This morning at a roundtable organized by the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, a spokesperson for the New York State Dept. of Transportation emphasized construction of new carpool lanes among options being considered in a DOT long range study of the Staten Island Expressway. Planning documents show that NYSDOT would like to move that project to into environmental review during 2000 ¾ construction wouldn't begin until sometime after 2004. However, expanding the SIE is more than likely to be heavily contested by Staten Island civic and elected leaders.

From the point of view of promoting more driving and car dependence, widening a highway with carpool lanes is a only a minor variation on highway expansion in general. There is no evidence, for instance, that the Long Island Expressway carpool lanes have generated significant numbers of new carpools. Instead, they have mainly sorted multi-occupant vehicles out of the general traffic mix, opening up space for additional driver-only cars. In the context of NYC, the lanes may not be much of a boon to transit, either. In the Gowanus carpool lane, buses are already bogged down in traffic due to heavy car use of the lane. The latter is due in part to a big enforcement problem ¾ NY State DOT estimates that up to 15% of cars in the Gowanus carpool lane may be driver-only cheaters.



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