Archive for December, 2010
Dec
08
Debating subway map form and function
Posted by: | Comments
Massimo Vignelli's diagrammatic map still inspires discussion nearly forty years after its debut.
After listening to the current iteration of the New York City subway map called everything from bilious to muddy to messy to a mongrel, I almost felt bad for the thing. Almost. It’s been insulted, beaten, torn apart and called everything under the sun, but it still looks ugly.
Last night, the Museum of the City of New York hosted an All Star panel of subway map men. Massimo Vignelli, John Tauaranc, Eddie Jabbour of KickMap fame and historian Paul Shaw took turns exploring the evolution of the form and functionality of the New York City subway map. The MTA’s map folks were invited but apparently declined the invitation. While the various designers disagreed on the proper appearance for a map, the one thing that united the evening was an obvious disgust with the current iteration. “Clarity is the key,” Tauranac, one of the designers of the 1979 subway map, said. “The MTA simply does not do that.”
The design shortcomings of the current map are evident in Lower Manhattan where station names overlap subway route lines and information isn't easy to comprehend.
The venerable Vingelli took the floor first. While the angular subway schematic that divided the city’s subway riders remains Vingelli’s most iconic New York piece, the subways are replete with the 79-year-old Italian designer’s imprint. The relatively clear signage and the unified use of Helvetica was a part of Vingelli’s Graphics Standard manual that the TA adopted in the late 1960s.
To introduce his idea for a subway map, Vingelli spoke about merging form and function. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and in fact, a good designer will figure out a way to incorporate both. A map, he said, is a geographical representation of an area designed to get around at street level. A subway map should be a diagram used to show how routes interact with each other. “When you try to mix the two things, you’re just making a mongrel,” he said of the current subway map.
Vingelli, who understands the impact his map had on form and function in the public realm, didn’t set out to design something for MoMA. “Designing a diagram is not just a piece of art,” he said. “It’s really a logical thing.”
His original plans included three different schematics for subway stations. His diagramatic map would hang next to a geographic map of New York City and a neighborhood map. “From the beginning, we knew one map could not do the job,” he said.
Today, MTA stations feature neighborhood maps — decades after they were first proposed — but the authority decided to merge the geographic map of the city with the subway map. Vingelli did not approve. Showing high-res images of the subway, he detailed the typographic problems with the map and its cartographic shortcomings. The current map, he noted, features call-out balloons and haphazard text. “It covers the information it’s supposed to provide,” he said.
Ultimately, Vingelli, who seems not bitter but upset that the MTA discarded his map, blamed the authority for meddling with the map to the point of incomprehension. “You don’t need a good designer,” he said. “You need a good client.”
The 1979 iteration begat complexity on a map.
Following Vignelli, Tauranac took the mic. He was a member of the MTA’s map committee in the late 1970s and helped lead the effort to replace the Vignelli map with something more “quasi-geographic.” But he said, “over the years, it has become more quasi and less geographic.”
Unlike Vignelli’s map, Tauranac’s representation of the subway map attempts to provide geographic context. The key change between Tauranac’s and Vingelli’s map involved a consolidation. While Vingelli used different lines for each subway route, Tauranac’s committee with help from the design team led by Michael Hertz used trunk lines instead to remove clutter. But the MTA has added more and more extraneous info, and it’s too hard to see the important stuff.
Today, Tauranac offers up his own map for sale. It’s a semi-schematic, semi-geographic meld that features type face that doesn’t run at angles or cover subway lines and shows the difference between night, day and weekend service. It is a far cry from the current iteration of the official map, and Tauaranc’s disgust with The Map showed. “Land got a color I can only describe as bilious, and Just ask any 5th grader what color a park is.” he said of the latest MTA map refresh. “The MTA map has deteriorated. It’s messy in form and less valuable in function.”
For Tauranac and for Kickmap’s Eddie Jabbour, the current MTA version isn’t informative enough in the right ways. Tauaranc spoke at length about the service guide, once a key feature of the Vingelli map and now relegated to the Internet. Without it, the map is only half useful. “When does the Q go to Astoria?” he asked. “Rush hour? Weekdays? Weeknights only? Weekends only? And when does it stop at 49th Street?” With the current map, you just can’t tell.
