Giving major crosstowns with bus routes signal priority would certainly be an appropriate response to a vote-down of congestion pricing. "You don't mind gridlock, well then we won't worry about it."

But remember judges get parking permits. And an environmental lawsuit with an injunciton in place could be extended for decades if a judge permits ongoing requests for "more information."

It benefits residents of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx who work in Lower Manhattan. Remember, hundreds of thousands of Queens resident work in Manhattan every weekday.

(How does the $2B 2nd Ave subway benefit Queens?)

That three station extension is the one major project in the hopper that primarily benefits Manhattan residents.

It would, however, also improve transit access for others to the hospital complex on the Upper East Side, a considerable employment center in its own right. If phase 2 is extended to 125th, then Bronx residents and MetroNorth riders would be able to swtich there and get improved access.

I suspect this discussion will be moving from theory to practice pretty soon and we'll be seeing at one or more major crosstown streets converted to BRT before the end of the Bloomberg administration.

How about subway line extensions further into Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx? How about adding lanes to roads to create BRT lanes? How about improving service on the permanently disabled G line? Reactivating abandoned LIRR ROWs or train stations in the boroughs. East side access indeed. Lower MH rail link, argh. These should not be at the top of our list.

Major cross town routes would't move at all in that case, particularly on streets with one bus after another going by.

There is a problem generally, in fact, that neither the avenues nor those major cross-town streets can have signal priority. That's why cross-town buses are useless.

My view is in Manhattan you need grade separation at least at major streets, if not all streets, for surface transit to work.

Buses should have signal priority -- the ability to turn the traffic light green when it approaches the intersection.

If you converted avenues back to two-way operation and let the BRT run right down the middle of the avenue you also eliminate all of the curbside loading conflicts and many of the turning conflicts.

Bogota and Paris both have some excellent examples of BRT working entirely on surface streets, no tunnels.

Plus lots of trolley systems had tunnels for congested CBD areas -- Newark, San Francisco, Philly to name a few. I see Manhattan as a place where BRT just won't get it done -- unless you are talking about taking over the FDR for buses.

If you look at the numbers, the uptown M15 moves faster and has much higher ridership than the downtown M15. Why? First Avenue has an underpass at 42nd and passes under the Queensboro and Triboro bridges, rather than getting stuck. One could build a whole bunch of additional underpasses, but at that point you are getting almost as costly as the subway, and buses have much higher operating costs.

Thanks for that argument against non-grade-separated BRT, Larry. Also, don't forget that First Avenue bypasses most of the traffic for the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

This kind of grade separation is not unheard of; the Grand Concourse has it at all major intersections - originally for the trolleys.

I live on the 7 line in Queens, and I love the idea of the 7 line extension, especially if it were to have the extra stop at 10th avenue. Having the 7 train go that much further in Manhattan would make some trips direct that today require a transfer.

It wouldn't be world class if it got stuck at stoplights at the major cross streets. Serious BRT requires grade separation, at least at major intersections.

If you look at the numbers, the uptown M15 moves faster and has much higher ridership than the downtown M15. Why? First Avenue has an underpass at 42nd and passes under the Queensboro and Triboro bridges, rather than getting stuck. One could build a whole bunch of additional underpasses, but at that point you are getting almost as costly as the subway, and buses have much higher operating costs.

The southern half will never be built, because anything that isn't done by the time the baby boomers start retiring in large numbers never will be.

I'm also beginning to think that the Second Ave subway, as much as I wish it existed, is just a huge boondoggle and mistake.

With a fraction of the funds required to build just the uptown segment of the subway we could fully redesign and convert First and Second Avenues to a worldclass bus rapid transit system that, would be more than capable of taking the pressure off of the Lexington Ave subway.

We could then go ahead and use those 2nd Ave funds to build out the entire citywide BRT network.

I'd take the deposit, but I wouldn't charge. If there is one group of people who are hurting the environment by riding transit, it is those who get on the Lex at GCT at 8:30 am. If they ride a bike, they are doing us a favor. The MTA could even put in locked storage areas around Downtown, perhaps incorporating them into the Fulton Transit Center complex.

My first old/dog new/trick idea was that if I could have ridden one of those folding bikes to a commuter rail station, ride in, then ride the bike to work, perhaps living in the 'burbs would have been more acceptable to me. The next was it would be better to ride a bike to the station, leave it there, pick up another in the city, and ride it to work.

So I now think is the only solution to the misery of tranferring to the already-crowded IRT for the trip to Downtown is -- bicycles. There is your feasible Velib program for NYC. Suburbanites who want to live longer can pick one up as part of their monthly ticket at GCT, Penn, or Atlantic Terminal, and ride them to Downtown.

The problem with populist outer borough objections to a lot of things that benefit "Manhattan" is that lots of people from the outer boroughs spend a lot of time in Manhattan, and taxes collected in Manhattan spend a lot of time in the outer boroughs.

So saying everything is to benefit Manhattan so it's unfair to charge people elsewhere to drive there is disingenous.

As I said, all Manhattan RESIDENTS are getting from the system expansions now proposed is the upper section of the Second Avenue. I'd put the further expansion up to 125th as a maybe. The southern half will never be built, because anything that isn't done by the time the baby boomers start retiring in large numbers never will be.