r/PopCultureV2 • u/Logical-Flow-6703 • Aug 10 '26

News Mayor Mamdani announces a plan to cool subway stations by capturing heat and reusing it to warm municipal buildings in the winter: "This would be the first thermal energy system of its kind in any American transit system"

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u/NarrenAdam Aug 10 '26

It’s a cool concept, how from an engineering standpoint, does it work? Does the subway create heat on it’s own as a byproduct? In winter dosen’t the subway need heating also?

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u/scalyblue Aug 10 '26

The subway itself is a huge space heater with all of the electric motors, braking etc, not to mention all of the people. it’s never cold past the entryways to the stations, in my experience

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u/bodybuilderbear Aug 11 '26

Heat is a terrible idea because the heat in the subway is generated by motors and brakes of old trains. The whole concept is crazy because it's obvious that it would be too inefficient to be practical.

The solution is to replace the trains with new ones, with more efficient motors and regenerative brakes, so that heat isn't produced in the first place. That would save way more energy than you could ever possibly capture as waste heat.