Sander Reaches Out
New MTA chief Lee Sander is off to a strong public start, touring elements of the metropolitan transit system to discuss issues with riders and transit workers, with print and television reporters in tow.
NY Road Agencies Await Leadership
As of this edition, the Spitzer Administration has yet to name a new NY State transportation commissioner.
Report Underscores Transit's Growth in New Jersey
A recently released Tri-State Campaign report contained good news for NJ Transit: the state’s investment in buses and rail is paying off.
An Unheralded Pataki Legacy
When George Pataki took office in 1994, the NY State Dept. of Transportation’s policy for the downstate highway system was to build a system of carpool lanes across the metropolitan region.
Officials: Land Use Vital to T-Z Transit
One immediate opportunity to chart a new transportation course and test the practice of uniting transportation and development planning in New York State is the Tappan Zee Bridge corridor.
SIE Bus Lane: Proceed With Caution
NYSDOT has released the results of its study of allowing cars to use the new Staten Island Expressway bus lane, and found that opening the lane to cars with three or more occupants would be feasible from a congestion point of view.
Westchester and Bus Rapid Transit
While rapid bus service transit is one option being considered in the Rockland-Westchester Tappan Zee corridor, Westchester County is also forging ahead with its own ideas about possible bus service innovations within the county, for its Bee Line system.
Strategy Board Points to Funding Gap, Transit Oriented Development
Connecticut ’s Transportation Strategy Board released its updated strategy for a more intermodal and balanced transportation system last week.
NJ Uneasy About Turnpike Lease
An opinion poll of New Jersey voters by Farleigh Dickinson University found that 54 percent think leasing the New Jersey Turnpike to a private company to raise money for the state is a “bad idea,” with only 17 percent saying they support it.
CT Companies Embrace Parking Reform
Aetna , the large health insurance company, is using innovative parking techniques to encourage its employees to take transit to work, according to a recent piece by Toni Gold in the Hartford Courant.
Giants/Jets Stadium: The Good, the Bad and the Missing
Unlike some sports facility plans we could name, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the new Meadowlands Stadium recognizes that the number of people that can drive to the game is dependent on the number of parking spaces available.
Sander Reaches Out
New MTA chief Lee Sander is off to a strong public start, touring elements of the metropolitan transit system to discuss issues with riders and transit workers, with print and television reporters in tow. He commutes to the East Side of Midtown Manhattan from eastern Queens via the LIRR and #7 subway. Transit workers cited in the Daily News seemed to appreciate Sander’s gesture and the chance to speak to the new boss: “No one in senior management had ever bothered to ask such basic questions” about her job, station agent Melissa Rigault related to the News.
This sort of common touch was noticeably absent from the MTA’s previous leadership. Outgoing NYC Transit president Larry Reuter, for instance, was known for being chauffeured from his home in Staten Island to transit headquarters, even after his office moved to the MTA’s 2 Broadway location in Lower Manhattan. Reuter received good marks from some observers as a competent manager of a gigantic operation and far-reaching capital investment program, but customer information practices did not see marked improvement during his tenure. Technology information projects lagged (MTR #544), and basic management steps like implementing ways to quickly inform station booths and agents, and in turn, the riders, about what is going on during incidents were never addressed. Hopefully, better labor relations under new management can lead to the sort of customer relations revolutions NY State has quietly accomplished at two other running gags of public service — the Dept. of Motor Vehicles and in the courts’ jury duty practices.
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NY Road Agencies Await Leadership
As of this edition, the Spitzer Administration has yet to name a new NY State transportation commissioner. For now, we will take the lag as indicating that a careful search and selection process is in the works to identify and hire a strong policy reform leader. It is unclear whether the new administration is seeking to install new leadership at the NY State Thruway Authority. The present Thruway board is heavily weighted with members selected by former Governor Pataki for appointment or reappointment during 2006.
