I wrote an article a few weeks ago about the way you often see advocates, planners, and the general public undervaluing the number of people a transit project can serve by way of connecting passengers, with the example of Highway 407 station in Toronto.
In today’s article, I want to provide another example, this time from New York City with its IBX project. I plan on doing more articles in this series looking at different transit projects (not just in North America) from a “network” perspective, so if there’s a project you would like me to cover, leave a comment or reply to this email!
The IBX is a new orbital rail service planned for an existing but underused rail corridor, travelling through Brooklyn and Queens and connecting to a ton of radial subway corridors. I wrote more about it in a previous article, as well as the decision to use light rail for the corridor:
What’s so interesting about the IBX is that it has huge potential to both be delivered quickly (thanks to all that existing right-of-way) and have a big impact (thanks to the many connections). Back in 2016, the New York Times wrote an article about the G train, talking about how its relevance was increasing likely as a byproduct of new development in Brooklyn and Queens, and how it was moving ~150,000 passengers per day. What’s interesting is that the Times referred to this number as being “dwarfed” by the 225,000 daily riders on the L train, but that’s not how I see it: the L gets good service, and provides a useful commuter route, and has CBTC — all of this makes it surprising it doesn’t get far more ridership than it does (not even twice what the G gets). All of this suggests to me a high degree of orbital transport demand in Queens and Brooklyn shining through despite the poor service, and the under-appreciated poor connections! The G does not have amazing connections to services in Long Island City (its northern anchor), and it misses high quality connections with a number of other radial lines along its route.
Given all of this, and the fact that the IBX is longer than the G, travels through areas with worse existing transit options, intersects more lines, and is going to be a new build (and thus could have great connections): the ridership the MTA has projected is surprisingly low — just 115,000 a day. Even Toronto’s Eglinton Crosstown with far less subway connections and density surrounding it is meant to move many more than that.
I see two main problems in this: The first is that the ridership being so low suggests planning that doesn’t see orbital rail as useful as an actual orbital corridor and instead as last mile transport from the various connecting subway lines. I talk about this more in the video I made about the orbital light rail schemes currently popular in northern Europe, but orbital light rail likely best serves this role as last mile transport from a number of radial corridors rather than as a strong corridor in its own right.
But this does not appear to be what New York is building — the IBX is a significant line in its own right, almost entirely reusing existing right-of-way space. Connections do not seem like they will be all that great to the various subway lines (much like the London Overground which uses higher capacity trains), which implies more of a “market” for trips that aren’t bookended on the subway. This is despite this being a new project, expensive, and explicitly about enabling inter-borough travel. It hits on the point that in some cities there is a chronic underestimation or misunderstanding of network effects and how people might want to travel. Sure, the connections might be well signed, but they won’t be very quick or easy. Now, to be clear, I don’t think better connections to the subway lines are a bad thing — they would be great, and by making transfers easier they’d likely boost ridership, but I don’t see them happening in most places, which is unfortunate especially given the poor connections on the G.
Now, I imagine that these poor connections will suppress ridership — people generally do not like exiting closed rapid transit systems in the middle of their journey, and that’s especially true in cities like New York with little to no intermodal rail fare integration. What’s unfortunate about this is that it leaves the question as to whether better connections and a better level of service could drive more riders open. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy — this line didn’t need to be subway because demand is low, but demand might just be low because of poor connections and the level of service.
Part of the issue here is probably just that making the connections good enough that the choice of a higher capacity mode is obvious isn’t possible in New York. Instead of designing a better more complex project, it seems the desire is to get something easy done. A big part of the choice to use light rail was to avoid issues with the tunnel near the All Saints Cemetery — which would make sense if IBX was a bargain basement project, which some have sold it as. But, this project is supposed to be over $5 billion before a shovel has turned, far more than a project like the Canada Line that was half in tunnel, not to mention the various orbital light rail schemes in Europe that usually cost several times less. In the ideal case, the project probably still costs just as much, but it uses high capacity trains, and has several short new sections of connecting tunnel, or pedestrian bridges built to create tight integration between the IBX and the connecting subway lines.
This obviously has huge potential, but the dismissal of the power of these connections to enable more than just last-mile connections for people travelling radially as well as complex cross-borough trips means that it isn’t seen as worth pursuing. Alas, even if it was, the high costs in New York mean it would unlikely not pass a cost-benefit analysis.
The best comparison line for the IBX is the London Overground. The latter upgraded the stations on underutilized orbital rail lines, added the Overground to the Tube map, and had much more ridership than the transport models calculated. One of the reasons was that it made inter- borough travel much faster and easier than taking the bus, as well as providing orbital travel to avoid going into crowded central London trains and back out again. The Overground also spurred a lot of development along its routes. Finally, frequent service meant it was effectively another Underground line. So popular was the Overground that more trains and carriages had to be ordered, to lengthen trains, to service the demand.