Planetizen links to a New York Times article about the Rockland County village of Suffern, which has seen a large increase in its fortunes over the past twenty years. The article doesn't mention how much Suffern has suffered from its location as two major highways were built around it. It also doesn't acknowledge how the town has benefited from public investments in transit service, particularly over the past 10-15 years.
Suffern sits at the southern end of the Ramapo Pass, a narrow gorge that's the only inland route between New York City and the Hudson Valley. That's why the three New Jersey branches of the Erie Railroad converged to one in Suffern, and why so many roads have been built through here. In the 1920s the States of New York and New Jersey built Route 17 just west of Suffern. In 1955 the New York State Thruway was constructed through the northern end of the town, and in 1994 Interstate 287 was extended to the southwest. These highway bypasses contributed enormously to the use of cars in the town and the decline of the downtown area.
To get to Manhattan by train, the only option used to be to go all the way to Hoboken and take the PATH or ferry. The trains made all stops, and train and ferry service were infrequent. But even then, bus service was convenient and well-patronized - and produced a nice profit for the private Short Line operator - because of the Lincoln Tunnel Exclusive Bus Lane (established in 1970) and the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
In the 1990s, yuppies from Manhattan began to discover Hoboken, leading to an increase in ferry service. In 2003 New Jersey Transit opened a $415 million transfer station at Secaucus that allowed passengers to switch to Penn Station-bound trains, cutting 20-30 minutes off of some trips. The resulting increase in ridership allowed NJ Transit to run more trains. Now, between 5:00 and 9:00 AM there are three or four (PDF) trains an hour from Suffern to Hoboken, some of them making only one stop between Suffern and Secaucus. There is service at least hourly between 6:00 AM and 11 PM seven days a week.
The fortunes of Suffern were established with the building of the first roads and railroads through the Ramapo Pass, but they then fell with the building of bypasses. What has brought Suffern up again is the construction of transit improvements.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
In Praise of Long Walks
In many parts of the world it's common for people to walk a lot. Sometimes they'll walk long distances - hours, days - to get where they need to go. It used to be pretty universal.
When I was younger I thought this just happened, that you could get up and start walking and just spend the night wherever you wound up. I was disappointed to discover that there are large sections of the country that are really very inhospitable to people on foot. To a large extent, it's because major roads have been built for cars with almost no thought to pedestrians. Outside of towns and cities, sidewalks are scarce, shoulders are narrow, and speeds are high. In some places, pedestrians are harassed, particularly outsiders.
My first reaction was to praise long-distance trail projects, like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Coast Trail. Certainly, people do take long walks on these trails, and they're great for spending time in nature, getting exercise and seeing pretty mountains. But if you've ever hiked on them, you'll know that they're not very practical for actually getting anywhere. They usually don't go through population centers: Harper's Ferry, West Virginia is one of the few towns that are actually on the Appalachian Trail.
The first reason for that is that land in towns is expensive, and walking trails didn't provide a good return on investment for either private companies or governments to spend the money to develop them. The second is that they piggyback on existing trails, many of which were made for visiting mountaintops. While it's great for hikers to climb Bear Mountain on their way through the Hudson Valley, it's not really the most convenient route to get from, say, Peekskill to Middletown.
I developed an interest in stories about people walking long distances, and looked for older ones that went back before all those roads were built and filled with cars. It turns out that in a lot of circumstances it wasn't much easier to get around on foot. There were weather problems, brigands, lack of food and difficulty finding or affording places to stay. There were also difficulties such as not having a good path to travel or losing the path.
One thing that's very striking about these narratives, particularly the more recent ones, is how many times the walkers get into cars, buses and trains. Especially cars. Five hundred years ago, if someone walked from Paris to Brussels they'd have had to walk from inn to inn, and once they left home they wouldn't see their families until they came back. Today, Appalachian trail hikers regularly hitch rides to grocery stores, or get visits from family members in cars. Just about every trail journal has an entry about getting a ride to a campsite further down the trail and then hitching another ride back to complete the skipped section.