Eddie Jabbour's KickMap simplifies the tangle of subway crossings in Brooklyn. (Click to enlarge)
The KickMap, which first came to my attention back in 2007 and is now available in app form for iPhones, tries to solve those problems. Jabbour’s map borrows elements of Vingelli’s map and tries to produce an easy-to-follow schematic with geographical underpinnings. The mobile version will automatically show nighttime service after 11 p.m., and it is, says its creator, more user-friendly. “There’s a cynicism in that map,” Jabbour said of our subway map. “It’s almost as though someone said, ‘That’s where Atlantic/Pacific is going to go. Tough. Figure it out.’”
As the speakers wrapped up their presentations, the lesson from the evening was one of visual simplicity and information presentation. The Map with its intermodal balloon boxes despised by all has tried to do too much with too little, and the MTA seems content to let the quasiness win out over visual simplicity or a form that serves a function. “Our map is a mongrel,” Jabbour said. “It’s an actually barrier to understand the system.”
Dec
07
Event of the Day: A talk on the subway map
Posted by: | Comments
Massimo Vignelli will discuss his iconic and controversial subway map tonight at the Museum of the City of New York.
I’ve got a soft spot for subway maps. The history of the subway map traces the history of the city, and as with everything else in New York, we’ve seen controversy emerge out of the map as well. Should the subway map be geographical? Schematic? A work of it? The debate is endless.
Tonight, at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of the City of New York, various cartographers will gather for a talk entitled “The New York City Subway Map: Form v. Function.” The museum’s website describes it as such:
Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York City subway map, produced by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was considered a design triumph—earning itself a place in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art—but it was also criticized as confusing to passengers. A new version of the subway map was released earlier this year, re-raising the enduring dilemma of how best to achieve both functionality and beauty. Join the creators of several subway maps, including John Tauranac and Massimo Vignelli, for a discussion about designing for the riding public, featuring Eddie Jabbour, creator of Kick Map and the NYC subway app; and Paul Shaw, author of Helvetica and the New York City Subway System: The True (Maybe) Story.
I’m looking forward to this one, and if you’ve got a few hours free tonight, check it out. The Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue between E. 103rd and E. 104th Sts., a short walk from the 6 train stop at 103rd St.
Dec
07
The M42′s slow trek across town
Posted by: | Comments
Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White unveils the Schleppie Award while Gene Russianoff looks on. (Photo courtesy of Kim Martineau/Transportation Alternatives)
If you’re trying to get across 42nd St. in a hurry and the M42 is on the horizon, you’re better off walking. At least that’s the message the Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives had for the city’s transit riders as they unveiled the annual Pokey and Schleppie Awards for the New York’s bus routes today.
Maintaining an average rate of just 3.6 miles per hour during the noontime run, the M42 captured the Pokey Award, the Straphangers’ recognition for the system’s slowest bus. It is the second consecutive year this midtown route has taken home the trophy. For anyone young enough and healthy enough, it is indeed possible to cross Manhattan on foot faster than the M42 covers it on wheels.
The Straphangers and TA also unveiled the slowest routes in the other four boroughs as well. Taking home the honors were the B35, the Bx19, the Q58 and S42. Still, none of those buses can hold a candle to the M42. Each maintains speeds above 5 mph, and the S42′s 8.2 mph velocity might be slow for Staten Island but would be considered speedy along the streets of Manhattan.
As for the Schleppie, a nod for the system’s “least reliable” bus, the Bx41, the system’s 15th most popular bus route, took home the award. The Straphangers had more on the unreliable local buses:
Almost one in four Bx41 buses — 23.5% — arrived bunched together or came with big gaps in service during the first half of 2010. Last year’s “winner” with the worst reliability was the B44, which runs between Williamsburg and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
The groups noted, however, that the number of unreliable buses had more than doubled in the past year. MTA New York City Transit measures a “borough-representative sample of 42 high-volume bus routes” for unreliability. In the first half of 2009, the groups found four routes out of those 42 had more than one in five buses arriving off schedule. However, that has grown to 11 routes in the first half of 2010.
