City Begins to Respond to Truck
Onslaught
Last week, the NYC Council Transportation
Committee held an oversight hearing; the theme was "Trucks,
trucks everywhere: Does the City do anything to manage
truck traffic?"
Corzine Borrowing Plan Poorly Received
The plan to
refinance existing state transportation bonds in order
to head off the pending insolvency of the state's main
fund for transportation infrastructure spending floated
recently by the Corzine administration is not winning
ringing endorsements anywhere in New Jersey.
E-Transport News from NYC
The NYC Dept. of Transportation
publishes a monthly e-mail newsletter with updates
on city projects and initiatives.
Suozzi Walks Third Track's Fine Line
Newsday recently
reported that County Executive Thomas Suozzi opposes
the LIRR third track project.
City Transit Use on Growth Path
New York City Transit
saw the highest subway ridership last year since 1953,
despite a three day transit strike and a fare hike
for weekly and monthly MetroCard users, according to
an agency release.
Is the No. 7 still alive and well?
In our last edition,
we noted cross-currents in news stories about the health
of NYC's plan to extend the #7 subway to foster development
on Manhattan's Far West Side.
City Begins to Respond to Truck Onslaught
Last week, the NYC Council Transportation Committee
held an oversight hearing; the theme was “Trucks,
trucks everywhere: Does the City do anything to manage
truck traffic?”
The answer is ambiguous at best, said the numerous
community activists and policy organizations that testified.
Council Transportation Chair John Liu alternately
criticized and questioned NYC DOT Commissioner Iris
Weinshall regarding the many years taken for a study
of how to revise and better enforce official city truck
routes. Liu noted that he and the Tri-State Transportation
Campaign have been calling for truck management reform
for close to a decade, when he was president of the
North Flushing Civic Association.
On February 10, three days before the oversight hearing,
NYC DOT indeed released preliminary findings from its
Truck Route Management and Community Impact Reductions
Study, which has been in the works since the late 1990s.
Chief among the recommendations is creation of a
new Office of Freight Mobility within the NYC DOT.
That could be a sign that city government is adapting
the city DOT’s mission to large increases in
the volume of truck traffic plying city streets. Federal
estimates expect the trend to continue, putting as
many as 50% more trucks on city streets by 2020 than
are experienced today. The new office will represent
progress if it brings more DOT and NYPD attention to
bear on the heavy truck impacts being felt in communities
in every borough of the city, and begins to make the
city’s rules and routes for trucks into something
known and tangible to both truck drivers and neighborhoods.
City transportation commissioner Iris Weinshall said
one reason for the study’s long duration is that
NYC DOT expanded its scope to encompass crash data
related to trucks and broader public outreach. She
called the effort a “monumental undertaking.”
Still, it’s hard to understand why several
of the showcased recommendations could not have been
put into effect years ago. The city unveiled a new
set of clearer truck route signs to replace the hodge-podge
of existing truck-related signs, and a set of locally-tailored
palm cards to that precinct-level police officers can
use to immediately identify through and local truck
routes in their areas. Many neighborhood leaders report
significant confusion on the part of local police about
truck route maps and rules, and the city’s strong
emphasis on police education at the Council hearing
seemed to confirm this. Commissioner Weinshall also
said that the DOT intended to include administrative
law judges in its educational efforts, presumably to
tighten the application of penalties for trucks that
receive summonses.
Police commitment from the top will likely also need
to increase if neighborhoods are going to see any relief.
Council member questioning at the hearing revealed
that while about 13,000 NYPD summonses were issued
to trucks for all reasons during 2005, the police issued
40,000 tickets to bicyclists. At two dozen meetings
with community boards and civic groups, Tri-State Campaign
staff found truck enforcement at the top of local traffic
complaints, and no mention of bicyclists.
The DOT estimated that it would increase the total
number of truck-route-related signs in the city to
10,000, from 4,000 today. They estimated that about
1,800 of these will be “negative” signs,
which tell drivers not to drive on certain inappropriate
streets. The DOT has apparently had a philosophical
issue with “negative” signs in the past,
and Commissioner Weinshall said that some communities
do not want signs. However, our solicitation of community
views and experiences indicates that some city neighborhoods
have had to wage extended battles to get “no
trucks” signs, and we anticipate no shortage
of demand for the DOT’s new model.
Other features of the city’s plan mentioned
in the initial recommendations or during the City Council
session include time of day restrictions for some truck
routes, which will be tested on Staten Island, and
further investigation of opportunities to route trucks
off of local streets and onto parkways. Commissioner
Weinshall mentioned the city’s successful opening
to some trucks of the portion of the Grand Central
Parkway between the Triborough Bridge and the BQE,
which diverted significant truck volumes off of Astoria
streets (see MTR # 459).
Councilmember Leroy Comrie of Queens asked the DOT
whether it anticipated using traffic calming measures
as permanent deterrents to trucks trying to turn onto
inappropriate streets, but received a non-answer about
a city “wide turn zone” program, which
appears to be a plan to get the largest trucks to use
specific intersections. The absence of traffic calming
in any form in the DOT’s work is a big disappointment,
but also a comment on where real traffic deterrents
sit in that agency’s overall planning and traffic
management perspective.
Council members asked how the city planned to reduce
overall truck growth, but the DOT had little to say
on that front. Mayor Bloomberg withdrew the city’s
support for a cross-harbor rail freight tunnel during
last year’s election campaign and has not announced
any freight plan to take its place.
No date has been announced by NYC DOT for the full
release of its truck routing study. To review the preliminary
recommendations, see: www.nyc.gov/html/dot/pdf/truckstudy.pdf.
