Why the Pointless NYC Subway Shutdown Was Worse Than You Realize

Fearing a major snowstorm, New York officials shut down the subway, a major inconvenience that could have longterm consequences.Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of the New York/Flickr

Meteorology and governing are inexact sciences. You have limited information to work with, tremendous time constraints, and way too many variables. You do the best with what you have and hope you get it right.

“It comes down to the governors and mayors to protect public safety,” says Robert Puentes, Director of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative with the Brookings Institute. “They’re doing the best they can with the information they have. Sometimes the information is wrong and they pay the penalty for that.”

But that doesn’t mean after the fact assessments are invalid, especially when millions of people are affected. And in the case of the decision to shut down New York’s public transportation system in the face of a snowstorm Monday night, it looks like the wrong call was made. More than an inconvenience, that could be a bigger problem than you realize, one that could haunt the area years down the road.

With meteorologists predicting blizzard conditions and perhaps as much as 18 inches of snow for New York City, city and state officials moved quickly to shut down as much of the transportation system as possible. Highways were closed to all but essential personnel. The Metro-North and Long Island commuter railroads were shut down, and all bus and subway service was suspended at 11 pm Monday night.

Commuter railroads were shut down as well, making for an eerily empty Grand Central Terminal.Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of the New York/Flickr

When Tuesday came, the much-hyped storm was a bust, with New Yorkers standing in less than a foot of snow left wondering why the normally 24-hour subway—even the underground lines—had been shut down. Effectively forcing millions of people to stay at home has obvious consequences: Shops and restaurants don’t get business, public transit and taxis lose out on fares. People can’t get to the pharmacy to pick up medicine, check on relatives, or get to the doctor’s office. It’s way harder for essential city employees to get to and from work.

Causing a temporary halt on economic activity is a hedged bet. You accept these downsides rather than risk stranding people and clogging the roads at an especially inopportune time. Memories of Boston in the 1978 blizzard and and Atlanta in an ice storm last year show what can happen if you don’t. New York has its own memories of catastrophic weather, like Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and a 2010 blizzard. Imagine trying to rescue stranded passengers from a stranded elevated train line in a blizzard. Not fun.

But there’s a good chance New York lost more than the stakes it thought it was putting down, and that it has created a longterm problem for itself.

Protecting people is paramount, but “you don’t want to cry wolf,” says Henry Willis, director of the RAND Corporation’s Homeland Security and Defense Center. “Then people won’t listen to you” when you need them to. The next time a big storm hits, New Yorkers might not heed the warnings to stay home. Or, perhaps even worse, government officials could disregard the warnings of meteorologists and decide not to order a shutdown even when one might be warranted, not wanting to get it wrong again.

Officials in the South who have dealt with hurricanes are familiar with this problem. 2005’s Hurricane Katrina is a good example: Mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders were issued, but disregarded by many. “Some people said they didn’t leave because there had been evacuation warnings in the past and the storm never hit New Orleans,” says Willis. The results were disastrous. (This effect goes both ways: When Hurricane Rita hit Texas a month later, according to Willis, “the evacuation order was more effective than it had ever been.”)

Shutting down the subway is a big deal for New Yorkers. It’s a system that, under normal circumstances, runs 24 hours a day, every day. It’s used more by than 5 million people daily. If it’s not running, normal life in the city does not exist. So its closure could have an outsize effect on the citizen’s psyche. The next time a blizzard’s expected, people may say, “Remember that time they closed the subway because they were so afraid? These government types always overreact.”

Which is the last thing you want people thinking when you really need to clear the streets.