Photo: cunningsue/Flickr

MTA chief Jay Walder floated the idea of off-peak discounts in an interview in today's New York Times. While Walder didn't offer quantification, the Balanced Transportation Analyzer software model I've developed with Ted Kheel can estimate the effects of time-varied subway fares -- not just how ridership might shift from peak to off-peak periods, but indirect impacts such as the shift of auto trips to transit and the resulting changes to car travel speeds.

The results look promising for this prototype fare structure that I tested with the BTA:

• 1/3-off subway fare from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.
• 1/6-off subway fare from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.
• 15 percent higher subway fare from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Although Walder referred only to off-peak discounts, the model suggests that forestalling an increase in ridership during the two peak hours, when the system is strained beyond capacity, could require raising fares at those times.)
• No fare change during the "shoulder" hours of 7:00 to 8:00 a.m., 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., and 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
• 1/4-off subway fare at all hours on weekends and holidays.
• 1/4-off bus fare at all times (not mentioned by Walder but assumed here to preserve overall fare parity).

Here are the results:

• The average price of a subway ride drops by 23 percent, equivalent to a $210 annual savings for a typical straphanger who takes 12 trains a week.
  
• Notwithstanding the overall discount, however, peak-hour subway users who could not change their commute times would pay $100 a year more in fares.
  
• Annual savings of $230 for bus riders, due to the assumed 25 percent drop in bus fares.
• Subway usage increases 3 percent, even as morning and evening peak hour ridership drops by 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively, slightly easing crowding during those critical times.
  
• Bus usage increases 5 percent.
• 15,000 fewer cars enter the Manhattan CBD on weekdays, raising average speeds there by 2 percent.
• Car and truck drivers save six million hours of travel time worth an estimated $230 million that they now lose to gridlock each year -- with a majority of the savings occurring outside the CBD.
• A rise in cycle and pedestrian commuting due to lower traffic, with the resulting increase in physical activity translating into health and longevity benefits worth an additional $116 million a year.
• Fewer crashes and less pollution, with health and related benefits close to $100 million a year.
  

The downside of this program is an estimated $300 million drop in farebox revenues: $134 million on the subways, $162 million on buses.

The logical place to make up the shortfall, congestion pricing, is a subject Walder will obviously want to avoid until he is on even firmer political footing. The synergies are strong from a technical standpoint, since differential subway pricing would help the subways absorb car drivers whom a cordon toll would induce to switch to transit. The political synergies could be strong as well if differential fares help expand the constituency for congestion pricing.

Amount of space that would be needed for cars if subway-riding New Yorkers thought like, say, a certain assemblyman from Westchester.

Parsing data derived from 2008 subway passenger counts and the NYMTC 2007 Hub Bound Report [PDF], Frumin writes:

Just to get warmed up, chew on this -- from 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds. Breathtaking if you ask me.

Over this same period, the average number of passengers in a vehicle crossing any of the East River crossings was 1.20. This means that, lacking the subway, we would need to move 324,000 additional vehicles into the CBD (never mind where they would all park).

At best, it would take 167 inbound lanes, or 84 copies of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, to carry what the NYC Subway carries over 22 inbound tracks through 12 tunnels and 2 (partial) bridges. At worst, 200 new copies of 5th Avenue. Somewhere in the middle would be 67 West Side Highways or 76 Brooklyn Bridges. And this neglects the Long Island Railroad, Metro North, NJ Transit, and PATH systems entirely.

Take a gander at the map above to get an idea of the real estate that would be taken up by all those cars. Think such a proposition would lead John Liu to base his stances on congestion pricing and bridge tolls on principle, rather than wind direction? Could Deborah Glick overlook her personal hatred for the billionaire mayor long enough to save her constituents from carmaggedon? Would the prospect of seeing his district literally transformed into a parking lot prompt Sheldon Silver to finally take an unequivocal stand favoring transit over car commuting?

Right. Probably not.

Following another revision to the Second Avenue Subway construction timetable, the first phase of the mega-project remains, as ever, about seven or eight years away from completion. Pete Donohue reports in the Daily News:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has finished an in-depth analysis of the work schedule, budget and potential hurdles for the long-awaited addition to the system, sources told the News.

The conclusion: the official completion date for phase one of the project should be pushed from June 2015 to December 2016, with possible future delays placing the opening in the summer of 2017, the sources said...