What I learned from these stories is that walking too requires infrastructure. The paths and maps need to be created and maintained. There need to be bridges or boats to cross rivers and other obstacles. There need to be places to obtain food and places to stay, and they need to be affordable to walkers. This is a lot of work, and down through the ages it's something that people have spent years setting up. This infrastructure doesn't just happen.
The reason I've been talking about this stuff is that I feel it's very important to be able to walk just about anywhere we want to go. Not that the government should immediately go out and build straight, level walking paths for every city pair, with subsidized travelers' inns every five miles - although that would be a better use of the stimulus money than half the projects that are currently begging for it - but that we should aim ourselves in the general direction of making it easy to get places on foot, between towns as well as within them.
It's actually quite a tragedy that country roads used to be places where people could walk, and they still are to some extent, but with the number and speed of cars these days I wouldn't want to spend a month walking along them. When I was a kid I once visited coastal villages in Italy and Greece, and one thing that impressed me so much - impresses me to this day - is how they had well-maintained footpaths to other villages. I'm talking paths paved with stone, but too steep and narrow for cars. They were much more direct than the roads, because they didn't require all the hairpin turns. They weren't hiking trails or rail-trails or carriage roads. They were footpaths, built for people to get around.
When I was younger I thought this just happened, that you could get up and start walking and just spend the night wherever you wound up. I was disappointed to discover that there are large sections of the country that are really very inhospitable to people on foot. To a large extent, it's because major roads have been built for cars with almost no thought to pedestrians. Outside of towns and cities, sidewalks are scarce, shoulders are narrow, and speeds are high. In some places, pedestrians are harassed, particularly outsiders.
My first reaction was to praise long-distance trail projects, like the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Coast Trail. Certainly, people do take long walks on these trails, and they're great for spending time in nature, getting exercise and seeing pretty mountains. But if you've ever hiked on them, you'll know that they're not very practical for actually getting anywhere. They usually don't go through population centers: Harper's Ferry, West Virginia is one of the few towns that are actually on the Appalachian Trail.
The first reason for that is that land in towns is expensive, and walking trails didn't provide a good return on investment for either private companies or governments to spend the money to develop them. The second is that they piggyback on existing trails, many of which were made for visiting mountaintops. While it's great for hikers to climb Bear Mountain on their way through the Hudson Valley, it's not really the most convenient route to get from, say, Peekskill to Middletown.
I developed an interest in stories about people walking long distances, and looked for older ones that went back before all those roads were built and filled with cars. It turns out that in a lot of circumstances it wasn't much easier to get around on foot. There were weather problems, brigands, lack of food and difficulty finding or affording places to stay. There were also difficulties such as not having a good path to travel or losing the path.
One thing that's very striking about these narratives, particularly the more recent ones, is how many times the walkers get into cars, buses and trains. Especially cars. Five hundred years ago, if someone walked from Paris to Brussels they'd have had to walk from inn to inn, and once they left home they wouldn't see their families until they came back. Today, Appalachian trail hikers regularly hitch rides to grocery stores, or get visits from family members in cars. Just about every trail journal has an entry about getting a ride to a campsite further down the trail and then hitching another ride back to complete the skipped section.
What I learned from these stories is that walking too requires infrastructure. The paths and maps need to be created and maintained. There need to be bridges or boats to cross rivers and other obstacles. There need to be places to obtain food and places to stay, and they need to be affordable to walkers. This is a lot of work, and down through the ages it's something that people have spent years setting up. This infrastructure doesn't just happen.
The reason I've been talking about this stuff is that I feel it's very important to be able to walk just about anywhere we want to go. Not that the government should immediately go out and build straight, level walking paths for every city pair, with subsidized travelers' inns every five miles - although that would be a better use of the stimulus money than half the projects that are currently begging for it - but that we should aim ourselves in the general direction of making it easy to get places on foot, between towns as well as within them.
