Streetsblog New York City

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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Streetsblog has gotten word that, due to Port Authority construction and maintenance work, the north and south sidewalks of the George Washington Bridge will be closing intermittently until further notice.

According to a spokesperson, the authority plans to have the paths open on an alternating basis. Updates are posted on the PA website, and are also available by signing up for cyclist and pedestrian email and mobile alerts.

Over 315,000 bus riders cross the Hudson River each weekday. More than half of these bus riders travel through the Lincoln Tunnel, but the exclusive bus lane, which only operates during the morning rush hour, is at capacity.

This Streetfilm, produced in collaboration with the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and with animation by Hugh Gran and Carly Clark, offers recommendations on what the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey can do to improve these bus crossings. You can also download TSTC's full May 2009 report on area bus service [PDF] for more info.

The Lincoln Tunnel Express Bus Lane is a congestion-busting powerhouse, moving 62,000 riders into Manhattan during the morning rush every day and enticing huge numbers of commuters to leave their cars at home. It is now "the most efficient roadway in the country," according to an analysis by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. One shudders to think of the traffic nightmare we'd have without it.

The Lincoln Tunnel XBL was established all the way back in 1971. In the last 38 years, bus ridership crossing the Hudson has boomed, especially this decade, but capacity for buses hasn't kept pace. Unless provisions are made to accommodate more bus travel -- and soon -- riders will face slower trips, the ridership gains of recent years will flatten out, and traffic troubles will deepen as more commuters choose to drive.

The good news is that it doesn't take all that much time or money to deliver some significant enhancements for bus riders. In a new report, "Express Route to Better Bus Service" [PDF], Tri-State lays out a strategy to expand on the success of the Lincoln Tunnel XBL and make bus travel more attractive for all trips across the Hudson. It's a wake-up call for the Port Authority to get moving on some long-overdue improvements.

"A population nearly the size of Cincinnati travels by bus across the Hudson River every weekday, but plans to enhance service for these riders are stalled," said Tri-State's Veronica Vanterpool, co-author of the report. "With bus travel anticipated to grow, we need to stop treating bus riders like second-class citizens and provide them with faster commutes and better access to information."

Tri-State recommends creating a westbound Lincoln Tunnel XBL during the evening rush and moving full-speed ahead with plans for a new high occupancy/toll lane for the morning commute (which has been stuck in the study phase for way too long). The report also touches on strategies to speed bus service across other Hudson River crossings, organize on-street loading for the city's growing volume of private bus operators, and make it easier for riders to plan their trips.

Follow the jump for the full slate of Tri-State's major recommendations.

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It took four months longer than expected, but here's good news from the Port Authority, care of The Manhattan Times, regarding the greenway detour between W. 158th and 181st Streets:

The pathway in the park near the George Washington Bridge has been reopened to pedestrians and bicyclists as of this morning 4/28/09 and will not require any further closures.

Assuming no other projects are pending elsewhere along the route, it looks like bike riders and walkers can finally take advantage of an uninterrupted path from Battery Park to Inwood.

A temporary detour along the Hudson River Greenway in Washington Heights went into effect Thursday.

The closure, related to work on the George Washington Bridge, will reroute cyclists to Broadway and Ft. Washington Avenue between 158th and 181st Streets. According to a Port Authority flier [PDF], pedestrians may access the park and riverfront through the tunnel at 172nd Street.

Interruptions are to occur on a "periodic" basis until December 31, "typically" from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Plans to bring "big box" retail to a remodeled George Washington Bridge Bus Station have been scuttled due to fears that it would attract more car-commuting shoppers to Washington Heights.

Instead, according to the Manhattan Times, the Port Authority will build spaces for about a dozen smaller commercial shops and offices, says PA Executive Director Christopher Ward.

The decision to plan for multiple tenants, Ward said, was partly driven by the belief that retail opportunities should serve customers who walk or take transit to the terminal, rather than out-of-area shoppers arriving by car.

"The community spoke clearly that we didn't need more cars," Ward said.

Work on the terminal, which is expected to increase bus capacity by 50 percent over the existing design, is currently scheduled to start in late 2009 and should take about three years, the Times reports.

Just after the long-awaited off-road link from Inwood to Battery Park was completed, Streetsblog got word of a pending Hudson River Greenway detour due to planned work by the Port Authority on the Manhattan tower of the George Washington Bridge.

According to the signage plan [PDF], cyclists and ped traffic will be rerouted to Broadway and Ft. Washington Avenue between 158th and 181st Streets, in Washington Heights. As you can see from the signs, work was scheduled to begin in September. According to a notice from Community Board 12, as of last week the PA was set to get started on November 3, but has since postponed again.

Streetsblog has a message in with the PA to see what the latest projected dates are. Looks like the work is supposed to take anywhere from six to eight weeks.

When it comes to reducing traffic in New York City, improving transit performance over river crossings is a no-brainer. Faster buses lure people out of their cars and take traffic off the streets, which is why the Tri-State Transportation Campaign is advocating for a New Jersey-bound express bus lane through the Lincoln Tunnel.

In a post on Mobilizing the Region yesterday, TSTC says it's time to build on the success of the much traveled Manhattan-bound express bus lane:

The Lincoln Tunnel’s Manhattan-bound XBL is the busiest bus lane in the country, carrying 1,700 buses with over 62,000 passengers on weekday mornings. In fact, it is so popular that it is now congested at times, though it still speeds bus times by 15-20 minutes according to the Port Authority. This has prompted the Authority to study the creation of a bus/high occupancy toll (HOT) lane in the tunnel to alleviate gridlock on the bus priority route.

However, there has been less discussion on how to improve evening rush hour traffic into NJ, which is actually worse. During the average evening peak period (4-7 pm), nearly 15,000 cars travel westbound into NJ; by comparison, around 13,900 cars enter NYC during the morning rush (7-10am). Usage of a Jersey-bound XBL (which would either replace an NJ-bound general purpose lane or be a contraflow lane carved out of NY-bound traffic) would almost certainly rival that of the morning XBL, providing real benefits for the largest share of trans-Hudson commuters and creating further incentives to commute by mass transit.

A Jersey-bound XBL would also help to alleviate some of the problems that the new blocking-the-box crackdown is meant to address. Some of the worst box-blocking hotspots are in Hell's Kitchen, where cars line up for block after block on their way out of Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel.

For more ideas about improving bus service on bridges and tunnels, see Cap'n Transit's series on the topic.

Photo of NJTransit bus leaving Manhattan via Lincoln Tunnel: Jumpy/Wikimedia Commons/MTR

Funding shortfalls and logistical hurdles may be delaying plans to replace Penn Station, but the Municipal Art Society's campaign for Moynihan Station is not letting up. The MAS has been on a roll this spring, hosting a series of events related to the West Side project. This video, posted yesterday, features former Washington Post reporter Don Phillips and Metro-North lawyer Walter Zullig, Jr. discussing the project within the context of the national and regional rail networks. From the MAS recap:

Phillips provided a global overview of the transportation crisis and discussed how Europe, Asia, and even Mexico are placing massive investments in their infrastructure. France, for instance, is building rail tunnels “like crazy” for trains that, in some cases, will be carrying trucks. Iran is on a rail building boom. And Mexico is building a huge new port and rail network to compete with the Port of Los Angeles.

But “we have no vision at all,” said Phillips. “All we can say now is no new taxes.”

Rail enthusiasts jonesing for pictures of gorgeous new stations will get their fix in the first part of the video, which shows some recently completed projects -- in Europe, of course. If the Port Authority takes over the Moynihan Station project, might New York finally get a palatial new station of its own?