The original schedule for the first phase projected a 2012 completion date but MTA officials have pushed the date back several times over the years -- most recently in March 2008.

I'm lucky. I don't have to put up with sardine-style rush-hour commuting on the Lexington Avenue line. But if I did, I'd want relief as soon as possible. Eight years is a long time to ask people to wait, especially when a viable alternative like physically separated Bus Rapid Transit can be provided much sooner, at much less expense. And if experience is any guide, this won't be the last time the Second Avenue Subway gets pushed back, either.

ITDP director Walter Hook said it well in an interview with Streetsblog this February:

I don't know why Japanese and Chinese cities can roll out 10 miles of new subway line a year, and the richest city in the world has been trying and failing to build the Second Avenue Subway since the 1960s. But I've lived in this town a long time, and I am skeptical. The optimists are telling us that we will have a Second Avenue Subway between 125th Street and 63rd Street by 2015 and only after we spend $4 to $5 billion. So this means we are probably talking about 2018 or 2020, and $10 billion. The Second Avenue Subway would be great, it’s needed, it would have higher demand than almost any other metro line in the country. At those volumes, metros are often a good investment. But will it happen?

The MTA has a huge hole in its next capital program, with billions in funding for core maintenance still unaccounted for. That comes first, no matter what. If our legislative goons in Albany can't muster the will to fund mega-projects, too, we can still expand the system: On the east side of Manhattan, the right BRT configuration would carry almost as many commuters as the Second Avenue Subway, for a fraction of the cost.

There are messengers who do it. Some of them take their bikes, which drives me crazy, cause I’ve just never agreed with the M.T.A. I know bicyclists will now ring the phones off the hook, but they are just too big, particularly at rush hours -- I just don’t think they should allow it. But I’m not running the M.T.A. …

While the mayor, who rides the 4/5/6 line to work, is not in charge of the MTA, he does control the city's streets. Could it be that many East Side cyclists are driven underground by a lack of adequate biking facilities?

It's disappointing that Bloomberg, who seems to understand the value in providing dedicated spaces to ride, doesn't see a connection here. If he wants fewer cyclists on his train, protected bike lanes for the East Side would be a good place to start.

Whatever your stance on the Ravitch Commission's MTA rescue plan, the broad inequities of allowing New York transit service to deteriorate while fares rise 23 percent are stunning. The doomsday budget passed earlier this week would affect vastly more New Yorkers than bridge tolls or congestion pricing, burdening those who can least afford the added delay and expense.

The Regional Plan Association and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign came out with a strong one-two punch yesterday that frames this disparity in no uncertain terms, countering the shopworn drivel we've been hearing in defense of the "driving public."

These fact sheets from the RPA chart the doomsday service cuts by borough. The maps are helpful and alarming -- visual confirmation that pretty much everyone who rides the train can expect longer waits and more crowded conditions. Bus riders from eastern Queens to lower Manhattan will see routes eliminated and less frequent service. I see that in my neighborhood, Windsor Terrace, the B75 is slated for extinction, shunting more riders onto the F train.

New Yorkers who would bear the brunt of these cuts, of course, outnumber those who would be asked to pay bridge tolls under the Ravitch plan. The gap is cavernous, as Tri-State shows in these fact sheets, updating its earlier analysis of congestion pricing impacts. In the Bronx, where pols balked at the Ravitch plan's modest Harlem River bridge tolls, car-free households outnumber car owners by greater than 3 to 2. The margin is much larger when straphanging commuters are compared to solo drivers -- 5 to 1. Even in Westchester, three times as many people commute to Manhattan by transit as by driving alone.

As ever, the populist "defense" of the driving public is a bunch of hokum that no reporter should let go unchallenged. Households without a car earn, on average, less than half what their car-owning counterparts make. Streetsbloggers know this already. What about everyone who gets their transportation news from the morning paper and the local network desk anchors?

NYC subway weekday on-time performance, measured as the "percentage of trains that arrive at the terminal within 5 minutes of the scheduled arrival time." Source: mta.info.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) today launched an email and text messaging system that will notify registered customers of planned and unplanned service changes at any of the MTA's family of transportation agencies... The system will be fully operational tomorrow morning.

Using the MTA's website at www.mta.info, customers can register to receive alerts about any combination of subway lines, bus routes, rail lines, bridges or tunnels. They can choose to receive them 24/7, or only during a particular time of day or week.

