As I discussed in my last post, PLANYC2030 is focused on finding the money to maintain the existing transportation system, shifting new development to locations near subway and commuter rail stops, and improving travel to and within the Manhattan Central Business district, New York State’s most important economic asset. I agree with most of what was said. In this post, however, I’ll discuss what wasn’t talked about in much detail — trips to the Central Business District from areas beyond walking distance from rail stops, and trips outside ones’ one neighborhood (where one can walk) to locations outside the Central Business District (where you can take transit). My suggestions, over and above those in the plan, follow. If you are not interested in planning and transportation issues, you might want to give this post a pass.
As shown last time, once you have a private automobile it is almost always in your interest to use it because (as in the example of my own 10-year-old car purchased new) three-quarters of the cost of an automobile is fixed whether it is used or not, including the cost of buying and financing it and insuring it. Once you have it, therefore, trips that could be taken by transit or on foot end up being taken by car. There are, for example, three destinations outside the CBD I travel to each week that are 1 to 1.5 miles away. In each case, given the frequency of service and the distance one must walk to the train or bus, using transit doesn’t save any time at all compared with walking, and might take longer. We could walk, and sometimes do, but everyone in my family knows the car is there, so whoever is the slowest to get ready to leave always knows we can use it. If we didn’t have the car, on the other hand, we would walk or ride bicycles to all these destinations, and not think twice about it. Everyone would make the effort.
There are other destinations, however, where neither walking nor transit is even feasible. For example, those whose family has lived in the New York area for several generations generally have family and friends living all over it. After struggling to take mass transit for these trips for several years, at up to 2 ½ hours each way, we eventually bought a car. Given that people travel to places outside the CBD for a variety of work and non-work reasons, means must be found to improve the level of car-free mobility outside the CBD to the point where people can live well with one fewer car. That is actually two environmental and transportation goals. The first is to induce those living within the transit zone, and using transit or walking for most trips, to live without a private automobile, instead of having one. The second is to make it possible to live well outside the transit zone (and in the suburbs and country at large) while having one car rather than two in a two-adult household.
Providing an alternative to the automobile in areas and along routes with fewer travelers, at an affordable price and with reasonable energy efficiency, is a tough nut. Moreover, given the shortage of funds to even maintain the transportation system that we have, any improvements would have to be cheap and small, and yet have benefits for people living in wide areas. East Side Access, for example, will extend the commuter rail system just a few track miles, yet it will greatly improve mobility for anyone living near a Long Island Railroad or (by freeing up capacity for MetroNorth to go to Penn) MetroNorth station. The upper half of the Second Avenue Subway, also a relatively short extension, will by removing the number one bottleneck on the subway system also benefit people throughout the Bronx, and provide MetroNorth riders with easy transit access to the many hospitals on the Upper East Side. Any additional investments would have to have similarly systemic effects.
For those traveling to the CBD from locations beyond walking distance from a subway or commuter rail, the current alternatives to driving to Manhattan are taking the bus to the subway, and driving to the vicinity of a station, parking and riding. The plan discusses the former in the context of the existing Bus Rapid Transit pilot and improving bus subway transfers, the latter not at all.
For those taking buses in Queens, a more significant investment could yield significant results. Whereas the Bronx and Brooklyn have extensive subway networks that narrow down to limited trackage across the rivers and into Manhattan, Queens, as a result of the 63rd Street tunnel, actually has more capacity into the CBD that it does within the borough. Only half the capacity of that tunnel is used, because there is no subway line in Queens to run additional trains. Meanwhile, thanks to its limited subway network, people in Queens are more likely to take the bus to the train there than elsewhere. After changing at remote stations, however, bus riders face a long subway ride.
I suggest that one lane in each direction on the Long Island Expressway from Flushing Meadow Park to Long Island City be limited to buses, and that new ramps be built to provide the lane with direct exit access to and from major arterials with significant bus routes. Local bus routes could then be restructured to allow buses to pick up passengers along a street, and then jump on the LIE for a quick ride to Long Island City, where a transfer could be made for a quick subway hop across the river to Manhattan. On a free-flowing super express lane, the trip along the expressway would add perhaps 10 minutes to the bus route, perhaps less, depending on where the bus was coming from. CBTC technology will eventually allow more trains to run the Flushing and Queens Boulevard lines. If additional capacity is someday required, however, a short branch could be diverted off from the 63rd Street tunnel to a single station that also served as a terminal for the LIRR busway. That one station extension would then be part of a network that could include just about every area beyond walking distance from the subway or LIRR in Queens.
