Mega-Project as Trans-Hudson Poker Chip
The NY Sun
reported a week ago that the project to construct a
new commuter rail tunnel from Secaucus to Midtown Manhattan
had become a bargaining chip in the tug-of-war over
the World Trade Center site rebuilding plan.
Groups Vow to Defeat Legislation at Polls as Trenton
Strips Fix-It Measure
The NJ Environmental Federation,
Sierra Club NJ Chapter and the Tri-State Transportation
Campaign said they would fight the constitutional dedication
of 1.5 cents of the state gas tax to the Transportation
Trust Fund, as proposed by Governor Corzine to underwrite
a huge new transportation debt program, because language
directing the NJ DOT to spend most of its construction
resources to maintain and improve existing infrastructure
was stripped out of transportation funding bills by
lawmakers this week, apparently at the behest of construction
unions.
Jersey Still Has Nation's Poorest Roads
The state legislature
undermined New Jersey's "fix-it-first" law
at a time when the Garden State holds the distinction
of having the greatest share of roads in "poor" condition
in the United States.
City and Big Developers: Getting to Win-Win
In an essay
in a recent Regional Plan Association Spotlight on
the Region, RPA's Jeremy Soffin attributed a New York
City "inferiority complex" toward
developers to a generation of "urban ailments.".
Passive Bus Lane ≠ Bus
Rapid Transit
The NY State
DOT is still not studying the smart bus rapid transit
system across the Tappan Zee bridge corridor requested
by transit advocates.
More Than Small Fixes Needed on S.I.
Proposals to ease
Staten Island traffic are due next week, according
to Mayor Bloomberg's January charge to city agencies
to quickly produce a traffic relief plan.
Community Eyes Benefits of De-Paving
A community visioning
process conducted by the Southern Bronx River Watershed
Alliance is developing ideas for how to use land freed
up if the Sheridan Expressway is demapped and removed.
More Riders on the (Light) Rails
New stations in Union
City and North Bergen are feeding thousands of new
riders onto the Hudson-Bergen light rail line.
100's of Hybrids Coming to a Lane Near You?
The NY
State Department of Motor Vehicles told MTR that 640
vehicle owners have signed up since the new "CleanPass" program
to allow 45 MPG or better hybrid-fueled cars to use
the Long Island Expressway HOV lane was begun March
1st.
Kill Your Speed, Not Staten Island
Transportation Alternatives
launched an anti-speeding campaign on Staten Island
at the end of February, in a public-education response
to growing numbers of law-breaking related crashes
and pedestrian deaths in the borough.
Good Ideas Dept.
Two Assembly bills - supporting bus
lane enforcement cameras and a pilot truck-weight monitoring
system - have recently been introduced in Albany.
To Clarify
We'd like to clarify statements in MTR issues
520 and 523.
Mega-Project as Trans-Hudson Poker Chip
The NY Sun reported a week ago that the project to
construct a new commuter rail tunnel from Secaucus
to Midtown Manhattan had become a bargaining chip in
the tug-of-war over the World Trade Center site rebuilding
plan.
The reasoning was that New York would be more amenable
to supporting the rail tunnel if New Jersey officials
within the Port Authority closed ranks with the Pataki
Administration in confronting World Trade Center lease-holder
Larry Silverstein.
In any event, the downtown talks seem stalled, while
New York transportation agencies gave a collective
thumbs-up to the rail tunnel project at a meeting of
the NY Metropolitan Transportation Council this week.
That’s good, because there are better reasons
for New York to support the commuter rail project,
and possibly a better deal for it to strike regarding
significant Port Authority funding.
Port Authority Chair Anthony Coscia, an appointee
of former NJ Governor James McGreevey, has mentioned
the possibility of the PA contributing in the neighborhood
of $2 billion to the tunnel, called the Trans-Hudson
Express Tunnel by NJ Transit. The quid pro quo with
New York so far has been Governor Pataki’s insistence
on Port Authority involvement in the ill-conceived
LIRR connection to lower Manhattan.
Hopefully, that idea will die out under the next
administration. New York needs a big infusion of funds
for the big transit projects — Long Island Rail
Road to Grand Central and the Second Avenue Subway — that
it is about to begin. Port Authority funding to help
realize them along with the Trans-Hudson Express could
just be the grand deal the region’s transit system
needs.
