Two highway removal projects in the region got a boost of federal funds today.  USDOT announced that New Haven’s Route 34 and the South Bronx’s  Sheridan Expressway will receive $16 million and $1.5 million respectively to advance plans to convert these underutilized highway corridors into [...]]]>

The area targeted for development in New Haven.

Two highway removal projects in the region got a boost of federal funds today.  USDOT announced that New Haven’s Route 34 and the South Bronx’s  Sheridan Expressway will receive $16 million and $1.5 million respectively to advance plans to convert these underutilized highway corridors into more walkable, vibrant, and viable communities.

The New Haven Register reports that New Haven’s award allows Phase 1 development along Route 34 to begin.  The transformation of Route 34 into an urban boulevard is expected to generate 2,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs with hundreds of millions of dollars in future private development.

A press release from South Bronx Congressman Jose Serrano confirms that the award will fund a study for a vision plan of the Sheridan Expressway and Hunts Point area.  The study aims to fill a gap in the NY State DOT’s review of the project alternatives, which currently avoid any discussion of land use or economic development that could occur with a removal of the expressway.

The Congressman is quoted in the release:

Meanwhile, the creation of a vision plan that addresses the current and future needs of our community in the Hunts Point area and the Sheridan Expressway is of vital importance. We are eager to remake this area into a livable, walkable and green section of our community, and this is the first step towards achieving that goal. I am encouraged that this grant specifically states that this ‘City-led, multi-agency, holistic planning process will be designed to respond to the needs and goals of the business and residential communities in the area.’ This is precisely the process that all planning in our borough must undergo as we work to right the development and planning wrongs of many decades.

The official announcement from Secretary LaHood will come next week.

Serrano’s release is available here.

Image: Via City of New Haven.

.600 is a phenomenal batting average for a major leaguer. It’s a woeful showing for [...]]]>

The old Yankee Stadium. Nearly all the parkland shown in this photo was razed to make way for the new stadium and parking garages. Most of the promised replacement parkland has not been built and is over budget.

.600 is a phenomenal batting average for a major leaguer. It’s a woeful showing for the parking garages around Yankee Stadium, many of which are brand-new and financed by tax-exempt city bonds. And the failure of the garages is one the city could have seen coming.

The operator of the stadium-area garages, Bronx Parking Development, may now default on its bond obligations to the city, according to the NY Daily News. Four out of every 10 spaces in the garages are empty, in a year after the Yankees won the World Series.  Among the reasons cited for the lack of drivers: “many fans… lured” to the Metro-North station built specially for the stadium at East 153rd Street.

Sound familiar?  Back in 2006, Tri-State, along with 10 other organizations, warned that the new Metro-North station would make the increased garage capacity superfluous.  At the time, the organizations said that public money should go to the Metro-North station, not the garages.  The new stadium has fewer seats than the old, making the decision to add 3,600 parking spaces even more puzzling.

In addition to the approximately 5,000 fans (a bit lower in other accounts) taking Metro-North, the Daily News notes two other factors contributing to the high vacancies in the garages: cheaper parking nearby and a drop in reserved parking for season ticket holders.

Photo: atomishe.com via Gothamist.

(Click to visit.)

Click the links below to find responses in four key State Senate [...]]]> New York primary elections are tomorrow! This year, Tri-State teamed up with Transportation Alternatives to survey candidates on their views on the region’s most critical transportation issues. Results are being posted at New York Transportation Survey [dot] org.

(Click to visit.)

Click the links below to find responses in four key State Senate races (each race was listed a “race to watch” by The Capitol and has a transportation survey response from at least one candidate).  Not every candidate responded, and where they haven’t we encourage you to call their campaign offices to find out why.

Queens NY-10: Lynn Nunes v. Sen. Shirley Huntley (no response, call 718-523-3069 to find out why.)

Brooklyn NY-18: Sen. Velmanette Montgomery vs. Mark Pollard (no response, visit campaign website to find out why.)

Manhattan NY-31: Adriano Espaillat vs. Mark Levine vs. Miosotis Munoz vs. Anna Lewis (no response, call 646-283-5942 to find out why.)

Bronx NY-33: Gustavo Rivera vs. Sen. Pedro Espada (no response, call 718-652-4329 to find out why.)

Explore the site to find more from State Senate, Assembly and the Gubernatorial candidates. Enjoy some time researching — and don’t forget to vote!

