The Transit Crunch
Kudos to NYC Transit for its frankness about the overcrowding crisis on the subways. As any rider of the L train or the numbered lines knows, the system is straining at maximum capacity -- and, NYCTA says, it's not just that the trains themselves are full; so are the tracks.
“From my point of view, this is scary,†said Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, who presented the data to members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board. “This is scary in the sense that right now, on a lot of these lines, we’re several years and a big capital construction project away from being able to provide what I consider adequate service. We’re constrained.â€
I've written a lot in support of congestion pricing, and I continue to support it. But the Transit Authority's report is a clear reminder that the need to couple congestion pricing with serious capital investment in mass transit upgrades is far from academic.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
Subways | Transportation | NYCTA
F Train
The name fits it so well. Today I was reading this week's edition of Crain's and in Neighborhood Journal they have a story on the F train. This line has no express trains and it takes me who travels from Avenue X to 34th Street an hour (when there's no intruptions) to get to work. Because of this trains are packed and when you get to stations north like Carroll, Bergen the train can be so crowded people can't get on. With Condo's going up all over my area of Brooklyn this will increase ridership.
The MTA has no respect the people who ride this line. As an example, they have trains that only go as far as Kings Highway and are marked as such. I will wait for a train marked Coney Island but that is no guarantee that it's going to Coney Island. Many times they throw us off at Kings Highway (never mind that this station is completely exposed to the elements) and we have to stand there in the pouring rain, winds at 40 mph, snow covering the station and wait maybe 10 minutes for a Coney Island bound train. I thought there was a policy in effect that barred them from making us wait in bad weather conditions at this station exposed to the elements but apparently there is not (I was once threatened with arrest if I didn't get out of a doorway and let the train go back to Manhattan).
According to the article there won't be an express train on the F line until 2011 at the earliest. We can't wait that long due to repairs on the express tracks (they repaired the A line after a transformer fire in about 6 weeks down from the 2 years they orginally said it would take) and I'm fed up with the lack of caring from this Mayor and the MTA.