A faithful reader writes in with this suggestion about the Tappan Zee renovation/reconstruction project:
Dear Cap’n,
As you may be aware, the choice for a transit mode for the new Tappan Zee Bridge was to be made this month. I attended a public meeting for this at the beginning of the month and the representative in attendance from NYSDOT made this clear to those of us who were there to expect to hear something in May. The month is nearly over and no one has heard a thing from the project team regarding the chosen alternative. Perhaps this is worth a blog post?
P.S. I work as a planner so I understood everything that was presented at the TZ hearing, but NYSDOT did a horrible job of breaking this stuff down into a digestible format for the public. It was a jargon and PowerPoint-filled mess – all too typical for these meetings.
Thanks,
-James
If you want to see this project transformed from a boondoggle to something that will improve people's lives in a meaningful way, you might want to let Governor Paterson know.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Connecting Brooklyn and Queens: Just what the doctor ordered?
There are many subway and commuter rail lines that cross from one borough to another, but some crossings are particularly underserved. One that's often mentioned is between Brooklyn and Queens.
There are in fact five subway lines that connect Brooklyn and Queens directly: the A/C Fulton Street Subway/Liberty Avenue El, the G Crosstown Subway, the M Myrtle/Ridgewood El, and the J/Z Fulton Street/Jamaica Avenue El. The LIRR Atlantic Branch also goes from Downtown Brooklyn to Jamaica. Connections from Jamaica and Ozone Park to Downtown Brooklyn are good, and connections from Greenpoint and the other G train neighborhoods to Long Island City are good. Connections from northern and western Queens to southern Brooklyn are not so good.
What we don't have right now is any concrete information about what neighborhood pairs people want to travel between in Brooklyn and Queens, so we don't know exactly where the greatest need is, or the greatest potential ridership. So we don't know which corridor to work with.
There is some information available, the census journey-to-work data. Working for the Regional Plan Association, Michael Frumin used this data to model potential ridership for one particular line: the Triboro RX proposal to run subway-frequency service along the NY Central Port Morris Branch, Hell Gate Bridge, NY Connecting Railroad and LIRR Bay Ridge Branch, from Yankee Stadium all the way to the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Frumin wrote, "At the end of the day, we can comfortably say that at least 76,000 New Yorkers (including 32,000 diverting from other modes of transportation) would use the Triboro RX to get to and from their jobs every day." Obviously, there are not that many people who live in Bay Ridge and work in Concourse Village or vice versa; most of the trips that Frumin projected would be less than a third of that length.
It'd be nice to have some easy interface to the journey-to-work data to be able to tell, for example, where the best place to build a new Brooklyn-to-Queens connection would be. It would also be helpful for estimating the effect of only building part of the "Triboro RX" at a time.
In fact, just because there's an unbroken set of tracks running from St. Mary's Park to Owl Head Park doesn't mean that you need to run a single train line the whole way. It might be better to use the line for extensions or branches to several different lines instead.
I'll give one example, which was actually considered by the MTA back in the 1960s: to extend the L train west to Brooklyn College. This and other uses of the Bay Ridge Branch were considered in a long and multi-branching SubChat thread last year. Someone was kind enough to post scans of a map that was released by the MTA and the city in 1969, and another that was printed in the New York Times in 1971. (The rest of the scans are worth a look as well). More potential uses later.
There are in fact five subway lines that connect Brooklyn and Queens directly: the A/C Fulton Street Subway/Liberty Avenue El, the G Crosstown Subway, the M Myrtle/Ridgewood El, and the J/Z Fulton Street/Jamaica Avenue El. The LIRR Atlantic Branch also goes from Downtown Brooklyn to Jamaica. Connections from Jamaica and Ozone Park to Downtown Brooklyn are good, and connections from Greenpoint and the other G train neighborhoods to Long Island City are good. Connections from northern and western Queens to southern Brooklyn are not so good.
What we don't have right now is any concrete information about what neighborhood pairs people want to travel between in Brooklyn and Queens, so we don't know exactly where the greatest need is, or the greatest potential ridership. So we don't know which corridor to work with.
