I'm not even sure that matters. This sub loves to point out the Japan trains, but in this case I think it's worth pointing out Japan's trains have so many jobs that are strictly unnecessary, are also for-profit companies and they do fine as far as keeping costs reasonable.

Lmao dude the conductor opens and closes the doors and makes all announcements, you know what else is the conductors job, keeping his head out the window approaching and leaving a station to keep an extra watch. The conductor also has his own emergency stop as well as the train operator so now that's 2 people that can watch for an emergency. Also trains have doors on both sides as any NYCer knows, I wonder how often the wrong side would be opened while people lean on the doors because they instead try to task the driver of the train with driving....making announcements, opening and closing the doors and whatever else. Also conductors are used in something called RTO (rapid transit operations) flagging in which they are used to flag train traffic for crews and contractors doing large jobs under live train traffic. Stop regurgitating garbage without actually knowing anything. If you think MTA workers just sit around getting paid free money and not doing anything. People driving trains and buses have to schedule a simple day off months in advance. Have little to no down time and forced overtime constantly. One or 2 little issues along their run, which happens constantly and whatever small amount of time they had for a meal or bathroom break is gone. People in other departments are working under dangerous ass conditions under live traffic and on the track with no hazard pay, breathing in horrible air very often and only make decent money when they live at work with their overtime. The largest majority of workers...those within the 5 boroughs, tend to more miles of track, move more passengers, with more trains then their metro north and LIR counterparts and are paid less money for the same job and don't receive railroad retirement benefits because the MTA regards it as a "transit" system instead of a railroad in order to save money. If you think the MTA is wasting all its money on overtime you should do some more research. Contractors are constantly paid double or close to it an hour to do the same jobs that MTA employees do, the MTA wastes spends money on "advisors" than they do on men doing the actual work. The MTA makes horrible decisions and prioritizes the wrong projects. All MTA workers would love to be paid a fair normal wage and have less or even no overtime. The MTA cries broke every time it's time for contract negotiations....like it will be this may....but they just received billions during covid, hochul is working on plans now to secure them more billions, they will soon receive more billions in the form of the congestion tolling which has been approved just not finalized on pricing yet. Yet they raise bridge tolls, tunnel tolls and fare tolls constantly. You are calling the workers grifters and redundant, get mad at the right people, the horrible beurocracy that is the MTA. Fire all the chairpersons and high management of the MTA and run it correctly.

I don’t know if MTA can especially with that stations that are curved, it’s get hard for the driver to see when they closed the doors.

ROI is not a good way to look at government spending

Insane take. The city would be nothing without the subway