What Happened When I Decommissioned A Subway

本站添加: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]the New York City subway. Too dirty, too crowded, too dangerous. Well, at least that's what the US Secretary of Transportation says. So today, we're going to take all of that very literally. And we're not only going to defund the subway, we're just going to decommission it all together and give New Yorkers what they've been yearning for, enough roadway capacity to drive to their hearts content, just like real Americans. And to figure all this out, we're going to have to dig into some data, do some capacity analysis, and make some pretty tough choices about right of way. I did a lot of shooting on location for this one last week. So, New York, it's time to put away your coastal elite ways and start living like a proper US citizen. Because you guys, it's 2026. Subways are old technology.

[00:00:48]It's time to stop forcing New Yorkers into cramped metal boxes underground where they have to ride shoulderto-shoulder with undesirabs and give them a taste of the quality of life all other Americans enjoy. In the last week, the Trump administration launched the Freedom to Drive initiative aimed at solving congestion by expanding and maximizing roadway capacity, a strategy that's never been known to fail. In other words, it's time for New York to stop shoving its cosmopolitan urbanist values down everyone's throat and just get with the program. Because in the most recent census data, almost 50% of New Yorkers took transit for their work commute. It's completely horrifying. So, we're going to redesign the transportation system so they can live more like residents of real America, say Oklahoma City. Now, it is a lot to ask to rescue the whole city all at once.

[00:01:44]So, here's what we're doing today. We're going to undertake the Lexington Avenue improvement project. That's right. We're going to take what I believe is still New York's most busy and crowded transit corridor, the Lexington Avenue line, decommission it, and give these longsuffering riders the roadway capacity they need so they can all drive just as God intended. I'm talking about the four, five, and six lines where they run under Lexington Park and Lafayette from 125th Street all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge. And we're going to simplify the alignment and widen the corridor with as much pavement as we need. And how much is that? Well, to figure it out, we're going to have to take a traffic engineering approach and do some math. We need to know how many people are using the Lexington Avenue line at peak hour because peak hour is what a traffic engineer sizes for. And luckily, we have this report from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, NIMTIC, Hubbound Travel Data 2024. It comes out annually, and it's like my favorite report in the history of planning and engineering. The 2019 edition inspired one of the first videos I ever did. The idea of the report is that the area of Manhattan below 60th is uniquely powerful within the region's economy and I would argue the nation's economy and understanding how people travel in and out of the hub, what modes they use, what routes and what times a day is critical to planning and policym and this kind of data collection isn't new. The report says since the first hubbound survey in 1924, private motor vehicles, including autos, taxis, vans, and trucks, have been the second most common mode of transportation after the subway system. 2024 was no exception with close to 2 million people entering the hub by subway on a typical weekday and just around 750,000 by motor vehicle. There's no 2025 report yet, but my intel is since the advent of the congestion relief zone below 60th in January 2025. Motor vehicle traffic is down 11% and transit ridership is up 7%.

[00:03:58]Not very American. Anyway, the hubbound report documents travel on a single typical weekday, October 16th, 2024, and it slices and dices the data all kinds of ways. What we want to look at is the hourly by direction for Lexington Avenue subway lines. So the four and five which generally run express with limited stops through Manhattan and the six which makes all local stops. According to the report, the combined ridership at peak hour, peak direction is 25,612 passengers at 5:00 p.m. northbound.

[00:04:34]Basically PM peak hour. Now let's calculate the number of vehicles. I'm going to divide by 1.1, which is a pretty typical vehicle occupancy assumption. And that means we have to account for 23,284 northbound motor vehicles to replace all the subway trips. Also, there are already 730 vehicles on Lexington in the 5:00 p.m. hour. And this is a little apples and oranges since the subway number is northbound and Lexington Avenue runs one way southbound. But I feel pretty good about rounding this to a single direction peak hour vehicle demand of 24,000. So how many lanes do we need? Well, in travel demand modeling, you would assume 1,800 vehicles per hour per lane for a freeway. That's free flow travel. One car every 2 seconds past a fixed point.

[00:05:25]Well, let's not get crazy here. We aren't building a freeway down the middle of Manhattan. So, the next step down is a suburban style principal arterial, which you could call a strode if you're being unkind. For this type of facility, you'd model it at like 1,200 vehicles per hour per lane. So, it's not free flow, but it's a suburban environment where you assume your principal arterial is getting at least 2/3 of the green time at most traffic signals, and there isn't much in the way of other complications like delays due to pedestrian crossing activity. Well, Manhattan is not a suburban environment.

