normalization process” that occurred after the closed subway stations were reopened where robbery frequency returned to historically “normal” pre-closure levels. These notable decreases of crime in and around subway stations during the station closure time periods, as well as the prominent increases in robbery when subway stations reopened, should be taken into consideration when planning transit maintenance, conducting crime prevention initiatives, and scheduling crime control strategies.

Automated Train Identification and Train Position Monitoring at New York City Transit

Like any legacy subway system that first opened in the early 1900s, the New York City subway system operates using technology that dates from many different eras. Although some of this technology may be outdated, efforts to modernize are often hindered by budgetary limits, competing priorities, and managing the tradeoff between short-term service disruptions and long-term service improvements. At New York City Transit (NYCT), the locations of all trains on all lines are not visible to any one person in any one place and, for much of the system, train locations can only be seen at field towers for the handful of interlockings in its operational jurisdiction as result of the legacy signal system, which may come as a surprise to many daily commuters or personnel at newer metros. In 2019, developers at NYCT gained full access to the legacy signal system’s underlying track circuit occupancy data and developed an algorithm to automatically track trains and match these data with schedules and manual dispatchers’ logs in real time. This data-driven solution enables real-time train identification and tracking long before a full system modernization could be completed. This information is being provided to select personnel as part of a pilot program via several different tools with the aim of improving service management and reporting.

The subway as fourth place: anomie, flânerie and the “crush of persons”

Sociologically speaking, what kind of place is the subway? If urbanism is defined as the experience of being surrounded by strangers, then the subway is a quintessentially urban space. But social scientists remain polarized in their views of this space, alternately describing the subway as an antisocial environment, a liminal “non-place”, or a space of multicultural contact. In this paper, we describe the social life of the subway, analyzing an original data-set compiled through detailed observations of the behavior of more than 4,000 passengers on the New York City subway system. We use logistic regression to model the factors that influence how passengers direct their gaze and configure their bodies while riding mass transit, and interpret our results with the help of “subway diaries” kept by 18 research subjects over the course of a week. Our findings help to reconcile conflicting images of social interaction in crowded transportation spaces: the subway is a “fourth place”: a utilitarian space in which context-specific norms serve to flatten social distinctions, allowing a passive form of social contact constrained by the presence and prevalence of other passengers in the subway car.

Random matrices and the New York City subway system.

We analyze subway arrival times in the New York City subway system. We find regimes where the gaps between trains are well modeled by (unitarily invariant) random matrix statistics and Poisson statistics. The departure from random matrix statistics is captured by the value of the Coulomb potential along the subway route. This departure becomes more pronounced as trains make more stops.

NYC subway runs best with quantum maths

With its antiquated trains, rusty rails and straphangers who keep the doors from closing, the New York City subway system could hardly be described as efficient. And yet, some trains arrive with reliable regularity, following neat statistical model similar to that seen in quantum systems. Aukosh Jagannath at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Tom Trogdon at the University of California, Irvine, used the subway system's real-time data feeds to analyze gaps between arrival times on two lines. They found that the southbound 1 line that runs down the west side of Manhattan shows what are called random matrix patterns, which are a sign of greater efficiency, says Jagannath, who is now at Harvard University. These trains run at more regular intervals

Vulnerability of Transportation Networks: The New York City Subway System under Simultaneous Disruptive Events

This paper addresses the topic of transportation network vulnerability within the context of the New York City subway system. We propose a network model for it and an approach based on shortest-path passenger flow simulations in order to quantify delays experienced by passengers arising from disruptive events, particularly from those that occur simultaneously. We determine if and to what extent the effect under such simultaneous scenarios is greater than it would be had the same disruptions occurred as separate events. Our findings can be useful in supporting the planning decisions necessary to prepare for the harmful consequences arising from disruptions to complex urban networks.