The most unreliable bus routes in each of four boroughs with over 20% of buses bunched together or big gaps in service are:
- B44: 21.7% unreliable btw Sheepshead Bay and Williamsburg on Nostrand Avenue
- Bx41: 23.5% unreliable btw Wakefield and The Hub on White Plains Rd/Webster Ave
- M101/2/3: 22.3% unreliable btw Upper and Lower Manhattan on 3rd and Lexington Avenues
- S78: 21.8% unreliable btw St. George Ferry and Tottenville on Hylan Boulevard
While local buses remain among the worst forms of surface transportation in the city, TA and the Straphangers acknowledged the MTA’s Select Bus Service plan. It’s taken a painfully long time to get Select Bus routes off the ground, but riders are noticing improvements.
“The next generation of buses is making inroads in New York City — Select Bus Service can cut travel time for riders,” Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, said. “Where these fast buses have been tried in the Bronx, travel times dropped at least 20 percent. Similar improvements were recently installed on Manhattan’s East Side. Rather than pokey and schleppie buses, New Yorkers deserve quick and efficient bus service. We are encouraged by the city’s willingness to make New York’s buses work better.”
Eventually, as the MTA replaces the MetroCard with a contactless payment technology, bus load times will improve, and bus speeds should improve. Still, though, bus stops are much too close together, and the lack of lane and signal priority means that buses will forever be at the whims of surface conditions. Until bus routes are cleared, pokey and schleppy will be a perfectly adequate description of New York City bus service.
For more on the awards and the Straphanger’s methodology, check out their press release. After the jump, a vide on the awards from Streetsfilms. Read More→
Dec
07
Fulton St. Hub finally sticking to a schedule
Posted by: | CommentsIn Transit Fantasyland, the Fulton St. Hub would have been completed last year at a cost of $700 million. Instead, after years of delays, redesigns and cost overruns, the MTA in 2007 eventually set a completion date of 2014 and a budget of $1.4 billion. “What I present today, I stand by. I expect you to hold me accountable to it,” Capital Construction President Michael Horodniceanu said a few years ago, and it appears as though the authority is indeed sticking to its schedule.
As Matt Dunning of The Tribeca Trib reports, the Fulton St. Hub is still on pace for a 2014 opening. “The job is going well,” Uday Durg, a program executive at the MTA, said to a Community Board 1 meeting recently. “All of our contracts are moving on schedule and are tracking on budget.”
As Dunning notes, 2011 will see the continued gradual opening of parts of the hub. Southbound R trains will again pick up and drop off passengers at Cortlandt St. by 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of the 2011 attacks. A new entrance for the West Side IRT will open on William St., and a temporary tunnel between the IND platform and the East Side IRT stop will be available for use as well. With the Corbin Building shored up and funding in place, the plagued project is finally getting well off the ground.
Dec
07
Transit Fantasyland: Improving service across NYC
Posted by: | CommentsAcross New York City, various neighborhoods are noticeably lacking subway service. Stretches of Brooklyn and Queens far from Manhattan suffer from a lack of direct transit access while cross-Bronx service is non-existent and even Alphabet City, a locus of growth and gentrification, is a long hike from the nearest subway. As it takes far too many years and far too many dollars, the options for system expansion are limited, but that doesn’t stop people from trying.
Back in October 2008, after a pair of development conferences with planning experts from across the New York Metropolitan Area, the Regional Plan Association put forward a report entitled “Tomorrow’s Transit: New Mobility for the Region’s Core.” It highlighted numerous ongoing projects including the Second Ave. Subway, East Side Access, the 7 Line extension and our dearly departed ARC Tunnel, but its more intriguing sections propose subway extensions that expand service beyond the current capital campaign. Just imagine if money were no issue.
We start in Manhattan where the Second Ave. Subway dominates the day. Much of the RPA’s document focused around making use of a new Manhattan trunk line. Instead of terminating at East. 125th St. and Lexington, as current SAS plans propose, the RAP’s Second Ave. Subway would run west to intersect with the various subway lines along 125th St., terminating at the 1 stop along Broadway. That’s a common-sense proposal though that could happen if New York every found the money to do so.
In the southern reaches of Manhattan, the RPA’s plan involves some additions near and dear to our hearts but with some odd limitations. For Alphabet City, the RPA proposed the old tea-cup handle extension of the SAS along Ave. C in order to provide “widespread benefits for lower income areas,” a main thrust of “Tomorrow’s Transit.” Also for Alphabet City, the RPA proposed dropping a staircase at Ave. A and 14th St. to provide for access to the First Ave. L stop. I’ve been told in the past that the tunnel depth and underground space limitations preclude that plan, but it’s one that has long been an obvious exit point.