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Report Underscores Transit's Growth in New Jersey
A recently released Tri-State Campaign report contained good news for NJ Transit: the state’s investment in buses and rail is paying off. More than one in ten New Jersey residents take transit to work, and mass transit use is growing at twice the rate of driving. From 1997 to 2004, the number of miles traveled by transit grew 30%, compared to 15% growth for the number of commuters who drive.
The State of Transportation 2006: Benchmarks for Sustainable Transportation in New Jersey, examines trends in 25 different measures of transporta tion in NJ, including infrastructure, service, travel choices, congestion and crowding, reliability, and impacts on the state’s economy and environment, from the period of 1997 to 2004.
Among the report’s key findings:
● Economic growth in NJ has proceeded without corresponding gains in mileage driven – the number of miles driven for each dollar of economic output produced in the state has fallen 5 percent.
● Freight movement, and particularly truck travel, is growing much faster than passenger travel, and managing this trend looms as a major challenge.
● The state has made little or no progress on reducing roadway deaths, with total traffic fatalities averaging about 740 and never dropping below 720 annual deaths.
● New Jersey has made some improvement in road and bridge conditions, though in recent years roads and bridges have begun to deteriorate again. At 13.5 percent, New Jersey has the nation’s highest percentage of lane miles in “poor” condition.
● As of 2004, energy consumption for transportation, especially gasoline, continued to increase as residents traded cars for SUVs and light trucks.
● Transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions are growing at a rapid rate.
● Bus and light rail reliability – measured by the frequency of vehicle breakdowns – deteriorated even as the fleet grows younger.
The Campaign plans to update “The State of Transportation” on a biannual basis, monitoring the state’s progress on each of the included metrics.
The full report can be found at www.tstc.org.
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An Unheralded Pataki Legacy
When George Pataki took office in 1994, the NY State Dept. of Transportation’s policy for the downstate highway system was to build a system of carpool lanes across the metropolitan region. The first segment in the network, 40 miles along the Long Island Expressway, was well along in planning and opened in stages from 1993 to 2005. Other projects were under discussion for jammed highways such as the Cross-Westchester and Staten Island Expressways, with conceptual thinking for even more additional lanes.
To the governor’s credit, he listened to critics who said that the highway expansions would encroach on nearby communities and that HOV lanes in busy metropolitan areas often served to sort out incidental carpools (and free up more space for driver-only vehicles) rather than encouraging new ones. In 1997 he called off the Cross-Westchester plan, and canceled the extension of the LIE HOV lane into Queens the following year. Around 2000, he directed the NY State DOT to plan for a bus-only lane on the Staten Island Expressway rather than an additional car lane (though see story below left).
The last gasp for the HOV network was NYSDOT’s LITP 2000 plan developed in the late 1990s to build new carpool or general purpose lanes on nearly every highway on Long Island (MTR #313). Governor Pataki declined to back the plan.
The clear question as to what should come after the general end to large-scale road construction in downstate New York was never answered during Governor Pataki’s tenure. The administration’s “quality communities” smart growth program never really gathered steam or proposed anything significant in terms of state agency planning or projects. The new state administration has a big opportunity to fill the void.
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One immediate opportunity to chart a new transportation course and test the practice of uniting transportation and development planning in New York State is the Tappan Zee Bridge corridor.
Officials of towns, villages and the county legislature in Rockland County recently requested that any big effort to build a new river crossing and develop a mass transit line in the corridor “allocate a significant level of resources for land use planning.”
“Smart land use planning in our corridor is vital to the future of our communities, and absolutely essential to future success of Tappan Zee transit service,” the officials wrote to the manager of the Tappan Zee/I-287 environmental review effort.
They argued that “To reap the greatest benefit, the corridor project must be designed to accommodate and promote community aspirations, in addition to meeting engineering standards and mass transit viability thresholds. It simply will not work if our zoning and master plans are not updated to meet the challenges and opportunities of the transportation project you are pursuing.”
Rockland County’s legislative and municipal leaders recognize what New York transportation officials have so far refused to acknowledge: that getting transportation right in 21st Century metropolises requires a strong dose of land use planning.
