TSTC Asks Parkway Hearing Postponement
The New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection has announced a hearing on the proposed widening of the Garden State Parkway on January 30th, starting at 7 p.m. in Little Egg Harbor.
Jersey Shows How it's Done
At a well-attended NY Metropolitan Transportation Council meeting last week, New Jersey assistant transportation commissioner Mark Stout laid out the recent policy reforms that have led NJ DOT to proclaim: “land use is our business.”
Warrington Out at NJ Transit
Even transportation insiders were surprised when NJ Transit executive director George Warrington announced his departure from the agency effective March 31, 2007.
CT: Stop Gridlock, Go Transit
The Connecticut Citizens Transportation Lobby hit a home run in turnout for its “Stop Gridlock, Go Transit” rally in a hearing room at the state capitol in Hartford last week.
Sustainable NYC: Real Deal or Another Big Study?
The public outreach portion of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlanYC initiative to outline the needs of a future city of 9 million people commenced this month with a round of meetings involving neighborhood leaders.
NYC Traffic: the Times & Beyond
A recent NY Times piece reiterated the enemy-is-us findings of a number of advocacy-related reports that have pointed out that the majority of Manhattan car commuters begin their trips in New York City rather than the suburbs.
Long Island Bus Ridership Still Soaring
Ridership at Nassau County’s Long Island Bus continues to skyrocket, with 32.2 million people riding in 2006, according to a recent presentation by Long Island Bus President Neil Yellin. This represents a 3% increase over 2005, and 6% over 2004.
Sidewalks Grow in Brooklyn
NYC DOT has announced a plan to expand sidewalks around the L-train Bedford Ave. station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Welcome Aboard!
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is excited to add two new directors to its board, and also welcomes our new staff attorney, Kyle Wiswall.
TSTC Asks Parkway Hearing Postponement
The New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection has announced a hearing on the proposed widening of the Garden State Parkwayon January 30 th, starting at 7 p.m. in Little Egg Harbor. The hearing is the only one scheduled where members of the public can comment on the largest highway widening project in New Jersey in recent memory. The hearing was announced in the January 10 thDEP Bulletin, less than three weeks before the hearing will take place.
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign has asked Environmental Commissioner Lisa Jackson to push the hearing date back, citing inadequate notice and the lack of availability of the documents on which comments will be based.
The hearing announcement did not specify where members of the public could see the documents related to the hearing, such as the Environmental Assessment, Traffic Study, or Threatened and Endangered Species Report. Even for those who know where to look, to gain access to any document related to the widening, the DEP has required a detailed OPRA (Open Public Records Act, the NJ version of the Freedom of Information Act) request which takes days to process.
In October, the DEP itself told the NJ Turnpike Authority, which runs the Parkway, that its permit application was incomplete.
Transportation reformers are concerned that the only study done on the Parkway expansion project uses data as much as a decade old and contains no analysis of impacts such as increasing development pressures in rapidly growing southern New Jersey. Neither does the slim EIS offer any look at strategies to head off the re-congestion that inevitably follows standard road widening in busy metropolitan areas.
The project as it stands is a lousy fit for a state where planning practices at other transportation agencies has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years, as we recount at right.
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Jersey Shows How it's Done
At a well-attended NY Metropolitan Transportation Council meeting last week, New Jersey assistant transportation commissioner Mark Stout laid out the recent policy reforms that have led NJ DOT to proclaim: “land use is our business.”
The statement might seem unremarkable to anyone unfamiliar with state transportation departments. But the policy of complete separation of state transportation projects and municipal development decision-making is still proclaimed as a virtue by some at the NY State Dept. of Transportation, years and perhaps decades after observers of the American landscape pointed out the dysfunction of that arrangement, not to mention the obvious interdependence of development patterns and transportation systems, whether they function in harmony or in conflict.
Stout’s presentation encompassed themes now familiar to MTR readers in a well-argued package: it is impossible for metropolitan states to keep up with traffic congestion by building or widening roads; local subdivision-oriented road systems often exacerbate congestion by dumping every type of car trip onto state highways, management of access to state highways can be done more aggressively without terrible consequences, and state DOTs are in the land use business for better or worse whether they admit it or not.
NJDOT’s new planning perspective seeks partnership with municipalities to address these problems regardless of whether they result in major capital projects on state road systems. Rebuilding or forging new grid systems in towns is an effective congestion reliever and improves cycling and walking circulation in the bargain. Several DOT town planning initiatives—in Warren and Gloucester counties– are attempting to get ahead of development curves so that state roads are not overwhelmed (or disfigured, along rural Route 57 in Warren County) when growth occurs, and several others are downsizing city highways to make their vicinities more attractive for urban development. Stout’s overall message was that “Better planning and design will reduce vehicle miles of travel” (or at least restrain its growth). DOT has won municipalities’ cooperation by sending the message that it is more likely to invest planning and capital resources in those areas where a productive partnership exists .
Unfortunately, the leaders of the suburban divisions of NYSDOT who most need to learn about the direction taken by NJ DOT did not attend the NYMTC session (NYSDOT’s Poughkeepsie office was in the newspapers explaining the need to widen Route 22 through the highlands in Putnam County).
