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| Re: Why New York City will never build another subway station (1552376) | |||
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Re: Why New York City will never build another subway station |
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Posted by Spider-Pig on Mon Jul 6 11:47:21 2020, in response to Re: Why New York City will never build another subway station, posted by Mitch45 on Mon Jul 6 05:14:11 2020. I agree with the article both as a matter of historical fact and as a matter of current economics.Current economics are not a useful predictor of the future. Substantial subway expansion (all new mileage, as opposed to reopening existing closed stations or lines) is so expensive now in this city that it takes a confluence of unusual circumstances to make it happen. You can't predict that this will permanently remain the case. People probably didn't predict the shift in costs between capital and labor. But now there’s even more reason to doubt extension - COVID-19 and the sharp rise in working remotely. People have been predicting the rise of telecommuting for decades and until 2020 it didn't happen. I would argue that it's only the upper classes that have really taken to working remotely, everyone else either continued to work or just lost their job. As those jobs come back those commuters will come back. Meanwhile, flaws in telecommuting will lead to people returning to offices. If telecommuting were preferable in the absence of a deadly pandemic, it would have been adopted already. The only thing that will kill commuting is the complete elimination of those jobs, either by automation, or outsourcing. Not really the same, but after 9/11 people predicted that no one would work in tall buildings again, Battery Park City was depopulated and people predicted that no one would want to rent at the new WTC. None of those predictions came to pass. Doing this would save businesses a ton of money in rent costs and people could theoretically be more productive if their workplaces were in their own homes Numerous studies have found that people are less productive in their own homes, except where they end up working longer hours due to the absence of the clean break where they have to leave work to get home. One thing that you haven't considered is that due to the quarantine, many people have considered the value of having larger homes with private yards and driveways. This might make the upper SAS less useful, but it might make subways to outlying areas more useful. |
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