Comments on: Sustainable Transportation for NYC: How to Make it Happen http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/02/13/sustainable-transportation-for-nyc-how-to-make-it-happen/ Covering the New York City Streets Renaissance Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:07:22 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 By: crzwdjk http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/02/13/sustainable-transportation-for-nyc-how-to-make-it-happen/comment-page-1/#comment-28915 crzwdjk Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:55:08 +0000 http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/02/13/sustainable-transportation-for-nyc-how-to-make-it-happen/#comment-28915 Oh and by the way, I wouldn't rule out subway expansion entirely. After all, Madrid is opening 30 miles of new subway line every four years, and their costs are well under $100 million per mile, a good order of magnitude cheaper than here. Of course, New York has its own peculiar geology that makes things somewhat difficult, but subway construction need not be as slow and expensive as it is made out to. Heck, look at how fast they re-built the subway tunnel through the WTC. Oh, and the reason the MTA is being so slow in implementing their CBTC system is because the system cannot work in principle, and has not worked anywhere in the world in a subway environment. It is a scam for the enrichment of consultants, and the way forward is to scrap all that, get a proven working system, or just stay with the current automatic train stop system until its capacity of 35 trains per hour is exhausted. Oh and by the way, I wouldn't rule out subway expansion entirely. After all, Madrid is opening 30 miles of new subway line every four years, and their costs are well under $100 million per mile, a good order of magnitude cheaper than here. Of course, New York has its own peculiar geology that makes things somewhat difficult, but subway construction need not be as slow and expensive as it is made out to. Heck, look at how fast they re-built the subway tunnel through the WTC. Oh, and the reason the MTA is being so slow in implementing their CBTC system is because the system cannot work in principle, and has not worked anywhere in the world in a subway environment. It is a scam for the enrichment of consultants, and the way forward is to scrap all that, get a proven working system, or just stay with the current automatic train stop system until its capacity of 35 trains per hour is exhausted.

]]> By: Glenn http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/02/13/sustainable-transportation-for-nyc-how-to-make-it-happen/comment-page-1/#comment-28911 Glenn Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:26:24 +0000 http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/02/13/sustainable-transportation-for-nyc-how-to-make-it-happen/#comment-28911 One of Robert Moses great insights in terms of "getting things done" in NYC is that people respond to examples of positive success. The bankers who underwrote his bonds couldn't believe that people would pay extra for a toll bridge that operated next to a free bridge just because it would save them some time. So Moses built one (the Henry Hudson I think) and the revenues exceeded expectations and he was able to build many more based on that success. On a smaller scale we need to think about how we can create more proven successes and show that all the analysis in the world can never replace real world experience. Furthermore, it becomes much harder for naysayers to reject something that has actually worked and build up a user base constituency in real life than for them to reject an analysis full of future projections. One of Robert Moses great insights in terms of "getting things done" in NYC is that people respond to examples of positive success. The bankers who underwrote his bonds couldn't believe that people would pay extra for a toll bridge that operated next to a free bridge just because it would save them some time. So Moses built one (the Henry Hudson I think) and the revenues exceeded expectations and he was able to build many more based on that success.

On a smaller scale we need to think about how we can create more proven successes and show that all the analysis in the world can never replace real world experience. Furthermore, it becomes much harder for naysayers to reject something that has actually worked and build up a user base constituency in real life than for them to reject an analysis full of future projections.

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