On December 22^nd, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign filed a lawsuit in NY Supreme Court against the City of New York and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority over their approval of the environmental impact statement for the Hudson Yards project, which includes the proposed West Side Jets stadium. 

The suit argues the strong likelihood that the study underestimates the traffic, and related impacts such as congestion and air and noise pollution, of the proposed stadium. The study relies only on opinion surveys of Jets season ticket holders to predict how many stadium patrons will use mass transit to travel to games. Surveys asking about future behavior in hypothetical situations are often unreliable. The groups argue that the city should use more solid analytical tools for a critical question like transportation for a major new development. Transportation analysis for other land uses in the Hudson Yards rezoning plan used a variety of more objective methods for estimating mass transit and car trips.

Bloomberg administration officials have been dismissive of any critique of the stadium plan since its inception and throughout the curtailed public process the proposal has undergone. The Jets have not proposed any sort of unified ticketing system that builds transit fares into stadium tickets, as NASCAR and Madrid Olympic planners have proposed (see stories elsewhere in this issue).

Transportation experts told the NY Times that the city’s survey methods produced inaccurate transit numbers. Jose Holguín Véras, a transportation modeling expert at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, said the Jets had failed to inform survey respondents of extra costs and walking distances: "The results need to be analyzed with caution," he told the paper, "because the questions aren’t specific enough to gauge respondents’ behavior in the future."

The environmental study says the proposed stadium will attract a much greater share of patrons using mass transit than does any other U.S. urban stadium. Even before the #7 subway extension is brought into service, the city claims that 68% of stadium-goers will arrive by transit. That is a far higher share than Madison Square Garden sees, despite being directly atop Penn Station, with its multiple commuter rail and subway lines.

If city numbers about the transit share are wrong, even by a small amount, it could mean far worse traffic impacts than those forecast in the city’s EIS, and terrible West Side gridlock on event days.

The environmental impact study also makes broad assumptions about the completion of multi-billion transit projects. The environmental review notes stadium patronage will have a significant impact on the transit system in Manhattan (in the form of crowding at stations), and assumes that the problems will be addressed by major additions to the transit network such as the Second Avenue subway and the Long Island Railroad connection to Grand Central Terminal. It also calls for a number of Midtown Manhattan subway station renovations that are not currently in the MTA capital budget. Everyone knows the MTA is facing tremendous funding problems, and the public is owed a look at how the stadium and #7 subway projects will impact the system in case these projects are delayed or cancelled.

Madison Square Garden also filed a suit with similar transportation arguments, and goes into other areas of the environmental review.

The NY Sun recently reported that Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, in anticipation of an upcoming visit by the Olympic Committee, are putting a "full-court press" for the Public Authorities Control Board to approve the Jets stadium. The authority, which includes governor representatives, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, must approve the state’s $300 million contribution to the project.

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