Further uptown, the RPA wants to explore extending the 7 line extension further south with a possible connection to the Canarsie Line. In Midtown, transit can be improved by adding light rail to Broadway. Remember: We’re living in Transit Fantasyland here.
In the Bronx, let’s send the Second Ave. Subway everywhere. The cost-prohibitive 3rd Ave. extension is designed to better server areas without very much subway service while the Metrolink Extension would use the Amtrak right-of-way to serve Co-Op City. The 3rd Ave. extension would replace the lost El train and connect across the Bronx to the 207th St. terminal area in Upper Manhattan. If anything, this routing is a bit haphazard and would raise capacity issues in Manhattan.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn suffers from the opposite problem: It’s proposed extension don’t do enough. In the southeast corner of the county of Kings, the RPA would advocate building out two stops along Nostrand Ave. and constructing the long-awaited Utica Ave. line. I recently explored the tortured history of these subway expansion plans, and I’d want to see something even more ambitious. Shoot for the ocean or at very last, Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park.
Again, the Second Ave. Subway enters the picture as well. Once East Side Access is complete, the RPA would convert the LIRR’s Atlantic Branch into a rapid transit line via the Second Ave. Subway. Say good bye to the Transit Museum as this plan would reactivate Court St. and the outer platforms at Hoyt-Schermerhorn. On another note, the one-stop spur on the L to Starrett City seems to be more trouble than it’s worth, and the super express J service has been debunked elsewhere.
And finally, Queens. The RPA would spur off the Queens Boulevard past Rego Park along Jewel Ave. to better serve the Kew Gardens area. Similarly, the Queens Bypass straight to Forest Hills would alleviate a lot of crowding along that Queens Boulevard line. The southeastern Queens extension would be a huge boon for that area as well.
Ultimately, these plans are nearly as ambitious as the old Second System proposals, and unfortunately, they’re just as likely to see the light of the day. While the RPA rates projects as long- vs. short-term and high vs. low capital on a spending scale, these exist only on paper for a time when money is abundant. If we could expand the system willy nilly without concerns for cost, this isn’t a bad blueprint for it, but as we look at “Tomorrow’s Transit” two years later, only the BRT aspects are finally come online. Fifty years from now, will New York City still be recycling the same old subway expansion plans?
For more on the RPA’s “Tomorrow’s Transit” plan, check out the report right here as a PDF.
Dec
06
Photo of the Day: A MetroCard Mona Lisa
Posted by: | Comments
Juan Carlos Pinto's MetroCard Mona Lisa is now on display in DUMBO.
Take a look at this baby. It is a Mona Lisa MetroCard by artist Juan Carlos Pinto. The Guatemala-born artist has been working in New York City for the past ten years, and he uses non-biodegradable plastic objects as his medium. He slices, dices and pastes them to create visual images.
“The idea of using these non-biodegradable cards is to reinforce recycling and prolonging its use indefinitely while providing the artist with a source free material. It is also a way of reminding us about the danger this material can cause if left to seep into the earth,” he says on his website.
Pinto’s work is currently on display at the DIS Micro Gallery at 147 Front Street in Brooklyn. Always a sucker for a good “Mona Lisa,” I like MetroCard Che as well. Viva la fare hike revolucion.
Dec
06
A mundane ending for Port Authority’s ARC money
Posted by: | CommentsWith the ARC Tunnel dead and buried for the foreseeable future, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has unexpectedly found itself with over $3 billion to spend. Since there are no shortages of transportation infrastructure upgrades in the New York region that need funding, finding ways to spend this dough is no tall order. As Andrew Grossman reported in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, the Port Authority has already lined up projects to complete.
By and large, the ARC money will go to road improvements. The PA plans to reconstruct the 72-year-old approach to the Lincoln Tunnel on the New Jersey side of the river, and the George Washington Bridge needs a new set of support cables. On the transit side of things, the PA will start work on a new bus garage in Manhattan that will allow for increased bus loading and drop-offs at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Most of these projects would have been delayed until 2016 or beyond had ARC gone ahead.
