When I Said “There’s No Room At The Inn” What I Meant To Say Was “There Is That Little-Used Guest Suite Which We Could Let You For The Right Price”

After earlier sounding an alarm about how they would handle all the additional commuters MTA president admits that it actually wouldn’t be that big of a deal after all:

Amid all the bad news, the president of NYC Transit feared an underlying message had been lost about the benefits of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed congestion pricing plan.

During rush hours, the busiest train lines — including the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and E — are running at or over capacity. Yet Roberts insisted the system could still “fully support” the increased ridership projected from congestion pricing. “In fact the current strain on parts of the system is a big argument in favor of congestion pricing, not against it,” he said.

Roberts believes the business-day toll could pay for subway improvements and for such big-ticket projects as the first leg of the Second Avenue Subway, which is already $1 billion short.

On Monday, Roberts proposed quick “fixes,” including adding more cars to trains and extending station platforms. But these remedies would take “four or five” years. More importantly, they all require money the MTA doesn’t have.

“Congestion pricing is critical to putting these fixes into place,” Roberts said yesterday.

The city’s Department of Transportation estimates congestion pricing would dissuade 94,000 current drivers over an entire day, but believes only 7,000 of them will shift to subways and buses at the peak morning rush between 8 and 9 a.m. “Other drivers presumably come from areas where it is more convenient to use commuter rail,” said DOT spokesperson Molly Gordy.

If half of that 7,000 end up in the subway, they would add just 1 percent to the current morning peak-hour load of 345,000 riders. Roberts noted they would also be spread across the subway’s 22 lines.

“This is a minimal bump that the system can unequivocally absorb,” he said.

But doesn’t that also actually kind of undercut one of the main reasons to support congestion pricing — that so many more people will use public transportation?

And what’s more, has everyone simply taken at face value the notion that there will be an increase of one million new people in New York City in just over twenty years? (Questions to ask include but are not limited to: Really? Who are these people? Where will they come from? Will New York somehow magically get more affordable? Will Manhattan turn from a neighborhood of pied-a-terres to a solid middle-class enclave of families exceeding replacement levels? Will there be some massive new industry that will move here?) Or I guess it’s to everyone’s benefit to just assume there will be that many people here:

NYC Transit President Howard Roberts has expressed concern about how the system will handle expected population growth of 1 million people by 2030. Some lines, including the Nos. 2, 3 and 4, already are grossly overcrowded and operating at or above capacity.

“We’ve got to begin to look at how we get to comfortable rides, comfortable capacities, for people in that time period . . . given how long it takes for capital projects to get done, we don’t have a lot of time to do it,” Roberts said yesterday.

The strain on the system is a “big argument” for congestion pricing, Roberts said. The city’s pricing plan would generate billions of dollars to fund mass transit projects by charging drivers to enter Manhattan below 86th St.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign agreed.

“The choice is clear: We either act now to handle the coming million . . . . or drown in the crush,” Russianoff said. “Congestion pricing is the answer.”