How could we replace the capacity of the NYC subway?

http://frumin.net/ation/2009/08/whats_capacity_go_to_do_with_m.html

by winanga • 17 years ago

22 10 17 years ago

lsb2• 17 years ago

This assumes that people won't carpool, that people will keep driving their car filled with 1.2 people into downtown/midtown. All you need is a congestion tax, and lots more people will drive only up to (say) Newark to take the Path train in, or Jamaica to take the subway/LIRR in. And that's not even counting the throngs of people living in Hell's Kitchen / Chelsea / Kips Bay / Stuy Town / the Village / the LES / Battery Park City, who live and work in the CBD.

locopati• 17 years ago

Even if you assume 4 people per car, cars still wouldn't work as well as the subway does for moving people. The original post is an interesting perspective on how important the subways are to NYC, nothing more.

Interesting mildly off-topic side-note (gathered from 'The World Without Us'): if the systems responsible for actively pumping water from the subway system were to shut down, the subways would be flooded in about 2-3 days (since they're well below the water table of the surrounding Hudson and East Rivers).

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/did_you_know.html

skorgu• 17 years ago

As much hate as the subway gets when they get shut down from the rain a little context yields a lot more understanding: "We move 13 million gallons of water a day when it’s not raining." Mind boggling that any of it works at all.

lsb2• 17 years ago

No, I completely agree! I think that, for example, London has been more aggressive in removing the number of cars on the roads; even still, there are traffic jams galore.

There was a study about how building more than 3 lanes of highway did nothing to reduce congestion, because more people then just drove. (It's hilarious that you'd need as many tunnels into the CBD as West-East streets!)

100k2• 17 years ago

If you want to see a similar visualization of what this means on the level of single street, check out this poster:

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/9346/espaciocoches.jpg

It shows how much space it takes to move the same number of people using cars, bus, and bicycle.

ars• 17 years ago

That poster is inaccurate, it shows far too many cars, and far too many people on the bus.

You can fit 4 people in a car, but you can not load a bus completely full or no one will be realistically able to use it.

So the poster should have between 1/4 and 1/8 the number of cars on the screen.

100k2• 17 years ago

I take it you don't ride buses. They are often completely full in rush hour, including people standing.

Meanwhile, most cars have only one person in it. Maybe an average of 1.5. You could have a carpool with 4 people in it, but I think that's rare compared to single passenger vehicles.

How could we replace the capacity of the NYC subway?

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