The inherent reasons why New York should support
the Hudson tunnel have to do with development and regional
dynamics. New Jersey is growing faster than Long Island,
and no capacity is left in existing transit connections
between New Jersey and New York City. Meanwhile, ambitions
for developing Midtown’s west side are increasingly
pivoting around the idea of a revitalized Penn Station
transit complex, and new rail capacity from the west
can only further those visions.
The Trans-Hudson tunnel became a chip of another
sort further up-river last week as well, when environmental
group Riverkeeper said the project made the idea of
transit service across the Tappan Zee Bridge unnecessary
(west-of-Hudson commuter rail lines may achieve a one-seat
ride to Penn Station in the Trans-Hudson Express plan).
The position ignores the fact that most of the traffic
congestion on the bridge is generated by east-west
travel, not people driving to Manhattan, but it is
true that Metro-North’s ambition to build Rockland-to-Grand
Central commuter rail will have to account for the
market share absorbed by direct Rockland-Penn Station
service.
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Groups Vow to Defeat Legislation at Polls as Trenton
Strips Fix-It Measure
The NJ Environmental Federation, Sierra Club NJ Chapter
and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign said they
would fight the constitutional dedication of 1.5 cents
of the state gas tax to the Transportation Trust Fund,
as proposed by Governor Corzine to underwrite a huge
new transportation debt program (MTR #’s 521,
522), because language directing the NJ DOT to spend
most of its construction resources to maintain and
improve existing infrastructure (MTR #523) was stripped
out of transportation funding bills by lawmakers this
week, apparently at the behest of construction unions.
Constitutional dedication of NJ tax revenues must
be approved by voters. The Trust Fund measure would
appear on this November’s ballot. Its defeat
could force reconsideration of the giant borrowing
scheme, since the 1.5 cents currently collected as
general revenue is one of only a handful of sources
of real money that Corzine’s plan directs to
transportation. Additional organizations were joining
the pledge to fight the dedication as this edition
was being finished.
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Jersey Still Has Nation's Poorest Roads
The state legislature undermined New Jersey’s “fix-it-first” law
at a time when the Garden State holds the distinction
of having the greatest share of roads in “poor” condition
in the United States.
The Federal Highway Administration rates pavement
conditions nationwide using the “International
Roughness Index,” whose scale ranges across ratings
of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good and Very Good.
As of 2004, New Jersey had the greatest percentage
of roads in any state in “poor” condition,
the lowest federal ranking, at 15%. This share has
increased steadily from 12% in 1999. About 80% of NJ
roads are in less than “good” condition
(third worst in the U.S.), another measure that has
worsened in recent years. Over one-third of the state’s
bridges are obsolete or structurally deficient, according
to the FHWA (9th worst).
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City and Big Developers: Getting to Win-Win
In an essay in a recent Regional Plan Association
Spotlight on the Region, RPA’s Jeremy Soffin
attributed a New York City “inferiority complex” toward
developers to a generation of “urban ailments.” That
perspective causes city leaders to “roll out
the red carpet for any development project willing
to look twice at our once proud city.”
That doesn’t need to be the case now that the
city has regained its pride and is again the place
to be. Soffin notes that despite the debate unfolding
around city subsidies for a red-hot housing market,
the city still asks almost nothing of those proposing
huge development complexes in the city’s midst.
He describes the giant parking proposal, absence
of transit improvements and destruction of parks in
the new Yankee stadium plan well-known to MTR readers
as one example — “The underlying theme
is that the City…seems to believe the only way
to get these projects built is to work as a junior
partner of the developer” — and concludes
that “it’s time the City’s policies
reflect our newfound self-respect.”
An interesting perspective on the RPA piece comes
this week in Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi’s
announcement of the redevelopment plan for the Nassau
Coliseum area. Leaving aside the plan’s alienating “towers-in-parks” quality,
the Wang-Reckson development plan will contribute $55
million to transportation improvements in the area,
including new bus services and improvements to the
pedestrian environment. Something on this order could
surely have been extracted from recent approvals for
projects like the IKEA in Brooklyn, along with appropriately-scaled
transportation measures for the other big boxes proliferating
around the city outside of Manhattan.
(Suozzi claims “no cost to the taxpayer” as
a result of the deal, though older information distributed
by Wang’s Lighthouse group suggests substantial
NY State funding of the Coliseum renovation.) See www.rpa.org/spotlight/news_temp.html.
