Corzine, Kolluri Talk Transit Village Changes
In MTR #530, we reported on Secaucus's efforts to become
the first state-designated transit village with an
affordable housing component.
Bad Year Shaping Up for NJ Pedestrians
New Jersey bicyclist and pedestrian deaths are up significantly
in the first five months of 2006, compared to the same
period last year.
"Garden Swap" Promises
Penn Station Renewal
In a city filled with the prospect of uncounted large building projects and attendant debates, the most interesting is suddenly the concept of swapping the site of Madison Square Garden for a rebuilt Penn Station and intensified development around an expanded transit hub.
Tappan Zee Transit Costs
In the most recent MTR, we reported ridership estimates
from the official Tappan Zee corridor alternatives
analysis study. Here we show some of the preliminary capital and operating costs.
NYC Rapid Bus Planning on an M-34 Pace
Bus rapid transit (BRT) won't be coming to NYC streets
until 2008 at best.
City Big on LIRR-Downtown Project
NYC Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff provided at least
one glimpse into the contents of the strategic plan
his office is reportedly developing for the city's
future.
Newark Light Rail Nears Service
A mayor is not the only thing new that Newark will
see this summer.
Infrastructure Inflation
Metro Magazine recently reported that mass transit
agencies are experiencing significant capital project
cost increases due to inflation in prices of construction
materials.
NJ Senate Panel Delays on Xanadu Roads
The Senate Transportation Committee tabled legislation
that would have used 60% of sales tax revenue generated
by the Meadowland Xanadu mega-mall to widen Route 17
and 3.
Corzine, Kolluri Talk Transit
Village Changes
In MTR #530, we reported on Secaucus' efforts to
become the first state-designated transit village with
an affordable housing component. The following week,
both Governor Corzine and NJDOT Commissioner Kolluri
stated that Secaucus won’t be alone because all
new transit villages will be required to have an affordable
housing plan.
“I think it is time to consider affordable
housing as a primary consideration, not a secondary
concern of the approval process” Kolluri said
at a transit village symposium sponsored by the Voorhees
Transportation Center. “The governor is committed
to that, and I am committed to that.”
Applicants for the current fiscal year will not be
affected by the policy change.
Kolluri also announced that future applications will
be evaluated on a rolling basis, meaning each application
will be evaluated as municipalities submit them. Currently,
all applications are evaluated at the same time and
new villages announced once a year. This creates a
climate where towns feel they are competing with each
other and politics may play a role in determining which
applicants earn the official state designation.
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Bad Year Shaping Up for
NJ Pedestrians
New Jersey bicyclist and pedestrians deaths are up
significantly in the first five months of 2006, compared
to the same period last year.
As of June 5th, 69 pedestrians and cyclists have
been killed in New Jersey traffic crashes, compared
to 55 in 2005, a 25 percent increase. The 2006 figures
include the tragic May deaths of Vanessa and Hector
Montes, 5 and 2-years old respectively, who were killed
by a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street near
their Elizabeth home.
Despite a pledge by former Governor Christine Whitman
to halve pedestrian fatalities, the state has made
little progress toward this goal. Annual bicyclist
and pedestrian fatalities have hovered around 170 since
the 1990s; if fatalities continue apace for the remainder
of the year, 2006 will be the deadliest for cyclists
and pedestrians in more than a decade.
Building more bike routes and sidewalks, providing
more crosswalks, implementing traffic calming measures
to slow speeding traffic and getting a lot more serious
about traffic law enforcement can help lower fatalities.
Many New Jersey cities have opover-engineered streets
that encourage speeding and create very tough pedestrian
conditions.
Regarding infrastructure, the DOT’s 2007 capital
program recognizes the need for more projects, and
significantly increases bike/ped funding to more than
$33 million in FY 2007 (though this represents only
a slight uptick in the share of total funding going
to bike/ped projects because of capital program expansion).