Eat your heart out, Twitter.

Via Transport Politic, some encouraging transit news from Iraq, where the mayor of Baghdad recently announced plans to move ahead with the city's first subway lines. The Guardian reports:

One of the new proposed subway lines would run 11 miles from Shia-dominated Sadr City in the east to Adhamiya in north Baghdad. The other would traverse 13 miles and link mixed central Baghdad to the primarily Sunni western suburbs.

Both lines would have 20 stations each and run through a patchwork quilt of sectarian neighbourhoods, which largely remain divided, despite the security improvements. Bombs still rattle Baghdad daily, but on a much smaller scale than the violence that ravaged the capital throughout 2006-07.

Naturally, huge question marks remain about a project that's been tabled repeatedly over the years due to disruptive violence. But is there a better metaphor for a unified Baghdad?

"If anyone suggested a train back then, they would have been sent to one of Saddam's old mental homes and never heard from again," said an incredulous Umm Fatimah, 41, from the suburb of Karada. "Even now it does seem a bit crazy, but not as crazy as then."

Another Karada resident, Nazem al-Qasemi, said something had to be done to sort out Baghdad's chronically clogged arterial roads. "Look at it," he said, waving a hand at a gridlocked roundabout. "Even if this is just talking, at least it's giving us hope."

Graphic: Osamu Abe via Transport Politic

In today's Times, Richard Brodsky weighs in on the pitfalls of shortchanging capital needs in the face of the immediate MTA budget crisis.

"The need for investment in the system is gargantuan," said Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester County who is chairman of a committee that oversees the authority. "Twenty-five years from now what we do on the capital plan will resonate much more loudly than what the debate is going to be about fare increases."

"It would be a terrible mistake to take whatever resources may be available and use them all on the operating side," Mr. Brodsky said.

The key words here: "whatever resources may be available." As the MTA contemplates eliminating bus routes and subway lines in addition to raising fares, we have not yet heard a proposed solution from Brodsky, who promised Streetsblog in April that he and his colleagues, having killed congestion pricing, would "continue ... good faith efforts to deal with the real problems of congestion and mass transit funding."

We have a message in with Brodsky's office in hopes of getting his views on potential service cuts, fare hikes, and the possibility that the Ravitch Commission will recommend measures that he has opposed in the past, including congestion pricing.

This cartoon, by Tom Toles of the Washington Post via Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, refers to DC subway funding, now under attack from conservative "think tanks." But it could just as easily apply to transportation and public works projects across the country, which continue to be largely overlooked despite their prior role as job generators in otherwise hard times.

Given the logistical difficulties and escalated costs of boring underground, Dwyer points to an alternative (link added).

Only now are city and authority officials beginning serious exploration of using the surface of the city, rather than its underside, for mass transit.

One idea is to dedicate portions of big streets and avenues to protected bus lanes, physically separated from other traffic. Riders would pay their fares before they boarded. An experiment to do that in the Bronx has made a big cut in travel time, said Joan Byron, director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center for Community Development.

Such systems are called bus rapid transit, and the cost to build them is $1 million to $2 million per mile, Ms. Byron says, compared with $1 billion per mile for the Second Avenue subway.

“If you just took the cost overruns for one year on any of the megarail projects, that would pay for a handsome bus rapid transit network,” she said.

As Streetsblog readers know, the Pratt Center, headed by current Brooklyn City Council candidate Brad Lander, has advocated a BRT build-out for some time. After the jump, an excerpt from the Center's testimony [PDF] before the Ravitch Commission.

We should consider putting the Second Avenue Subway on hold to implement and evaluate the success of the First/Second Avenue BRT route, which will be running the length of Manhattan by the end of next year, and could be simply connected to a Brooklyn route of the Williamsburg Bridge a year or two later. Let’s make this work -- with a genuinely separated lane, off-board fare payment, bulbs and stations that make for rapid boarding, signal-light timing, and inter-borough connections -- and see how much of the need we can satisfy at a fraction of the cost.

While it is, as the Pratt folks acknowledge, "anathema" to suggest abandoning projects like the Second Avenue subway, from a livable streets perspective a citywide BRT system as they envision it would be a true game-changer. BRT (or light rail for that matter) re-allocates street space away from private motor vehicles in favor of public transit and, with proper design, pedestrians and cyclists. While there's no denying its merits as a people-mover, a Second Avenue subway essentially maintains the street-level status quo, and at a much higher cost.