Although it requires the use of an automobile, it is also possible to drive to a subway station, park, and take the subway to Manhattan — just as suburbanites drive to commuter rail stops. Indeed, many people drive to my neighborhood and park for the train, one reason I only favor resident-only on-street parking permits for the overnight hours. Depending on the number of local residents who use their cars during the day, however, on-street parking near subway stations can be tight. PLANYC2030 proposes building over rail yards at the West Side Yards, Sunnyside Yards, and 38th Street Yards to free up room for housing. Aside from central locations where the payoff might be sufficient, I worry about the implications of this proposal. What will happen to transit service 50 years afterward when buildings need to be renovated or perhaps demolished and replaced? Will the value of those buildings be sufficient to allow their owners to do the work at high cost without years of disrupted service, or would that cost – and objections to 24/7 transit operations – be shifted to the MTA?
There is one type of structure, however, I do think is appropriate for an outlying transit yard – a one-story parking field. Drivers could be charged a small fee, perhaps the equivalent of a second fare, to park there, and then take the subway in to Manhattan. For example, at the huge Jamaica Yard in Flushing Meadows Park Queens a platform could be built for a parking lot station where the R and V would relay. Drivers in Eastern Queens could drive to that location, park on the new parking field, and then ride the train in to Manhattan and Long Island City. Parking fields over the 60th Street yard in Brooklyn, along the Sea Beach (N) line, could offer the same opportunity to those living in Dyker Heights, Flatlands, Mill Basin, Marine Park, and similar neighborhoods – and, via the Verranzano Bridge, those living on Staten Island. A similar parking field over the East New York subway yard could serve Queens residents traveling to Lower Manhattan via the Jackie Robinson Parkway and the A or J/Z train. On the J/Z during skip stop service, the station at Broad and Wall is a 25 minute ride from there. The Concourse and Jerome yards in the Bronx could similarly serve those living in Riverdale and away from commuter rail stops in Westchester. Yankee fans could park there as well, rather than fight the traffic all the way to the stadium.
The parking lots wouldn’t have to just serve commuters and others going to Manhattan. They could also serve non-car-owners from the Transit Zone going out. In order to travel beyond that transit zone without owning a car, people frequently need to rent one, so the cost and convenience of doing so is an important factor in how well one can live without their own automobile. In New York City the cost is high, and the convenience is low. The repeal of the “vicarious liability” law was supposed to bring down the cost of renting a car in New York City, according to proponents of repeal. Did it? Because when I compiled did the numbers a decade ago, I found it would be cheaper to own a car than to rent and use car services and taxis for trips that couldn’t be taken by transit. A private car is certainly more convenient, at least for those members of the family who don’t have to deal with alternate side of the street.
One factor in expensive rental cars is the high cost of real estate in central locations. But if a section of the parking fields over transit years were leased to car rental companies, those living in Manhattan, Brownstone Brooklyn, Long Island City and similar areas could take a subway to the Concourse Yard, Jamaica Yard, or 60th Street Yard (depending on the direction they were heading outside the city), pick up a car and go.
In PLANYC2030, and in a subsequent newspaper article, the administration endorsed the extension of ferry service, and suggested the possibility of operating subsidies. But operating subsidies for ferries, like operating subsidies for a new park on Governor’s Island, would divert scarce money from the parks and transit systems most New Yorkers rely on to premium facilities likely to be used only by the affluent. The plan also acknowledges the key disadvantage of water passenger transportation – the need to travel to and from the piers. Its proposed solution, however, is to extend bus routes and improve cross-town bus service on 34th Street and 42nd Street in Manhattan. That is inadequate.
There is no way those cross-streets could be given traffic signal priority over the avenues without locking down Midtown in perpetual gridlock, congestion pricing or no. Without a grade-separated right of way, therefore, the trip from the dock to the destination is and will be interminable. Right now the M34/M16 bus is scheduled to take 14 minutes from the ferry terminal to 5th Avenue, and 22 minutes from the terminal to 8th Avenue. That is in addition to the wait for the bus, the need to switch to a north-south route to approach a destination, and perhaps an additional walk to it. That could mean a 40-minute-plus trip just from the East Side ferry terminal in Manhattan to a desk in an office, seat in a conference room, or a seat in a Broadway theater in Midtown. Ferry access works well Downtown, where everything is a short walk from the water, but to really take off – and for more people to be willing to pay its entire operating cost – it would have to provide serve Midtown as well.
