Relieving Traffic Congestion in Major Urban Areas

              The daily woes caused by traffic congestion are a key concern to commuters across the United States.  As gasoline prices have soared, they are also an economic challenge as well, wasting vast amounts of fuel.  The environmental impact is obvious, but solutions are not as clear.  Many of the responses to this vexing issue concentrate on punitive measures to motorists, including the imposition of tolls, restrictions on movement, limiting parking, and special fees to enter main business districts during specified hours.  These responses, opponents contend, ignore the root causes of congestion, and offer little in the way of immediate or long range solutions.  As a case study, This edition of The Five Minute Briefing will examine one of the most congested cities in the United States, and the proposed solutions of the local mayor. 

            New York City’s five boroughs rest on several islands and the mainland. The most populous, Brooklyn and Queens, are on Long Island; the least populated, on its own island, Staten Island; The Bronx is on the American mainland and, of course, there is Manhattan Island, the lower portion of which is the central business district for the region.  Each morning and evening, roads, bridges and tunnels onto Manhattan Island are filled to capacity with commuters entering and leaving.   Estimates of the cost of these delays range up to seven billion dollars (NYC ENCLO) annually. Even during the non-rush hours, traffic is generally heavy and extraordinarily slow. The city’s subways and buses are frequently crowded up to their maximum safe capacity.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg has attempted to address this problem on several occasions.  As a means to discourage private autos, he sought to impose tolls on those bridges linking Manhattan to Long Island and The Bronx, a move that failed to win general support. He recently attempted to impose “congestion pricing,” a concept that would have levied tolls or fees on motorists entering lower Manhattan during rush hours.  The move was rejected by the state government.

            Opponents of congestion pricing describe a fatal flaw in the proposals. They state that unless Bloomberg is willing to preside over a precipitous drop in Manhattan’s commerce, any reduction in automobile usage unaccompanied by a simultaneous increase in capacity in other forms of transportation would have rendered the concept useless.  They point out that if all those who use autos to commute stopped using their cars and attempted to take buses and subways, there would be no room for them, and it would be many years until any infrastructure improvements could be built, if they could be built at all. With the subways and buses already jammed to capacity, displaced motorists would have no mass transit alternatives. There has been no definitive statistics provided indicating that funds collected from tolls would have been sufficient to finance mass transit alternatives.  However, even if they did, it would take years before those adequate alternatives could be constructed, and in the interim, both commuters and local businesses would have suffered a serious, if not catastrophic, blow.   

              Over the last half century, New York City has actually lost non-vehicular alternatives. Part of the subway service it boasted over three-quarters of a century ago is gone. The elimination of many of the famous “el” lines, (elevated subways in Manhattan and portions of The Bronx and Brooklyn) was performed at the behest of local real estate developers who believed that the noisy trains reduced the value of their property, leaving key areas of NYC underserved.  Over the years, a number of attempts to develop wholly new subways lines have been unsuccessful.  Further, as the city’s population has become more far flung (particularly in the northeast section of The Bronx as well as in Queens) whole, newly developed parts of America’s mightiest urban center have been left with no subway service at all.  Indeed, the subway system is, comparatively, about 15% smaller today than it was in 1938.  Informal attempts, such as private or “dollar” vans, to supplement the city’s mass transit have been discouraged or even outlawed.   A limited system of “express buses” seeks to serve outlaying areas of the city, at a price about 2.5 times as high as normal subway and bus fares.

            But it is not only the subways that have been relatively ignored. Despite its fortunate location between the Hudson and East rivers,  and on New York  harbor, waterborne commuting is at a minimum.  The Staten Island Ferry is viable and reliable, but it serves only the least populated portion of the city.  Elsewhere, ferry service is minimal and costly.  Even waterborne cargo is barely 1% of the 1964 level.  It is ironic that both the city and state that were born and grew to prominence based on maritime commerce—from the Atlantic Ocean to the Erie Canal—have virtually turned their backs on this vital avenue.  

            Cargo rail lines have been allowed to wither away.  There has been a sharp reduction in the number of rail carriers serving the city. Cargo destined for the five boroughs from the rest of the USA must detour all the way to Albany, hundreds of miles,  before crossing the Hudson. Even then, cargo rail lines to the city are few. The result is that the bulk of cargo must be offloaded from the rails and shipped the rest of the way by truck.  For over a century, plans have been made to build a cross-harbor tunnel to the mainland for the specific purpose of allowing cargo trains to enter and leave the city.  There has been no progress made. 

Conclusion:  There is universal agreement that congestion in central urban areas is a serious issue, and that action must be taken to improve it. However, punitive measures such as tolls, fees, and movement restrictions bear little opportunity for success unless alternative transportation options are simultaneously provided.

Labels: congestion