I certainly can’t fault the PA for using its money, and they seem to be doing so wisely. Unfortunately, these projects won’t do much, if anything, to address the need to increase rail capacity across the Hudson River. Until we do that, the PA is simply spinning its wheels as it modernizes infrastructure leading to bottlenecks under the river.
Dec
06
NY Senate, under GOP control, aims for payroll tax
Posted by: | Comments
The future is not looking bright for the MTA’s balance sheet. Facing the spectre of looming raids on its supposedly dedicated funding, the state Department of Taxation and Finance confirmed that they did indeed overestimate the payroll tax revenues. While the MTA has long since adjusted its budget projections to align with state totals, the payroll tax is increasingly coming under fire.
This development, first reported in February, drives home the need for a better and more reliable source of revenue for the MTA. Tom Namako at The Post reports:
The latest jostle for commuters is that the wide-ranging “bailout” package of fees and taxes approved in 2009 is coming in about $400 million short of projections that were established earlier this year, statistics show. The controversial business tax — which hits all business owners in the MTA region with a 34-cent levy for every $100 of payroll — appears to be $321 million under expectations, MTA data show. Overall, it will bring in about $1.34 billion instead of the $1.66 billion that bean counters projected.
And the “MTA aid” levies — like a 50-cent surcharge on every yellow-cab ride along with car-rental, garage-parking and license fees — are under projections by $60 million, the numbers show.
“The riders have done their part with service cuts and fare hikes, but motorists aren’t doing their part,” fumed Andrew Albert, an MTA board member. He added that the bailout bill “is not a good package” and that city’s free bridges should be tolled to help finance mass transit.
A state Division of Budget spokesman confirmed that the MTA had already been prepared for this shortfall. “The $320 million drop reflects current projections for 2010 against what the MTA had in its February plan,” said Erik Kriss said. “The MTA’s February plan numbers are based on the payroll projections the state made in December 2009.”
Meanwhile, as Republicans have reclaimed the New York State Senate, Newsday brings us some alarming news: Because so many Republicans campaigned on anti-payroll tax platforms, the GOP members in the Senate will try to repeal the tax. “It’s such an infamous, self-explanatory tax that is has to be addressed,” Sen. Kemp Hannon (R-Garden City) said to Newsday. “Will [the Assembly and Gov. Cuomo] go along with it? I’m not sure they know what they’ll go along with.”
It’s basically impossible for the state to overturn the payroll tax because of the massive crisis it will create. If the state were to revoke $1.3 billion in MTA financing, the authority and our transit system would simply collapse. Until Republicans propose a better way to generate this revenue, their attempts to overturn the tax cannot be supported. Albert’s proposal won’t be popular amongst drivers, but it’s high time for a renewed attempt to toll the East River bridges.
Dec
06
On the importance of station spacing
Posted by: | Comments
Station distances along Second Ave. doesn't bring the subway closer to certain areas. (Click to enlarge the map)
One of the key considerations in planning a subway — or bus — line focuses around distances between two stations. Planners want to space stations far enough apart to allow trains to build up considerable speed underground, but they also want to place stations close enough together to provide comprehensive coverage to previously underserved neighborhoods. As the city builds out the Second Ave. Subway, the MTA has a chance to improve subway coverage through station spacing.
Along Second Ave., a few key cross streets are missing their subway stops, but much of the empty space is covered through proper station construction. For instance, 79th St., a major crosstown street, won’t enjoy a subway station, but the exits and entrances at East 86th and 72nd Streets should make up for it. The south end of 86th St. will deposit people between 83rd and 84th Sts. while the north end of 72nd St. will leave them near 73rd St.
The problems arise elsewhere down the line. After 72nd St., the next stop on the theoretical T train would be at 55th St. and 2nd Ave. while the Q will stop at 63rd St. and Lexington. The seventeen blocks between local stations would be a system-wide high. Along the Q, Transit plans to construct a station entrace at 3rd Ave. and 63rd St., but those trying to reach the East River area with its numerous hospitals will have considerable walks.
On the Lower East Side, the same problem arises. After 14th St. and 2nd Ave., the T won’t stop again until Houston St. and 2nd Ave., a span of 14 blocks. Along other lines that stop at Houston St., the 6 next stops at Astor Place and then Union Square while the 1 stops at Christopher St. and then 14th St. The 14-block gap makes the T a semi-express along 2nd Ave.