There is some information available, the census journey-to-work data. Working for the Regional Plan Association, Michael Frumin used this data to model potential ridership for one particular line: the Triboro RX proposal to run subway-frequency service along the NY Central Port Morris Branch, Hell Gate Bridge, NY Connecting Railroad and LIRR Bay Ridge Branch, from Yankee Stadium all the way to the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Frumin wrote, "At the end of the day, we can comfortably say that at least 76,000 New Yorkers (including 32,000 diverting from other modes of transportation) would use the Triboro RX to get to and from their jobs every day." Obviously, there are not that many people who live in Bay Ridge and work in Concourse Village or vice versa; most of the trips that Frumin projected would be less than a third of that length.
It'd be nice to have some easy interface to the journey-to-work data to be able to tell, for example, where the best place to build a new Brooklyn-to-Queens connection would be. It would also be helpful for estimating the effect of only building part of the "Triboro RX" at a time.
In fact, just because there's an unbroken set of tracks running from St. Mary's Park to Owl Head Park doesn't mean that you need to run a single train line the whole way. It might be better to use the line for extensions or branches to several different lines instead.
I'll give one example, which was actually considered by the MTA back in the 1960s: to extend the L train west to Brooklyn College. This and other uses of the Bay Ridge Branch were considered in a long and multi-branching SubChat thread last year. Someone was kind enough to post scans of a map that was released by the MTA and the city in 1969, and another that was printed in the New York Times in 1971. (The rest of the scans are worth a look as well). More potential uses later.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Street-level Rapid Transit: Getting the Transitways
So you want to build a bus rapid transit line. In an earlier post, I discussed the various characteristics that have been used to define BRT (or else features of BRT), and concluded that the one most likely to make the difference between "rapid" and "not rapid" is physical separation. But where do you put the physically separated right-of-way?
The answers to this question are roughly the same as for trolleys, so this applies to them too. We're talking about rights-of-way in cities, so there are usually three sources of property that are long enough for a useful transit line: existing or old rail rights-of-way, landfill near waterways, and roads. Occasionally you might have some large chunk of land come on the market, and you can use part of that for a rail line.
Here in New York, there aren't too many existing rail lines with room for new lines. There's been some talk about reactivating or supplementing some rail lines; I may have a chance to talk about them in another post. The Westway case pretty much outlawed landfill for the purpose of building transit. There may be some new transit in the Hudson Yards or other developments, but those aren't necessarily in the areas where transit is needed. That leaves roads.
Converting roads to transit is a political move, and can encounter political resistance. Every road is used by someone, and even the people who use lightly-used roads can object to losing a lane. Part of the reasoning behind "Plan B" is that by rejecting congestion pricing, motorists have refused to pay for the streets they use, and the city is therefore justified in reallocating it to whatever other uses they chose. It's a great principle, but in reality it may not be enough to overcome opposition. In choosing roads to convert to transit use, we should not assume that the Plan B reasoning will be enough to overcome opposition. We should keep in mind that some roads will be easier than others. I'm going to talk about various road widths and how easy or hard they may be to appropriate for transit.
One or two lanes. There exist two-lane busways; I've ridden on the West Busway in Pittsburgh. But the West Busway was converted from a rail line. It runs through a tunnel and a deep gorge with no shops or residences adjacent. Any one-lane or two-lane road that has destinations along it will probably have some people who are used to driving to those destinations, and the shops or residences will be used to receiving deliveries by truck. In Denver, Sixteenth Street was converted to a mall used only by pedestrians and buses, but I believe they still allow delivery vehicles; similarly for the Fulton Street Mall in Brooklyn.
One or two lanes, plus parking, convert the parking lanes to busways. Ensuring access to businesses and residences is the main thing, but people can be very protective of parking, especially in areas where there are more drivers.
Four lanes (or two lanes, one-way), plus parking. Merrick Boulevard in Southeastern Queens has this configuration, and a "BRT" plan has been shelved because of community objections. However, it is important to note that many of the objections were over the taking of parking lanes. The plan did not include physically separated lanes, and in fact the lanes would not have been dedicated to buses 24/7, so the line would not have been Rapid enough to attract proponents.
In streets that have four lanes plus parking, the two middle lanes serve vehicles anticipating turning left, but mainly they allow faster cars to pass slower ones, and increase the overall capacity of the road. They do not contribute as much to the functioning of car traffic as parking lanes do, so taking them for a busway is less likely to engender as much opposition as taking parking lanes. However, opposition can still be considerable.