A 2005 study by the Tri-State Campaign showed high
demand for such project funding by New Jersey towns
and cities, but relatively low state funding in the
area (see MTR #499).
Yet, state funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects
drops to zero in 2007, and one-time Congressional earmarks
account for more than a third of funding. If this “green
pork” can’t be secured for each year of
the state capital program, New Jersey’s bike/ped
program will be left with a big hole to fill at a time
when both municipal demand and the need on the street,
demonstrated in a growing fatality toll, is very high.
The state will have to do significantly more on a sustained
basis to get anywhere near Governor Whitman’s
original goal.
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"Garden Swap" Promises
Penn Station Renewal
In a city filled with the prospect of uncounted large
building projects and attendant debates, the most interesting
is suddenly the concept of swapping the site of Madison
Square Garden for a rebuilt Penn Station and intensified
development around an expanded transit hub.
Constructing a new Penn Station on the Garden site
would correct one of the most egregious New York City
development mistakes of the 20th Century, and help
reinforce the 21st Century expansion of the region’s
commuter rail network around projects such as the Trans-Hudson
Express tunnel, which will significantly increase New
Jersey Transit capacity into western Midtown, and LIRR
East Side Access, which could free up enough capacity
in Penn Station to allow “west side access” by
some Metro-North trains via Amtrak’s west side
line and Hell Gate Bridge/Sunnyside routes (see next
story).
The area around West 34th Street also curiously continues
to feature some relatively low-value land uses given
the district’s infrastructure. Of all the places
to plan big NYC projects, it is probably the best suited
of all of those currently in play.
Two real estate giants – Related Companies
and Vornado Realty – are pushing the plan. Vornado
owns a lot of properties in the immediate district.
The Garden would be moved to 9th Avenue, while office
buildings would rise on its 8th Avenue site above a
grand new Penn Station. The idea is already encountering
a variety of cross-currents, as described in recent
NY Observer and NY Sun articles:
? The Pataki administration is impatient to begin
the transformation of the Farley post office building
west of 8th Avenue into the planned extension of Penn
Station, without revising the plan to accommodate the
new concept. The Related/Vornado plan would make train
station areas west and east of 8th Avenue complementary,
but might demolish part of Farley to locate the Garden
on the western end of that block. Governor Pataki will
leave office in January, and has been unable over 12
years to sufficiently knock bureaucratic and political
heads to achieve more progress on the Farley plan.
? Preservationists seem set to oppose any destruction
of Farley in favor of a new Madison Square Garden.
It is possible the Garden could be located on the other
side of 9th Avenue, but that would open up the issue
of development rights above Penn Station rail tracks
and the cost of constructing a new platform to bear
the building.
? Garden executives say they will not move unless
they are able to bring their lucrative property tax
exemption with them, according to the Observer.
? Who will pay for the new Penn Station east of 8th
Avenue is a big, unresolved question.
? Amtrak owns the land and underground rights beneath
Penn Station and the Garden, introducing yet more complexity
to any negotiation over the train station and development
above rail tracks.
We would add, from a transportation perspective,
that any big development and train station plan will
need to address the area’s pedestrian capacity
problem. Today, walking on 8th Avenue between 34th
and 42nd Streets is a chore at almost any day-time
hour, while train commuters completely swamp 7th Avenue’s
sidewalks during rush periods, forcing many pedestrians
into the avenue itself. It is past time to re-tip the
balance of street space back to the pedestrian traffic
generated by midtown’s big transit stations.
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Tappan Zee Transit Costs
In the most recent MTR, we reported ridership estimates
from the official Tappan Zee corridor alternatives
analysis study. Here we show some of the preliminary
capital and operating costs.
Unsurprisingly, full east-west bus rapid transit
is the least expensive option, with even a lower operating
cost than comparable light rail service. Commuter rail
between Rockland and Manhattan along with east-west
light rail had the highest overall construction cost.
