.RUSH-HOUR--  --    ------------

The chief part of the subway's business is carrying people to and from their jobs. In those early morning and late afternoon ninety minutes everyone seems to be on the subway. Those are the unbearable periods for which the subway is notorious. Because no practical system could have the enormous reserve capacity to give every rider a seat during peak periods. Even just giving every rush hour rider uncrowded standing space would require so many trains as to make the per ride cost prohibitive. Belmont was right, the rush hour crush is unavoidable.

That however does not mean a ride during peak hours must of necessity be a brutal and humiliating experience. Rush hour can be civilized.

Consider, being part of a dense crowd on a platform is not really unbearable. Nor does having to be a strap-hanger make rush hour so terrible. Horrendous is the struggle into the train through the doors, and the battle out again. Detraining is not just a scramble within the packed crowd to the doors before they close; when they are reached it means prevailing over the in-rushing surge. The horror is getting on and off.

It comes down to too many people determined to squeeze through too few doors.

But why are there not more doors?

Because the seats line the sides of the cars.

Why? Why must the seats line the sides of the cars? Why not rush hour carriages without seats where, to the degree structurally possible, the walls are maximally devoted to doors? Why not seatless rush hour trains with one conventional carriage in the front and one in the back reserved for the aged and infirm? Most trains are even now rested during off peak hours when the 2 to 5 minute head time is reduced to between 5 to 20 minutes. Effectively there are now special rush hour trains, except that they are not especially designed for their role.

Alternatively, why not seats stretching down the center of the train? That would permit at least a doubling of doors. More than a doubling if the doors parted vertically.

                ;    Financing the Subway

The subway must be profitable. It needs its own independent income. As long as it is dependent on subsidies it will have a pauper's fate. While ruled by politicians it will serve special constituencies and not the general public.

It was built quickly and well, and at a very reasonable cost, as a profit-making business. As such it was efficiently operated and ambitiously enlarged. It did not require a subsidy even though its fare was half of the dime which its predecessor, the horse drawn omnibuses had charged. It even remained profitable for a good while after inflation began melting the value of the nickel.

Today only a fraction of the subway's enormous potential is serving the public. Apart from becoming air-conditioned, the subway has not undergone any significant improvement for a century. It is not more comfortable, it is not faster, nor handsomer, or safer or cheaper. The reverse is true. The battle to keep it going long ago replaced all ambition to realize its potential. A program of continuous modernization, steady service improvements and radical expansion is long overdue. New lines are required on the West Side and the East Side of Manhattan and to Staten Island. Underground lines to both New York airports and to Newark are a necessity. Runs at 80 + mph out to Nassau and up to Westchester are in order. The subway must serve public needs, not map demarcations or political shibboleths.

Real improvements would be expensive. How could they be paid for?

With funds that are earned. The subway must be allowed to earn a good living. Substantially sums are waiting to be realized by optimizing existing money streams and by sinking wells into brand new revenue strata. The drill bits to this golden ore are business-people with ingenuity. Given incentives they will harness themselves to the task and pull the subway to prosperity.

It is a potential gold mine because mass transit is inherently efficient. It has a guaranteed daily 3.5 million passenger ridership. It is a huge, established, paid for system. Its core operation has a single motorman and conductor giving rides to thousands at a time. Many of the stations, while requiring only a handful of attendants, process hundreds of thousands of passengers a day with their turnstiles and fare cards.

Automation can yet achieve more economies. A computerize track and signal system can eliminate motormen and create a safer system. Both station and track maintenance can be improved with automation. Substantial reduction are possible in the army of tens of thousands currently snoring in the nooks and crannies of the system.

But the real money lies elsewhere, in a much more sophisticated operation. The current management is struggling just to keep the machinery of a hundred year old system running. A new management is required to build and operate the considerably more complex subway that is on the horizon.