It's actually quite a tragedy that country roads used to be places where people could walk, and they still are to some extent, but with the number and speed of cars these days I wouldn't want to spend a month walking along them. When I was a kid I once visited coastal villages in Italy and Greece, and one thing that impressed me so much - impresses me to this day - is how they had well-maintained footpaths to other villages. I'm talking paths paved with stone, but too steep and narrow for cars. They were much more direct than the roads, because they didn't require all the hairpin turns. They weren't hiking trails or rail-trails or carriage roads. They were footpaths, built for people to get around.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Not for the weak-stomached
... is the prose describing BRT in this Tappan Zee PDF. Apparently the source of this stuff is the Bus Rapid Transit Practitioner's Guide.
Not a Horrible Senator for Transit
After recommending Jerry Nadler as the transit candidate to be New York's next Senator, I was encouraged by Niccolo Machiavelli (himself!) to examine some of the other candidates.
Many upstaters are disgruntled at the prospect of having two senators from the New York metropolitan area. (Maybe they're also upset at the idea of being represented by two Jews, but they don't come out and say that.) It's a funny thing, though: we really haven't had too many senators who weren't from downstate. There were John Foster Dulles and Charles Goodell, but they were both appointed to fill vacancies and then lost the next election (hmm). Kenneth Keating (1959-1965) is the most recent senator to be elected from upstate; he served one term and then lost to Bobby Kennedy.
Still and all, maybe upstaters deserve a senator every now and then. I was worried that we might get some awful highway-builder like David Gantt appointed, but it turns out that there's at least one promising name: Representative Kirsten Gillibrand (D-Hudson).
Your Cap'n disagrees with Gillibrand on a lot of issues, like tax cuts for the wealthy and the farm bill. But this is a blog about transit, so how is she on these issues?
Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to look into her record in detail. At a glance, I see that she voted for a bill to give grants for public transit, but she also voted for a Rangel-sponsored bill to pump money into the highway trust fund, and for the automaker bailout. Generally she seems to vote with the House majority, which is not surprising for a freshman in Congress.
In terms of statements she's made, she supports light rail for the Capital District. The Times Union reported in August:
“The investment I’m really interested in is a commuting light rail system between Albany and Saratoga,” said U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Greenport.
Gillibrand’s ideal system would grow branches to the airport, Schenectady, Troy and other communities. She estimates such a project could cost around $1 billion and would require sustained investment over at least a decade.
Gillibrand even has a champion in mind: Gov. David Paterson.
“Because it’s a significant investment, it would have to be an investment from the state and it would have to be a vision of the governor,” she said.
Or she could even reach across the aisle to Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, whose district covers most of the proposed trunk route. It'd be nice if she developed that idea as much as she did her gas price pandering.
In terms of transit, Gillibrand practices what she preaches. The Main St. USA blog reposts a Times Union piece from last year that describes her riding the D.C. Metro every day from her Arlington apartment to the Capital, dropping her son Theo (then three years old) off on the way at the congressional daycare center.
Gillibrand's record is pretty scanty - again, what you'd expect for someone who's only served one term in Congress. It certainly doesn't compare to Nadler's strong record of support for transit and rail freight. But if Governor Paterson did wind up appointing Gillibrand, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for transit. Hey, maybe we'd wind up with a light rail system in the Capital District.
Photo: Theo and Kirsten Gillibrand by Andrew C. White/Flickr.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Transit Candidate
When I recommended Representative Jerry Nadler for the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton will be vacating in a few weeks, I was totally serious. I didn't think he had much of a chance, since I hadn't heard anyone else mention his name, but now it looks like other people are thinking of him. The Times reported today that he's one of six people they know of who received a 28-page disclosure form from the Governor. He's been discussed on various Democratic blogs like MyDD and Matt Yglesias's, after he told Democracy Now! that he was "certainly" interested in the Senate seat.
Now it still might be the case that the best thing for transit and livable streets would be for that seat to go to Shelly Silver or Anthony Weiner, but there's no question that of all the candidates that have been mentioned, the one who's cared the most and done the most is Nadler. As he told Amy Goodman, "I think my record on economic development in New York, in terms of port development and transportation, has been a very far-seeing record."