Though not shown directly in our table, commuter rail
options reap relatively high fare revenue, but that
is largely offset by high capital costs. It is possible
that future detailed BRT plans in the future will show
higher construction costs — it is unclear at
this stage, for instance, what types of technological
and infrastructural elements would be needed for corridor
rapid bus service. Specially designed stations, real
time data technology or tunneled routes in White Plains
would likely hike capital costs.
Of those analyzed, three options were eliminated
from further consideration — the options with
light rail and Manhattan-bound commuter rail with full
corridor bus rapid transit.
It is noteworthy interesting that the option with
the highest ridership, full east-west BRT with a commuter
rail link to Manhattan, was eliminated from further
study, even though it shows significantly lower net
costs per rider than an option that made the cut — full
corridor commuter rail.
Numbers from the alternatives analysis are likely
to change as project designs, impacts, ridership, and
other data become more detailed in the EIS.
| |
Capital
cost (millions)
|
O & M
cost
(millions)
|
Annual
cost **
(millions)
|
Net
cost/
rider
|
|
Full
corridor commuter rail (CR)
|
7,434
|
52
|
398
|
18
|
|
East-west
light rail (LR)*
|
3,040
|
41
|
183
|
18
|
|
East-west
bus rapid transit (BRT)
|
2,100
|
30
|
128
|
5
|
|
RocklandManhattan-
CR; east-west BRT*
|
5,942
|
64
|
341
|
13
|
|
Manhattan
bound CR; east-west light rail *
|
7,628
|
83
|
438
|
21
|
|
Manhattan
bound CR; LR in Westchester
|
5,537
|
63
|
321
|
14
|
|
Manhattan
bound CR; BRT in Westchester
|
5,015
|
52
|
285
|
10
|
* Option eliminated from EIS consideration
** Operating and maintenance (O&M) figures are annual.
** Annual cost = annual payment to amortize 50-year loan at 5% interest for capital cost + yearly operating and maintenance.
*** Net cost per rider divides estimated ridership by annual cost less fare revenue. The latter ranges from $63 to $70 million annually for options with Manhattan-destined commuter rail but falls to $32 million for east-west BRT and $20 million for east-west light rail.
[Back to Top]
NYC Rapid Bus Planning on
an M-34 Pace
Bus rapid transit (BRT) won’t be coming to
NYC streets until 2008 at best, NYC Transit and New
York City officials announced at recent public meetings,
and may not be very rapid after all, according to press
statements by NYC Transit.
If service actually begins in 2008, it will be four
years after the project began, and seven years after
Mayor Bloomberg promised “surface subways” along
1st and 2nd Avenues as part of his first campaign platform.
Like the NYC DOT’s decade-long effort to revise
truck routes in the city, the BRT effort could end
up as another major signal that transportation planning
in New York is in need of major institutional overhaul,
on a par with Mayor Bloomberg’s first-term abolition
of the Board of Education.
The big BRT question is: what are they doing? An
advantage of BRT is that it is relatively easy to implement,
compared to other types of rapid transit. While the
recent round of meetings presented more detail about
what rapid bus service would look like on selected
routes, the agencies have taken the route selection
process to an extreme level of bureaucratic delay.
Does anyone disagree that the East Side of Manhattan
is a clear candidate? Don’t NYC Transit and DOT
have the expertise to have recommended one key route
in each of the other boroughs two or more years ago?
At this point, it may be that the agencies are extending
the implementation date beyond the span of Mayor Bloomberg’s
term of office, so that current leadership won’t
have to deal with implementation. That’s a sad
contrast to Los Angeles, for example, where the mayor
had BRT up and running in 18 months. Comments to the
NY Times about the effort certainly betrayed no sense
of urgency or even interest by project principals:
Ted Orosz of NYC Transit told the paper that BRT routes
would have limited impact, and said his agency “didn’t
want to oversell” BRT because it was unlikely
to speed service more than 10 percent over today’s “limited” routes.
Recently distributed materials on potential routes,
which are clear and informative, note that pre-boarding
fare collection is being considered for certain routes.