With the city already on board with Select Bus Service, and with the MTA cutting capital projects, struggling to maintain existing infrastructure, and pondering cuts in service, is it time to consider shifting capital resources toward a true BRT network?

Image: Las Vegas MAX system via Tri-State Transportation Campaign

New York City has long sent the feds billions more in taxes each year than we get back in services. To give you an idea of one place the money goes, here is what the feds gave corn farmers to tend their fields in a two-year period: $36 billion.

Here is what we got to run the subway: 0

The feds have been reasonable when it comes to helping out with big projects like the new subway and train tunnels that never get done. But, we get not a penny toward the day-to-day cost of transporting 4 million straphangers.

I interviewed Larry Hanley a couple of weeks ago. He's the former Staten Island bus driver (famous for getting up in Rudy Giuliani's grill, among other things) who now serves as a Vice President of the Amalgamated Transit Union. Negotiating contracts across the Northeast, Hanley is seeing smaller transit systems in places like Lancaster, PA and Albany, NY struggling with increasing operating costs at a time when they are also experiencing record increases in ridership.

With New Yorkers facing a pair of fare hikes and a deteriorating transit system, Hanley is arguing that federal funding in mass transit is an investment in local economies, green jobs, the environment and national defense. "We've got a Saudi Arabia's worth of energy savings beneath the streets of New York City," Hanley said. "It's called the subway."

Photo: Crowded bus in Champaign-Urbana by Benchilada on Flickr.

Thank you for contacting me in support of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal. As you probably are aware, on March 31, the City Council approved a home rule message authorizing the state to approve Mayor Bloomberg's plan. The vote was 30 members in support and 20 against. I voted in support of the proposal. However, neither the State Assembly nor the State Senate acted in time to move this plan forward.

Anyone who drives in New York understands that congestion is a major problem, particularly in the Central Business District (CBD). Heavy traffic doesn't just anger and inconvenience drivers. It impacts our economy and environment as well. It is estimated that congestion costs the city $11.6 billion worth of lost business revenue, productivity, operating costs, and fuel and vehicle costs. In addition, because of our poor air quality, New York City asthma hospitalization rates are more than twice the national average.

Congestion pricing was one significant way to address these issues. It would have reduced traffic, improved air quality and public health, and provided critically needed funding for mass transit. Currently, our public transportation system is stretched to the limit. Nowhere is this more evident than the East Side. The Lexington Avenue subway line is operating at 110% capacity and, with 65,000 riders daily, the M15 is the most heavily utilized bus line in the Western Hemisphere.

Congestion pricing would have allowed the city to receive a one-time federal grant of $354 million for short-term mass transit improvements and allowed the city to use the congestion pricing fees to bond out an estimated $4.5 billion for major transit projects. These funds would have gone towards critical capital projects like the Second Avenue Subway, Bus Rapid Transit on First and Second Avenues, and East River ferry service. In addition to these large scale projects, if congestion pricing has been implemented, my Council District will have benefitted immediately from these short term transportation improvements:

• 46 new subway cars, primarily for the E & F lines
• 5 additional buses on the M101/M102/M103 lines
• 4 additional buses on the M86 line
• 2 additional buses on M66 line
• 3 additional buses on M31 line
• 6 additional buses on M15 line
• 10 additional buses on X90 line

Unfortunately, we won't be seeing these short term transportation improvements any time soon. However, I remain committed to the long term goal of reducing traffic and improving air quality in our city and will continue to work with our city's elected leadership to advance those goals.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me on this issue. I heavily weighed your views, and those of my other constituents, in formulating my position. As always, please feel free to contact me with any specific questions about this or any other issue facing our city.

Sincerely,
JESSICA LAPPIN
Council Member
5th District - Manhattan

Yesterday we heard that Assembly Member Deborah Glick's office told a constituent the congestion pricing bill could lead to worsening air quality. (Because, you know, building mass transit infrastructure will cancel out all the particulate pollution that pricing will keep out of the air.)