[00:06:02]Instead, we need to model it as an urban arterial, and for that, you'd usually assume something like 800 vehicles per hour per lane under the theory that you're getting roughly half the green time at signals, and you've got all the additional sources of delay in the urban environment. Now, I'm just using model assumptions at face value. The reality is traffic is way more complicated and dynamic than this, especially in a place like Manhattan. I have a whole video on the nonlinear nature of traffic congestion if you're interested in that particular rabbit hole. Okay, you can see where this is going. We've got 24,000 motor vehicles to accommodate in a single direction. One lane is going to handle 800. That's 30 lanes in one direction. Real America uses 12T lanes, not whatever New York has because real Americans drive real cars. So that's 360 ft on each side of the center line of Lexington Avenue. A total of 720 ft, not counting sidewalks or bike lanes or bus lanes. Not that we want any of that anyway. Doesn't account for on street parking either, which we probably need copious amounts of. The bottom line is we're basically going to have to eminent domain an entire city block on either side of Lexington and Lafayette all the way down the island of Manhattan. So, the good news is the long-suffering riders of the Lexington Avenue line will now be able to enjoy the blissful experience that is driving a car in Manhattan. But the bad news is there's a lot of stuff within a block of the center line we're going to have to give up. So, let's say our final goodbyes as we get ready to bring New York into the 21st century. Let's start with some obvious stuff. City Hall itself directly in the blast radius as well as the municipal building seems kind of catastrophic to lose the very seat of local government. But on the other hand, by the time we get done here, there isn't going to be that much of the city left to govern anyway. Also, the court system pretty overrated in the large scheme of things. I mean, you're going to spend a lot less time administering justice when there are so many fewer jobs and residents in your city. all this vertical stacking. Maybe it seemed like a good idea when the Chrysler building went up a 100 years ago, but the world has moved on. Even relatively newer stuff like 601 Lexington, eh, the structural integrity is kind of questionable anyway. So, condemning the entire block is just the prudent thing to do. Okay, this next one is tough. A lot of effort went into saving Grand Central Terminal from the wrecking ball in the 1960s, but it's time to accept that there's no longer much demand for fast, frequent, efficient regional rail travel. It's a technology whose time has passed, and what real Americans want is to be stuck behind the wheel of a car for hours on end. The modernization project proposed here doesn't touch the Metro North lines that run under Park Avenue, although those are right at the edge of the eminent domain zone, but just in case you're wondering, those carry around 25,000 passengers in the morning peak hour. Just try not to think too much about how many lanes of traffic that is. Places of religious worship, sadly not in this corridor's future.

[00:09:22]Places of secular worship, also gone.

[00:09:25]Entertainment venues not really important in the large scheme of things and there's a lot of housing that just has to go to be honest. We'll all be better off. All it does is generate traffic. In fact, I saw a few places where they're trying to add even more population density on the corridor. Just stop it. These are already some of the most crowded living conditions anywhere in the US. And if developers would do a little market research, they'd realize that real Americans want a low density suburban lifestyle, not whatever all this is. More good news for New Yorkers.

[00:10:01]If you reduce population density, then you don't need all this neighborhood commercial. And even better, we're going to take out a department store, which is just a traffic generation nightmare anyway. And the nation's second largest bookstore. You guys just order ebooks.

[00:10:17]independent retailers are over. Also, New York already has too many Italies, so this one in Soho is expendable. Also, unfortunately, everything on Malberry and Ma is toast, too. It's all basically within the 350 ft center line, so that means no more Little Italy, but you know, there's probably a Majanos's Little Italy at a mall up in like Westchester County, so you'll be all right. Likewise, all the Indian and other South Asian places around the 28th Street station gone. And make sure to pay your last respects to the Latin and Caribbean bodeas and eeries up around 116th Street because we've got a very wide roadway to build. You know, dense urban environments are just inconvenient anyway. Too much stuff going on in limited space. Elevators coming up out of the sidewalk for loading in merchandise. Seems like an awful lot of trouble. Strip malls and loading docks have been invented. This is a solved problem. Several parks and public spaces are toast, including Grammarcy Park, which the Lexington Alignment bisects and let's face it, is not a real park anyway. this pedestrianized plaza, Aster Place, kind of charming if you go for that sort of thing, but it's not really going to work with 60 lanes of traffic running through it. And we're taking out all the adjacent land uses anyway, so what's the point? I guess one argument for not modernizing Lexington is all the quote unquote cool urban fabric you lose, which yeah, I suppose, but it's pretty subjective and frankly kind of elitist to dwell on that when the city has such significant motor vehicle capacity needs. You know, we didn't even talk about bike lanes yet. There are way too many of them in this city, including on the Lafayette segment. I don't think they're going to make it into the redesign. They're either for poor people who can't afford to drive a car or they're for coastal elites who are just virtue signaling. There's no in between.

[00:12:20]And whichever it is, none of those people are real Americans anyway. While we're on the topic, let's go down to Union Square where there's just far too much non-driving activity. And worse, the climate clock on the south side of 14th Street. It's an art installation that I've been looking at ever since the first time I came to New York in 2000.