The officials’ letter also says land use planning coordinated with transportation projects will help reduce friction and opposition to the project. The letter was signed by Rockland Legislature Chair Harriet Cornell, Legislator Connie Coker, Orangetown Supervisor Thom Kleiner and South Nyack Mayor Tish Dubow.
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NYSDOT has released the results of its study of allowing cars to use the new Staten Island Expressway bus lane, and found that opening the lane to cars with three or more occupants would be feasible from a congestion point of view.
However, the agency also found that under HOV-2 rules — simple carpooling — the lane would become as congested as a general traffic lane and serve no new purpose.
Converting the existing bus lane to an HOV-3 lane could also take some time, because the bus lane’s width and sight-lines were set up under the assumption that only buses would use the lane. If DOT decides to change the lane’s status, and extend the resulting HOV-3 lane all the way across the Expressway route to the Goethals Bridge, it may take a few year’s worth of study and then perhaps a $100 million or so that is not programmed in NYSDOT’s budget.
The DOT undertook the study at the insistence of Staten Island officials who are concerned with persistent Island-wide gridlock and the bus lane’s “empty” appearance, even though it moves far more commuters at rush hour (MTR #537) than each of the other lanes on the clogged-up highway link.
A recent Advance editorial commented: “The bus-only lanes were designed to move people more efficiently, not necessarily vehicles, complaints about ‘empty lanes’ notwithstanding.” The Advance also reported this summer that enforcement of the bus lane has been scant, predicting more violations if an HOV designation is made, further undermining the lane’s efficacy.
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While rapid bus service transit is one option being considered in the Rockland-Westchester Tappan Zee corridor, Westchester County is also forging ahead with its own ideas about possible bus service innovations within the county, for its Bee Line system.
The Journal-News recently reported that Westchester County has begun a study examining bus rapid transit potential along a 12-mile stretch of Central Avenue, between the County Center in White Plains and the Bronx border in Yonkers. The county recently hired consultant STV for an 18-month study of speeding buses and building ridership along the road, which is Bee-Line’s busiest corridor. The bus routes that run along Central Avenue, the No. 20, 21, and BxM4C express bus to Manhattan, serve about 5,000 bus riders each weekday, or 9% of the system’s total weekday ridership. Westchester planners said that bus rapid transit implementation costs in Los Angeles ranged from $200,000 per mile for modest improvements to $9 million per mile for more extensive changes to exempt bus service from general traffic congestion.
We applaud the county’s initiative and look forward to emergence of a BRT plan. The county is likely to see a significant jump in bus ridership as free MetroCard transfers to Bronx subways become available this spring. BRT improvements would further improve the bus system’s appeal, though more funding will be needed to meet greater demand.
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Connecticut ’s Transportation Strategy Board released its updated strategy for a more intermodal and balanced transportation system last week. The TSB was set up in 2000 to help address transportation woes in the state and first came out with its list of strategies in 2003.
Very little in the report is new: the TSB states that instead of creating a new list of projects, existing promises must be realized and new funding raised over the past few years must be allocated. It says that about $600 million of the $3.6 billion raised for transportation projects over the past two years is still up for grabs; the rest will go to projects prioritized by Governor Rell and the legislature, including new rail cars for the New Haven Line, the New Britain-Hartford busway, and new commuter rail service between New Haven, Hartford and Springfield.
The report warns that a looming longer term funding shortfall will “require tough decisions about what projects to undertake and how to pay for them,” and then essentially states there isn’t enough money to pay for the roadway projects the TSB itself recommends: “$6 billion will be needed to construct all the recommended highway projects” including controversial projects like Route 11 and Route 6, and that “current financial resources are unlikely to support one, let alone all, of those projects.”
