… would probably be dotted with parking lots the size of Greenwich Village in order to accommodate all the daily commuters driving into the city on the equivalent of 84 Queens Midtown Tunnels, predicts Michael Frumin at the Frumination blog. (HT: Kottke) [%comments]
New York City Without Its Subway …
TAGS: New York City, transportation
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Interesting point, Mark S. I live in NYC, and just visited Los Angeles. The whole time I was thinking, “They could really use a Subway system like NYC.”
The traffic is insane. You have to pay for parking everywhere you go. Nothing is walking distance.
Much cheaper than driving, too.
If all that space were parking lots and bridges/tunnels then wouldn’t we have less traffic into the city, unless your proposing that all the office jobs eliminated by the altered landscape are replaced by 100′s of 1000′s of parking lot attendants.
For every bit of space removed we have to remove some of the commuters, no?
Mike,
Work on a formula for this, I would guess its similar to the rocket equation.
Frumin mentions the very fact that everyone here seems to agree is the primary result – and then proceeds to run right past it without another thought.
“At that point, who would want to go to Manhattan anyway? “
“I’d love to live in a city that is ahead of population expansion with their public transport, but I suppose this never happens.”
Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out for Philadelphia. We inherited quite a remarkable system from the carcasses of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Reading Railroad (and numerous private streetcar concessions), but stations and lines have been abandoned or converted to busing as population has shrunk within the city proper, and when it comes to restoring or creating new service, SEPTA management only wants gold-plated projects or not at all (google Schuylkill Valley Metro for a prime example: SEPTA dug it’s heels against a lower capital diesel-electric compromise). Philadelphia has a trolley network (surface light rail) that other cities (Minneapolis, Denver, I believe even LA) actually are spending billions on recently and today, and it’s just rusting away with buses running the routes.
How about asking the opposite question: what if there was even more transit in New York City like there is in Zürich Switzerland?
You don’t want to walk to the next street corner ? No problem. An electric tram just came along, hop on and ride for a couple of 100 meters, then get off. Its all possible because public transit is the only thing thats cheap in Switzerland. An all day transit pass costs ~$6 which is a bargain compared to a cup of coffee for $8. The locals pay even less per day on their subsidized annual passes. Some employers even include them in as part of the compensation package.
How do they get everyone to ride and no one to drive ?
Easy. There are almost no parking spaces. OK , there are a few but the monthly rent is comparable to renting a small apartment.
Public transit is a non profit making endeavor.
Selling cars, gasoline, their repair, insurance and all the other aspects of not using building and using a viable mass transportation system makes a great deal money — especially for corporate interests, the super-rich and their proxies the “K Street” street walkers.
The same old song… With a difference in the melody.
If you had that much parking it would eliminate much of the reason people would have come therer to park. In any case, the parking still exists: it is just that the subway enables the parking to exist outside the city, inthe same way that parking huttles enable remote parking at the airport.
Having lived in NYC for nearly a decade then moving to Dallas, I’ve experienced just this.
Every store/restaurant/home etc. must have parking, and that takes up space, often more space than the establishment itself (20 people can fit inside a restaurant much smaller than what is needed to hold 20 cars).
This ends up forcing commercial establishments be be quite spread out (by NYC standards), or solely along strips expanding linearly, with all the parking hidden behind the buildings. The end result is that things are so spaced out, you need to drive to get from one place to another. And because you need to drive, they need parking, and because they need parking, things become even more spread out, thus making the city even more car dependent. I don’t think adding a better public transportation system will help. Its just too much sprawl.