If Glick ends up basing her decision on that tortured logic, here's a look at what she would deny her district [PDF], according to the Campaign for New York's Future:

• 46 new subway cars, primarily for the E and F lines
• 3 additional buses for the M20/M104 Routes
• 5 additional buses for the M101/102/103 Routes
• 6 additional buses for the M15 Route
• 9 additional buses for the M1/M2/M3/M4 Routes

Those are just the short-term enhancements that will be implemented before congestion pricing goes into effect. (And it's worth repeating that the data comes from CFNY's district fact sheets, an excellent tool to help bolster your argument when you call your reps.)

Glick's district, which falls entirely within the congestion zone, also stands to benefit enormously from the most obvious result of congestion pricing: less traffic. Lower Manhattan will see a 33.2 percent reduction in extreme traffic jams and a 6.4 percent reduction in overall traffic, according to DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

And it goes without saying that a very small minority of Glick's constituents would actually pay the fee. Only 3.2 percent drive alone outside the zone as part of their commute, according to 2000 Census data.

Brodskyite populist posturing would seem especially out of place in these parts. Only 22.4 percent of households own a car, a low figure even in New York City, and the average income of those households is more than $180,000.

Take Hakeem Jeffries. The Brooklyn assemblyman reportedly has no position on pricing at the moment, but not so long ago he stood with Richard Brodsky in support of the Westchester pricing foe's $6.50 taxi drop charge "alternative."

In addition to system-wide and Brooklyn-specific improvements, here is just some of what residents of Jeffries' district stand to lose without pricing:

• 33 new buses on the B41 line
• Structural overcoating on the B and Q lines between Prospect Park and Sheepshead Bay
• Upgrade of the PA systems in the Bedford-Nostrand, Classon, Clinton-Washington and Fulton Street stations on the G line
• Flooding improvements for the Crosstown Line
• An 8.1% to 22.1% percent reduction in traffic jams

Check your district fact sheets to see what's on the block in your neighborhood. And if you haven't called your reps already, now is the time to pass this information on.

I just called Deborah Glick's office as an outraged constituent to ask why she was not doing more to support congestion pricing, since she represents a swath of Manhattan on the West Side that would certainly benefit from reduced cars, better mass transit, etc.

I spoke to one of her top aides, Theresa Swidorski, who told me that while Glick "has not taken a position," one of her main concerns is the fact that the Congestion Pricing bill is not currently subject to SEQR--the State Environmental Quality Review Act.  http://www.dos.state.ny.us/lgss/seqr.htm

I asked why this should be of such a concern that Glick would risk shooting down the whole Congestion Pricing bill and federal funding for better mass transit. Swidorski responded that Glick's worried any work to expand the subways could "negatively impact the air."

That's right folks: Glick is worried that expanding the subways might "NEGATIVELY IMPACT THE AIR."

"There will be digging, there will be debris," Swidorski said.

Forgoing SEQR, Swidorski added, would set a terrible precedent for state law.

I'm not one to argue for sidestepping environmental reviews. But it would seem to me that the environmental benefits of reducing traffic congestion and expanding mass transit are really a no brainer here. I'm not sure why we have to waste a lot of time and precious capital to verify what we already know--less cars and more mass transit are good for the environment.

Supporters of the environment and Congestion Pricing should call Glick's office and let her know that.

Here's the digits:

District Office: 212-674-5153
Albany Office: 518-455-4841

glickd@assembly.state.ny.us

• Western Queens will not see a 39% reduction in its most severe traffic jams and a 6.1 percent reduction in total traffic; will not get new bus routes from Middle Village to South Ferry in Lower Manhattan, and from Jackson heights to Penn Station; and will not get improved service on the Q60 bus route or 46 new subway cars that would increase service frequency on the E and F trains
• Western Queens may lose state-of-the-art train control on the 7 line that would allow trains to run faster and closer together for better, more frequent service
  
• North-central Brooklyn will not see a 22.1% reduction in severe traffic jams, 33 more buses on the B41 line, or more capacity on the C line
• North-central Brooklyn may lose BRT on Nostrand Avenue and upgraded PA systems on stations on the G line
• The northeast Bronx won't see an 8.3% reduction in severe traffic jams or three new express bus routes to Lower Manhattan
• The northeast Bronx may lose extension of BRT service to Pelham Parkway and upgraded service on the 5 line

UPDATE. More transit and traffic benefits, including improvements for Staten Island, that will be threatened if congestion pricing fails to pass:

• Staten Island won't see a 12.3% reduction in severe traffic jams or 33 new express buses
• Staten Island may lose BRT along Hylan Boulevard, 64 new cars for the Staten Island Railway, and a new Arthur Kill railway station
• Lower Manhattan will not receive a 32.3% reduction in severe traffic jams and a 6.4% reduction in total traffic, 33 new buses on half a dozen lines, or greater capacity on the E, F and C lines
  

 
With the March 31 deadline to qualify for $354M in federal transit funds approaching, the Campaign for New York's Future and the Empire State Transportation Alliance have rolled out an ad campaign to get the public behind congestion pricing.

