Borough Board Doubts S.I. Transportation "Plan"
The Staten Island Borough Board -- composed of community board leaders, the borough president and city council members -- declined to support the Staten Island Transportation Action Plan at its early October meeting. The plan is an attempt to coordinate the transportation projects of several agencies working in Staten Island. Objections included changes to bus schedules and routes. Also at issue was the inclusion of the Port Authority's Goethals Bridge expansion project in the plan. The latter is a curious element of the plan, considering the widespread opposition to the Goethals Bridge "twin" at and Island public hearing in June. Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari was a vocal critic of the bridge plan this summer, but has signed off on a draft of the Staten Island Transportation Action Plan that includes the Goethals project. The Action Plan contains little additional transit for Staten Island, and pushes transit other non-highway improvements like a Verrazano Bridge bike and pedestrian path off by several decades. The plan also has no clear goals, other than to list and execute a collection of projects that are mostly unrelated to each other. Our dictionary calls a plan: "A scheme, program, or method worked out beforehand for the accomplishment of an objective." The S.I. Transportation Plan opens with a new, somewhat degraded definition: "A long list of projects is a wish list. A short list of projects is an action plan."