The indispensable first step is to accept the fact that exceptional people will not harness themselves to an enterprise under the thumbs of politicians. Outstanding talent will not struggle just to create new sources of revenue for Tammany Hall. A new subway needs significant independence. Its managers will have to have a substantial stake in its success. Offered real incentives entrepreneurs will go into the tunnels and bring out gold, enough to reward themselves and to give New Yorkers the subway of the future at a pittance a ride.


1.    FREIGHT:

It is well known that railroads make their money in freight. Freight hauling is profitable. It is also well known that trucks are New York's bane. They congest traffic, polute the air and destroy the roadbed.

Yes, the subway is the solution to the city's congestion and pollution problem, and freight service is the answer to the subway's need for funds. The system is vastly underutilized after 10 PM. Between midnight and 6 AM trains run only every 20 - 30 minutes. The subway can be used to haul freight through the night. That is how the city can be best provisioned. Manhattan, and subsequently even the outer boroughs' business districts, need to be closed to most trucks. Once the city can offer a container transport alternative such an ordinance would be acceptable. A handful of cargo terminals uptown and downtown would be sufficient. Containers would be lowered down onto flat-bed railcars and then raised up onto alternate energy vans which would shuttle the goods to their end users. Such a service could be offered at a reasonable cost to business. It would relieve NY's traffic congestion, help fund the subway, while making the air breathable and the sidewalks livable.

The subway already has a nascent freight branch. The South Brooklyn Railway Co., with over 6.5 miles of track in Brooklyn starts in lower Brooklyn Bay. Its waterfront yard is at 39 St and 2nd Avenue next to the Bush Terminal. It terminates in the repair shop at Conney Island. Before prohibition the SOB carried freight for breweries. It also picked up rubbish and ashes and pulled them to landfills in Conney Island. In 1929 it initiated door to door delivery of carload freight for trailer trucks. Originally it had operated freight trolleys in Brooklyn. It still uses former trolley tracks besides the subway tunnels. It owns no freight cars but it pulls boxcars from all of the country and Canada. It now has 2 diesel locomotives. Until 1955 it operated electric locomotives dating from 1904. Freight was a profitable business for 5 decades.

A freight service was operating as early as 15 September 1904 on the 3rd and 9th Avenue els. The US Express Company transported livestock and other cargo in baggage cars in five round tips a day from Morris Street to points uptown. Until 1919 even the US Post Office used  the front platforms of  el cars to carry mail.


2.    SANITATION:

Presently a sanitation crew picks up garbage for half a day and spends the afternoon driving out to the dump site, emptying the vehicle, and returning to the depot.

Moreover, the city's landfills and rubbish dumps are rapidly filling up. A substantial part of each day's garbage haul is already being railroaded to dumps in other states. Before long all of New York's daily refuse will be taking that journey.

Sanitation container depots above the subway tracks are a solution. Instead of spending half a day taking a truck full of garbage to a dump, a sanitation crew could simply release its load down a chute into a container on a flatbed rail car sitting on a spur. Alternatively, a detachable refuse container could be unhitched and lowered in its totality down onto the waiting flatbed railcars. At the same time the sanitation crew would pick up an empty container and resume collecting garbage. At night the flatbed rail car on the tracks below would then be tightly closed and assembled into a train for the journey to a distant landfill.

The sanitation crew would be saved the long journey to a landfill. The truck and crew would be available for an afternoon of garbage collecting. Substantial fuel savings and increased manpower and equipment utilization would accrue. Private refuse and rubble carriers could also economize through this service. But most of all it would be a major new revenue source for the subway.


3.    SHOPPING MALLS:

The Tokyo subway was built n 1927. Subsequently many of its main stations were converted into huge concourses. An enormous mall runs under Zürich's main train station. Most cities in Europe and Canada have such underground shopping areas. Many of New York's subway stations can be similarly deepened, widened and enlarged. Even local stations could be expanded to create space for rows of substantial shops.

Such an expansion would not hurt, but would help today's retailers. It would put a break on the exorbitant store rental market. Moreover, retailers could offer customers the chance to pick up their purchases in a subway branch, allowing for shopping unencumbered by packages. Shoppers would themselves carry home many items which currently require costly truck delivery.