Also, bike capacity isn’t very good. Bikes don’t brake very well, so bike headway is if anything worse than car headway. Bikes fit in narrower lanes than cars, but that will only increase the headway. Even in Hanoi, where bicycles and motorcycles are so common they have dedicated lanes, a study shows that on a lane of about the same width as a car lane, capacity is about 3,100 motorcycles per hour. This compares with 32,000 on an IRT track.

I guess this will get worst over the next few years when more people move over here. I still don’t quite understand why so many people are moving to NYC when it costs so much to live here.

I do know one thing: gas prices go up and driving into work becomes too expensive, the next thing you know there are more people on the train. I think the funny thing is that whether or not we get more people in the city, or more traffic because more people try to drive, the subways are going to get taxed after people realize they get to work faster on the train.

The worst case scenario is that their is so much traffic AND we get more people living or coming to work in the city AND gas prices go up too, the trains will be the only real way to get to work… now that would be pretty horrible. The trains will be beyond capacity.

Quite a while ago, in the mid-90s, and on account of an after-work errand, for a few months I had to drive my Civic a few days a week to work near Penn Station. It wasn’t so bad! I liked the privacy, listening to the radio, being above ground. Traffic moved, I don’t remember the trip ever taking an outrageous amount of time.

Still, I have little psychological problem with the subway. And I see people checking each other out all the time. I’ve seen people smile those small smiles of commiseration occasionally, or at a cute child. The ones I mentally curse are the self-absorbed bible thumping preachers (aka “lunatics”), the beggars, those supposed advocates of the destitute “informing” us they have a sandwich to hand out, but which is just a thinly veiled coverup for panhandling. And, maybe, the loud, foulmouthed louts and loutettes acting out their young-person resentments and need for attention.

But the psychological stress thing–I think it’s exaggerated. There’s as much amusement to be had riding the subway as there is annoyance, if you keep your eyes open.

Besides that, when I was 4 and and took my first of many subway trips with my mom, she always told me not to look at anyone or talk to anyone. Guess it kind of just stuck with me.

Which crooked tracks are you going over? I take the B over the Manhattan Bridge every morning. That’s a notorious “crooked track” area, but it’s a pretty smooth ride.