It’s an obvious idea, really. When an agency has hundreds of miles of tracks, subway cars and bus along with millions of passengers each day, why not test out innovations on the fly? Who needs a laboratory when New York City is filled with guinea pigs?

This approach to innovation is one that, over the last few years, New York City Transit has readily embraced, and with Howard Roberts at the helm, the agency is going to continue this policy full speed ahead. “Piloting stuff makes great sense,” Roberts said to me two weeks ago.

Over the last eighteen months, since Roberts took the helm at NYCT, more and more pilot programs have rolled out on the rails. The MTA embraced the Rider Report Cards and is in the midst of year two of the grading project. As a result of those report cards, NYC Transit has instituted the line manage program. Elsewhere, the city has seen the return of double-decker buses.

But the best, perhaps, is yet to come. As I wrote in August, New York City Transit will soon be tested train cars with flip seats that will enable the agency to accommodate more passengers during peak hours. The catch, of course, is that some of these cars won’t have seats, and everyone will be left standing.

Roberts wants to institute a test run of this program sooner rather than later to see if New York City Transit can begin to alleviate the problems of overcrowded. By deploying these retrofitted cars on some of the more crowded lines, the agency can add capacity to lines that can’t take more trains per hour.

When this pilot program commences — and it will still be a few months before that launch date — NYC Transit plans to stagger the seatless cars. Group them in the middle, and those rider angling for seats will avoid these cars like the plague. Mix it up, and straphangers will test these cars.

The MTA these doesn’t have much leeway in its budget for off-line experimentation. That the agency is willing to experiment on the fly, that they’re willing to take the risk that some pilot programs will work while others may not, is a sure sign that leadership is willing to do what it takes to respond to the demands of the passengers. If only our elected representatives were so obliging.

When I sat down with New York City Transit President Howard Roberts nearly two weeks ago, our talk eventually turned to the state of the system. We all know about the MTA’s attempts to restore the system to a state of good repair, and we all know that the trains are very crowded with many lines running at or near capacity. Roberts and I spoke at length about these two challenges New York City Transit faces in meeting customer demand.

“My personal estimate is that only about 100 of our stations truly qualify for the state of good repair,” Roberts said to me, and I couldn’t disagree with his estimate. Outside of the so-called Central Business District in Manhattan and a few flagship stations — Atlantic Ave. and Coney Island come to mind — in the Outer Boroughs, the number of stations with cracked walls , exposed pipes and decaying platforms far outnumber those in top shape.

As always, it’s a matter of money. Restoring the system to a state of good repair remains at the top of the MTA’s list of priorities, but the agency must first spend the available funds on maintenance and operations. As long as the tracks are in good repair, as long as the cars are running, the stations will come third even as they considered a major priority.

The other part of his equation is line capacity. “A significant number of lines are already operating at capcacity,” Roberts said. Almost wistfully, the NYCT head spoke about the progress in other parts of the world. Shanghai, for instances, has 89 tunnel-boring machines at work and by 2012, will have a subway system three-quarters the size of New York’s. Meanwhile, in a few years, the city will have tunnel-boring machines digging out the LIRR’s East Side Access route, the Second Ave. Subway and the 7 Line extension, but those projects pale in comparison to those underway in Asia.

While the MTA awaits this great awakening, to meet ridership demands, the agency will attempt to bring computer-based train control online over the next few years. In early tests, the returns are very promising. On a closed L line, NYCT was able to feed 31 trains per hour through the tunnels as opposed to the 23 trains per hour peak-use riders currently enjoy. These are, as Roberts put it, “huge capacity improvements that we can get without boring more tunnels.”

These CBTC plans though are still at least five to ten years away from reality. While the MTA is eying an outfitting of the newer signal system on the IRT lines and potentially the F line as well, again, the money just isn’t there. It will continue not to be there as long as the economy slumps.

But as some point, this lack of state and federal investment will come back to haunt our country, Roberts believed. “Either Americans wake up with respect to infrastructure needs or we will no longer be the preeminent power in the world,” he warned. I couldn’t agree more.