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Corzine Borrowing Plan Poorly Received
The plan to refinance existing state transportation
bonds in order to head off the pending insolvency of
the state’s main fund for transportation infrastructure
spending floated recently by the Corzine administration
is not winning ringing endorsements anywhere in New
Jersey.
The plan would apparently launch a new round of long
term bonds backed by the savings from refinancing and
rescheduled payments on existing debt.
Many worry that another round of borrowing, even
if it yields strong capital spending levels for the
next few years, will leave the state with a gigantic
transportation debt it will be hard pressed to repay,
and that severe transportation cuts will be required
early in the next decade. However, Democratic legislative
leaders have not been among those expressing concern.
“It's unfathomable to me that we’re borrowing
again, but I guess that’s what the new treasurer
wants to do,” Assemblyman Bob Briant, who last
year was appointed help oversee the Transportation
Trust Fund, told the Star-Ledger. “It's going
to add to the debt problem, and it’s going to
severely hamper future commissioners from being able
to deliver transportation improvements.”
“We get $6 billion in revenue for the price
of $11 billion,” said State Assembly transportation
committee chair John Wisniewski in the Star-Ledger. “That’s
a big price to pay to get through a couple of years….By
doing this we’d be going in the direction other
than the reforms that we have talked about the last
two years.”
“That’s $5 or $6 billion going into the
pockets of bond holders instead of to roads and mass-transit
systems,” the Tri-State Campaign’s Jon
Orcutt told the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“What the (fund) needs is a thoughtful, fiscally
responsible, long-term solution. What the governor
is proposing is none of those,” Senator Robert
Littell, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, told
the Gloucester County Times.
“Short-term fix after short-term fix creates
the recurring fiscal crisis Governor Corzine said he
wanted to avoid when he took office.” Laborers
Union president Ray Pocino wrote in a recent letter
to legislators.
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E-Transport News from NYC
The NYC Dept. of Transportation publishes a monthly
e-mail newsletter with updates on city projects and
initiatives. The February edition (#7) mainly surveys
current pedestrian safety and cycling projects, while
presenting data on the continuing decline in NYC pedestrian
fatalities and a summary of traffic measures implemented
during the December transit strike.
It is possible to subscribe to the newsletter at
the Dept.’s web-site: www.nyc.gov/dot. However,
a fairly extensive surf through that site did not turn
up any archive of newsletter editions 1 through 6.
[Back to Top]
Suozzi Walks Third Track's Fine Line
Newsday recently reported that County Executive Thomas
Suozzi opposes the LIRR third track project. The initiative
would add another track to the LIRR Main Line between
Bellerose and Hicksville. The paper reported that Suozzi
warned residents in a letter last year that the project “may
involve the taking of personal and village land.”
In response to a Campaign query about the report,
Nassau County provided this position: “One of
the challenges of government is to meet the region's
transportation needs and to protect the interests of
residents and their communities which would be directly
affected by the LIRR's plan to add a third track to
the Main Line. I understand the importance of increasing
the passenger capacity of the LIRR and I look forward
to reviewing the draft DEIS, which will show us for
the first time the actual location of the proposed
third track. As I have said previously, I favor using
the existing track bed and right-of-way. I oppose the
forcible taking of property from homeowners and local
governments to construct the third track.”
So far, there is no proof that this project will
require the taking of property, despite a loud campaign
in western Nassau County to discredit the project.
It would be unfortunate if Suozzi opposed the tangible
transit and mobility benefits of the LIRR third track
while attempting to spearhead the “Nassau Hub” concept
that pairs greater development density with new mass
transit capacity in central Nassau County. That plan
will ring hollow if the county fights or delays a plan
that addresses the clear need for more overall Long
Island Rail Road service. A business-labor coalition
on Long Island has recently begun taking a tough approach
to politicians inclined to support NIMBY opposition
to the third track plan (MTR #521).
[Back to Top]
City Transit Use on Growth Path
New York City Transit saw the highest subway ridership
last year since 1953, despite a three day transit strike
and a fare hike for weekly and monthly MetroCard users,
according to an agency release.
Total subway ridership was 1.45 billion, an increase
of 23.1 million customers over 2004. Subway ridership
averaged 4.7 million riders on weekdays. Annual bus
ridership was down slightly during the year to 736.4
million, but weekend bus ridership reached the highest
levels since 1975. Weekday bus ridership was also up
by .6% over 2004. Overall subway and bus ridership
reached the highest level since 1970, 2.2 billion.
The numbers indicate that riders prefer subways over
buses. This is not surprising, since NYC’s buses
currently have the unflattering reputation of being
the slowest city transit buses in the nation. NYC Transit
is working on bus rapid transit concepts, though the
initial effort may only offer modest increases on a
few routes. NYC Transit and the city should step up
their efforts to include more routes for these smaller
scale improvements, and transform some streets into
urban transitways with pre-boarding fare collection,
for instance. A rapid, high-tech bus system could relieve
some of the subway system’s burdens, serve neighborhoods
that are far from subways and offer relatively low-cost
new transit capacity.
[Back to Top]
Is the No. 7 still alive and well?
In our last edition, we noted cross-currents in news
stories about the health of NYC’s plan to extend
the #7 subway to foster development on Manhattan’s
Far West Side.
In the meantime, the MTA has issued a notice seeking
a construction manager for the work. Potential bidders
must be “prequalified,” and then a formal
request for proposals will be issued. The notice says
subway construction should be complete by June 2012,
and that the estimated construction cost is $1.5 billion.
However, it also notes that financing for the contract
is not in place, and a contract award will not be made
until funding is secured.
[Back to Top]