Six or more lanes (or three or more lanes, one-way), with or without parking. In this case, the additional lanes are not necessary for faster cars to overtake slower ones. They just serve to add capacity and move traffic. Any objection will simply be that "traffic will get backed up." It probably will, but not as disastrously as it can with a simple two-lane road.
Dual-carriageway roads. In this case, there is already some kind of median on the road, which can be used for transit stops. Also, the cross streets are often not extended to the middle carriageway, meaning that transit in the middle can flow better.
Installing transit on the larger streets would also have a traffic calming effect, as has happened where the tramway was installed in Paris. Reducing the number of car lanes reduces the speed of the cars and their ability to change lanes quickly, making things much safer for pedestrians.
Because of this, the most promising road corridors for installation of BRT or light rail are the ones with dual carriageways such as Queens Boulevard, Ocean Parkway and the Grand Concourse. The next most promising are the ones with six lanes or more, like Northern Boulevard, Southern Boulevard and the LIE.
If you really really think that the best place to put BRT is on a two- or four-lane street, you're welcome to try. Just be prepared for some stiff opposition when you tell the local residents and businesses that you want to take away lanes and parking. You may be able to overcome that resistance with data on ridership and time savings, so have it ready.
Of course, buses and trams are flexible, so you could have them running in a shared lane for a short section, but in that section they wouldn't be Rapid.
The answers to this question are roughly the same as for trolleys, so this applies to them too. We're talking about rights-of-way in cities, so there are usually three sources of property that are long enough for a useful transit line: existing or old rail rights-of-way, landfill near waterways, and roads. Occasionally you might have some large chunk of land come on the market, and you can use part of that for a rail line.
Here in New York, there aren't too many existing rail lines with room for new lines. There's been some talk about reactivating or supplementing some rail lines; I may have a chance to talk about them in another post. The Westway case pretty much outlawed landfill for the purpose of building transit. There may be some new transit in the Hudson Yards or other developments, but those aren't necessarily in the areas where transit is needed. That leaves roads.
Converting roads to transit is a political move, and can encounter political resistance. Every road is used by someone, and even the people who use lightly-used roads can object to losing a lane. Part of the reasoning behind "Plan B" is that by rejecting congestion pricing, motorists have refused to pay for the streets they use, and the city is therefore justified in reallocating it to whatever other uses they chose. It's a great principle, but in reality it may not be enough to overcome opposition. In choosing roads to convert to transit use, we should not assume that the Plan B reasoning will be enough to overcome opposition. We should keep in mind that some roads will be easier than others. I'm going to talk about various road widths and how easy or hard they may be to appropriate for transit.
One or two lanes. There exist two-lane busways; I've ridden on the West Busway in Pittsburgh. But the West Busway was converted from a rail line. It runs through a tunnel and a deep gorge with no shops or residences adjacent. Any one-lane or two-lane road that has destinations along it will probably have some people who are used to driving to those destinations, and the shops or residences will be used to receiving deliveries by truck. In Denver, Sixteenth Street was converted to a mall used only by pedestrians and buses, but I believe they still allow delivery vehicles; similarly for the Fulton Street Mall in Brooklyn.
One or two lanes, plus parking, convert the parking lanes to busways. Ensuring access to businesses and residences is the main thing, but people can be very protective of parking, especially in areas where there are more drivers.
Four lanes (or two lanes, one-way), plus parking. Merrick Boulevard in Southeastern Queens has this configuration, and a "BRT" plan has been shelved because of community objections. However, it is important to note that many of the objections were over the taking of parking lanes. The plan did not include physically separated lanes, and in fact the lanes would not have been dedicated to buses 24/7, so the line would not have been Rapid enough to attract proponents.
In streets that have four lanes plus parking, the two middle lanes serve vehicles anticipating turning left, but mainly they allow faster cars to pass slower ones, and increase the overall capacity of the road. They do not contribute as much to the functioning of car traffic as parking lanes do, so taking them for a busway is less likely to engender as much opposition as taking parking lanes. However, opposition can still be considerable.
