Streetsblog New York City

From Suffolk County to New Haven, the communities of New York and Connecticut are planting the seeds for a serious investment in transit-oriented development in the years ahead. Funded by a $3.5 million grant from HUD’s Sustainable Communities program, nine cities, two counties and six regional planning organizations have come together to develop regional plans for tying sustainable transportation and new development. Those plans are the first steps toward an impressive array of projects across the region, from new rail stations to new zoning codes around existing transit hubs.

The New York and Connecticut region have the best transit and rail network in the country, explained Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association, which is administering the collaboration, but also the largest income gaps and most expensive housing. For the region to continue to prosper in the 21st century, he said, it needs to embrace its transportation system as the backbone for continued development, including affordable housing.

By mid-century, said Adolfo Carrion, the regional HUD administrator and former director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, the country will need an additional 200 billion square feet of development to house its growing population and economy. “It has to be vertical,” said Carrion. “It has to be reliant on mass transit.”

For that to happen, local government needs to lay the groundwork now, so that when the economy recovers from recession and the real estate market again kicks into high gear, dense and transit-oriented projects are built. This grant makes that kind of planning possible.

In New York City, for example, the Department of City Planning will develop strategies to encourage transit-oriented development at Metro-North stations in the Bronx and at the East New York LIRR station. “Growth in New York City in the right places actually takes cars off the road,” said Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden. The Bronx was selected due to its strong growth in recent years, she added. “The logical place for the Bronx to grow more is along its Metro-North corridors.”

In East New York, fantastic transportation resources are paired with major economic challenges and strong community organizations to partner with. The area near the train station will become what Burden called “a really complete neighborhood, live/work, mixed-income, mixed-use, that’s really walkable, bikeable with strong mass transit.”

In Stamford and Bridgeport, the grant will fund feasibility studies for new rail stations, which could catalyze the redevelopment of entire new neighborhoods.

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Even when there's no breaking news at the RPA's regional assembly, the annual get-together at the Waldorf Astoria is a good time to gauge the collective mood of the people who run the region's transportation systems and think about planning for New York City's future. How often do you get the heads of the MTA, NYCDOT, and the Port Authority all in the same room?

At the last three regional assemblies, funding our transit system with congestion pricing or bridge tolls seemed within reach, to varying degrees. (After the State Assembly killed congestion pricing in 2008, the zeitgeist was still kind of optimistic, because the insiders knew that road pricing would be revived soon.)

This year, the impending transit cuts in New York and New Jersey cast a bit of a pall on the proceedings. At times, the atmosphere felt tinged with foreboding, like when Lt. Governor Richard Ravitch told the crowd, "It's hard to imagine what life will be like if we don’t make the investments in infrastructure that we have historically made."

The official theme of the event was "innovation," often encapsulated as "doing more with less" by speakers coping with shrinking budgets.

One of the more notable exchanges came at a panel on technology and transportation, when New York City Transit chief Tom Prendergast noted that the financial battering his agency has absorbed is "forcing us to do things we've never done before." One example: the MTA's new open data policy.

Prendergast didn't share much in the way of specifics, but he did hint that the MTA hopes to make transit arrival info accessible to riders before adding countdown clocks at every station and bus stop. "We're looking at simple and innovative ways of getting that information up to people on the street," he said.

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At a panel put on by the New School last week, some of New York's biggest players in transportation and planning came together to discuss the future of the city's infrastructure. They all seemed to agree: The city can't keep up with its global competitors without new sources of revenue.

Christopher Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, framed the stakes: "We have to ask, what builds wealth?" The other panelists concurred: New York's health and economic dominance won't continue without consistent investment in its infrastructure, particularly its transportation network.

Seth Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, put it more directly. "We have spent the last 20 years trying to get our infrastructure back to pre-1970 levels," he said. Without moving further, "We will not be able to compete with other world cities."

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We're getting dangerously close to transit Armageddon.

