Subway Psychology

"A person is smart. People are dumb."

Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) Men in Black

If aliens landed on Earth, what would their impression be?

Not very positive, if their landing zone was anywhere near a Subway station during rush hour.

Something about public transport brings out the worst in people. We transform from rational, intelligent beings into selfish, stubborn creatures as soon as we disappear underground.

Humanity has sent man to the moon and split the atom, yet stick sixty of us in a subway car and suddenly we're just animals again. We bustle and nudge aside other passengers on the platform. We desperately try to cram three hundred people into a carriage designed for sixty.

Today, a fat man tried to squeeze himself into the overstuffed compartment of the Uptown E Train, his ample backside squished between the carriage doors. His hefty buttocks were preventing the door from shutting, but he feigned innocence and astonishment when the conductor demanded: "Stand CLEAR of the door, Sir."

Riding twenty blocks uptown wasn't a very pleasant experience. Thank goodness I'm tall. A lot of the shorter people on the train found themselves eye-to-armpit or worse.

But, of course, acting idiotic on public transport is not an American invention. New Yorkers might be thoughtless and selfish as they wage their war against the other commuters, but they know the all-important rule. Don't do anything that might delay the train.

The greatest example of subway stupidity I've witnessed was on the Paris Metro, when the sliding doors simply refused to close because so many people were stuffed into the compartment.

"Move forward!" The conductor demanded. "Make room for the doors to close!"

As the passengers in the compartment breathed in and shuffled forward, they created about six inches of free space for the doors to close. Except before they could, an entire wave of eager passengers stepped off the platform to fill the newly vacated space.

If looks could kill, that conductor would be France's greatest serial killer.

Why Americans drive big cars...

Curiously, the commute to the office in Lawrenceville is exactly the same distance as my old commute from Winchester to Ocean/Power FM. 40 miles a day.

In my lunch break today, I did some idle calculation.

Based on the current exchange rate, the cost of petrol in the UK and New Jersey and the mileage my cars got here and in England, I came to a staggering conclusion.

Even though my '86 Lincoln Town Car has an engine 150% larger than my Volvo 480 - and neatly does half as many miles per gallon - it's still a whopping 25% more expensive to drive from Winchester to Fareham and back (40 miles) than it is to drive from North Brunswick to Lawrenceville (also 40 miles.)

Of course, in England my commute took 20 minutes at 80mph. Here it takes 40 minutes at anywhere between 55mph (the speed limit) and a standstill (because of the millions of traffic lights on US Route 1.)

But with maths like that, no wonder people in America are still happy driving 'big' cars.

But it's not so much that America grants indulgence to gas-guzzlers. My commute up to New York City is also shocking. A round-trip (that's a return ticket, folks) costs $21.50 and my subway tickets on the Uptown E Train cost $4 there and back. To get to HQ in London, my return train ticket from Winchester to Waterloo was £40 and my Tube tickets were £4 each. On today's exchange rate, that works out as $96 compared to $24.50.

That's almost a quarter of the price!

No wonder we couldn't afford to live in England.

Oh, it goes without saying that the $24.50 you pay to get from New Brunswick station to the corner of 49th and 6th includes train service that runs on time and pretty much guarantees you a seat.

British Rail? If you were a dog, we'd take you out back and shoot you.

Congestion Charge to Come to New York City

Taking a leaf out of "Red" Ken Livingston's book, New York City Major Michael Bloomberg unveiled plans for an $8 "Congestion Pricing Strategy." Drivers could face a fee commuting into New York's central borough, Manhattan.

Similar in principle to the £8 congestion charge for driving through the centre of London (although half it's price) Bloomberg's charge is intended to ease congestion, improve air quality and help raise $31 MILLION for new rail links, tunnels, subways and buses.

It's just one of 127 energy conserving measures unveiled on "Earth Day," intended to help America's biggest city cut it's carbon footprint. The plan is backed by 70 businesses, civic and green groups - but still has to make it's way through the state government before it can be implimented.

That won't be easy. Over 60% of drivers in New York are against the fee - despite being informed by Bloomberg's spin doctors that Londoners over in the UK overwhelmingly supported their similar congestion charge. Not that it would have mattered. Unlike Bloomberg, Ken Livingston had the clout to bring in the congestion charge whether Londoners liked it or not.

Before New York votes on the issue, they'll hopefully examine the lessons Londoners have learned following the introduction of the charge. The most obvious of these being the effect the charge has had on local businesses.

John Lewis reported an 8% drop in revenue in central London since the introduction of the charge - while revenue outside of the area was actually on the rise. The drop in revenue suggests that the charge didn't encourage people to take public transport instead of the car - it simply dissuaded them from entering London at all.

Herein lies the greatest problem with the London congestion charge - and possibly New York's.

The key to making people switch from private to public transport isn't found in raising the cost of driving. It's in making public transport an attractive alternative to cars.

If public transport was quicker, more reliable and cheaper, more people would use it. It's as simple as that. But instead, the British government is stuck in an idiotic mindset of raising prices without offering alternatives.

One recent moment of genius (which I blogged about here - British Trains are Awful and Expensive) was to increase the cost of rail travel to reduce congestion. It succeeded - but only by reducing the number of people who could afford to travel by train.

We can only hope that people in New York are smarter than that - and instead of hoping a congestion charge will solve all their traffic and smog problems, they'll take the initiative to redirect that revenue into the public transport system where it's needed most.

New York might surprise us all - and prove that a Congestion Charge isn't necessarily a bad thing - but the way it's implemented in London is.