Transforming Transportation Planning
For decades, planning by those responsible for our roads and
streets has been straightforward and simple – congested
roads were widened. The method has not only failed to
reduce congestion, but it has helped spur sprawl development
as new highway capacity has enabled further flung development,
ultimately spawning more and longer car trips and worse roadway
congestion.
Former NYC transportation official Sam Schwartz in told the NY
Press in 2003 that
"Traffic engineers have failed. If you compare the
accomplishments of our profession over the last 50 years
to the medical profession, our performance is equivalent
to millions of people still dying of polio, influenza and other
minor bacterial diseases that have been cured."
Changing the basic terms of transportation planning and breaking
the vicious circle of road widening, sprawl development and worse
traffic congestion is one of the key missions the Tri-State Transportation
Campaign was founded to pursue. Traffic congestion cannot be
regarded as an isolated phenomenon curable with more pavement. It
is a symptom of a broader development, transportation and planning
failure that has made car dependence inevitable and made most other
options for travel unviable in most of the American landscape. A
way out of the cycle is a more unified consideration of development
goals, community aspirations and the transportation investments that
can support them and promote mobility over the long run.
Reform in New Jersey
Fortunately, some major transportation agencies are coming
to the same conclusion. Although the Tri-State Transportation
Campaign and other organizations battled for years with the New Jersey
Dept. of Transportation over spending priorities and the efficacy
of new road construction, we are now much closer to a meeting of
the minds. NJDOT officials have become national champions for
smart growth-oriented transportation planning, seeking through new
planning methods to put a stop to "the cycle of growth and
widening that has plagued one of the nation’s most congested
states." Former New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jack
Lettiere has said, "We can’t build our way out of congestion,
but can ease congestion if we build the right things."
Innovative NJDOT projects now include scrapping the proposed Millstone
Bypass east of Princeton in favor of a less destructive alternative,
the conversion of a Route 18 extension in Wall Township near the
Shore into construction of a 20-mile bike and pedestrian path, and
working directly with local leaders along Route 9, Route 17, and
other corridors to help control the root cause of traffic congestion -
poor land use decisions.
The NJDOT also hosts a Transit Village Initiative that seeks to
encourage residential, recreational and commercial development near
existing transit hubs.
Stagnation in New York
Over a decade, the Tri-State Campaign has waged campaigns across
downstate New York that have engaged civic leaders, elected
officials and allies from advocacy groups to head off road
expansion projects likely to spur sprawl development and traffic
growth. More
recently, NY State DOT officials have begun using language like "fix
it first" to indicate they are emphasizing good upkeep of
the existing road system over new capacity construction.
A report produced by an independent panel for the NY State DOT
in 2004 urged that "NYS must lead the effort to link land use
and development to ensure quality communities with efficient transportation
system." However, DOT officials in the field continue to insist
that they will have nothing to do with land use. The DOT continues to pursue road expansion strategies
in parts of sprawling Suffolk County, while the NY State Thruway
Authority is contemplating highway expansion in Rockland and Orange
Counties. Clearly, more needs to be done to bring NY State
agencies into the 21st Century planning fold.
Planning Issues in New York City
The ambitious economic development
initiatives launched by the Bloomberg administration – rezoning
major districts for more intensive development, new sports arenas
and suburban-style big box stores outside of Manhattan – have
taken place without much thought for their transportation consequences
in the town that coined the term "gridlock." If city
development initiatives are not made alongside coherent planning
for more mass transit capacity, they can worsen car dependence and
traffic congestion, worsen quality of life in neighborhoods
and commercial areas and further erode the city as uniquely transit-
and pedestrian-focused place.
The city has acknowledged that its recent rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn
could indeed create problems for the capacity of the underlying transportation
system, and has launched an after-the-fact transportation study to
attempt to address that problem, the Downtown Transportation Blueprint. The
recent plan to add thousands of housing units to Williamsburg-Greenpoint
was also done without any transportation forethought, and elected
leaders there now also clamor for a transportation capacity analysis.
Though Mayor Bloomberg famously announced he wouldn’t want
an IKEA store in his neighborhood, the city continues to seek to
site big-box retail stores and their large parking lots in boroughs
outside of Manhattan without requiring any transit-oriented planning
(like free or cheap delivery services for customers).
City-supported stadium projects raise many of the same issues. The
now-defunct West Side Stadium project threatened traffic mayhem and
was accompanied by incoherent transportation planning, while the
new Yankee Stadium plan would create thousands of new traffic-attracting
parking spaces but no new mass transit access. We are seeking
details of the transportation aspects of the new Shea Stadium
plan. For more, read our transportation
and development page.
Connecticut - New Tricks for an Old-School Department?
