A before-and-after rendering of a proposed design for the Nostrand Avenue bus line, at Empire Boulevard.
The federal government’s fiscal year 2011 budget, released this week, has good news for Connecticut’s Hartford-New Britain Busway and New York City’s Nostrand Avenue Select Bus Service. Both were recommended for funds from the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts and Small Starts program in the upcoming year.
For ConnDOT Commissioner Joe Marie, this is a triumph. Connecticut is now poised to win a “full funding grant agreement” from the FTA, a multi-year agreement that will guarantee hundreds of millions of federal dollars for the busway. ConnDOT’s application seeks $275.3 million, with the federal budget recommending an award of $45 million towards that amount this year. ConnDOT intends to use this grant and other federal funds to cover about 80% of the cost of the $570 million project. If Connecticut does win the grant agreement, expected in the spring, Marie will have turned around not one, but two transit projects that had been stalled for years. The New Haven-Springfield Rail Line received money from the federal high-speed rail program last month.
New York City will receive $28 million for a new Select Bus Service route on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn that will connect nine subway lines and the LIRR. As TSTC’s Kate Slevin told Streetsblog earlier this week, this is another reason for local officials to get behind the project. “We’re living in a time where money for all services, including transit, is scarce,” she said. “Elected officials along the corridor should not look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Image: From NYCDOT presentation to Nostrand Avenue Community Advisory Committee.
[...] federal cash for City’s big bus [...]
While the Nostrand Avenueline might be worthwhile and even here a streetcar might give a better bang for the dollar, the Connecticut busway is a boondoggle. It will not cost less than doing rail in a usable manner and it won’t get the ridership. Look at the West and South Busways in Pittsburgh or the Harbor Freeway busway in Los Angeles.
[...] this month, Connecticut learned it would receive $45 million in federal New Starts funds for the busway, strongly suggesting that an additional $230 million [...]