New York City Doesn’t Work Without the Subway
Commuting is changing, but there’s no realistic scenario in which Manhattan bounces fully back to life while its underground network founders.
Empty seats don’t tell the whole story; the subway is still essential to New York City.
Source: Bloomberg
The pedal-assist electric bikes available since early last year at Citi Bike stations around New York City have transformed my morning commute, now that I’m heading into the office again most mornings. I biked to work occasionally before their arrival, but generally avoided doing so if the temperature was much above 60 degrees (about 16 degrees Celsius) because that meant getting to the office soaked in sweat. Now I can make the trip even on sweltering mornings as I conquer the hills of Central Park with only modest exertion. E-bikes effectively transform New Amsterdam’s topography into Amsterdam’s, and you know how popular bikes are in Amsterdam. What’s more, any bike allows one to travel through the crowded city without sharing an enclosed space with others, which has its attractions in a pandemic or post-pandemic or whatever it is we’re living through right now.
Still, there are limits to this mobility revolution. If I want to be confident of finding one of these e-bikes anywhere near my apartment on a weekday morning, I have to be out the door before 7:15. To be sure of getting one to ride home, I’d need to leave work not long after 4. Getting an e-bike isn’t such a priority for the evening commute, since I’m generally OK with arriving home soaked in sweat, but wait long enough and there aren’t Citi Bikes of any sort left in Midtown Manhattan. Here’s the view from the app at 6:30 one evening last month. I took the subway.