Six or more lanes (or three or more lanes, one-way), with or without parking. In this case, the additional lanes are not necessary for faster cars to overtake slower ones. They just serve to add capacity and move traffic. Any objection will simply be that "traffic will get backed up." It probably will, but not as disastrously as it can with a simple two-lane road.
Dual-carriageway roads. In this case, there is already some kind of median on the road, which can be used for transit stops. Also, the cross streets are often not extended to the middle carriageway, meaning that transit in the middle can flow better.
Installing transit on the larger streets would also have a traffic calming effect, as has happened where the tramway was installed in Paris. Reducing the number of car lanes reduces the speed of the cars and their ability to change lanes quickly, making things much safer for pedestrians.
Because of this, the most promising road corridors for installation of BRT or light rail are the ones with dual carriageways such as Queens Boulevard, Ocean Parkway and the Grand Concourse. The next most promising are the ones with six lanes or more, like Northern Boulevard, Southern Boulevard and the LIE.
If you really really think that the best place to put BRT is on a two- or four-lane street, you're welcome to try. Just be prepared for some stiff opposition when you tell the local residents and businesses that you want to take away lanes and parking. You may be able to overcome that resistance with data on ridership and time savings, so have it ready.
Of course, buses and trams are flexible, so you could have them running in a shared lane for a short section, but in that section they wouldn't be Rapid.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Nothing New Under the Sun
You may remember that the Red Hook Tunnel Bus was not an original idea of mine, but had been discussed by lots of other people before. Turns out I've been duplicating other ideas as well. Great minds think alike - sometimes at the same time, according to Malcolm Gladwell.
And so last week I wrote about possibilities for putting transit back on the Brooklyn Bridge. In today's headlines, Streetsblogger Ben Fried linked to a NY1 story about this idea, featuring "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz. In the comments, Susan Donovan linked to a 2005 blog post by her husband Aaron, who now works for the MTA and might be able to pass the idea on to some others. Aaron's post includes a lot of interesting stuff about the extensive streetcar and elevated train network that used to be hooked up to the bridge.
Commenter J. Mork linked to an awesome movie filmed in 1899 by Edison from the front of a train crossing the bridge, where you can see pedestrians, carriages and a trolley.
And so last week I wrote about possibilities for putting transit back on the Brooklyn Bridge. In today's headlines, Streetsblogger Ben Fried linked to a NY1 story about this idea, featuring "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz. In the comments, Susan Donovan linked to a 2005 blog post by her husband Aaron, who now works for the MTA and might be able to pass the idea on to some others. Aaron's post includes a lot of interesting stuff about the extensive streetcar and elevated train network that used to be hooked up to the bridge.
Commenter J. Mork linked to an awesome movie filmed in 1899 by Edison from the front of a train crossing the bridge, where you can see pedestrians, carriages and a trolley.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Essential Service
Todays New York Times has an article about the federal government's Essential Air Service, which spends $100 million a year on subsidies to small airports, spending on average a hundred dollars per passenger. One such airport is in Plattsburgh, NY. Never mind that Plattsburgh is 30 miles from Burlington, VT, and 65 miles from Dorval. The military spent a huge amount of money converting an old base into a commercial airport (with free parking!) to "revitalize" the local economy, after lobbying by Senators Clinton and Schumer.
Imagine if the government had taken all that money and spent it on upgrading the train tracks between Albany and Montreal that pass through Plattsburgh? Could they convert them to continuous welded rail, and shave a significant amount of time off the route? Could they improve signaling? Add a spur to Albany Airport? How much more tourist traffic would come through Plattsburgh to the Adirondacks?
Imagine if the government had taken all that money and spent it on upgrading the train tracks between Albany and Montreal that pass through Plattsburgh? Could they convert them to continuous welded rail, and shave a significant amount of time off the route? Could they improve signaling? Add a spur to Albany Airport? How much more tourist traffic would come through Plattsburgh to the Adirondacks?
Tunnel xRT: the Queens Midtown Tunnel
This is the last of the major East River crossings to the Central Business District. The Queens Midtown Tunnel, like the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, carries no local buses, only the 21 express buses that make the loop, inbound through the tunnel and outbound over the Queensborough Bridge. There are some private buses that use the tunnel, including the New York Airport Service buses to Kennedy Airport.