[00:12:41]But in 2020, the clock portion was modified, and it now displays the years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds civilization has to effectively limit global warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, which scientists say is what's needed to limit the most challenging impacts on ecosystems, human health, and well-being. Well, they're going to have to relocate the climate clock because we have like 60 lanes of roadway to build. And finally, we're going to lose some institutions of higher learning. Cooper Union at Aster Place. Baroo has its own stop on the six line and a whole vertical campus, including a pedestrianized segment of 25th Street. Kind of a bastardization of what college should be. University campuses are supposed to be sprawling and bucolic. Everyone knows this. And besides, these are hot beds of progressive indoctrination. So, we're going to lose Baroo and Hunter, which is up at 68th Street and also has its own sixline station complete with vertical campus. You know, these cutuni schools don't even have football teams. What are we even doing here? Sad to see all the folks at Hunter out of a job, but big thanks to everyone from the Department of Urban Policy and Planning for bringing me out again this year. I do get amazing turnout in New York and the faculty, staff, and students at Hunter do a great job pulling everything together. I believe we raised money for a couple more fellowships. We had good conversations with local transportation leaders, and I had a ton of fun walking through an early draft of the video you're watching now. Happy to come back anytime. There is no shortage of video topics I can do in New York, so the more often I come back, the better. So, real talk, with a population of around 1.7 million and a land area of about 23 square miles, New York County, aka the island of Manhattan, is the most densely populated county in the US by a good margin. But over the course of the average day, that population swells to more than double. So, what I haven't even mentioned is if we actually took all the people who take trains into Manhattan and put them in cars instead, we'd need something on the order of like 2 million additional parking spaces. I got to be honest, as high a transit mode share as Manhattan has, there are still far too many places where parked cars completely disfigure the urban environment. This is about as good as the US gets, but it could still be so much better. So, if you haven't figured it out by now, this whole video is really a love letter to the New York City subway and the Lexington Avenue line specifically. Granted, it's a bit of an underhanded love letter, but that's really the only kind I know how to write. It's also been kind of a technical argument for why the subway is so indispensable to the city and how it enables New York to be New York, but I think it's a lot more than that. Some people see the fact that the subway requires you to ride shoulder-to-shoulder with people who might not look like you, who might occupy a different socioeconomic stratum than you, as a weakness, a fatal flaw that will always make car travel preferable. But people like that are just people who are not cut out for New York. Because I think reality is completely the opposite. The subway is democratic. There's no first class or business class. everyone's traveling economy. It's a place where you confront in the most visceral way the fact that we're all in this together. We all have to navigate around one another in a limited space. We all have to cooperate.

[00:16:22]We all have to do our part to make the city work. It's what sets New York apart among American cities. And none of it happens without the Lexington Avenue line. One thing you've probably noticed when I visit a city, I never rent a car.

[00:16:37]And not just because I have an intense dislike for driving, but also the places that are really worth going in any city should be well connected by transit.

[00:16:46]Besides, public transportation is, in my opinion, absolutely the best way to experience a city. There's actually a whole streaming show built around this idea and it's Day pass from Not Just Bikes creator Jason Slaughter. In the latest episode, Jason gets a transit day pass in Copenhogen, Denmark, and we get to come with him and enjoy the sights and sounds and understand what makes Copenhogen great. Hint, it's an amazing city for walking and biking. But it turns out the city also punches way above its weight in rail transit, including a growing automated metro system that should be the envy of just about every North American city. Days is exclusive to the Nebula platform and it's just a ton of fun. Jason's regular channel is always good, but teaming up with Nebula Studios on Daypass allows him to open up a world where he can bring you along to see great world cities through the lens of transit.

[00:17:44]Nebula has always been strong on urban planning, engineering, and architecture content. But whether your thing is culture, science, comedy, or current events, there's so much more on the platform, it's impossible to overstate how important Nebula has been in growing this channel and helping me connect with new audiences. Your subscription means a lot. Yes, it means you get my content early and ad free, but also subscribing really helps support what I do in a structural way, and it's also an investment in continuing to make the Nebula streaming experience itself better and better. Because yes, Nebula is kind of like Netflix for people who are a little too into trains, but it's much more. It's a home base for content that's a little more thoughtful, that's created by humans for humans, which I think is more important than ever. And there's a big idea behind all of it.

[00:18:37]Raising the level of the entire platform and growing it into a prestige streaming service. So, if you use my custom link down the description or the QR code right here on screen, you're going to get the best deal. All the Nebula content for 50% off the regular price when you sign up for an annual subscription. Or you can do a lifetime subscription. Regular price is currently $500, but with my creator link, it's just $30. You pay once and you get Nebula for as long as both you and Nebula exist. Nebula subscribers also get guest passes, one every month or three per quarter if you're on annual or lifetime. Once active, guests can binge all the Nebula content they want for a week and no payment info is required.

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[00:19:49]and then go check out Jason's Day pass in Copenhagen right now. And that's all I've got. Thanks for joining today and thanks as always to the patrons whose direct support has been huge in getting this channel to the point where I can reach as many people as I do in our nation's biggest metropolis. Thanks as always to the Nebula subscribers, too.

[00:20:08]And special thanks to Professor Bloom and everyone at Hunter for humoring my nonsense. Keep the great topic suggestions coming. I'll be back with a new episode in a week or two and I'll see you then.