The ability to live without a car is a big part of what makes NYC special. But with blocks of high-rises planned and tens of thousands more people moving to Williamsburg, the L Train is already failing miserably at rush hour, with waiting crowds deep as the platform at station after station.
But what improvements can be made? There's not enough headroom for double decker cars; longer trains won't fit in stations; and the L's computers can't handle the current load, forget doubling the number of trains.
Though an airport-style moving walkway sounds like a good idea, it would have to move at about 20 MPH to be useful, and at that speed it's likely kids and old folks would stumble and break something, then plead for help as they sped along, headed right into the cow-catcher / belt scraper that would have to be installed at the Eighth Ave. deadend.
So the only feasible way to cram more people onto the train is to pack them more tightly. If you look around a train at rush hour, though people are already cheek to jowl, at least half the air space is wasted on air.
Since the new, plastic developments attract frat boys & girls, who will soon be stumbling from bar to bar in Williamsburg like they do everywhere else, I suggest we put them to use.
Fraternities used to have fun stuffing phone booths, and with all the booths gone they would likely jump at the chance to pack and unpack L Train riders. It would be tough to wake them for the morning rush hour, but we could let them sleep in the stations and lace their breakfast beer with stimulants to get them going.
The danger, of course, is that stations would spin out of control and turn into frat Satyricons, with wired drunks fighting and skidding across beer slicked platforms right in front of speeding trains, clogging the tracks so badly the trains themselves would need cow-catchers.
But no plan is perfect, and we have to start somewhere...