The three print ads and one TV spot, sponsored by Environmental Defense, direct their audience to www.BetterTransit.org, where visitors can contact council members and legislators to voice support for the plan, and to the ED web site, which has a page devoted to pricing info. In a stroke of heretofore unknown marketing genius, the print ads will appear on buses, subways and commuter rail trains throughout the region.

 


Congestion pricing has just over 30 days to clear the City Council and state Legislature if New York is to receive hundreds of millions of dollars for upfront transit improvements. Transportation Alternatives recently launched its own pro-pricing PR campaign, with full-page ads in weekly newspapers in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan.

Not to be outdone, pricing opponents will certainly ratchet up the volume -- and the rhetoric -- in the coming weeks. Be sure to enter the Congestion Pricing Populist Soundbite Contest to join in the fun.

Video via pmasoned/YouTube

This almost daily journey of mine up to Columbia, where I've been going a lot lately to research a book, was anecdotal confirmation of what any serious study would probably show you: the city's transit system, while packed at rush hour, has considerable capacity in the off-peak hours.

While I enjoyed my ease in finding a seat, for the city and for its citizens it would be better if the subway lines were more crowded during non-rush hours. The city's transit lines are one of its more expensive and valuable pieces of infrastructure. Having more riders means that the taxpayers, who, lest we forget, ultimately own the subway, are getting more value out of this publicly owned piece of infrastructure.

There's an easy way to do this and that's to substantially lower the cost of an Unlimited Ride MetroCard so that most residents buy them. This is a far more effective way of encouraging off-peak ridership than lower-cost single fares at off-peak hours, which has also been discussed.

Economists talk about the elasticity of purchases, meaning how price sensitive a purchase is. Commuting to work is very inelastic because most people have to get to work and they will pay what they have to to get there. Sure, in the long run they may move to a different neighborhood if commuting costs are too high, but they won't change habits much on a daily basis.

Not so with more optional trips. If you are thinking of stopping for a book on the way home, or trying out a new place for lunch, or even sunbathing in a park, then an extra $2 or even $1 will be a significant deterrent. This is a very elastic commodity. If you have an Unlimited Ride MetroCard, then the cost of an additional trip, once you have committed the "sunk cost," is zero. That's a good thing for citizens' quality of life, and a good thing for the economic health of the city.

In just a few weeks, on March 2, we will all be paying more for those unlimited ride cards. A monthly pass, for example, will rise to $81, up from $76. The law of supply and demand being what it is, this means that fewer people will buy Unlimited Ride MetroCards than otherwise would have, and thus fewer people will use the subways.

This rise in price came out of the push earlier this year by MTA CEO Elliot Sander to raise base fares, and the campaign ended exactly the wrong way. Under pressure from Governor Spitzer, the MTA ended up keeping the base fare the same and raising the price of the unlimited ride cards. For some reason, this is more politically palatable.

I have an alternate policy suggestion for next year: let's drop the price of a monthly Unlimited Ride MetroCard to a breathtakingly low $30. Meanwhile, let's raise the price of an individual fare to $3. This would push most people to buy the unlimited ride cards, leaving the individual tickets for the tourists and out-of-towners, who are less price conscious and whose money we should be seeking to extract anyway.

Someone about now might be asking what all this has to do with street life. A lot, actually. As we walk around our favored part of the city, it's easy to forget that an essential part of being able to sip a coffee at a café or stroll along a shopping strip is the thundering tracks underneath the sidewalk. They enable people to live densely, without cars and their necessary parking spaces, and so create the possibility of having many people per square foot of sidewalk, which is in the final analysis the essential component of a livable street. The transit system lubricates street life.

Some transit expert could determine how lowering the cost of the unlimited pass while raising the single fare would impact MTA finances. Such a move might increase the gap between revenue and expenses, and thus increase the need for public funding. But even if that were the case, the city and state should fill any gap, and the public should demand they do so. We accept higher fares with a grudging stoicism, not fully realizing that this our transit system, publicly owned, built and now operated. (We can leave for another day the common misperception that the transit system was originally private. It wasn't. See my essay here for info on this.)