My solution is for the Times Square Shuttle to be extended a few blocks down 41st Street of 40th Street, through the Con Edison Site at 40th Street and the FDR now being demolished, and at grade under the FDR drive to the ferry terminal. Such an extension would not be cheap, but it could be financed in part by the taxes paid by development at that site (similar to financing the Flushing Extension with Hudson Yard), whose value it would enormously inflated by providing rapid access from MetroNorth, the LIRR (after East Side Access) and the subway directly to it. The site could also be used to stage construction, limiting impact on Tudor City. Such an investment would cut the time from pier to desk and back in half, and perhaps by more.
The only alternative I could think of that might be somewhat equivalent is to turn 34th Street into a busway with “stations” to facilitate passenger loading and unloading, and build underpasses for First, Second, Third, Lexington, Madison, Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Avenues (like the one at 42nd Street and First Avenue, so 34th Street could have 3 to 1 signal priority over those avenues. Or doing the same to 23rd Street, and moving the ferry terminal south. At that cost, however, it might be cheaper just to extend the subway the half-mile.
The toughest nut of all is non-auto travel for those both living and working outside the transit zone. When asked to consider this some years ago, the answer I came up with was dynamic carpooling, with a separate carpool formed among club members for each trip using information technology. I proposed having public employees, union members or religious organizations start the system initially, since it would only work if a large number of people were already doing it, what I called the “chicken and egg” problem. And I proposed security screening by the club to overcome the reluctance to share rides. New York City may be too stagnant to latch on to such a new idea first, but in Boston the entrepreneur behind Zipcar just launched a dynamic carpooling service on Earth Day, with a website here http://goloco.org/greetings;guest. I wish them well. Maybe if it suceeds up there, it can spread down here.
PLANYC2030 also ducks some cases where political obstacles stand in the way of transportation improvements. The Transit Workers Union continues to fight against the expansion of private vans, which provide unsubsidized mass transit in places where buses require deep subsidies, and in some cases better service to non-CBD destinations. But private bus companies have pushed through federal rules to prohibit local public transit operators from offering charter and other point-to-point services off peak and on weekends when buses are available, thus preventing taxpayers from using their own buses. Some years ago I exchanged e-mails an official of the TWU, who told the union was in favor of getting rid of that restriction, which could provide an overtime income opportunity for its members. Depending on the level of demand, one can catch a bus making a series of stops at a series of Brooklyn neighborhoods and heading on to Atlantic City. Why not have New York City Transit provide similar service to Shea Stadium, depending on the number of people registering via internet paying ahead for it in each location?
Last but not least, the most environmentally beneficial alternative means of travel is non-travel. Many years ago, while working at the Department of City Planning, I was asked to help draft a series of possible scenarios for changing land use and lifestyles in New York City for the Commission to use in its Planning and Zoning report. The document was well received, but lefty Planning Commissioner Ron Shiffman chided us for not considering the implications of the internet. Mind you this was during the Dinkins Administration, before Al Gore invented the internet, when I barely understood what it was. The internet boom, based on the premise that anyone working with information would work at home, and everyone would shop at home, came and went. But perhaps Professor Shiffman was only wrong about the timing.
Studies of telecommuting show that those who do so hurt their career, but it doesn’t need to be an all or nothing thing. The potential additional capacity of New York’s rail transit system outside of rush hour is enormous — at least 50% more than the current “base” service and up to double. If a substantial share people were able to work at home a few hours in the morning of afternoon, or a couple of days per week, much of the transit congestion people now experience could be avoided, and having more people at home in New York’s individual neighborhoods would improve their ambiance. In San Francisco, the crash of a gasoline truck has destroyed the highway approach to the Bay Bridge that is used by 280,000 commuters every day — the second time this key link has been broken in 20 years (the first was the 1989 earthquake). Bay Area commuters face months of disruption. According to the Associated Press “the city has found itself scrambling to add trains to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) rail system, as well as free ferries, buses and trains for the daily commute. Above all else, city authorities are urging residents to telecommute if they have the means. However, this ‘telecommute only in case of disaster’ message has caused no shortage of hands being thrown in the air by those who have long-advocated the benefits of telecommuting.” Perhaps, given the environmental benefits, it isn’t just for disasters anymore.