Randall O’Toole, the Cato Institute’s go-to guy on transportation policy, says New York should consider leaving its flooded subways to rot:
After Hurricane Katrina, some people argued that we shouldn’t rebuild New Orleans, not simply because it was below sea level but because the city was economically and politically dysfunctional. The same argument could be made for the New York City subway system, which was so heavily damaged by Sandy that repairing it could cost “tens of billions of dollars.” [ . . . ]
There are two alternatives to rebuilding the subways. The drastic alternative is to simply let the city fend for itself without subways. A more realistic alternative would be to convert the subways into underground busways. Electric buses could move just about as many people as the subways do with far less infrastructure.
Battery-powered buses in particular would require almost no infrastructure other than rechargers (and the tunnels themselves, of course, which as far as I know weren’t damaged by the storm). At eighteen feet in height, the tunnels are tall enough for double-decker buses, which should be able to move about as many people per hour as the subway trains. With minimal added infrastructure, the buses could even be driverless, making them far less expensive to operate and maintain than rails.
It may turn out that only a few of New York’s 400-plus route miles of subways were harmed by the storm. But if it was significantly more, the city should seriously consider beginning a transition from rail subways to bus subways.
O’Toole, who makes a living studying and writing on transit, is notorious in transit circles for hating the very thing that supplies his livelihood. He is viewed by his guild a bit like theologians might view a man who claims to practice theology while disavowing any kind of faith. Or rather, while attacking and deriding faith. As you’ll know if you’ve ever spoken to transit advocates (of which I am one), they do approach these matters with an enthusiasm that can take on religious dimensions. You might call O’Toole the new atheist of transit policy.
October 31st, 2012 | 11:31 am
Well, he’s not arguing in favor of abandoning the transit system, is he? He’s arguing in favor of using the tunnels for an underground bus service, which sounds interesting. Those rails do have their drawbacks, don’t they?
But the cultural changes would be profound. Will our grandchildren one day ask us why Social Security was called the “third rail” of politics?
October 31st, 2012 | 1:40 pm
On the one hand, a subway train; on the other, battery-powered buses running through tunnels underground.
Is it just that traveling by rail is unamerican?
October 31st, 2012 | 3:02 pm
A modest proposal, guaranteed to create jobs and reduce maintenance costs. Replace the subway trains with pedicabs. They will be even less polluting than electricity and can boost employment among the terminally higher educated who are always preening about their body images anyway. It will also reduce the number of overweight people, at least in the NYC area.
October 31st, 2012 | 7:12 pm
How long would these buses have to be to accommodate all the passengers that one subway train does? I have never been on a bus car that is as roomy as any train car, whether in NYC or any other city with a subway train system.
Also, I can’t imagine that pulling out all the rails from the tunnels and paving the tunnels for buses will be any cheaper than fixing the limited portion of the underground that was damaged by water.
@Jaime
After a long hard day at work, the pedicab drivers could refresh themselves with a nice 31.9oz glass of soda…
November 1st, 2012 | 10:11 am
This is the silliest proposal to “reduce cost” ever. How can you have ever ridden a New York subway train and imagine any number of buses could ever match its capacity, speed and operating efficiency? If reducing cost is the goal, how do you beat the low friction and longevity of steel wheels on steel rails? If buses can be driver-less, how much easier would be driver-less trains? Why heck, they’re already in operation in airports around the world.
So-called “conservatives” are not financially conservative at all when their ideology (which is its own kind of theology) takes over, as is the case here.
November 1st, 2012 | 12:40 pm
Within minutes of paving the subways, the first pothole will form.
November 1st, 2012 | 1:00 pm
Has the Cato Institute suddenly bought stock in a tire company or something?
Hint: It’s a proven fact that rubber on pavement is less energy efficient than steel on steel. The tradeoff of course is maintenance cost (and the way steel rusts when a storm surge brings seawater into the tunnels).
But I bet if we actually run the numbers, it’s a tossup between electric busses and steel-on-steel electric subway trains.
Oh, and battery tech isn’t quite there yet to free the electric busses from some form of power- be it “third rail” delivered or overhead line delivered or something else.