To listen to our current senators talk, they seem to relate to transit in an abstract way, as one of the many kinds of pork that northeastern senators are expected to fight for, as well as possibly something that will earn them points with people who care about the environment. They don't seem to get that millions of people in the state rely on trains to get where they want to go. When they think about their constituents going places, it's usually by SUV or plane.
Nadler seems to be different. He's been one of Amtrak's most consistent supporters in the House. He's got a long record of supporting not just passenger rail, but rail freight, notably the Cross-Harbor Tunnel. He does occasionally support car things, like this bizarre rally in support of Manhattan car dealers. But he's willing to criticize a "really stupid project" like the Downtown-JFK rail link in order to defend projects that matter, like the Second Avenue Subway and the Fulton Street transfer station. And he's got a healthy skepticism about privatization.
It's certainly possible that CBK - or Gillibrand, Israel, Maloney or Suozzi - could turn out to be great for transit and livable streets, but Nadler's record beats the others' hands down. The financial disclosure forms are due back Thursday, so the Governor probably won't make a decision before then. That means there's still time to contact him and let you know how important it is to have a senator who cares about transit.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Financing trouble? Oh noes!
The Times reports that infrastructure projects around the country are coming to a standstill because states are having trouble borrowing money.
Call me naive, but I honestly didn't realize that so much was done with borrowed money. It's not like I have no debt, but I thought that projects were done by, you know, saving until you had enough to pay for them. Doesn't anyone pay cash anymore?
Call me naive, but I honestly didn't realize that so much was done with borrowed money. It's not like I have no debt, but I thought that projects were done by, you know, saving until you had enough to pay for them. Doesn't anyone pay cash anymore?
Gioia Calls for Midtown Tunnel Bus
A tipster pointed me to an email from City Council Member Eric Gioia, who represents western Queens, including Long Island City. Gioia called a rally today to protest the planned closure of the #7 train for the next nine weeks between Queensboro Plaza and Times Square. Residents and businesses in southern Long Island City, which are normally just 10-15 minutes from Midtown, will have no direct subway service, instead being forced to take a shuttle bus to Queensboro Plaza and transfer to the N or Q trains. Gioia proposes several steps to mitigate the closure, similar to what the MTA did a year ago when they replaced switches in Woodside. But here's the most interesting part:
It's a big deal to have a political leader talk about tunnel buses. Back in December 2007, there was talk of a Red Hook bus through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Last March, in her testimony to the City Council, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that if congestion pricing passed, the MTA would run a new bus route "from Jackson Heights to Penn Station." She didn't give any further details, and congestion pricing was never passed, so there was no bus.
In May I discussed possible Bus Rapid Transit through the tunnel, feeding into the new 34th Street Transitway (PDF). I know that Gioia is suggesting that the tunnel bus go to Grand Central, and only while #7 service is suspended. But if we had buses running through the tunnel all the time, then suspending the #7 train wouldn't be such a big deal. We'd have an alternative that everyone would know about.
It's called redundancy, and it's practiced by smart businesses all over. And in other neighborhoods there is redundancy: in Sunnyside the #7 is complemented by the Q32 and Q60 buses, in Woodside by the Long Island Railroad, and in Jackson Heights by the Queens Boulevard subway. In Hunters Point there used to be fairly decent ferry service, but nowadays it's very infrequent and doesn't come at all in the wintertime.
Running buses through the tunnel is really a no-brainer. Especially with the 34th Street transitway to speed the buses across Manhattan, and on the weekend when congestion is light, you could really get people to Penn Station pretty quickly, not to mention the other subway stops along 34th Street.
I put together the following map (based on maps from Openstreetmap.org) to show possible bus routes to places that Google Maps indicates are ten minutes from Penn Station.
Clockwise from the top, they are: Broadway and 21st Street in Astoria, the 39th Avenue N/W station in Dutch Kills, 46th and Greenpoint in Sunnyside, and Greenpoint and Manhattan Avenues in Greenpoint. Google Maps says that it could take up to 30 minutes with traffic, but again this is on the weekend and along the transitway. Obviously, if the buses make several stops it will slow things down, but I'd venture to say that you could still get from one end to the other in half an hour.
