New York is one of the largest cities in the world, the financial, commercial, and transportation capital of the United States. The city is home to a large concentration of manufacturing, engineering, and electrical companies.
Founded in the early 17th century by Dutch settlers, by the end of the 18th century, New York City became the largest city in North America.
The city’s population exceeds 8 million within its municipal boundaries, and if you add the virtually merged New Jersey and Southwestern Connecticut areas, the population of Greater New York City exceeds 18 million.
The subway system plays a significant role in solving inner-city transportation problems. The city has five distinct boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond and the Bronx. The center is on Manhattan Island, where offices, banks, stock exchanges, trusts, boards of many companies are concentrated and where most passenger traffic goes.
In terms of length and number of stations, the New York subway is the world’s largest. It has 27 lines of 369.8 km and 461 stations owned by NICTA. A significant volume of traffic is carried on the company’s 22.4 km PATH sections with thirteen stations, which were built at a later date.
Construction of the New York subway began in 1868. Today it is the third largest subway in the world by the volume of traffic in the capitalist countries with high enough, up to 40 pairs of trains per hour, carrying capacity. It operates 24 hours a day and accounts for about 3/4 of the passengers carried by all U.S. subways.
However, despite the significant volume of traffic, little money was allocated for maintenance and reconstruction of the lines, and as a result the New York subway was in a state of disrepair. Trains schedules are not kept, the condition of stations and cars is unsatisfactory, lighting is dim, and stations and runs are littered. In addition, using the subway, especially at night, is not safe. It is estimated that for this reason alone, traffic has been reduced by 20% in recent years. The car fleet has about 30 different types of rolling stock. This is due to the fact that previously the subway was operated by a large number of companies, not related to each other, and each company sought to produce or order their own cars. There are now over 6200 cars in total, of which only about 1,400 cars have enhanced comfort, air conditioning, forced ventilation, etc. Considerable part of cars is idle because of unsuitability for operation: there is no lighting, walls are pasted with advertising leaflets and painted, doors are broken, windows are broken. Such condition of cars is first of all a result of vandalism, which became the scourge of many subways in the world. In New York City, even guard dogs are used to protect cars, but this does not always help.
In recent years, the condition of the track has deteriorated noticeably, and the number of accidents and stoppages due to track malfunctions has increased. Schedule violations have become systematic. For example, in July 1984 more than 35% of trains arrived at terminal stations more than 4 minutes late. Traffic interruptions increased to 20-30 minutes, and the number of derailed trains increased, causing longer interruptions. There have been recorded derailments of rolling stock due to falling parts of cars on the track. The main reason for the unsatisfactory condition of the track is the lag in the timing of scheduled preventive maintenance from the established standards. Only 60% of the track requiring repair is repaired annually. As a result, there are more than 500 permanent speed limit warnings on the lines.