Overview of The New York Transportation

New York City constantly finds ways to improve its transportation system to reduce traffic congestions in its streets and protect the pedestrians from vehicle attacks. The city of New York undertakes these improvements through the addition of a new subway line, Uber and Lyft one-year caps, and the placements of concrete barricades on the sidewalk. Although, through these attempts of advancements to the transportation system it induced setbacks that affect the health of the commuters, immigrant-minorities’ income, and caused more congestion on the sidewalks. Subway lines are ideal to improve the traffic congestion on the road, as it provides commuters options to travel by subway trains instead, of suffering in traffic when driving a car on the road of New York City. Before the subway, in the 70’s, the city of New York thought that it was ideal to have minibuses to carry twenty to thirty people around the city, and to have those buses to travel on their own lane, closed from public vehicles. Although, the subway is proved to be a more efficient way to move people in urban city with an ever-advancing technology and increasing population.

Thus, the city of New York continued upon the idea of subways, and recently they constructed a new subway line called the “Second Avenue Subway line”, it was in construction for almost 100 years. As I learned in the lectures, about 55% of the world’s population live in urban cities like New York City, and it will eventually increase to about 66% in the future. Therefore, subway lines are important to the movement of people, as it will promote efficient travelling rather than the promotion of driving in a car that will only increase traffic on the road. In result of this perceived reduction of cars on the road, this will reduce the outdoor pollution of vehicles, creating a healthier environment for those who are living or visiting the city of New York, especially for the tourist, as New York is a highly known for its tourist attractions. Although, this introduces another problem, how is the air quality underground? In Barcelona, comparisons were made between the air quality in their subway lines and the streets, and it was found that the air quality in the subway lines was poorer, the air pollution was greater underground. Although, there were no negative short-term effects on the respiratory health on people constructing or riding on a subway, like in Stockholm, likely due to the fact of safety precautions were made before the construction of the subway. In which, New York City has to properly regulate the air quality in their subway lines to avoid contradictions of reducing air pollution in New York City. Therefore, the city of New York must invest money to not only improve the transportation of people by creating subway lines but to maintain a healthy air quality for commuters to travel around the city. To further reduce the traffic congestion on the streets of New York, the city has capped the number of Uber/Lyft drivers on the road. Uber and Lyft are relatively new transportation services that essentially act the same way as a New York yellow cab or taxis.

The difference between a New York taxi and an Uber/Lyft car is that the screening for the drivers for Uber and Lyft are much more lenient. This means that Uber/Lyft drivers will have issues on safety and hygiene requirements that are not up to the expectations of taxi drivers. The capping of the number of Uber/Lyft drivers is great as it will further reduce the number of cars on the road and reduce the concerns of safety and hygiene on such cars. Although, this negatively affects the independent workers of Uber/Lyft, mostly immigrantsand minorities, as they rely on this service to produce income for there living in the city. The services of Uber and Lyft provides algorithm price-fixing depending on the distance of the destination rather than the time it takes to arrive at the destination. This helps each Uber/Lyft drivers as it reduces competition between them and makes each driver an independent contractor. New York City may reduce the number of cars on the road by capping off the number of Uber/Lyft drivers but it negatively affects the income opportunities for those who are struggling to live in a city like New York. This may also connect to previous point of subway lines, as the potential Uber/Lyft drivers are struggling to create a living for themselves, it will be more difficult for them to provide money for the city to improve the subway systems in the city that eventually go into the regulation of air pollution of the streets and underground of New York.

Bicycles are a great alternative piece of transportation for commuters to use for an urban city like New York City Although, when bicycles and cars have to share the road, bicycle fatalities are bound to happen. Bicycle fatalities are common in an urban city. For example, in 2005, New York city saw an increase of bicycle fatalities. This sparked New York to create solutions to prevent the number of fatalities to increase. Accordingly, New York City created bike lanes that are similar to Toronto’s bike lanes. Although, this may have reduced the number of casualties, but it did not fully stop the conflict between cyclist and drivers. In 2017, there was vehicle attack, specifically a rental truck, that ran through a bike lane that killed eight pedestrians and injured twelve. Immediately after the attack, New York set concrete barricades to block vehicles from entering the bike lane and to protect the cyclist from vehicle attacks. In one side, this is a positive as it allows for pedestrians who choose to ride a bicycle to traverse around the city to feel safe.

On the other hand, this created congestion on both the bike lanes and the sidewalks of New York. If the cyclist are protected from vehicular attacks, the pedestrians on foot must be also protected from such attacks. When, I was in New York this summer, the sidewalks of Time Square and Broadway had concrete barriers on the middle of the sidewalks. This funneled the pedestrians in between the barriers creating congestion. This was at its worst at peak hours of the day, since it was summer, the tourist, and workers were all congested onto one sidewalk. It created chaos as the cyclist are forced into sharing the road with cars when the sidewalks and bike lanes are congested due to the concrete barricades. Therefore, New York’s implementation of bike lanes were ineffective as they did not stop the vehicle attacks from happening, yet the addition of concrete barricades limited vehicles from entering the bike lanes and sidewalks, later it was considered to be adding on to the congestion that New York already had it its streets.