The NJ municipalities of East Windsor, Hamilton and Robbinsville have filed suit against the State of New Jersey for the return of funds that were supposed to be used to replace trees destroyed by NJ Turnpike [...]]]>

Robbinsville officials blocked access to a Turnpike construction site in protest of the state's broken reforestation promise.

The NJ municipalities of East Windsor, Hamilton and Robbinsville have filed suit against the State of New Jersey for the return of funds that were supposed to be used to replace trees destroyed by NJ Turnpike construction.

According to reports, $15 million set aside for replacing 268 acres of lost tree cover has been diverted by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection to keep state parks open instead.  Another $1.6 million that was to be used along the Garden State Parkway widening project has also been diverted.  In total, the Turnpike project involves clearing 449 acres of trees in seven towns. $13 million remains for reforestation, an amount the municipalities claim is far too small to cover the losses. (Reforesting one acre costs $61,200, according to the reforestation plan the NJ Turnpike Authority submitted to DEP.)

The replanting funds were among the measures promised to the municipalities in exchange for land to accommodate the massive widening of the NJ Turnpike, which will add 170 new lane miles to the roadway from interchange to 6 to 9.  The redirection of funds clearly violates the spirit of the No Net Loss Reforestation Act, which says that trees removed from state land during construction should be replaced as close as possible to the original site. Whether it violates the letter of the law should be determined by the lawsuit.

Town officials now regret transferring the land needed for the widening. “After this episode, what mayor in his right mind would ever sign an agreement with the State or the Turnpike?” Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried wrote in Politicker NJ. Aside from the lawsuit, the reallocation has prompted direct action by Mayor Fried (see picture), and has legislators weighing in and asking the Governor to intervene on behalf of the aggrieved municipalities.

The broken promise is another sorry chapter in the history of the Turnpike widening project, which has been poorly justified and promises little but induced traffic and more sprawl.  The trees would have offered noise and pollution mitigation along the widened sections of the Turnpike.  The net loss of trees is a blow to local residents, and threatens to deepen the adverse effect of the widening on greenhouse gas emissions, making it all the more difficult for the state to meet goals mandated by the Global Warming Response Act.

A state judge will hear the case on October 1.

Photo: Times of Trenton.

During a recent public information session, NYS Department of Transportation unveiled its analysis showing that carpools with at least 2 passengers (HOV2+) add to bus lane delays and congestion in the Staten Island Expressway bus lanes. The department’s questionable decision to open up the bus lanes to cars [...]]]>

Bus in SIE HOV2+/bus lane

During a recent public information session, NYS Department of Transportation unveiled its analysis showing that carpools with at least 2 passengers (HOV2+) add to bus lane delays and congestion in the Staten Island Expressway bus lanes. The department’s questionable decision to open up the bus lanes to cars had drawn criticism from groups like Tri-State, who argued such a move was illegal and detrimental to improving bus riders’ commutes in the borough.

The Department also found that 54% of the vehicles in the HOV2+ bus lane during the PM peak hour are single occupancy cars. There were fewer, though a significant 34%, violators in the bus lanes during the AM peak.

Due to present construction on the Verrazano, the planned bus lane expansion, and early political pressure, the lane currently allows HOV2+ in what was originally envisioned as a bus-only facility. According to the Department’s new recommendations, once the lane is completed (projection is mid 2013)  through Victory Blvd., the Department will permanently reserve the lane for buses and HOV3+ only. Because of the steady high vehicle volumes on the SIE, the HOV3+ designation will operate 24/7.  According to the Department’s projections, the restricted lane will remain free-flowing, while avoiding the “empty lane syndrome” that fuels calls to open the lane to more vehicle traffic.

Left unanswered was whether it will ultimately be easier to shift to HOV3+ now, rather than in three years when drivers’ expectations and behaviors will be much more entrenched. Given past pressure to allow more traffic into the bus lanes, allowing such a large gap of time will test the Department’s mettle.

Enforcement Remains Biggest Obstacle

The single biggest factor contributing to congestion in the bus lanes is, not surprisingly, lack of enforcement. The DOT has proposed constructing “enforcement areas” – essentially a section of widened median to accommodate a patrol car -  within the separated lanes. Most effective, but not in the Department’s authority to implement, would be camera technology.  Legislation introduced by Senator Lanza and Assemblymember Cusick would allow “the use of enforcement cameras on high occupancy vehicle and bus lanes on the Staten Island Expressway.”  Similar legislation was passed in June to allow such technology to enforce existing bus lanes rules in current and future Select Bus Service corridors in the five boroughs.