Higher tax revenues from increased business activity might even make up for any additional necessary funding of the MTA. The main point though, is that this is our transit system. We should start acting like it in our policies.

Photo: petra jane/Flickr

The first such argument is a condensed version of the dramatic, impassioned plea-to-justice that Brodsky delivered at the final Congestion Mitigation Hearing a couple of weeks ago:

"For the first time in American history, someone is seriously proposing to charge the public for access to a public space."

It makes one wonder: When was the last time Brodsky paid a subway fare, bridge toll or train ticket out of his own pocket? Could it be that his windshield perspective on the city is so deeply ingrained that he doesn't realize that of the hundreds of thousands of people walking around Manhattan's traffic-choked public spaces every day -- 85 percent of them -- paid for "access" via mass transit?

Wylde countered:

Well, I said I live in Brooklyn and I have a choice. I can drive my car into Manhattan to work, in which case I pay nothing, or I can take the express bus, in which case I pay $9.00 a day. So right now we don't have a fair system. The people who take the bus are paying more and stuck in traffic. The people who are taking the subways, we don't have the resources we need to improve conditions. This program will raise almost a billion dollars between the federal grant that is promised if we pass this by March 31st and half a--half a billion dollars a year in revenues to support the system.

Ms. WYLDE: Why is every environmental organization in the city and state in favor of this, then?

Mr. BRODSKY: They're not.

Ms. WYLDE: They are. Name one that's not in favor of this.

Mr. BRODSKY: Well...

Ms. WYLDE: Every health organization...

Mr. BRODSKY: Gabe...

PRESSMAN: Yeah.

Mr. BRODSKY: Help me, Gabe.

Ms. WYLDE: ...every environmental organization, every business organization...

Mr. BRODSKY: I--all I want to do is just get my...

Ms. WYLDE: ...are supporting this. This isn't--it...

PRESSMAN: OK, well...

Mr. BRODSKY: But...

PRESSMAN: ...and she raises a legitimate issue, which is why are the environmentalists for it if it's so terrible?

Mr. BRODSKY: Well, I--some environmentalists are and some environmentalists are against it.

Ms. WYLDE: Who's against it?

Mr. BRODSKY: You want organizational names?

Ms. WYLDE: In the environmental community?

Mr. BRODSKY: Yes. I--some of the witnesses who testified, very clearly, are against it, the chairman of the Assembly committee on the environment, among others.

Not letting the facts stand in his way, Brodsky continues:

Mr. BRODSKY: There's a state law--I do, too. There's a state law that says you have to do an environmental impact study before you approve a project.

PRESSMAN: Right.

Mr. BRODSKY: They want to repeal that law and say we're going to approve the project, then do the study.

Ms. WYLDE: That is inaccurate. There's no one calling to repeal that law.

The Times has been running a series this month, called Next Stop, about the experience of commuting in the New York metro region. Reporter Billie Cohen took a different route to or from Manhattan every weekday, riding all manner of buses, trains, and subways. No bike commutes so far (and with just a few days left in the series it's probably safe to assume there won't be any).

Of particular interest, given the relevance of transit access to the discussion of congestion pricing, was this profile of the X68 Express Bus from Midtown to Floral Park, Queens, which left me wondering how those commuters might see their trips change -- or not -- in the coming year.

Then on Sunday, in an article summarizing her experience, Cohen uncorked this dour portrait of subway commuters:

...the unhappiest travelers I found were on the subway. Worn out by drudgery, angered by slow service, they were the most vocal and the least satisfied, and that makes sense.

Despite their deep wells of anger, subway riders were generally the most reticent and the most difficult to engage. In a city of ubiquitous crowds, their commute remains a bastion of anonymity.

Speaking for everyone who rides the subway, I'll admit there's a grain of truth to this, but c'mon -- "deep wells of anger"? Sure it's frustrating when there's a service delay or the train gets packed, and maybe people on the subway do want to keep to themselves by and large. Despite all that, any anger on display runs pretty shallow, I think, compared to the code of conduct and common decency most straphangers abide by -- not to mention the deep-seated anger to be found above ground.

Photo: Runs With Scissors/Flickr