Streetsblog New York City

Streetfilms does it again.

Superb!

PS - It's been a while since the last Streetfilm. We've missed you guys!

More Gorton ranting: not Streetfilms' finest hour.

Great video.

But why does the post below it not mention NJ Transit rail riders? They FAR outnumber Amtrak riders. I am tired of NJT riders being treated as invisible, even by transportation advocates. NJ Transit runs the third largest commuter railroad in the country, and yet you'd never know it.

I also think we as peds could also be more effiecient. One side of the street should be or walking southbound and the other going northbound. And we could also do this for the east-west walk as well. I swear as a child I remember it being this way.

I LOVE THE PASSION! KEEP IT UP!

So when can we expect wider sidewalks? Not sure about the "in a day" comment, but I am sure you could get this done in weeks!

Great piece, it should be shown to the planners working on moving Penn to the Farley post office. It is a great opportunity to redraw the planning map and is in the interest of LIRR, AMTRAK and NJT (and, hopefully, MN). This area could become the transportation center of midtown, only the cars stand in the way.

Echoing Niccolo, didn't the MTA mention plans recently to bring some Metro North Trains into Penn as well????

More trains mean more pedestrians!

Worthy to revisit this previous Streetsblog article:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/04/17/a-transit-miracle-on-34th-street/

Obviously, there always room for improvement in the plan but BRT on 34th Street is definitely a good start. It would be more efficient that the current bus lane layout. As for inserting planters and paint and just dropping it on 7th Avenue, as Gorton suggests, well the DOT put more thought into that (referring to Broadway as the example). The reason Herald Square was opened up to pedestrians was because of Times Square. With the new configuration at Times Square, this created a major traffic flow shift of all southbound Broadway traffic to 7th Avenue. Therefore, any changes made to 7th Avenue at 34th Street has to be consistent throughout 7th Avenue up to at least Times Square. I'm hesitant to say installing the bike lane setup on 7th Avenue (as done on Broadway and 9th Avenue), because hitting the Penn Station area will be tricky. On top of which, the Penn Hotel and Penn Station access to designated taxi areas has to be factored in. So for now, I would say increase sidewalk space on 7 between 42 and 34 by surrendering traffic lanes.

The sidewalk space presently available around Penn Station is further:

a. littered with scaffolding and illegal street merchants (32nd). Scaffold seems to support no work and needs to come down. I understand street merchants make a living selling knock off merchandise, but they need to find another place to do it.

b. overwhelmed by tourist bus sales, advertising street teams and free newspaper distribution (Penn Plaza); While, city parks and BID's charge tens of thousands of dollars for "event space" - its clear to me that none of the stake holders, Amtrak, the 34th street partnership or Vornado is able to regulate this zone - its is open to anyone with the balls to risk a ticket (which don't seem forthcoming). The free newspaper distribution is a menace that slows down the (all ready dangerous number of) people pouring out of Penn Station stairs/escalators.

c. new bus services directly competitive with Amtrak regional service (enabled by the city DOT to load/off load and park in the immediate vicinity); There are lines of passengers waiting to board buses on the sidewalk (33rd/7th Ave). We have a BUS STATION for this purpose!

d. sidewalks are filthy. One area in particular stands out. The QSRs operating on the East Side of 7th Avenue between 32nd and 34th are not property bagging their food waste. They are not washing their sidewalks down each day. The sidewalks are covered with organic material. Frankly this is true of the entire 34th Street Area. The zone is overwhelmed with lack of maintenance.

BRT can be more easily implemented on 34th Street, than 7th. 7th Avenue is 4 travel lanes wide with two parking lanes. One idea is to at least shift lanes to the right by moving the north parking lane into the leftmost travel lane, therefore making 7th Avenue three travel lanes wide. This will double pedestrian space on the north side. Another idea could be to equally increase pedestrian space on both the north and south sides, therefore causing one lane to be surrendered and squeezing the roadway from both sides. I don't know how feasible that could be. The Gimbels Passageways are a good idea, but they have to be at least double that size shown in the photo in order to handle large numbers of people. Another great idea is to prohibit vehicles W 33rd Street between 7th and 6th on peak hours to allow for more people to walk on the street. It's also notable to mention that when Penn Station was revamped in the 1990s, taxi dropoff was in the area between Penn Station and Madison Sq. Garden. I guess after 9/11, security became a factor and that was shut down to public access. Opening this area again to taxis will greatly reduce traffic on 7th Avenue.

@Ray: This regional bus service is competitive with Amtrak, especially for students, because tickets cost a fraction of the price of Amtrak ($20 by bus vs. $125 by train). This is a complicated matter, of course: Amtrak has never been adequately funded and there is not enough control over using and expanding rail infrastructure to increase service and possibly offer lower prices. But it's important that, in the meantime, there be bus service available to the thousands of folks who (like me) don't have a lot of money and need travel along regional routes like DC-to-NYC.

And yes, that is what the bus station is for - except that the bus station is over capacity, which is why there are so many bus services operating along side streets instead. What we need are policies (and the funding flexibility) to provide better service by bus and rail, and to improve station space accordingly. A more attractive and user-friendly station wouldn't hurt, either.