And how about the other externalities I mentioned? Slower service for transit riders, longer delivery times, noise, safety, public space?

I’d love to see walk-through trains – but I’m afraid this isn’t as simple as calling Kawasaki and asking for it. The cars first need to be designed – and they need to be designed in a way that will work with the NYCT system.

Pushers won’t help at Grand Central – they are a solution to the wrong problem. The problem at Grand Central is not that crowded trains pull in and more people want to get on – that’s a relatively minor problem, and it happens all over the system. The problem at Grand Central is that crowded trains pull in and a lot of people want to get off as well as on. So the people getting off have to squeeze through the thick crowds while the people outside are starting to impatiently push their way on. The more crowded the train when it arrives at Grand Central, the harder it is for people trapped in the middle to get out. If loads at the north end of the line are reduced just a bit (say, by diverting some riders to a new subway line a few blocks to the east), then the people getting off at Grand Central encounter less resistance, and dwell times are reduced, and service can be increased.

The Lexington line is crowded because the MTA is making little effort to run it at its true capacity. It uses 3-door cars where Tokyo runs 6-door, 20-meter cars, making boarding easier. It also uses individual cars instead of walk-through trains, which would increase capacity. The MTA isn’t making any attempt to either get Japanese-style pushers, or get people to push themselves as in China, which would allow trains to run 100% over official capacity instead of 13%. All of this costs peanuts; it would have cost zero extra money if the MTA had had the foresight to write multi-door, walk-through specs into the R142 order.

Cutting service is simply not acceptable, for the reasons stated above.

A crowded train tends to spend more time in stations as people try to push off and on, thereby slowing down service for everyone on the train and everyone on the trains behind it. One of the justifications for SAS is that dwell times at Grand Central are so long that, not only do they slow down service, but they actually reduce the overall capacity of the line!

And when people are left behind on platforms because they cannot fit onto a train (whether that train is truly crush loaded or it has some air bubbles in the middle that are inaccessible from the platform isn’t entirely relevant, except that, in the long term, it might be feasible to train people to fill in air bubbles), that certainly slows them down – they now have to wait for the next train, which may not be any emptier.

Incidentally, your premise is false. Cars also slow down buses (carrying people who don’t own cars or are choosing not to use them) and trucks (carrying deliveries to people regardless of whether they drive). Cars pollute the air and make noise. Cars injure and kill pedestrians and bicyclists. Cars occupy a lot of public space in a very space-constrained area; with fewer cars, some of that public space could be reallocated in a more equitable fashion. Those are all externalities that congestion pricing could offset.

And who named you sole arbiter of which social problems the government should and should not solve?

You’re assuming that nobody who lives outside the so-called CBD is wealthy. That’s most certainly not the case.

And you’re assuming that every subway ride either begins or ends at home. That’s most certainly not the case.

(And I’ve never heard the CBD defined as starting as far north as 86th St.!)

If you want to charge the rich more than the poor, then do just that. Don’t make assumptions about where the rich go and where the poor go, because there are bound to be plenty of exceptions – rich people who you will be undercharging and, worse, poor people who you will be overcharging.

I would be absolutely in favor of raising the fare substantially while simultaneously providing some sort of transit allowance (think of food stamps) to those who truly can’t afford the fare. Come to think of it, if the transit allowance could also be used to pay tolls and other driving fees, that would put to rest the claim that bridge tolls and congestion pricing are regressive.

I don’t agree that distance-based fares don’t make sense due to socioeconomics – there are plenty of poor people who take short trips and plenty of wealthy people who take long trips, and currently those poor people are effectively subsidizing those wealthy people. The only way to avoid that is through means testing of some sort.

Distance-based fares don’t make sense right now because outer borough politicians would have a fit and because most stations would have to be seriously redesigned to provide enough turnstiles for exit swipes.