Seeking a quick resolution to the MTA funding crisis, Governor Paterson lobbied over the weekend to get a Band-aid fix through the State Senate. The problem is, Paterson's plan provides no resolution at all. Fundamental details of the proposal are still sketchy, even as the governor pushes for a vote as soon as today, but there's no doubt that the numbers don't add up to a healthy transit system. Consider:

• The revenue streams in Paterson's plan keep shrinking while the MTA's operating deficit keeps growing, meaning that further fare hikes and service cuts will be necessary in a matter of months.
  
• All indications are that the latest proposal would direct zero dollars to the MTA capital plan, the five-year package of maintenance and expansion projects that is still completely unfunded.
  

By pushing for a stopgap measure on the Senate Democrats' terms, Paterson has effectively abandoned the framework laid out by the Ravitch Commission. His proposal does not share the funding burden equitably -- car commuters pay nothing to keep congestion-busting trains and buses running. Nor does it address long-term funding needs, risking system-wide decline by leaving even routine maintenance unpaid for.

Observers are in the dark about the most basic aspects of the governor's proposal, like how much it would raise in total. Does the plan still fund upstate roads and bridges with a surcharge on New York City cab fares? Will service cuts still be necessary even if this plan passes? It's hard to tell when all the discussions take place behind closed doors.

Advocates aren't pleased. The Empire State Transportation Alliance -- a coalition representing business, labor, and environmental groups -- released a statement yesterday stressing the importance of funding the MTA capital plan now, not just passing a temporary fix. 

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The ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria is packed right now for the RPA's 2009 Regional Assembly, where Richard Ravitch just accepted a lifetime achievement honor. Many luminaries from the worlds of transportation, planning, and politics are here, and I've got a few minutes to post some interesting exchanges from earlier in the day, so here goes.

At a morning workshop about the challenges to funding transit during an economic downturn, Ravitch spoke about the current impasse in Albany that's putting New York's transit system at risk:

The difficulty, politically, in my judgment, is very obvious. There are very few short-term dividends, for people who run for office, in long-term investments. They don’t get the benefit out of it. It doesn’t have the same electricity to it as keeping the fare low. The benefits may not be realized until future generations. That is a political problem.

People are going to have to bite the bullet, in terms of usage charges and various taxes that will generate the revenue streams we need in order to build.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who served in the state legislature when the MTA was emerging from the financial catastrophe of the 1970s, added this perspective:

The 1970s crisis allowed us in the 80s to put new revenue streams in place and implement the original MTA capital plan. We had the ability to do these things because people remembered the bad times. But then you start to get complacent.

The politics in the legislature is more difficult now than it used to be. The Senate has switched parties; Republicans would like it to go back the other way. The Republicans won’t vote for anything and the Democrats can't unite. The only way around that, frankly, is for a few Republicans to step up to the plate. How do you do that? The leadership could step up and do a deal. It takes delicate political negotiating behind the scenes, and whether the public-spiritedness is there, I’m not at all sure.

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If you're wondering how MTA doomsday service cuts will affect you, you can now look them up by state legislative district and ZIP code, thanks to new maps from the Regional Plan Association.

Not that the Fare Hike Four concern themselves with facts and data, but in Ruben Diaz, Sr.'s Bronx district, maps show the planned elimination of bus lines Bx4 and Bx14, as well as altered or reduced service on seven additional routes. Not to mention increased wait times on the 4, 5, and 6 subway lines. Constituents of Hiram Monserrate, Pedro Espada, Jr., and Carl Kruger all face cutbacks and service eliminations as well.

With GOP senators indicating a willingness to negotiate, there may yet be an outside chance to salvage a workable, long-term MTA rescue plan. There's still time to remind your legislators what you, and the city, stand to lose without it.