November 1st, 2012 | 1:09 pm
Interesting..I’d suggest that they connect about 9 to 10 buses together and put really wide doors (well, as wide as subway doors) and use the platform to pre-board people to save time; so they can move about 2500 people in 3 minutes. Wait, isn’t that what trains do now? So the battery and the driving computer is only difference ? At least it serves the symbolic function of being ‘unplugged from the grid’ ! There’s something very Andrew Sullivan-esque about this, you wonder whether peple are just saying things because they like the sound of it; sorry could not resist it..
November 1st, 2012 | 2:55 pm
As a wild-eyed libertarian radical, I personally like subway trains. I think they add to a city’s character and tourist appeal, and are probably worth paying a little bit more for than buses. However I don’t think government should be running them. Getting the State involved increases the cost of everything it touches, and providing transportation is not a proper function of government anyway.
Privatization obviously has the potential to greatly reduce costs and improve service, but privatization done wrong can be a squandered opportunity, as the history of post-Soviet Russia shows. It would need to be done in a way that enhances market competition, benefits the public, and doesn’t result in a giveaway to the politically connected.
Here’s a novel possibility — sell off the individual subway cars to independent operators, limited to ownership of one car per operator, and require them each to operate on a set schedule fixed by a management company contracted for that purpose.
Let each operator enhance, decorate, etc., their individual cars as they chose, and charge whatever fares they desired while requiring them to contribute a set amount to the management company sufficient to cover maintenance costs.
If you were waiting in the subway and didn’t like the prices being charged by one car, or thought it was too dirty or shabby or whatever, you’d just wait for the next one to come along. There would be a set schedule, so you could plan to arrive at the right time to catch the cheap or luxury car of your choice. Strictly prohibit any price collusion between car operators, and penalize them for failing to keep on schedule or for having safety violations that result in actual harm.
Free market competition would keep prices low and service innovative. Car operators on certain lines at certain times of day might offer free onboard entertainment, food and beverage service, historian guides, etc. The variety of options sure to sprout up in such a system would offer something for everyone and make it fun and exciting to ride the subway.
November 1st, 2012 | 3:32 pm
Here are a few ways to improve the proposed electric bus system:
1. To deal with the high volume of traffic, we could connect several busses together, to form chains.
2. We could remove the costs of maintaining batteries by providing a continuous power supply along each bus route, in the form of a powered rail.
3. Since the busses will be following fixed routes, we could increase efficiency by installing steel guides for the busses to follow, so they always take an optimal path along their routes.
4. Even more efficiently, we could replace the rubber tires on the busses with low-friction polished steel wheels. They could run along the tops of the steel guiderails.
These are such obvious improvements, I’m surprised no one has thought of them before!
November 2nd, 2012 | 3:43 pm
The damage is not as severe as you would think. Also the bus idea is idiotic – right now they are providing FLEETS of buses to make up for the lack of service between brooklyn and manhattan and do you know the size of the lines to get on them? Last night it took three hours for me to get home – most of that time was waiting to get on a bus. The lines were up to 12 BLOCKS long! A train on rails is the most efficient means to mass move people (other than using a transporter beam ala Star Trek). Once they restore power (this Sat 11-3) to lower Manhattan a lot more lines should come online connecting the 2 boroughs….
November 3rd, 2012 | 3:47 pm
I lived in Astoria, Queens for ten years. For five of those years the nearest subway line to my flat, the R Train, was unavailable on the weekends. To get into the city required a 25 minute walk to the elevated N Train. Five years to rebuild the tracks. This was going on all over the city. Gas or battery powered modules or “buses” is a legitimate alternative. Surely it wouldn’t have taken fives years to repave concrete pathways. They used to have a saying for this — “jobs for the boys.” Here in South East Michigan they are about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for light rail in Detroit that goes six miles. Six miles in a city of 138 square miles. A half empty city by the way. And a vastly larger suburban population. Madness. Buses, powered by gas and guided by GPS would be vastly cheaper, more efficient, and would cover more territory. Less time freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer at uncovered stops. Modern public policy is almost always policy that prospers the few and makes life miserable for the many.
I haven’t mentioned the famous MTA “job actions” in which motormen deliberately held trains back and vandalized the schedules and made millions late for work when it suited their purposes during negotiations. In one case it was done simply in response to negative news coverage in the media.
This obsession with light rail is just one more effort to destroy faith in the integrity of the public institution even as they insist the Goverment is the Community, not, as Martin Buber said, a community of communities.
And you saw this narcissicism and inflexibility in Mayor Bloomberg’s truly bizarre attempt to run the Marathan.
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