The Transport Politic

I agree that it's a balancing act, but what are we balancing? What are we maximizing for? It's critical we ask the right questions.

For example, why has bike commuting declined recently in the United States? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/02/bike-work-fewer-americans-new-trails-share-programs/2319972002/ It's not like cities like San Francisco and Seattle became bike hostile (if they have, I haven't heard it).

Bike commuting is only used by 1 percent of people in large metro areas in the United States. https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/travel-mode-shares-in-the-u-s/

Public transportation use is also falling in the United States. https://www.govtech.com/fs/transportation/2018-Was-the-Year-of-the-Car-and-Transit-Ridership-Felt-It.html

I love bike commuting. My life is better when I ride my bike to work, but I can't always do it. It's critical that as we think about the future we think about how to improve personal mobility. That's the key.

I'm skeptical that the future is automobiles with single occupants or bikes or scooters. People will gravitate toward toward personalized transportation that gets to where they want to be comfortably, quickly, and within their budgets.

Why do cities need federal aid to pay for purely local services like schools, subways, buses, water/sewer, etc? Maybe you can blame republicans for the lack of high speed rail between New York and DC, but how do you blame them for the terrible schools in those cities, the awful experience of dealing with government agencies, etc?

Also, it’s not clear to me that transit projects in other countries receive dramatically more national funding. The French National government is paying for only 20% of Paris’s new regional transit extension: https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2011/05/27/paris-region-moves-ahead-with-125-miles-of-new-metro-lines. That’s consistent with what similar projects in the US receive. (For example, the next phase of the Second Avenue subway is eligible for up to $2 billion from federal sources of a $6 billion total cost. And the federal government is paying $900 million of the $6 billion purple line in Maryland.) More important, it’s a small enough percentage of the overall budget that federal republicans withholding federal support shouldn’t make or break projects.

The biggest problem is indeed cost. Installing platform doors on the platforms throughout the system has been estimated in the past at US$1 million per station (US$400–500 million) in 2012 [1] and US$1 billion in 2013 [2]. But those estimates seem incredibly low now given more recent per-station costs elsewhere (CA$10 million, €2.6 million) [3], and the fact that NYC subway construction is higher than most other major cities [4]. As for depth, most NYC subway stations are directly below the street.

I’d be surprised if NYC builds platform doors before Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC).

[1] https://www.wnyc.org/story/283792-nyc-mta-tepidly-explores-platform-barriers-after-subway-track-deaths-again/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/nyregion/mta-says-subway-platform-gates-could-cost-1-billion.html

[3] https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2017/09/26/the-case-of-the-missing-platform-doors/

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html

NYC's transit mode share for commute trips is above 50% [1]. Of the additional 1.2 million people, this means that this population growth probably produced at least 1.2 million additional daily rides, since 50% of the 1.2 million rides the subway twice a day, to and from work.

1.2 million additional daily riders is about double the entire Washington Metro daily ridership and triple that of BART's daily ridership! Indeed, 1.2 million daily riders is about equal to ridership on the Lex! So I disagree with your conclusion that "Population increase can't account for the difference". This sort of ridership growth would have destroyed any other comparable system in the US. If anything, it's amazing that the NYC subway hasn't fallen apart more than it already has.

[1] https://www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/travel-mode-shares-in-the-u-s/

Most of the outer boroughs, especially Brooklyn and the Bronx, were developed in the pre-automobile era around subways. And many of the suburbs beyond were developed around railroad lines. Moses did indeed emphasize highways at the expense of transit for a generation— but the outer-borough subways nearly all still work as originally planned, and the rail lines to suburbs beyond would be far more effective if modernized to 'regional rail' rather than being operated as 'commuter rail' operated to haul suburbanites from park-and-ride lots to Midtown around a 9-5 schedule. e.g.: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2009/07/17/regional-rail-for-new-york-city-part-ii/