An NYU Rudin Transportation Center and Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems forum last week on joining land use and transportation planning focused on a set of "sustainable development strategy" projects established by the staff of the NY Metropolitan Transportation Council. The forum made clear that although NY State DOT has participated in the undertakings, it has made no effort to prioritize funding to bring the planning conclusions to fruition, and still has a long way to go in changing its attitudes about its own planning role and transportation’s place in the world.

Each sustainable development effort has sought consensus between municipalities, state agencies and other stakeholders to develop future land use and transportation plans. They have taken 2-3 years, and developed some innovative approaches to traffic congestion. Studies for Brooklyn’s Coney Island and Long Island’s East End are still underway. The Route 303 study in Orangetown (Rockland County) was finished in late 2002 (MTR # 438); Yorktown’s (Westchester) Route 202/35/6 Bear Mountain Parkway study in 2003. Since completion, both towns have awaited implementation for the NYSDOT components, but little has happened. Only a few small scale recommendations like re-timing traffic signals and adding turn lanes have gotten through NYS DOT’s pipeline.

Supervisors Thom Kleiner of Orangetown and Linda Cooper of Yorktown say the funding delays have made their constituencies skeptical that the studies will ever result in anything. Cooper noted that her residents would proclaim the study a success only after they were "shown the money." Nothing concrete has happened to slow the projects down; the pace appears to simply reflect the general sluggishness of transportation projects in New York State. If NYS DOT wants such efforts to succeed, it ought to commit from the beginning to expedited implementation of its pieces of the puzzles.

Unfortunately, last week’s forum seemed to confirm that NY State DOT is less than ready to take a strong role addressing transportation implications of land use. An audience member asked whether NYS DOT was prepared to employ its access management powers (permitting development driveways onto state roads) to affect land use in cases where it is working with a town on a general land use and transportation plan. Bob Dennison, chief of NY State DOT’s Hudson Valley office, essentially answered no, DOT leaves land use issues to municipalities.

NYS DOT has been uninterested in letting this model of planning expand beyond the first few initiated by NYMTC some five years ago. One observer of the East End SEEDS process says NYS DOT Long Island staff attend meetings but are waiting for the process to fail.

Sustainable development strategy projects on-line

www.202and6.com/home.html

www.orangetown.com

nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/gravesend.html

www.seedsproject.com

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