Violence in Advertisements in New York City Subway Stations: A Pilot Study

Violence has become a public health concern in the United States. Violent visually stimulating content encompasses various techniques such as fear, humor, shock, or violence, to stimulate a response or appeal toward awareness of human emotion. Exposing impressionable youth to violent advertisements can be particularly problematic. This is especially true in places like New York City where violent crime is a prevalent problem. With annual ridership reaching over 1.7 billion in 2014, the New York City subway system is abundant with advertisements. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the frequency and type of violent advertising on the Lexington Avenue/East Side Line in New York City, running through the Bronx and Manhattan to represent the lower and higher median income earning boroughs. There were no statistically different findings in median household income at site of station by number of ads or source of violent. Destruction was the most common form of violence (n = 32, 42.7 %) followed by intent to strike (n = 18, 24 %), showing a weapon (n = 15, 20 %) and horror (n = 10, 13.3 %). Most ads (n = 46, 61.3 %) were found in stations heading uptown toward and through the Bronx, the borough where median household income is lowest, whereas 29 (38.7 %) were found in stations heading downtown. Future studies could focus on additional boroughs and subways lines, and could be collected at multiple points in time to determine of how prevalent violent advertising is throughout New York City and at different time frames.

Engaging Undergraduates in the New York City S-SAFE Internship Program: An Impetus to Raise Geoscience Awareness

ABSTRACTTo engender and raise awareness to the geosciences, a geoscience research project and a corresponding geoscience internship program were designed around plume dispersion dynamics within and above the New York City subway system. Federal, regional, and local agencies partnered with undergraduate students from minority-serving institutions to conduct the largest plume dispersion study ever done in a complex, dense, urban-coastal metropolis. The students were engaged in an array of geoscience activities within the confines of geoscience learning communities. Assessment results indicate that the geoscience exposure and experience helped to stimulate and proliferate geoscience awareness and knowledge among the undergraduates.

Geospatial Resolution of Human and Bacterial Diversity with City-Scale Metagenomics

SUMMARYThe panoply of microorganisms and other species present in our environment influence human health and disease, especially in cities, but have not been profiled with metagenomics at a city-wide scale. We sequenced DNA from surfaces across the entire New York City (NYC) subway system, the Gowanus Canal, and public parks. Nearly half of the DNA (48%) does not match any known organism; identified organisms spanned 1,688 bacterial, viral, archaeal, and eukaryotic taxa, which were enriched for harmless genera associated with skin (e.g., Acinetobacter). Predicted ancestry of human DNA left on subway surfaces can recapitulate U.S. Census demographic data, and bacterial signatures can reveal a station’s history, such as marine-associated bacteria in a hurricane-flooded station. Some evidence of pathogens was found (Bacillus anthracis), but a lack of reported cases in NYC suggests that the pathogens represent a normal, urban microbiome. This baseline metagenomic map of NYC could help long-term disease surveillance, bioterrorism threat mitigation, and health management in the built environment of cities.

Hurricane Sandy: Shared Trauma and Therapist Self-Disclosure

Hurricane Sandy was one of the most devastating storms to hit the United States in history. The impact of the hurricane included power outages, flooding in the New York City subway system and East River tunnels, disrupted communications, acute shortages of gasoline and food, and a death toll of 113 people. In addition, thousands of residences and businesses in New Jersey and New York were destroyed. This article chronicles the first author’s personal and professional experiences as a survivor of the hurricane, more specifically in the dual roles of provider and trauma victim, involving informed self-disclosure with a patient who was also a victim of the hurricane. The general analytic framework of therapy is evaluated in the context of the shared trauma faced by patient and provider alike in the face of the hurricane, leading to important implications for future work on resilience and recovery for both the therapist and patient.

Liquid Fertility Management Bait Uptake by Urban Rats within New York City Subway Refuse Rooms