“Tough decisions” may refer to the electronic tolling and congestion pricing, options the TSB says should be studied to manage travel demand and raise new revenue. Reaction to the suggestion was mixed. House Speaker James Amann said tollbooths can be dangerous and cause delays, while Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney (D-New Haven) correctly countered that new technology toll collection can eliminate many of these concerns. Governor Rell’s spokesperson told the The Day that Rell supports a study of anything that could raise money for transportation. Interestingly, both the state and South Western Regional Planning Agency applied for federal money to study value pricing last year, including converting HOV lanes to High Occupancy Toll Lanes (HOT) (lanes in which single drivers will pay a toll to use the lane). Decisions are expected early in 2007.
Overall, the report seems to bode well for smart growth in the state. Land use was hardly mentioned in the TSB’s 2003 report, but the 2007 version strongly supports Governor Rell’s executive order on responsible growth, and goes further to recommend establishment of pre-approved development areas near transit, including grant funding to redevelop brownfield sites near transit hubs. The report also suggests development of a “uniform policy concerning rail station governance” that would centralize control of station parking, leases, and fees under state government. The concept deserves careful deliberation, since alienating local governments can doom progress toward transit villages and other forms of transportation-efficient development.
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An opinion poll of New Jersey voters by Farleigh Dickinson University found that 54 percent think leasing the New Jersey Turnpike to a private company to raise money for the state is a “bad idea,” with only 17 percent saying they support it.
Governor Corzine referred broadly to the need to turn state assets into budgetary resources in Tuesday’s state of the state speech, though no actual proposal to privatize the Turnpike is on the table. The Turnpike is widely viewed as the most valuable state-owned asset under consideration to be “monetized,” though other institutions like the state lottery are on the list.
The Corzine administration is still studying a wide range of options and conditions for such leases. It’s unclear as yet how these would perform in funding the state’s transportation needs versus more straightforward options like raising the state’s comparatively low tax on gasoline.
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Aetna , the large health insurance company, is using innovative parking techniques to encourage its employees to take transit to work, according to a recent piece by Toni Gold in the Hartford Courant.
The company will start charging certain workers for parking spaces this month, and by 2007, all employees, except those who ride or drive vanpools, will pay for parking. Parking costs will range from $75 to $200 a month. Aetna will increase its employee transit subsidy, from $21 to $30 a month, and build more bike parking. Free parking is a tremendous inducement to drive to work.
The parking reforms are part of the company’s relocation of 3,600 employees to downtown Hartford. 2,800 employees already work at the Hartford location on Farmington Avenue.
The goal from the corporate point of view is to reduce company costs associated with parking, which dovetails with the social goal of encouraging transit use in the city. Ideally, Aetna wants reduce parking to half of what suburban zoning dictates (from 6 to 3 spaces per 1000 square feet of office space), eliminating the need for some of its surface parking spaces. Gold notes that a few other companies, including ING Group and St. Paul Travelers, already have similar parking programs, and chides state government for owning huge surface lots downtown that would be ideal for infill, urban development.
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Unlike some sports facility plans we could name, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the new Meadowlands Stadium recognizes that the number of people that can drive to the game is dependent on the number of parking spaces available. Seeking to promote transit usage, the Giants/Jets plan reduces the number of spaces available by over 2,000 spaces from existing supply, despite plans for 4,000 more seats.
It promotes usage of the proposed train station that will connect the Sports Complex to Secaucus Junction, by creating new safe pedestrian corridors within the site, separating pedestrians from traffic. The Port Authority capital plan sets aside $96 million for this project, between 2007 and 2016.
However, the plan has two major drawbacks. The first is the reliance on the ludicrous Xanadu traffic study, which claims evening rush hour ends at 5:30 in North Jersey. It is nearly impossible to get a read on how the stadium will affect local traffic when relying on such a flawed traffic study.
Another problem is the absence of a look at more bus service to the site. The DEIS expects that NJ Transit will continue to run existing bus service to the stadium site. However, with the site a stone’s throw from dozens of bus routes that access the most heavily used bus-only lanes in the world (in the Lincoln Tunnel), the region would benefit from a study that examines new ideas for expanding bus connections to the Meadowlands complex.
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