Here, the real losers are those who live in Alphabet City. Currently, for someone who lives at, say, Ave. C and East 7th St., the nearest subway is the 6 at Astor Place, a walk of around 0.8 miles. The subway stop at 2nd Ave. and 14th St. will be a 0.9-mile walk from Ave. C and East 7th St. It won’t be any more or less convenient to have the Second Ave. Subway. In fact, for an area that once would have enjoyed a cup-handle extension of the Second Ave. Subway, the SAS will have profoundly little impact on a transit-starved area.
An idealized street grid leads to a diamond-shaped coverage area. (Via Human Transit)
What then is the proper distance for station spacing? Jarrett Walker at Human Transit tackled this topic back in November. Playing off of the news that San Francisco’s Muni is looking to improve both bus and subway travel times, Walker proposed an ideal solution for station spacing. The object, he says, is to minimize the overlap area while maximizing the coverage area.
For rapid transit stops, Walker proposes a distance of 1000 m between stops — or approximately 0.6 miles. That would correspond nicely to the 14-block distance between stations in the East Village, but it doesn’t solve the problem of Alphabet City. They are far away from the subway and will still be far away from the subway even when a new subway line opens. That doesn’t quite solve the city’s transit problems.
Ultimately, station spacing is less important for subway stations than for bus stops, and Walker is rightly critical of the American approach to bus stops. In Brooklyn where I live, the local routes stop every two blocks or around 500 feet. Buses are slowed by the need to stop constantly, and most healthy riders would choose to walk instead of ride.
For now though, we can see transit spacing in action along Second Ave. By and large, the distances are appropriate, but Walker ends on an intriguing question: “If you had two parallel transit lines, how might the stop locations on one of them affect the logical locations of stops on the other? And what’s the furthest apart that the lines can be (in terms of multiples of the maximum walking distance) for this consideration to matter?”
Dec
05
NY, NJ spar over Tappan Zee funding plan
Posted by: | Comments
The two final proposed replacements for the Tappan Zee Bridge.
New York State has put forward an ambitious $16-billion plan to replace the Tappan Zee with a multi-modal bridge. The new structure will feature rail and bus lanes and will improve transportation in between northern New Jersey, upstate New York and the metropolitan region. The state, however, has not allocated funding for the project in its next five-year capital plan, and Gov. David Paterson, in the waning days of his time in Albany, is searching for a funding solution.
To that end, Paterson floated the idea of folding the Tappan Zee into the Port Authority. The newly-rich PA could spend some of its ARC allocation on the bridge replacement, and New York and New Jersey would split the toll proceeds. Even though the bridge does not go into New Jersey and advocates feared it would be, in the words of the RPA’s Neysa Pranger, “a tough sell,” Paterson’s people believed that the bridge’s importance to the region would be a compelling enough reason to move forward.
“The ball’s in their court right now. But if they’re ready, I’m ready,” Paterson said of New Jersey. “And if they’d like to do it with the next governor, that’s fine, too.”
And guess what Gov. Chris Christie said? Well, he said no no no. “I can’t make this any clearer to New York than this: Stop screwing with us, OK?” he said. “You’re not going to come and pick our pockets. New Jersey’s not going to permit it anymore.”
He went on: “Gov. Rockefeller, may he rest in peace, decided that he wanted to keep all that money to himself. Well you want to keep all the money to yourself? Then you pay for the repairs by yourself. Unlike the George Washington Bridge, unlike the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, where we share the toll revenue and we share the cost of maintenance — like the airports.”
Christie appears to be ignoring the part of Paterson’s proposal where New Jersey gets to keep the toll money, but it’s not a surprise that he shot this idea down. What is surprising is his reaction. It’s tough to find anyone who thinks New York is “screwing” with New Jersey or picking the state’s pockets. New York provides jobs for workers in the region who take home their earnings to spend in New Jersey. We don’t capture revenue through a commuter tax any longer, and we’ve put up with increased congestion due to the influx of cars from across the Hudson River.
At some point, New Jersey and New York are going to have to work together to solve the transportation problem. If Christie and Paterson can’t, maybe Christie and Cuomo can. If not, we’ll just have to wait out these obstinate politicians. The traffic and transportation problems will remain long after Christie out of office.
