Talk:Transportation in New York City

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	Transportation in New York City has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
March 8, 2007 Good article nominee Listed

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/Archive 1

Contents 1 Major Overhaul Feb 2007 2 Good Article Nomination 3 Staten Island Railway 4 Overhaul July 11

[edit] Major Overhaul Feb 2007

This article has undergone extensive changes in the last two weeks. Although the article was previously rated (with a "B" grade) by WikiProject New York City, I've removed the rating pending a new one because of the major additions and edits to the article since that rating.Momos 22:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article Nomination Good morning (GMT time); I have reviewed this article on 01:06, Sunday 11 March 2007 (UTC) in accordance with the Good Article (GA) criteria. There are seven main criteria that the article must comply with to pass: Well-written: Pass Factually accurate: Pass Broad: Pass Neutrally written: Pass Stable: Pass Well-referenced: Pass Images: Excellent I have concluded that, in my opinion, the article has passed all categories and I therefore award it GA status. My one recommendation for improvment is to remove/shorten-width-of the table at the start of the article - it aligns to far to the left, and harms the appearance of the article by compressing the parallel text. Otherwise, Congratulations to the lead editors, and keep up the excellent work! Kindest regards, anthonycfc [talk] 01:06, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Staten Island Railway

Shouldn't there be a section on the Staten Island railway? There's only a one-line mention of it in the article. Or is SI not official part of New York City? JRG 10:06, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the oft-forgotten one. The SIR is like a de facto extension of the New York City Subway. If you have one or two sentences in mind, we could see how they fly. Tinlinkin 10:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Section? I figure the current mention and link are enough: "The city's 26 subway lines run through all boroughs except Staten Island, which is served by the Staten Island Railway." This Transport article is already very big, and the various railroad lines are well covered in their own articles. Lines with similar traffic levels should only get their own sections if they have no article of their own, and if there isn't enough information then the place to add things is in the linked SIR article. Jim.henderson 15:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Overhaul July 11

Goodness, that was quite a change, early this morning. On the whole I approve of the deletions of matters covered elsewhere, except that links or "main article" flags should have replaced the deleted texts. On the whole I disapprove of the additions. The history section, for example, belongs in another article or at least not at the top of this one. Anyway on the whole it's an improvement which, as always, still needs some tweaks.

Oh, small point. As I understand it, only two or three million people work in Manhattan, and jobs in outer boros are not ten or even five times more numerous, so "tens of millions" of commuters seem unlikely. Jim.henderson 17:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, quite a change. My thoughts on the change: (perhaps biased because I was the author of these changes) there was too much technical and un-informative info in the article in general. the layout, prior to revisions, simply was a list that named one item of transportation after another. Kepping in mind the notions of an encyclopedia format, I thought it would be wisest if there would be a section devoted to the background of the topic of transportation, which, considering the amount of background information that was prevoiously written in each section (like the tunnels/roads in the 'roads' section before edits described the opening of each tunnels, and even described Roosevelt driving through the Queens-Midtown tunnel upon completion in 1950), it made sense to consolidate this information into one section, so that way the actual descriptions of the modes of transport would be to-the-point, concise, and without diversions. Speaking of diversions, it was necessary to remove the 'other infrastructure' sec., becuase, water tunnels have little to do with the methods people use to get to their jobs in Manhattan.

I guess It would make sense to leave or add more 'main article flags' where needed, as some might expect the text to still be there for some reason.

And, i believe that what I have added over the past few days is not a final draft, let alone featured-content worthy; i do expect "some tweaks" to occur in the future. It is important to note, however, that the 'history' section in general is incomplete, however, it discusses content from 1500-1750, cited from actual research I have done in books (see References). Other parts are simply cut and pasted form other sections where it was needed or was a diversion.

sure, 'tens' of millions, perhaps, is inacurate. 'millions' ?

P.S. Should User:Momos help us here? He was responsible for the earlier draft, which, by the way, had a "good article" status. I would not want to remove that label with my edits!