[Back to Top]
Passive Bus Lane ≠ Bus
Rapid Transit
The NY State DOT is still not studying the smart bus
rapid transit system across the Tappan Zee bridge corridor
requested by transit advocates.
In a recent forum on the bridges plans, hosted by
Federated Conservationists of Westchester County, DOT’s
project directors said buses run by a variety of operators
would use a busway along the corridor, but offered
no assurance that the agency was studying service plans
that would create efficient corridor transit service.
Spokespeople for the many agencies now involved have
said conflicting things about whether a service plan
in which buses travel both on and off a dedicated busway
to reach worksites along the I-287 is under study.
A potential advantage of bus rapid transit (BRT)
over the Tappan Zee is its flexibility in low density
settings. Rapid buses could collect passengers at stops
in bedroom communities, bypass congestion in a dedicated
right-of-way along I-287, and then branch off on different
routes to serve job sites along I-287. This could give
the largest number of riders in the east-west Tappan
Zee travel market one-seat rides, reduce the need for
shuttle buses and increase transit revenue.
So far, DOT is not studying service with an intelligent,
locally-tailored operating plan designed to attract
riders — a hallmark of bus rapid transit systems
around the world — apparently opting for the
passive approach of laying out a lane and seeing who
comes to use it. If true, the agencies conducting the
study should throw bus rapid transit out of the mix
now and stop pretending to consider it. If they do
care about really testing BRT, then they need to hire
someone who knows what they are talking about.
Also at the forum, project managers hinted that because
of high construction costs, the project may have to
be built “in phases.” Transit advocates
worry that this means the highway bridge will be built
while transit components languish due to funding problems.
Expect vociferous challenges to any plan featuring
such “phasing."
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More Than Small Fixes Needed on S.I.
Proposals to ease Staten Island traffic are due next
week, according to Mayor Bloomberg’s January
charge to city agencies to quickly produce a traffic
relief plan (MTR #519). Members of a Staten Island
Task force have hawked wish lists to city Transportation
and Planning departments. But a Staten Island Advance
report on likely proposals asks whether the finished
plan will do much to ease traffic.
The task force is led by city transportation commissioner
Iris Weinshall and planning commissioner Amanda Burden.
Some of the hundreds of suggestions urged by task
force members, reported in the Advance, are:
- More turning lanes on Island streets;
- Cracking down on speeders;
- Running Hudson-Bergen light rail over the Bayonne
Bridge;
- Banning left turns on parts of Hylan Boulevard;
- Reserving Hylan's curb lanes for buses;
- Requiring developers to improve roads;
- Opening a road through the Fresh Kills landfill;
- Widening streets;
- Build a third MTA bus depot;
- Establish South Shore fast ferry service.
Some of these suggestions are worthy of consideration
and may displace a few local auto trips or address
particular bottlenecks. Many have been bandied for
years. So far, it seems that the Task Force has not
strongly intersected with the effort by Staten Island
elected officials to let cars use the new S.I. Expressway
bus lanes.
Probably the most important thing that can come from
the effort is a commitment to keep working to produce
a more comprehensive transportation plan for the long
term. Such a plan will be a challenge, because it will
require making some tradeoffs between moving transit
vehicles, such as rapid buses, and keeping cars happy.
If done well, it would also identify areas for denser
development instead of allowing traffic-causing sprawl
to continue along the West Shore Expressway.
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Community Eyes Benefits of De-Paving
A community visioning process conducted by the Southern
Bronx River Watershed Alliance is developing ideas
for how to use land freed up if the Sheridan Expressway
is demapped and removed.
Demapping is one alternative under study in the NY
State Dept. of Transportation’s Bruckner-Sheridan
Interchange project.
The advocacy groups that make up the alliance, such
as Sustainable South Bronx and the Pratt Center, have
long urged that the little-used and redundant Sheridan
be removed in favor of better Bronx River-front uses.
The visioning process will help make the idea more
concrete for the surrounding communities and their
elected representatives.
A recent session on the Sheridan land’s physical
features concluded that public access to the waterfront
is preferable to development directly on the river’s
edge, and sought to identify better pedestrian connections
through the Sheridan area to surrounding neighborhoods
as well as over the barrier represented by the Amtrak
right-of-way. Participants also discussed the opportunity
for a new Metro-North Railroad station at Hunts Point
Avenue. www.southbronxvision.org.
