I’ve written previously about plans to toll Manhattan city streets below 84th Street. The New York Times points out one potential hitch to getting folks out of their cars and onto mass transit
What is revealed [in an MTA study] is both predictable and eye-opening. Many subway lines are simply maxed out, meaning there is no room on the tracks they use to add trains that could carry the swelling numbers of riders. And that has implications that range from day-to-day decisions about how trains travel through the system to long-term planning on how to best move people around a growing city.
OK. The idea of incenting folks to use mass transit rather than their cars, to free up strain on the street network and reduce pollution is a good idea. However, if there’s no marginal capacity in the mass transit system, it might not work so well.
Of course, it should be noted that according to the NYT article, it’s only the old IRT lines that are operating at capacity. Lines primarily purposed to bring folks in from the other boroughs, or the A/C/E trains (which have a less favorable routing) still have some margin. So, we can get more folks into the city by train…but once in Manhattan, the extra transit folks will have to turn to cabs, busses, or pack the IRT trains like sardine cans.
There are projects underway to alleviate the crunch, including extending platforms to handle longer trains, upgrading the signaling systems to support shorter headways, and resurrecting the long-delayed plans for the Second Avenue subway…but they’ll all take time.
Perhaps it’s just as well that the congestion tolling plan met with a cool reception when presented in Albany.