![]() ![]() And this neglects the Long Island Railroad, Metro North, NJ Transit, and PATH systems entirely.”Īnd, of course, New York City’s population has only grown since Frumin made his calculations in 2009. Somewhere in the middle would be 67 West Side Highways or 76 Brooklyn Bridges. ![]() “At best, it would take 167 inbound lanes, or 84 copies of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, to carry what the NYC Subway carries,” Frumin concludes, “at worst, 200 new copies of 5th Avenue. Putting all those people in cars would add 324,000 vehicles to Midtown at once. The amount of space needed for all those cars to park, Frumin concluded, is around 3.8 square miles, the equivalent of three Central Parks.īack when Frumin was doing the math, the subway moved more than 1,000 people into the Central Business District every six seconds of the morning rush. In 2009, a data expert named Michael Frumin, currently the lead research scientist for Lyft’s New York City operations, asked and answered a terrifying question: What if everyone in New York City drove to work? What’s So Bad About More Cars On the Road? If even a fraction of those people drove, New York City would grind to a halt. The Metropolitan Transit Authority has predicted that, at most, only 60 percent of their former customers will return to public transit this year. The remaining 40 percent adds up to some 3.5 million people. In New York, car sales and driving habits constitute a serious threat.īefore COVID-19 hit, New York City hosted the third most traffic-jammed streets in America. In recent weeks, the number of cars on New York roads rose by 25,000. While in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, traffic levels plummeted, in the months that have followed, congestion has begun to climb. Upstand Movement, an organization that advocates for accessibility for families and pregnant people, found that a majority of parents and guardians polled were considering the purchase of a car in the near future. Some suspect that parents coping with lockdown conditions and the end of childcare may be driving the trend. But in New York City, a few data points indicate a rise in residents buying cars. Right now, car sales are down across the U.S. #Carmageddon 2 arrow keys fullA full 85 percent of Americans polled said they thought biking was safer than public transit when it came to COVID-19 distancing.īut the bicycle is not the only physically distant form of transportation with newfound adherents. According to Trek’s survey, this is no coincidence. reportedly sold 600 percent more bikes since the lockdown then this time last year. The New York City bicycle manufacturer Brooklyn Bicycle Co. This trend has not skipped New York City. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, local bike shop King Kog sold four years worth of inventory in just two months. Even Google searches for “best bike” doubled. Sales of “leisure bikes” are up a whopping 121 percent. sales of bicycles, equipment, and repair services are double what they were last year. Market research shows that across the U.S. Bicycling is booming, and all indicators point to more ahead.Ī national poll by the Trek Bicycle Company found that, of Americans who own a bike, one in five are riding more than ever, and more than half plan to ride even more once the pandemic has passed. What does this mean for the future of the most transit-reliant city in America? It could go one of two ways - a bike boom or a carmageddon - and for a little while longer, New York City actually has a chance to choose what the future holds.ĭeclining public transit ridership is not the only transportation indicator to come out of New York City’s COVID-19 lockdown. And the New York Stock Exchange recently barred its 3,000 employees from riding public transit. A recent poll found that nearly half of New Yorkers plan to avoid the subway entirely, even after the quarantine ends. Two months into the crisis, ridership was down 93 percent. There are strong arguments that New York City’s death toll had more to do with officials’ slow response to the virus than crowded buses and trains, but nonetheless, the perceived risk of contagion on public transit is strong among New Yorkers. These divergent futures are inextricable from the toll that COVID-19 is taking on America’s largest, densest city, and the fact that, for decades, the majority of New Yorkers have relied on public buses and subways to get where they want to go. New York City’s future is unwritten, but all evidence points to two divergent paths - one buoyed by people biking and walking, the other crippled by unending car traffic. ![]()
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