Whatever your stance on the Ravitch Commission's MTA rescue plan, the broad inequities of allowing New York transit service to deteriorate while fares rise 23 percent are stunning. The doomsday budget passed earlier this week would affect vastly more New Yorkers than bridge tolls or congestion pricing, burdening those who can least afford the added delay and expense.

The Regional Plan Association and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign came out with a strong one-two punch yesterday that frames this disparity in no uncertain terms, countering the shopworn drivel we've been hearing in defense of the "driving public."

These fact sheets from the RPA chart the doomsday service cuts by borough. The maps are helpful and alarming -- visual confirmation that pretty much everyone who rides the train can expect longer waits and more crowded conditions. Bus riders from eastern Queens to lower Manhattan will see routes eliminated and less frequent service. I see that in my neighborhood, Windsor Terrace, the B75 is slated for extinction, shunting more riders onto the F train.

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Following yesterday's Build for America launch and last night's presidential debate, the Regional Plan Association released a major report today recommending an array of public transportation improvements for New York City and northern New Jersey, adding its name to the ever-growing list of orgs and officials calling for federal investment to spur and sustain economic growth in the coming decades.

Over a dense 53 pages, "Tomorrow’s Transit: New Mobility for the Region’s Urban Core" [PDF] lays out dozens of projects, large and small, that would improve transit access and performance, with a focus on underserved and, in many cases, high poverty areas. The report, as breathtaking in scope as the $29 billion five-year capital plan unveiled by MTA head Lee Sander last March, also proposes augmentations to long-planned mega-projects like the Second Avenue Subway, and stresses links between modes to maximize coverage and efficiency.

Proposals are categorized by cost and level of need, as determined by existing transit service, income levels, and rates of auto ownership.

Follow the jump for highlights.

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This curb-cutting driveway leads to a parking lot for a new residential development on 16th Street in Brooklyn.

What would you do if you went to the doctor, and before speaking to you, taking your vital signs, or learning about your condition, she prescribed a powerful drug and kicked you out the door?

New York City's land-use doctor is the City Planning Commission, and the drug it doles out is the Zoning Resolution, a 1960s-era set of laws that is gradually transforming swaths of the city into more suburban, car oriented environments.

City zoning requires substantial parking at all new residential buildings. In many neighborhoods that means an astoundingly higher level of parking. For instance, the Zoning Resolution requires new residential buildings in walkable Park Slope to have eight times more off-street parking than the existing housing stock. So what does the planning commission base its powerful prescription on? Not much, according to Suburbanizing the City [PDF], a study just released by Transportation Alternatives, the Regional Plan Association and a host of other prominent transportation and planning groups. The study projects a billion miles of new driving by 2030 due to the planning commission's off-street parking requirements. Yet, in the recommendations accompanying the report, the groups write:

It appears that City planners do not know how much off-street parking exists, how much parking is planned and permitted, or how existing or planned new parking contributes to traffic, air pollution and carbon emissions.

As a first step toward diagnosing the extent of the parking problem, the groups ask the mayor to "fully assess the amount of existing and planned off-street parking" and take the following actions to accomplish that:

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Yesterday, several planning and environmental organizations joined Transportation Alternatives on the steps of City Hall to tout the release of "Suburbanizing the City" [PDF], the new report that critiques New York City's off-street parking policies. The coalition is similar -- but not identical -- to the array of groups that pushed for congestion pricing earlier this year. Their testimony highlighted the range of benefits that off-street parking reform would deliver, from mitigating tailpipe emissions to reducing housing costs.

Planning advocates recommended doing away with parking requirements and "unbundling" the cost of parking from the price of housing. "There's no reason for parking to be paid for by people who don't own cars," said Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin, adding that the construction of parking should be "a choice rather than a necessity."

Minimum parking requirements are especially ill-suited to affordable housing developments, said Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development (pictured at the mic). "[A parking minimum] really makes no sense at all for communities where less than 20 percent of households own cars, because it drives up the cost of housing and takes up valuable space that otherwise could be used to create additional units or public space."

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