That seems like an advance from word last winter when
Transit seemed to have ruled that measure out.
[Back to Top]
City Big on LIRR-Downtown
Project
NYC Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff provided at least
one glimpse into the contents of the strategic plan his
office is reportedly developing for the city’s
future. At a recent forum on airport capacity and access,
Doctoroff decried the “two hour” trip from
lower Manhattan to JFK Airport, and strongly endorsed
the downtown LIRR connection that business groups have
promoted as part of lower Manhattan reconstruction.
But so far, no study has shown that that project will
attract appreciable ridership — there appear to
be numerous better investments for public transportation
resources around the city.
Unfortunately, a NY Times reporter did not challenge
Doctoroff’s “two hours” assertion.
Travel time from lower Manhattan to JFK by subway, LIRR
and JFK AirTrain is significantly faster for someone
who knows his or her way around, or is simply assertive
in asking directions.
NYU’s Mitchell Moss said the city should have “double-decked
the Van Wyck Expressway 30 years ago,” according
to the NY Times.
[Back to Top]
Newark Light Rail Nears Service
A mayor is not the only thing new that Newark will
see this summer. NJ Transit will begin service on a new
light rail line connecting Penn and Broad Street Stations,
possibly in July. The route is mainly in-street, but
uses tunnels to reach Penn Station. It will create a
good transit link for commuters from the Montclair-Boonton
and Morris & Essex commuter rail lines, which do
not travel through Penn Station, to downtown Newark,
as well as better connect downtown to parts of the North
Ward. The line has stops at the city’s minor league
baseball stadium and the Performing Arts Center, and
the city hopes it will help anchor downtown residential
development.
An NJ Transit spokesperson told the Star-Ledger the
line would attract about 2,000 daily riders initially.
Future ridership may depend on additional transit investment
in the city. The line is designed so that it could provide
through service on the Newark City Subway line, which
runs from Penn Station generally northwesterly past Branch
Brook Park and into Bloomfield. The new line was also
initially conceived as segment of a light rail line that
would connect Midtown Elizabeth to Newark Penn Station
via Newark Airport. That project will have to compete
in Trenton with a host of demands for commuter rail extensions.
We suspect that the best bang for New Jersey’s
mass transit bucks will be in additional projects that
serve urban centers.
[Back to Top]
Infrastructure Inflation
Metro Magazine recently reported that mass transit
agencies are experiencing significant capital project
cost increases due to inflation in prices of construction
materials. The article cites U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
indices that show a construction material hike of 12.5%
in 2005, versus an average of 1.8% increase in prior
years. It attributes the spike to China’s steadily
rising pressure on supplies of steel and other materials,
and post-Hurricane reconstruction in the U.S. southeast.
It said NJ Transit was reporting project cost increases
in the range of 20-35% while other U.S. agencies are
delaying projects to seek additional capital funding.
[Back to Top]
NJ Senate Panel Delays on
Xanadu Roads
The Senate Transportation Committee tabled legislation
that would have used 60% of sales tax revenue generated
by the Meadowland Xanadu mega-mall to widen Routes 17
and 3.
The legislation is sponsored by Bergen County Democratic
Senators Paul Sarlo and Joseph Coniglio. Opposition to
it threatened from all corners — environmentalists,
transportation reformers, residents of south Bergen municipalities
and representatives of Hartz Mountain, a rival developer,
were all lining up to speak against the legislation.
Coniglio’s and Sarlo’s basic idea—to
use development-generated revenues for needed infrastructure
is perfectly reasonable, but many are looking for a more
balanced and comprehensive approach to sports complex
transportation planning (MTR #498). The Senators would
do well to call for an area-wide study emphasizing mass
transit as much as possible.
In other action, the panel also advanced to the Senate
floor a proposed amendment to the state constitution
which would dedicate the 1.5 cents of the state gas tax
that now flows to the general fund to the NJ Transportation
Trust Fund.
[Back to Top]