Governor Spitzer called during his election campaign for “incentives for counties and towns to ensure that land use and transportation planning are integrated…smart growth involves a planning process with a vision of what we want our communities to look like in a few years’ time, and then thinking comprehensively about the housing, commercial development, transportation and environmental infrastructure needed to make that vision a reality” (MTR #529). That sounds remarkably like the DOT-led smart growth efforts in New Jersey.
Some municipal leaders are in fact in front of New York State agencies on integrated planning — local and county officials in Rockland County have urged transportation agencies looking at options for the Tappan Zee corridor to fund complementary town land use plans (see MTR #547).
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Warrington Out at NJ Transit
Even transportation insiders were surprised when NJ Transit executive director George Warrington announced his departure from the agency effective March 31, 2007. Warrington would not comment on the reasons for his departure except to say he had many intriguing offers and wanted be away from NJ Transit while making his decision. Warrington will most be remembered as a tireless advocate for more rail access into New York City and reinvestment into New Jersey’s urban core.
The Bergen Record reports that former Governor Jim Florio will head a panel to replace Warrington. Joining him are NJDOT Commissioner Kris Kolluri, Port Authority Executive Director Anthony Coscia, Martin Robins from the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers, Bergen County Freeholder Bernadette McPherson, and others.
Warrington’s departure increases the high vacancy rate at the top of the region’s major mass transit agencies. Along with NJ Transit, both the Long Island Rail Road and NYC Transit are looking for presidents. Connecticut DOT is also hiring for a deputy commissioner position to handle transit and land use issues. Apart from mass transit, the MTA Bridge & Tunnel agency is presumably looking for a president, since its recent leader, Susan Kupferman, has been named Chief Operating Officer at the MTA. The Spitzer administration also continues its search for a leader for the NY State DOT.
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CT: Stop Gridlock, Go Transit
The Connecticut Citizens Transportation Lobby hit a home run in turnout for its “Stop Gridlock, Go Transit” rally in a hearing room at the state capitol in Hartford last week. Both House Speaker James Amann and Senate President Donald Williams attended the entire proceeding, along with many members of the legislature’s committee on transportation. Governor Rell was represented by Ralph Carpenter, ConnDOT commissioner.
The Citizens Lobby presented awards to the principals of state government for their work to increase transit funding last year (MTR #523), then launched its 2007 agenda, which demands more frequent transit service, development of rail and water-borne freight services and new highway safety initiatives such as greater law enforcement towards trucks and investment in existing infrastructure rather than in road expansion.
Lawmakers hailed the non-partisan nature of work in the capitol to find new transportation funding in each of the past two years, and referred often to the need to continue the focus and to improve the state’s policy-making and project delivery capacity. Commissioner Carpenter appeared to agree with the general sentiment.
The Tri-State Campaign’s Kate Slevin stated that improving transportation in Connecticut will require close coordination with land use, and thus for ConnDOT to spell out the traffic consequences of continued sprawl and work with municipalities to coordinate development and transportation planning.
The event was co-sponsored by the Tri-State Campaign, CT Fund for the Environment, the Business Council of Fairfield County and others.
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The public outreach portion of Mayor Bloomberg’s PlanYC initiative to outline the needs of a future city of 9 million people commenced this month with a round of meetings involving neighborhood leaders. Their stated purpose is to collect public ideas about how to develop a sustainable city and meet goals like reducing travel times and restoring infrastructure to state of good repair by 2030.
If a meeting for Brooklyn leaders was any indication, New Yorkers are not afraid of bold initiatives like congestion pricing. Most agreed that congestion pricing to cut traffic in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and Queens was a good way to speed travel times and raise new money for transit (the concept received a small, but audible, round of applause). Speeding buses through traffic and reevaluating bus routes, better subway service, and improving commutes between non-Manhattan boroughs were also popular recommendations. Leaders from around Brooklyn agreed that one way to create more green space is to use some existing street-space for planted medians and bikeways, and said the city should consider closing some roads to traffic.
Indeed, if the Mayor is serious about reducing travel times, he will have to make some tough choices. It will be hard, for example, to achieve this in the face of population growth without some way to unclog roads and devote more street space to efficient vehicles like buses and bicycles and essential traffic such as business deliveries.
Many observers worry that the PlanYC effort is too focused on discussion rather than implementation as time ticks down on the Bloomberg mayoralty. City officials with anecdotes such as the recommendation from Sammy of Queens to harness energy from rotating subway turnstiles does not allay these concerns. Many of those invited to meetings last week have worked for years on studies and proposals that have not yielded any action, such as traffic calming and general transportation studies of Downtown Brooklyn, the city’s talk of reducing truck impacts spanning back to the Giuliani administration and, more recently, the slow effort to define NYC bus rapid transit routes. Many Brooklyn leaders signed a 2006 letter to the Mayor asking for a transportation policy focused on better neighborhoods and moving people instead of cars.
City officials say that the implementation phase of PlanYC will start in March. Nonetheless, Mayor Bloomberg will have to move very swiftly to get worthwhile reforms in place during his term.