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More Riders on the (Light) Rails
New stations in Union City and North Bergen are feeding
thousands of new riders onto the Hudson-Bergen light
rail line. NJ Transit opened Bergenline and Tonnelle
Avenue stations February 25, rapidly boosting daily
ridership on the system from 23,378 to 27,222. Transit’s
target is 34,000 daily riders in 2007.
NJ Transit’s Camden-Trenton River Line also
continues to exceed early ridership expectations, with
over 1,000 more average daily riders in February 2006
over February of 2005, when the daily average was close
to 7,000.
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100's of Hybrids Coming to a Lane Near You?
The NY State Department of Motor Vehicles told MTR
that 640 vehicle owners have signed up since the new “CleanPass” program
to allow 45 MPG or better hybrid-fueled cars to use
the Long Island Expressway HOV lane was begun March
1st.
New York State DOT reports that the program is actually
a one year pilot program that will be revisited for
its congestion impacts. This had previously been unreported,
and dovetails favorably with a similar review element
inserted in similar programs in California. DOT officials
promised they will repeal the program if the HOV lane
becomes too crowded, and they are strictly monitoring
the program’s effects.
Federal transportation law allows hybrid cars without
the requisite number of occupants to use HOV lane and
bypass HOV restrictions, but only if the hybrids don’t
degrade speeds in HOV lanes.
But in places like Virginia, hybrid-admission rules
have allowed hybrids (even hybrid SUVs that barely
get more than 30 miles per gallon) to overcrowd HOV
lanes, political pressure has slowed repeal of the
measure, a lesson for New York officials should consider.
[Back to Top]
Kill Your Speed, Not Staten Island
Transportation Alternatives launched an anti-speeding
campaign on Staten Island at the end of February, in
a public-education response to growing numbers of law-breaking
related crashes and pedestrian deaths in the borough.
The campaign’s motto, “Speeding – There’s
No Excuse,” targets motorists’ rationalizations
for reckless behavior: A campaign poster at a Staten
Island bus stop along a busy roadway says “Died
to Cash a Check” – a pointed reminder to
passing motorists to slow down.
Funding for the effort was established by City Council
members Michael McMahon and James Oddo. The Advance
recently reported that Staten Island police issued
10,235 speeding summonses in 2005, and also noted that
S.I. University Hospital has seen more pedestrian victims,
including eight fatalities last year.
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Good Ideas Dept.
Assemblyman Pete Grannis, representing Manhattan’s
Upper East Side, has re-submitted his legislative proposal
to create a bus lane enforcement camera demonstration
project. Grannis’ bill, A1832, contends that “motorists
illegally parking in bus stops and occupying designated
bus lanes create significant safety dangers for bus
passengers boarding and disembarking buses.”
Bus lane enforcement cameras would discourage motorists
from abusing bus lanes and help reverse the sloppy
attitude toward special lanes that runs through New
York’s motoring public, police and city government.
Bus lane enforcement cameras have shown good results
in London, helping to keep buses on schedule. A1832
went to the Assembly’s Transportation Committee
in January but has not yet been reviewed; it also lacks
a Senate counterpart. The Legislature has been very
weak on proposals to make traffic law enforcement more
efficient, however. Assembly Transportation Chair David
Gantt of Rochester has routinely opposed increasing
the use of life-saving red light cameras in New York
City, for instance (MTR # 370), though some report
he is doing Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s
bidding in the matter.
Brooklyn Assemblyman Joe Lentol has also introduced
legislation (A02435) which would allow implementation
of a pilot truck-weight monitoring system. Sensor technology
able to detect overweight trucks would trigger cameras
that generate a summons to the truck owner. The long-evolving
NYC DOT truck route management study doesn’t
address weight violations, which increase infrastructure
damage, so the bill is an important contribution to
the overall discussion of truck impacts in the city.
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To Clarify
In MTR # 520, we reported that the Bee-Line bus system
will see a 50% rise in state operating assistance,
from $28 million to over $42 million. Governor Pataki’s
budget does call for Westchester to receive $42 million
this year, but it received $35.6 million last year,
not $28 million, making a 19% increase over last year.
In MTR #523, we stated that Metropool offers the
federal pre-tax transit benefit. Metropool in fact
offers info on carpooling, vanpooling, bicycling, walking,
and telecommuting, but not TransitChek.
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