Traditional rodent management tools, such as traps and lethal rodenticides, are acute measures to reduce commensal rodent populations. Given the growing concerns regarding effectiveness, environmental safety, and animal welfare related to these tools, it has become imperative to find new methods. Fertility control is an emerging potential alternative to these tools as a safe, humane and effective method of long-term population management. SenesTech, Inc. has developed a liquid fertility management bait that causes follicle depletion in the ovaries of female Sprague Dawley rats and compromises sperm production in male Sprague Dawley rats in laboratory settings. These studies have shown significant decreases in litter sizes following bait consumption, but acceptance of this bait by wild rodents needed to be confirmed. Bait acceptance was tested within refuse rooms of the New York City subway system. Bait was provided ad libitum for 90 days. Uptake was evaluated by examining, via fluorescence microscopy, the presence of the bait marker rhodamine B, which manifests as fluorescent bands in whiskers. Presence of these bands indicated that 51% of the captured population had consumed the bait, and of these, 58% had taken the bait more than once. These results demonstrate that wild rats will consume a liquid fertility management bait, even in the presence of highly palatable and abundant food within the refuse rooms. This study establishes the successful acceptance of a bait by wild rats. Further investigation is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this product for the management of urban Norway rat populations.

Tracking Terror Underground

At a secret operations center in lower Manhattan recently, investigators from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) suddenly began punching numbers on cell phones and speaking over the crackle of walkie-talkies, trying to track down a “black box” apparatus that had mysteriously gone missing. The box was designed to sample a tracer gas as it moved through the New York City subway system. It was a tense moment of drama on the last of three test days this summer for the Subway-Surface Air Flow Exchange Study—also known as S-Safe—the largest urban airflow study ever conducted, according to BNL researchers. With the help of the police and some 100 local undergraduate science students, BNL researchers released inert perfluorocarbon (PFC) tracer gases in and near the New York City subway to trace the subway system’s airflow dynamics. Understanding how air—and any chemical, ...

Counterterrorism, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

Counterterrorism, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

Whippersnappers in the Nursing Home

Dr. Jeff responds: Nursing homes have always served a wide variety of residents whose functional deficits require institutional care. Some exist only to care for children who are too medically complex to be at home. Although most states have home care programs and group homes to support developmentally disabled adults in the community, the aging of family caregivers of those individuals may lead to early nursing home placement. In the 1980s and 1990s, some nursing units and even entire facilities were created to serve a growing HIV-disabled population, which was generally quite young. Fortunately, as antiretroviral drug regimens have transformed the natural history of HIV/AIDS, the number of such patients requiring long-term care has declined. Nevertheless, most nursing homes maintain their self-image as geriatric care centers. With the aging of the population and the expansion of community-based programs to maintain higher-functioning patients at home, this demographic profile might have been expected to compound itself. It hasn’t. One reason for this has been the rapid expansion of subacute programs in nursing homes. Driven by the reality that reimbursement rates for subacute care are dramatically higher than for maintenance long-term care while dramatically lower than hospital care, many younger patients who would never have been considered candidates for nursing homes are coming (often very much against their will) to renamed “nursing and rehabilitation centers.” Many of these patients would previously have received care in the hospital, hospital-based acute rehabilitation units, or specialized rehabilitation hospitals. Some, particularly patients requiring ventilators, might otherwise have been referred to long-term acute care facilities. Others are chronic mental hospital patients or developmentally disabled individuals whose medical complications justify transfer into the federally reimbursable skilled nursing system (despite preadmission screening and resident-review regulations). The known risks of diabetes mellitus and cardiac complications in patients treated with antipsychotic medications may be accelerating this process. Others are dying patients whose insurance provides limited terminal care benefits. Many elective or semi-elective surgical procedures, such as the rapidly increasing number of joint replacements, include planned, prebooked stays in a nursing home afterward. It should be emphasized that all these admissions are driven by financial considerations, not by any evidence that skilled nursing facilities provide superior care or better outcomes than other care sites. Admissions to skilled nursing facilities are a consequence of our national “whack-a-mole” approach to health care cost reduction and the lack of any comprehensive health care planning.

Diurnal pattern of transit ridership: a case study of the New York City subway system

We study the diurnal pattern of subway ridership in New York City. Our study complements the existing line of research that looks at the dynamics of a place by studying the socio-demographics of its visitor population. It also points out an important omission in ridership research on the time of day dimension. The study results identify five main classes of the diurnal patterns and demonstrate that station ridership’s diurnal pattern is closely related to the local built environment.

Rational Buildings Designed To `Calm the Disorderly Mind'

Rational Buildings Designed To `Calm the Disorderly Mind'