From NY1 ("NYC Transit President: Faster, Longer Trains May Help Ease Overcrowding," May 25, 2007):
Subway cars generally run somewhere between 30 and 40 miles an hour, topping out at no more than 55. But what if you could find a way to run trains faster? It's just one of the issues on the mind of Howard Roberts, the new president of New York City Transit.The first piece of bad news: new lines seem to be ruled out.
"Is it possible to look at, you know, the possibility of running instead of at 50 miles an hour or 80 miles an hour," says Roberts.
Increasing the frequency of trains on existing lines is his top long-term goal, Roberts told NY1 in his first sit-down interview with us this week. Another possibility to alleviate overcrowding and meet growing ridership, he says, is longer trains, which would of course require extending platforms. They may be pie in the sky ideas, but still probably cheaper than drilling new tunnels, which can cost $2 billion per mile.It's nice they want to save money, but a simple look over the map released by the MTA shows that significant portions of the city have no Subway service.
Of course, I find the contention that these are "pie in the sky" ideas a little ridiculous. For the first half of the 20th century, the magnitude of rapid transit construction in New York City was incredible. The system is still the largest in the world by track mileage, and most of that was built before 1950.
As for digging more tunnels, it might not hurt either. Even extending existing lines to further reaches of the city could help enormously, and maybe could drastically boost ridership. The reason is that the distribution model chosen for the Subway is rather outdated. The Subway was designed first and foremost to bring people into and out of Manhattan. In the 21st century, jobs and industry are more spread around the city. The Subway is still great for taking you from Brooklyn to Manhattan, Queens to Manhattan, or The Bronx to Manhattan. It's really less useful for taking you from Queens to Brooklyn, Brooklyn to The Bronx, etc. Manhattan may be the city's behemoth "downtown," but more people live in Brooklyn and Queens alone, and almost as many people live in The Bronx.
However, if you take into account the extent at which people who live in one outer borough have to work in another, you'd probably find a multitude of trips people need to take that aren't even possible by Subway—and if they are possible, a car trip is far more convenient. What the MTA should be doing is looking into the most important and frequent trips taken within the outer boroughs. Extending the 6 and 7 trains to cross the East River north of Queens might be a good start—the two could interline across the river and in presently unreachable parts of the city. The 7 could be further extended as a Bronx crosstown train, while the 6 could be extended as an outer Queens crosstown line.
In light of present attempts to reduce automobile congestion, better ways of utilizing the Subway in the outer boroughs seem sensible. Three articles critical of Michael Bloomberg's congestion charging proposal appeared in The New York Times last week, and virtually no mentions of public transit were made in any of them. Julia Vitullo-Martin of the right-wing Manhattan Institute argued the congestion charging proposal in London didn't work as planned ("A Solution to Crawling City Traffic? Not So Fast," May 20, 2007). Among other things, Gabriel Roth, a former World Bank transportation economist at the World Bank, argued that the congestion charge should be paid for to improve roads, not rapid transit ("The Road Best Not Taken," May 20, 2007). Ellen F. Crain, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, argued that the proposal would be bad public health, at least in areas outside the congestion charging zone, where people might choose to park their cars ("Red Light for Breathing," May 20, 2007).
The other bad news: Mr. Roberts doesn't even ride the Subway, and a fare hike is possible next year (of course, the MTA has been saying that for years).
One of Roberts first initiatives will be a rider report card, asking passengers to grade their experience. He says it should be up to the paying customer, not him, how to prioritize dollars.Can't we find a transit president who at least uses the system, rather than driving around in a limo all day? Even billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg uses the Subway. Of course, he lives in Manhattan, where trips tend to be pretty convenient.
"I'm not somebody who rides the system and pays the fare, and if that individual wants the money put into better air conditioning on the buses, than that's where it ought to go," he says.
Roberts' boss, MTA chief Elliott “Lee” Sander has said a fare hike is possible next year. Roberts has little say over the matter, but suggests New Yorkers would probably rather pay more than let the system deteriorate.