The Department will be submitting a final report and application for FHWA approval in the coming months. The application will include sought after legal support for the opening of the lanes to HOVs.

“We realize that we can’t just look at the highway facility itself; we need to look at the impact of a highway through the community it [...]]]>

Of the two alternatives being studied as part of the Bruckner-Sheridan project (besides the "no build" alternative), the only difference whether the Sheridan remains or is removed.

“We realize that we can’t just look at the highway facility itself; we need to look at the impact of a highway through the community it runs through, it needs to focus on not just moving traffic.” – NYSDOT Region 11 (NYC) Director Phil Eng on the Bruckner-Sheridan Interchange project,  New York Times, July 12.

Few projects demand the type of broad vision described above as much as the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx. For over a decade, community residents have asked state officials to ease the burden on the South Bronx by removing the 1.25-mile Sheridan and using the footprint for open space and development. But despite Director Eng’s words, last Tuesday’s NYSDOT stakeholder’s meeting on the Bruckner-Sheridan Expressway, the first in 2 years, was a live illustration of an organizational silo at work.

The meeting was convened for the presentation of the Department’s traffic “micro-simulation analysis” results, a process in which future traffic patterns and volumes are projected for each of the project’s alternatives.  Besides a required “no build” alternative, NYSDOT is weighing two “build” alternatives, one which would remove the Sheridan (1E) and one which would keep it (2E).  Aside from the fate of the Sheridan, the two are nearly identical, each creating a new interchange from the Bruckner to direct trucks to the Hunts Point food markets and industrial areas and a new alignment on the Bruckner Expressway to widen a bottleneck over the Bronx River.

Projected to year 2030, the Department sees skyrocketing traffic volumes under any scenario, generally projecting higher volumes on local roads if the Sheridan is removed. These latest results appear quite specific, but need to be taken with a whole shakerful of salt because they are based on the same traffic modeling process and underlying data which the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance concluded was “junk science” after hiring Smart Mobility, an impartial out-of-state consultant, to review the state’s data. That 2007 analysis found basic errors, faulty assumptions, and a fundamental mismatch between the project and the traffic model used to analyze it.

Both then and now, the project team used the NYMTC Best Practices Model, or BPM, for studying traffic patterns and projections.  The Department used local traffic counts to calibrate the model, but the BPM’s design and underlying assumptions skew the latest results in the same way as the earlier numbers.

The BPM is a regional model, one which Smart Mobility called useful for analyzing “big picture land use and pricing assumptions.”  However, “it is of more limited use in evaluating the different traffic impacts of the [Bruckner-Sheridan] Build alternatives, because the differences are small relative to the accuracy level of the model. Use of the BPM for screening the alternatives is appropriate, but… the modeling is too coarse to calculate significant differences in future traffic impacts between the alternatives.”  Yet this is precisely what NYSDOT did and presented to the public.

Even if the BPM were an appropriate model to apply to the study area, garbage in still equals garbage out.  Our report also found that “about half of the purported benefits [of keeping the Sheridan] result from model coding errors rather than any real transportation effects.”  These included one-way streets mapped in the wrong direction and ramps coded with incorrect capacity numbers. The BPM also assumes that traffic steadily increases with population, unbounded by physical capacity constraints, producing “an implausibly high level of future traffic in the study area.”  In fact, the magnitude of the projected traffic growth dwarfs the differences between the remaining alternatives.

Because of the model’s uncertain conclusions and the errors underlying the Department’s projections, the decision to remove or retain the Sheridan should be based more on the potential community benefits of each alternative — including, but not dominated by, traffic considerations.  Unfortunately, study of the environmental, recreation, and economic benefits of a Sheridan removal is not part of NYSDOT’s plans.

A Cost-Benefit Analysis, Without Benefits

Tri-State and the Alliance have proposed and advocated for the Community Plan to create over 1,200 new units of affordable housing and over 700 permanent jobs in the Sheridan’s footprint. Such a plan would provide the surrounding neighborhoods, those with among the highest asthma and obesity rates in the country, with parks, river access and community space.

But that’s not even close to what NYSDOT will study as it prepares a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). “You just lose the Sheridan,”  Project Manager Guy LaMonaca said in describing the project team’s anticipated approach to the removal. He added that the Department would study that alternative as if the Sheridan was simply fenced off to traffic.

NYSDOT will not study the Community Plan to replace the Sheridan with parks and development, pictured here. In fact, it currently plans to study the removal as if nothing can be built in its place.

