Let’s start charging subway riders extra fees for hauling suitcases, bicycles and refrigerators on the trains, argues Clyde Haberman.

Before we discuss this we have to establish who Clyde Haberman is and how he thinks. Clyde Haberman seems to have made a career out of scolding people on public transit who do not act exactly like him, which involves sitting with your knees clenched, reading a NY Times folded vertically into quarters, uttering nary a word, and making sure the legs of your seersucker suit don’t mistakenly creep over the line separating your seat from the seat next to it.

For a long list of Haberman’s grievances against mass transit litter, mass transit NY Times reading, and mass transit cellphone use, click on this link.

Is Clyde Haberman riding the same subway as you and me? He writes:

An underground system that was designed to transport people, and only people, looks more like a network of freight trains at times.

Some passengers board the trains carrying suitcases the size of steamer trunks. The phenomenon is especially acute on summer weekends, when many New Yorkers head for the hills or the beaches schlepping more stuff than wartime refugees.

Routinely, riders haul enormous boxes containing appliances and other goods. Several months ago, I saw a man using a dolly to wheel a refrigerator onto a train. One day last week, no fewer than 13 baby strollers filled an entire car of a No. 1 train.

I’ve got a lot of complaints about the subway, but I can’t say that people lugging heavy cargo on board is among the top 25.

Clyde Haberman says the MTA should adopt an airline-style approach to customers with large bags, seeing as the airlines do such a tremendous job of preventing people from bringing giant suitcases on board, and charging for bags has been such a public relations boon.

Subway stations could easily be equipped with metal devices similar to those that are used at airports to delineate the limits for carry-on bags. Any oversize item would lead to a surcharge.

Surely, an extra buck or so would not bankrupt anyone taking home a 52-inch plasma screen television or heading to the Hamptons for the weekend. Just as surely, the transit system is in no position to turn up its nose at any dollar falling its way.

But more important than money is the possibility that a surcharge might make some people think twice about what they bring with them into the subways. Those outsize objects slow things down. They get in the way of passengers entering and leaving trains, and they clog subway station stairwells. Inevitably, they contribute to slowdowns…

Seriously, the guy should lay off the Haterade.