NEW YORK (WCBS 880) -- For the past two months, traffic in New York City has gone from bad to worse. Whether it's a weekday or a weekend, the roadways and interstates headed into Manhattan are always busy.
With so many people still working from home and many office buildings empty, many are scratching their heads at how, and why, commuting has only gotten harder.
This week, on WCBS 880’s In Depth Podcast, we steer towards the current car crisis to try and get to the real cause of congestion.
Our conversation begins with the one and only "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz. He weighs in on subway ridership, which has still not recovered fully from the pandemic. That means that if people are commuting again, they are driving.
"While car traffic is close to 100%, truck traffic is between 105% and 110%," Schwartz said.
He'd like to see carpool restrictions at bridges and tunnels, which is what the city did during transit strikes.
"We required two or more people per car to come in to Manhattan in morning," he said.
Schwartz believes the city needs to do a better job of getting people who commute into the Central Business District back on trains.
“I think transit needs to have a whole facelift," he said. “And it has to do a great deal with perception [ and] pricing. Part of the strategy is lowering the pricing to get people to come back into the system.”
He also believes offering financial incentives could help.
Additionally, we speak to Acting Chairman of the MTA Janno Lieber about other ways the system is trying to improve ridership.
While it’s easy to blame COVID or crime on the hit the system has taken, he said, “It depends on when companies call people back to office,” too.
Calling buses “an unsung hero of [the MTA]”, Lieber says that they could accomplish even more above ground if there were more bus lanes. Like everyone else, he too has noticed the uptick of traffic and commercial vehicles inhibiting drivers from doing their job.
As Schwartz believes police could be playing a role. “Police don’t care about parking and traffic enforcement,” he says, “That’s not why they became cops. They want to do public safety work.”
He believes that one of the first steps in addressing the crisis is remanding those duties to the Department of Transportation. Prior to the 80s, it was the DOT’s responsibility anyway.
With tensions so high between civilians and cops however, Schwartz said, “By and large, it’s better for a citizen or non-cop to be doing the traffic enforcement.”