New Congestion Pricing Poll
While many Brooklyn community leaders seem to support the idea of congestion pricing, a new Quinnipiac poll released last week found that NYC voters oppose the initiative 62% to 31%. This contradicts a survey commissioned by the TSTC last year (MTR #545) that found New Yorkers evenly split over the idea. Why the difference? First, Quinnipiac polled registered voters only, not all New Yorkers. Registered voters represent only 4.5 million of the city’s 8 million people. Second, question phrasing likely led to different results — Quinnipiac asked whether people support pricing to relieve congestion in Manhattan, whereas our study noted that revenue could be used for better transit (indicating broader benefits) and began with a brief description of road pricing’s success in London.
Still 48% of respondents to the Quinnipiac poll agreed road pricing would lead to better transit service. Both polls found traffic congestion to be a major issue in the city. In any event, a non-populist initiative to make some people pay for what they now get for free will be accomplished by
strong leadership, not via public acclaim.
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A recent NY Times piece reiterated the enemy-is-us findings of a number of advocacy-related reports that have pointed out that the majority of Manhattan car commuters begin their trips in New York City rather than the suburbs.
The article reported that: 53% of car commuters to Manhattan are from New York City. 35% of government workers in Manhattan commute by car. And Long Island, not New Jersey, is the biggest source of suburban drivers in Manhattan.
Reports that cover the theme of who drives to Manhattan in more detail include “Necessity or Choice: Why People Drive in Manhattan” (Schaller/Transportation Alternatives-2006), and “East River Bridge Tolls: Who Will Really Pay?” (Komanoff/Bridge Tolls Advocacy Project—2003) (see www.transalt.org and www.bridgetolls.org).
We would add two other points for a more complete picture of traffic trends in New York City:
Traffic boom in the boroughs: Measured traffic in the outer boroughs, on bridges either within the four boroughs other than Manhattan or connecting those boroughs to one another (and Staten Island to New Jersey) grew by 13.8% from 1995-2005, versus an increase of only 6.9% of traffic on Manhattan crossings over the same years. (“ NYC Bridge Traffic Volumes 2005”—NYC DOT).
Trucks are us: Truck volumes are increasing at a much faster rate than for other types of traffic. Trucks increased 28.9% on NYC toll bridges and tunnels from 1995 to 2005, vs. an 8.2% rise for all vehicles crossing NYC toll bridges over the same period. Truck traffic is expected to continue rapid growth and make up an ever-larger share of the city's total traffic mix. The Federal Highway Administration projects growth of truck volumes in New York City at 83 percent over 1998 levels by 2020. Data on trucks crossing NYC bridges confirms this seemingly extreme forecast within just a few percentage points as of 2005 (“Truck Toll Volumes” NYMTC 2005).
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Ridership at Nassau County’s Long Island Bus continues to skyrocket, with 32.2 million people riding in 2006, according to a recent presentation by Long Island Bus President Neil Yellin. This represents a 3% increase over 2005, and 6% over 2004.
Higher ridership is a good thing, but it puts even more pressure on the bus system managers, who deal with chronic underfunding. Though state and MTA grants have increased over the past decade, Nassau County’s support is still less than what it was in 1999.
The agency is now facing an operating deficit nearing $10 million that may lead to cuts in service in the next few months if funding cannot be found. In addition, millions are needed to begin replacing an aging fleet of buses, which are currently being run into the ground to keep pace with ridership.
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NYC DOT has announced a plan to expand sidewalks around the L-train Bedford Ave. station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In a December release, Commissioner Weinshall noted, “The Bedford Avenue station is heavily used and the sidewalks in the area will be expanded to meet the needs of this growing community. By building larger sidewalks we'll be able to provide bike parking and ease some of the crowding around the station entrance.”
The project, recommended by DOT and City Planning as part of their joint “Subway-Sidewalk Interface” project and supported by Brooklyn Community Board #1, will remove 5 or 6 car parking spaces in order to create more room on sidewalks around the subway station’s stairwell. The portion of the sidewalk extension farther from the stairwell will devoted to an additional array of bicycle parking racks.
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The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is excited to add two new directors to its board:
Sam Crane, Senior Vice President of External Affairs for Maher Terminals in Port Elizabeth. One of the world’s largest independent container terminal operators, Maher Terminals is the region’s leader in green port technology. Sam was a New Jersey state treasurer in the Florio administration.
Toni Gold , Senior Associate at Project for Public Spaces, is an urban planning and development specialist with expertise in transportation for livable communities. She is a Board member of 1000 Friends of Connecticut, a statewide smart growth organization, and frequent contributor to the “Places” column in the Hartford Courant.
We also welcome our new staff attorney, Kyle Wiswall. Kyle, a New Jersey native, comes to Tri-State with a strong background in environmental and natural resource law, having worked for the New Mexico Environmental Department and as lead editor of University of New Mexico’s Natural Resources Journal. He received his J.D. from University of New Mexico and is a member of the New York Bar Association. Kyle replaces Nancy Christensen, who has moved to a major law firm active in New York and New Jersey.
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