When challenged to ascribe value to the land in the Sheridan’s footprint, project officials claimed that their hands were tied.  Unless another governmental agency presented a “commitment” to a “concrete plan” for developing the area, the Department could not consider future land use scenarios in its analysis of the alternatives.

In fact, EIS’s do routinely study the potential and projected impact of projects on land value. Though it would be preferable to analyze the removal alternative with a fully conceptualized plan like the Community Plan, the value of developable land can be derived from the land values and uses in the  surrounding neighborhood, a Federal Highway Administration official at the meeting admitted.  Public parkland likewise has quantifiable value.

By law, NYSDOT is required to evaluate the project in a diverse number of areas that includes “Land Use and Social Conditions,” “Economic Conditions,” “Cultural Resources,” “Visual Resources,” and “Environmental Justice.”  As the Department would have it, the EIS would simply be a cataloging exercise of current conditions in each of these areas.  However, state and federal environmental law require the Department analyze the “impacts” of each alternative in these categories – an exercise that requires a projection of future impacts.  By dismissing the idea that the removal could provide any benefits to the surrounding communities, NYSDOT would make it impossible to conduct a balanced weighing of alternatives.  Such an inadequate analysis would be a waste of time and resources, and could open the project’s EIS to legal challenge.

Images: Top – via NYSDOT. Right – via Pratt Center for Community Development.

The Port Authority wants to be more bike friendly and we have the perfect place for them to get started: install bike parking at the Harrison, NJ, PATH station.

According to an internal bulletin from [...]]]>

There is demand for bike parking -- but little supply -- near the PATH station in Harrison, NJ.

The Port Authority wants to be more bike friendly and we have the perfect place for them to get started: install bike parking at the Harrison, NJ, PATH station.

According to an internal bulletin from March (seen here at WalkBikeJersey), “the Port Authority supports bicycling as an important and sustainable mode of travel. It seeks to provide its customers, tenants, visitors and employees with safe and convenient bicycle access and secure bicycle parking at its facilities, wherever operationally and financially feasible.”  Agency staff will be compiling and submitting “bicycle master plans” to Executive Director Chris Ward’s office by September 30 of this year.

The Harrison PATH station serves a high volume of bicycle commuters, but has no bike parking.  Multiple sources indicate that a major deterrent to potential bike commuters is lack of a safe, secure parking spot at the destination.

At Harrison, bikers lock to whatever is available — mostly to the railing that separates the sidewalk from busy Frank E. Rodgers Blvd under the PATH tracks.   On the morning these pictures were taken, an average Monday in June, bikes filled both sides of the railing from end to end.  A handful of bikes were locked to the rail on the east side of the street as well.  In all, nearly three dozen bikes crowded the sidewalk under the station.

Expect even greater usage in the future. The station is central to a formerly industrial neighborhood that hosts the new Red Bulls soccer stadium and is the the object of major city redevelopment plans. The Port Authority eventually plans to reconstruct the station (it had to remove the project from its near-term capital program due to lack of funds), but that redesign does not yet include bike parking.

Another view of the station's de facto bike parking.

After the jump, some details from the PA memo, which suggest other ways the authority could accommodate cycling:

The Board also authorized the Executive Director to take the following steps to advance the goals of this policy:

• Integrate improved bicycle access, safe bicycle lanes, and secure bicycle parking and storage into existing Port Authority buildings and facilities owned or operated by the Port Authority.
• Ensure that design guidelines for new construction and major renovations include sufficient bicycle access, storage, and related amenities to meet emerging demand.
• Develop multimodal transit hubs that encourage biking and walking.
• Remove any unnecessary restrictions on bicycle access, and promote the safe coexistence of motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians at Port Authority facilities.  [i.e. the Authority's bridges]
• Encourage tenants to expand bicycle access and accommodations.
• Coordinate bicycle facility improvements and intermodal connections with regional planning organizations, other regional transportation providers, and local governments to promote safe and seamless travel throughout the region.

Photos: Kyle Wiswall/TSTC.

The public reaction was quick and furious to a concept design for the downtown Brooklyn section of the Brooklyn-Queens [...]]]>

One of the tunnel options would route the BQE under downtown Brooklyn (in blue and green). NYSDOT suggests using the existing right-of-way (in black) as a "collector/distributor" highway, but it could have alternate uses.

The public reaction was quick and furious to a concept design for the downtown Brooklyn section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that would cut a new highway right-of-way through the Brooklyn Heights historic district and nearby parkland.  NYSDOT, anticipating a bump in attendance, moved the next stakeholders’ meeting from a small classroom to a larger theater.  They were not disappointed; the turnout was significant.

