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By the Numbers

All 468 stations completed!  The details on the timing of our run are as follows:

  • Start:  Thursday, December 28, 2006 at 3:43:06 PM ET

  • Finish:  Friday, December 29 at 4:37:09 PM ET

  • New Record Time:  24 hours, 54 minutes, 3 seconds

  • Old Record:  26 hours, 21 minutes, 8 seconds

  • Shattered Old Record by:  1 hour, 27 minutes, 5 seconds 

IN A TYPICAL HOUR WE...

  • Spent 43 minutes, 46 seconds riding the trains

  • Waited 16 minutes, 14 seconds for trains

  • Stopped at 23 stations with 19 being first time visits

  • Covered 11.7 miles of track

  • Collected 4 witness signatures

RIDING TIME vs. TRANSFER TIME

  • Total travel time was 18 hours, 8 minutes, 17 seconds

  • Total waiting time was 6 hours, 45 minutes, 46 seconds

  • The longest we spent on one train in the same direction was 41 minutes, 59 seconds on the R from 95 St in Brooklyn to 14th St in Manhattan

  • The longest we spent in a single car was 1 hour, 9 minutes, 27 seconds in car 8101 on the L, which includes 17 minutes, 15 seconds waiting for the train to reverse direction at Rockaway Pkwy

  • The shortest time on a train was 1 minute, 30 seconds riding the Shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square

  • The longest transfer was those 17 minutes waiting for the L to turn around at Rockaway Park

  • The shortest transfer was from a uptown 5 to a downtown 4 at Brooklyn Bridge, taking only 47 seconds.

SPEED AND DISTANCE

  • The approximate distance covered during the run was 292.2 miles of track

  • We covered only 44.3% of the 660 miles of passenger track in service

  • Excluding transfer time, our average speed was 16.1 miles per hour

  • Our average speed was 11.7 miles per hour including all transfer time

STATIONS AND TRANSFERS

  • There were 75 transfers made over the course of the run

  • We visited 579 stations, 111 of which were repeats

  • We traveled on all but one of the 26 subway routes, skipping the Z train

  • We arranged our route to ensure we met the requirement of stopping at the Aqueduct Racetrack station in Queens.  This station is only open on racing days (there are about 120 each year), from 11am-7pm on those days.  This means the station is only open 10.8% of the hours each year.

  • There were two stations which we were unable to stop at, but did pass by.  This is allowed by the Guinness rules because they are closed indefinitely for for long-term constructions projects.  Cortlandt Street on the RW line is closed for Fulton St Transit Center construction and Cortlandt Street on the 1 line is closed for WTC redevelopment.

BATHROOMS

Bathroom breaks are a popular topic for questions.  It was never really an issue for us during the ride.  We drank only small amounts of liquids and visited four restrooms in the system at the following locations:

  • Chambers St after getting off the C at 7:13pm

  • 179 St after getting off the F at 12:59am

  • Roosevelt Ave after getting off the V at 7:34am

  • Lexington Ave/60th St after getting off the R at 1:05pm

With good timing of our breaks, the longest we went without one was 6 1/2 hours:

  • 3 hours 30 minutes into ride when the first stop was made

  • 5 hours 30 minutes between first and second stops

  • 6 hours 36 minutes between second and third stops

  • 5 hours 31 minutes between third and fourth stops

  • 3 hours 32 minutes from our final stop until we reached the finish

We planned on using the restrooms at Times Square near the end of our ride, but when we arrived there, at 12:56pm there were significant lines for the three individual bathrooms.  We decided not to wait and boarded an R train only 2 minutes 42 seconds after arriving.  This easily saved us 15 minutes, and our gamble paid off as there was a multi-person bathroom open at our next transfer at Lexington Ave / 60th Street, which was just 6 minutes 44 seconds away.

 

US AGAINST OUR MODEL

  • Our model a forecasted a time of 23 hours, 39 minutes, which we fell short of by 74 minutes, but we still broke the existing record by 87 minutes.

  • The total forecasted wait time was 6 hours, 44 minutes and the actual was only 2 minutes longer meaning the train frequency was as we expected.

  • There were 36 transfers which took longer than expected (by 1 hour, 44 minutes), but there were off-set by 39 transfer which took less time than expected (by 1 hour, 42 minutes).

  • The total forecasted travel time was 1 hour, 12 minutes longer than forecasted.  With transfers and waiting time, there is the benefit of good breaks making up for bad breaks, however with travel time, there is minimal good fortune to offset trains running slowly.

  • There were 52 train segments which took longer than expected (by 1 hour, 28 minutes), compared to only 24 segments which took less time than expected (by 16 minutes).

  • In retrospect, we wouldn't make significant changes to our route, but would allow some more time for delays which added 1 hour, 28 minutes to the ride.  Here is our unofficial breakdown of the root causes of the delays:

    • 39 minutes - running time

    • 25 minutes - in route delay

    • 14 minutes - terminal holdout

    • 6 minutes - general order

    • 4 minutes - late departure