You could have other routes that don't go as far, like a bus up Fifth Street or Center Boulevard in Hunters Point to serve all the new development, and another up Vernon Boulevard to serve the commercial strip - or even a loop serving both.
If you wanted to go farther afield, here are destinations that Google Maps says will take fifteen minutes, or up to 40 minutes with traffic:
They are Astoria Park, Junction Boulevard in Elmhurst, 69th and Metropolitan in Middle Village, Bushwick Terminal, and Bedford and Metropolitan in Williamsburg.
These bus routes would provide robust redundancy during subway outages, add more travel options, and potentially serve areas that don't have very good transit right now. Following Gioia's request, the MTA should at least implement a Hunters Point loop that would connect Vernon and Center boulevards to 34th Street, and another one connecting Greenpoint with Penn Station.
Long term, the MTA should look into implementing some of these as new routes on a daily basis. They may not have the money, in which case I say: look to the Ravitch plan!
The MTA should have shuttle bus service from Grand Central
Station through the Midtown Tunnel to key #7 train stops in Queens.
It's a big deal to have a political leader talk about tunnel buses. Back in December 2007, there was talk of a Red Hook bus through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Last March, in her testimony to the City Council, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said that if congestion pricing passed, the MTA would run a new bus route "from Jackson Heights to Penn Station." She didn't give any further details, and congestion pricing was never passed, so there was no bus.
In May I discussed possible Bus Rapid Transit through the tunnel, feeding into the new 34th Street Transitway (PDF). I know that Gioia is suggesting that the tunnel bus go to Grand Central, and only while #7 service is suspended. But if we had buses running through the tunnel all the time, then suspending the #7 train wouldn't be such a big deal. We'd have an alternative that everyone would know about.
It's called redundancy, and it's practiced by smart businesses all over. And in other neighborhoods there is redundancy: in Sunnyside the #7 is complemented by the Q32 and Q60 buses, in Woodside by the Long Island Railroad, and in Jackson Heights by the Queens Boulevard subway. In Hunters Point there used to be fairly decent ferry service, but nowadays it's very infrequent and doesn't come at all in the wintertime.
Running buses through the tunnel is really a no-brainer. Especially with the 34th Street transitway to speed the buses across Manhattan, and on the weekend when congestion is light, you could really get people to Penn Station pretty quickly, not to mention the other subway stops along 34th Street.
I put together the following map (based on maps from Openstreetmap.org) to show possible bus routes to places that Google Maps indicates are ten minutes from Penn Station.
Clockwise from the top, they are: Broadway and 21st Street in Astoria, the 39th Avenue N/W station in Dutch Kills, 46th and Greenpoint in Sunnyside, and Greenpoint and Manhattan Avenues in Greenpoint. Google Maps says that it could take up to 30 minutes with traffic, but again this is on the weekend and along the transitway. Obviously, if the buses make several stops it will slow things down, but I'd venture to say that you could still get from one end to the other in half an hour.
You could have other routes that don't go as far, like a bus up Fifth Street or Center Boulevard in Hunters Point to serve all the new development, and another up Vernon Boulevard to serve the commercial strip - or even a loop serving both.
If you wanted to go farther afield, here are destinations that Google Maps says will take fifteen minutes, or up to 40 minutes with traffic:
They are Astoria Park, Junction Boulevard in Elmhurst, 69th and Metropolitan in Middle Village, Bushwick Terminal, and Bedford and Metropolitan in Williamsburg.
These bus routes would provide robust redundancy during subway outages, add more travel options, and potentially serve areas that don't have very good transit right now. Following Gioia's request, the MTA should at least implement a Hunters Point loop that would connect Vernon and Center boulevards to 34th Street, and another one connecting Greenpoint with Penn Station.
Long term, the MTA should look into implementing some of these as new routes on a daily basis. They may not have the money, in which case I say: look to the Ravitch plan!
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