The crowd was patient as the Department presented several new concept designs based on the three options previously presented: two “Design Speed Compliant” options, formerly the Standard option that caused so much anxiety; several Tunnel options; and a “Context Sensitive Corridor” option, a retitled version of what had previously been called the Improved Existing Corridor.

It was not long before NYSDOT indicated that it had heard the public outcry.  Noting that the Department “cannot talk about an option that runs roughshod over the community, even though it has other benefits,” Project Manager Peter King was quickly seconded, third-ed and fourth-ed when he suggested eliminating the two Design Speed Compliant options.  The worst-case scenario for the community appeared to have been averted, and a round of applause followed.

What’s Left: Tunnels, Widening, Rehabilitation

Spared the worst of NYSDOT’s plans for the downtown Brooklyn portion of the BQE, the stakeholders committee now must evaluate the remaining alternatives.  None of the three tunneling options presented call for the removal of the existing roadway. One retains it as a “collector/distributor” road, nearly doubling highway capacity; the other two leave its use in the air.  The Department suggested everything from keeping it a functioning highway to converting it to a bike and pedestrian parkway (Brooklyn’s answer to the High Line?).  Despite any benefits that may accrue from burying the highway, it would certainly be a step backward to end up with two highways in the neighborhood instead of one.

The “Context Sensitive Corridor” option sticks to the BQE’s current route, but expands the roadway to accommodate large shoulders for improved sightlines and space for vehicle breakdowns.  The widening would also significantly impact the many parks along the route, including the new Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Brooklyn Promenade.  The latter would overlook a widened BQE that would bring new air and noise pollution to the park and nearby homes.  Project team members floated the idea of extending the promenade over the new highway, though it is difficult to evaluate how effective such an extension would be as mitigation without more engineering and design work.

The final build concept presented calls for rehabilitation only, with no design changes.  NYSDOT clearly does not favor this option from a traffic safety and operations point of view.  Of course, the stakeholder committee must balance this against the fact that the option doesn’t burden the area’s parks or residences.

The next Stakeholder’s Committee meeting will be held on September 22nd at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights.

Image: Scanned image from NYSDOT Stakeholders Meeting. Brooklyn Heights Blog also has a scanned copy of a handout given out at the meeting.

NYSDOT [...]]]>

The "standard" alternative for the reconstruction of the BQE showed the new highway (in red) plowing through homes in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District (marked with red lines) and caused an uproar at a recent stakeholders meeting. The area shown here is where the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges touch down in Brooklyn.

NYSDOT is so misunderstood.  When they say “here’s our Standard alternative for the highway” and show a map of a highway plowing through a dense brownstone neighborhood of Brooklyn, they can’t understand why people get upset!

That was the scenario at the May 26 stakeholders’ meeting for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Downtown Brooklyn EIS – a project that aims to fix and upgrade the crumbling BQE through Downtown Brooklyn, from Atlantic Avenue to Sands Street, including the “Triple Cantilever” in Brooklyn Heights.

In presenting three very preliminary alternatives for the project, the State DOT presented the “Standard” alternative, a concept design that shows the highway alignment if all of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ safety and operational standards (for curve radius, lane width, etc.) were applied.  Because these standards are largely one-size-fits-all, many are simply inapplicable to an area as built-out as NYC.  That said, the Standard alternative provides a useful model by which to measure other (more realistic) alternatives.

Unfortunately, the name “Standard” came off to many members of the public as an adjective, as in “this is the standard way we do things.”  Did we mention that the alternative blasts through five blocks of the Brooklyn Heights historic district?

To be clear, the State DOT doesn’t plan to make half the neighborhood homeless, and its efforts to include all relevant stakeholders in the design and review process ought to be commended.  But the agency isn’t helping its cause by scaring the living daylights out of everyone in the room.

In response to a TSTC letter gently critiquing their presentation, the project manager admitted, “We discussed various ways to present this information to the [stakeholders committee] and in retrospect probably could  have been clearer in what we were trying to convey.” He went on to explain that they chose to err on the side of more disclosure rather than risk appearing to do the planning “behind closed doors.”

The Best Approach May Be The Least Studied

Unfortunately, the problems with the BQE project go beyond the State DOT’s communications.  While design is its nascent stage, each of the three design concepts presented appear fatally flawed.