There is a morning counterflow HOV 3+ lane on the Long Island Expressway, which begins in the middle of Calvary Cemetary, west of the BQE Interchange in West Maspeth. The lane has no entrances or exits from Maspeth to the tunnel, so there is no way for buses from the BQE to enter it. There is no evening HOV lane, and no bus lanes on any of the other tunnel approaches. However, two of the tunnel approaches have the capacity for busways: Eleventh Street as far north as 44th Drive in Queens and McGuinness Boulevard as far south as the BQE in Brooklyn, where it could connect with the Bedford Avenue BRT project.
The Q67 travels for part of its length along the expressway service road, but instead of going through the tunnel, it turns north towards Queens Plaza. Any new buses to use the tunnel would most likely be new bus routes, or else routes diverted from Queens Plaza.
On the Manhattan side of the bridge, things are very promising. As with the other bridges and tunnels, buses coming out of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel could connect to the First/Second Avenue BRT route. Last month, Transportation Commissioner Sadik-Khan revealed plans to make two lanes of 34th Street into an exclusive, separated busway, river to river. Linking this busway up through the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels to the bus and HOV lanes on either side would be a great way to get buses moving.
It's true that 34th Street already has a major transit line running underneath it, but that doesn't go everywhere. Connecting the busway to the tunnels could relieve congestion at the Port Authority bus terminal, because some buses could be through-routed to points east. These could be local buses, such as a West New York to Williamsburg bus, or a Long Island City to Hoboken bus. They could also be long distance buses, allowing people from Long Island to take Greyhound-type buses through to New Jersey and points west with only short stops in Manhattan.
There is a morning counterflow HOV 3+ lane on the Long Island Expressway, which begins in the middle of Calvary Cemetary, west of the BQE Interchange in West Maspeth. The lane has no entrances or exits from Maspeth to the tunnel, so there is no way for buses from the BQE to enter it. There is no evening HOV lane, and no bus lanes on any of the other tunnel approaches. However, two of the tunnel approaches have the capacity for busways: Eleventh Street as far north as 44th Drive in Queens and McGuinness Boulevard as far south as the BQE in Brooklyn, where it could connect with the Bedford Avenue BRT project.
The Q67 travels for part of its length along the expressway service road, but instead of going through the tunnel, it turns north towards Queens Plaza. Any new buses to use the tunnel would most likely be new bus routes, or else routes diverted from Queens Plaza.
On the Manhattan side of the bridge, things are very promising. As with the other bridges and tunnels, buses coming out of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel could connect to the First/Second Avenue BRT route. Last month, Transportation Commissioner Sadik-Khan revealed plans to make two lanes of 34th Street into an exclusive, separated busway, river to river. Linking this busway up through the Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels to the bus and HOV lanes on either side would be a great way to get buses moving.
It's true that 34th Street already has a major transit line running underneath it, but that doesn't go everywhere. Connecting the busway to the tunnels could relieve congestion at the Port Authority bus terminal, because some buses could be through-routed to points east. These could be local buses, such as a West New York to Williamsburg bus, or a Long Island City to Hoboken bus. They could also be long distance buses, allowing people from Long Island to take Greyhound-type buses through to New Jersey and points west with only short stops in Manhattan.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Improving the Elevators and Escalators
The New York Times had an interesting report today about the MTA's disgraceful record on elevator maintenance, and what some people, including President Roberts and Joseph Joyce, the General Superintendent of elevators and escalators, are doing to improve it. It ends with this quote from Joyce:
If I were Joyce - and I had the support of higher-ups - I'd make it part of the job requirements for the elevator engineers to spend one day a month traveling around the city in a wheelchair. The bus lift people as well. I'd do it myself.
I’m trying to get these guys to think that, you know what, that could be your mom that’s walking with a cane and needs that escalator. Nothing in this world is guaranteed. It could be one of us in a wheelchair next month. And if you want to enjoy the city, you want to be able to utilize our public transportation system. You need that elevator to work.
If I were Joyce - and I had the support of higher-ups - I'd make it part of the job requirements for the elevator engineers to spend one day a month traveling around the city in a wheelchair. The bus lift people as well. I'd do it myself.
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