ConnDOT still spends most of its transportation dollars on
highway projects. Its transit system has been neglected and
underfunded for years. After contracting scandals exposed a culture of corruption and waste at ConnDOT, Governor Rell created a reform commission tasked with studying and revamping ConnDOT's mission and culture. Thanks to the advocacy of the Campaign, the commission's draft report included recommendations that Connecticut enact smart growth, "fix-it-first," and congestion pricing policies, but it is still unclear if ConnDOT will move away from its highway-centric thinking towards smart growth and transit.
Currently, the state is considering
highway expansion to alleviate traffic congestion along a number
of corridors, including sections of I-95, I-84, Route 7, and Route
11. Governor Rell has secured new funding to buy new rail
cars and continue infrastructure modernization along the New Haven
commuter rail line (CT’s piece of Metro-North RR) but so far there has been little change in transportation emphasis or perspective in Hartford.
Fighting Sprawl
Bad Road Stopped: Route 92
The Campaign had a big win in 2005 when the NJ Turnpike Authority announced
it would transfer money from Route 92, effectively killing
the project for many years to come. Route 92 is a proposed 6.7-mile
highway through Middlesex County, extending from New Jersey Turnpike
Interchange 8A to Route 1 at Ridge Road in South Brunswick. The
highway is estimated to cost at least $350 million. The road would
destroy acres of wetlands, exacerbate sprawling land uses, and
would not solve the areas congestion problems.
Learn more:
Route 347
For years, the NYS DOT has been trying to figure out how to
deal with congestion on Route 347, a roadway in Brookhaven, Suffolk
County that suffers from the traffic impacts of low density, strip
mall development. Potential solutions have ranged from changing
the roadway into a limited access highway, adding lanes, or taking
a more smart growth oriented approach. The Tri-State Campaign is
pushing for the latter, and supports a plan that would connect
local land use planning, build pedestrian infrastructure, increase
local street connections (so cars have an alternative route), and
beautifying the corridor. In 2000, the Campaign worked with local
allies like the Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Organization to postpone
NYS DOT’s proposal to widen the roadway and add a number
of bridge crossings. But in 2005, DOT began a new environmental
review studying the same alternative opposed in 2000. TSTC is calling
on the state to start the process over and commence a smart growth
corridor plan that provides more sustainable congestion relief.
Tappan Zee Corridor
An environmental review on future options for the Tappan Zee
Bridge corridor, running through New York’s Westchester,
Rockland, and Orange Counties, is currently being conducted
by New York State Department of Transportation in consultation
with Metro-North and the Thruway Authority. What happens
to the Tappan Zee corridor will dictate, to a large extent,
how Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties will grow, develop,
and deal with congestion.
The study is focused on whether to
replace or rehabilitate the deteriorating bridge, a variety
of transit options to connect Rockland and Westchester, and
plans for the I-287 roadway.
The Campaign is educating local
leaders about the most appropriate transit technology in the
corridor. For example, bus rapid transit may make the most
sense, given its flexibility. lower cost, and appropriateness
for suburban environments. (Visit TSTC's Bus Rapid Transit Clearinghouse for more information.)
We are also advocating
for local land-use changes that would promote development
around new and existing transit hubs, rather than promote sprawling,
low density land uses. Tri-State is part of the Stakeholder Committee
for the study, and are opposing additional highway lanes across
the bridge.
Previous Campaigns
TSTC has successfully worked to stop wasteful
highway projects throughout the region. With allies, we have
made the case that regional highway expansion is not the answer.
2004: Millstone Bypass in New Jersey
We stopped a proposed a 2.3 mile four-lane elevated bypass highway that would run through the Millstone River watershed in West Windsor Township. We submitted comments and advocated strongly for a cheaper option that focused on operational improvements to reduce congestion rather than a brand new road. In 2004, the state chose the option we supported.
2003: Stopped Goethals Twin
The Goethals twin project was a project to construct a second highway bridge alongside the I-278 Goethals Bridge. In the mid nineties, we worked with coalition of community groups for years to oppose the project. In 2001, the PA announced that it was postponing the project due to budget constraints (partially due to September 11th). In fall 2003, the agency commenced on a brand new environmental study for bridge alternatives, and met with us directly to explain the situation. They seem to be leaning towards a new bridge, mass transit use, and possibly turning the old bridge for other uses, rather than a twinning plan.
1998: Stopped LIE Widening in Queens
In 1998, a project to widen the LIE in eastern Queens for a new HOV was halted by the Governor. More than 100 civic, health, environmental and transportation groups and 25 Queens elected officials signed a resolution against the project that the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and Queens Civic Congress circulated. A month later, Governor Pataki killed the project.
Mid-'90s: Stopped I-287 expansion in Westchester
We advocated against
plans to build a HOV lane in the center of the Cross Westchester
Expressway. In 1997, Governor Pataki said that he had instructed
the NY State DOT to end plans to build the HOV lane in the Cross-Westchester
Expressway.