• As described above, the “Standard” alternative’s impacts are so extensive that it is essentially precluded from consideration.
• A “Tunnel” option, a proposal to dig a tunnel under downtown Brooklyn for through traffic, will likely fail on two grounds, the first being its likely excessive cost, the second that it essentially results in two highways: the tunneled-through BQE and a “collector/distributor” road kept on the existing right of way.
• An “Improved Existing Corridor” design involves extensive expansion of the road on its current right-of-way, encroachment on parks, and impacts to the Brooklyn Heights promenade. It also appears to create room for ill-advised future traffic lanes.

Near Van Voorhees Park, the "Improved Existing Corridor" alternative would result in four 12' lanes with a 10' shoulder and 6' shoulder going south. Going north, there would be three 12' lanes, a 10' shoulder, and a 17' shoulder - wide enough to carve out an additional traffic lane.

Because of the area’s extreme density, the best answer to many operational and safety questions may be in alternatives that do not rely on extensive build-outs.  The project team said they would study several options that could hold the key to balancing the needs of the community with the operational needs on the road, such as roadway pricing strategies and user fees, transit improvements, demand reduction strategies and freight management.  Currently, these strategies are not a component of the design concepts (that is, it appears that the road alignment alternatives and these “system and demand management” options are being studied in isolation from one another). It is still extremely early in the design process, so this omission will hopefully be corrected later on.

Images: All images are scanned from a handout distributed at the stakeholder meeting.

Some relief for pedestrian overcrowding near Penn Station may be in sight.  The reopening of the Gimbels passageway, and a host of [...]]]>

Vornado's proposal for 15 Penn Plaza includes widening and reopening the Gimbels passageway, an underground tunnel, shown in yellow above, that would connect Penn Station and the Herald Square subway station.

Some relief for pedestrian overcrowding near Penn Station may be in sight.  The reopening of the Gimbels passageway, and a host of other transit and streetscape improvements, crept closer to seeing the light of day after Vornado Realty Trust’s presented its development proposal for 15 Penn Plaza at a public hearing before the New York City Planning Commission yesterday.

Vornado would replace the Hotel Pennsylvania at 15 Penn Plaza (7th Ave and 33rd St.) with what would be the city’s third-tallest building. The proposal requires approval of both the Planning Commission and the City Council.  Testifying at the commission hearing, Tri-State’s Kate Slevin said that “the proposed office tower’s proximity to Penn Station makes it an excellent location choice. There is no better place to encourage development than above transit facilities that provide easy access to Amtrak, NJ Transit, LIRR, PATH, and fourteen subway lines.”

The Campaign is particularly excited about the prospect of reopening the Gimbels Passageway which connects the commuter rail lines and subways at Penn Station with subway and PATH service at Herald Square.  The streets in the area are very congested with pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and transit riders will welcome a safer and less congested route between these two busy hubs.  According to Vornado’s Kate Ascher, a projected 10,000 to 20,000 people would use the passageway at peak hour each day. That should help reduce the crush of crowds near Penn Station; during the busiest times more than 69,000 people per hour used the station entrance at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue, the 34th Street Partnership said last year.

Foot traffic around Penn Station is extreme.

Describing Penn Station as having “been left in the dark ages,” Ascher enumerated additional proposed features. For the 34th Street 1-2-3 and 34th Street-Herald Square stations, Vornado would pay for new subway entrances, better lighting and signage – including real-time train information displays, and wider station platforms. Above ground, the developer would pay for wider sidewalks and street tree plantings.

The proposal represents the best of potential benefits to be had from well-planned public/private partnerships.  Ongoing contributions to the transit improvements by the developer allow the MTA to make these customer service enhancements even as the agency faces record budget deficits.  Underscoring the importance of these features to the project as a whole, Commission members noted that some developers have had difficulties keeping their end of the bargain in the past, forcing Vornado to reiterate its commitment.

Commission members was generally receptive to the project, but did question whether enough was planned to ensure the vibrancy of the Gimbels passageway, which was closed in 1980 due to worries about crime. Vornado promised to address the concern by designing an attractive space more akin to the retail-lined passageways underneath Rockefeller Center. One commissioner suggested that the city needs to make broader above-ground pedestrian improvements going beyond the project area; TSTC has previously suggested that 32nd Street between 7th and 6th Avenues be closed to traffic.

Also commenting in favor were Juliette Michaelson from Regional Plan Association, Dan Biederman of the 34th Street Partnership, and representatives from the Permanent Citizens’ Advisory Committee to the MTA and the Service Employees International Union.  No one spoke in opposition.

Images: Top – From 15 Penn Plaza DEIS. Right – Photo by TSTC.