Peter 21:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I've admired his work elsewhere but his contribs page says he's been inactive for weeks. Yes, consolidating the history bits was definitely the way to go. It's just that they went to the wrong place: the head of the article. So far as I see, the article for an extant thing like Grand Army Plaza or railroad should say first what it is, then what it does (well, often that's the same thing), and only after those jobs have been done in considerable detail, should the article get into how it started and how it became what it is today. So, in this case the whole well crafted history subsection with Stuyvesant and Roebling and those guys belongs at the back rather than near the front. The rest of the "background" section is in its proper place, since it's about what the thing does. And Governor Roosevelt (either of them) shouldn't have been in this article in the first place, but in some of the linked ones.

A less important point, hardly any articles actually need four levels of subsections. There's probably a reasonable way to flatten out one level of the heirarchy. Alas, when I see good work it intimidates me. Mustn't get caught giving grammar advice to Shakespeare; y'know. Seeing "plaes" in the bridge and tunnel section emboldened me, however, to redo that section a fair amount, with a slight upset of the text vs picture layout as the only obvious adverse result. Oh, and it didn't take three centuries for New York shipping to become world-class. Only two. Picky, picky.

As for the water tunnels, they transport the majority of freight into the city but, ah, that's an awfully picky way of looking at it. Anyway I'll make no further changes today or tomorrow except if someone messes it up, but maybe pick something to improve on the weekend. Jim.henderson 01:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this new version might need some pretty serious editing for grammar and readability. A lot of the new information is interesting and relevant, but the form it's in now is a bit less than ideal. As to the commuters/day, isn't it explicitly stated in the article that it's 7.61 million riders of bus and subway per weekday? The bus and subway would seem to account for the vast majority of commuters, so would 'approximately 8 million' be good to replace 'tens of millions'? Aesshen 16:52, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it is hard to describe both geography and engineering in one comprehensible sentence, so thanks for clearing that part up in the 'tunnels' section, Jim. I dont know what i was thinking, but when "curvature of the earth" popped into my head, i lost it.

There is a first time for everything, therefore, in this instance, i believe it would be the most sensible if the history section were to remain in the front of the article, becuase, just as transportation was important for ny's devopment, so is the information about how this occured in the first place, as is needed in an encyclopedia. However, i would agree that the entirety of the background section, not excluding the 'history' section, schould be reduced in size.

by the way, when i said that i deleted the 'other infrastructure' section, it was because it discussed water tunnels, as in the pipes that link 13 resivoirs to 9 milion sinks in the city, and not the vehicular road tunnels that link 9 milllion houses to 13 million office buildings in midtown. look at the history of the article if confusion remains, please.

Indeed, the entire article needs a great deal of looking over. I am not done working on the 'backround' section, and I will return to working on the 'history' section, so it is both shorter, more readable, and more sensible. And i will try to avoid writing 'plaes'.

Indeed, also, the commuters number of 8 million seems fairer than 'tens of millions', however, i do know that there are at least 17.3 million people just in the metropolitan area alone - a number that could greatly increase the number of commuters.

Peter 03:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, by all means let's have a nice big history of NY transport covering three centuries or more. There's no mention yet of the car floats, for instance or lighterage or Ben Franklin's Post Roads or the Tenth Avenue Cowboys. However, there is a time and place for everything, and the present article is not the place for a history to be either big or prominent. The current "background" subsections are about size and shape, and that's what the first section should be called or something synonymous like "Scope and Balance". If it includes a paragraph of matters more than a quarter century old, that's a lot for an intro. Move the history section to near the end of the article, and build it up there. Probably in a few weeks it will be tens of Kilobytes by itself and belong in its own article. Oh, and fresh water arriving in pipes from the Catskills is freight. A tonnage of freight that outweighs everything that comes by truck. But, it's got its own article and doesn't need length here. Jim.henderson 03:57, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Problem solved. Please see History of the New York City Transportation System, the new article which is essentailly cut and pasted all extra information form the former 'history' section. The present 'history' section, however, remains a complete, albeit heavily condensed, version of a history of events for the transportation system. I now agree that making the new article was the logical move- it allows further refining and editing of the editing section, a section i see as critical to the overall artie concerning the citys' infrastructure.

Peter 17:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)