A weekly roundup of good deeds, missteps, heroic feats and epic failures in tri-state transportation news.
Winners
Suffolk County bus riders — Suffolk County will receive $3.96 million over three years — higher than advocates anticipated — in federal funding from the New York Metropolitan Transit Council to expand Sunday bus service beginning in January 2014.
New Haven Mayoral Candidates Kermit Carolina, Justin Elicker, Henry Fernandez, Toni Harp and Sundiata Keitazulu — All five of the candidates running for mayor support traffic calming, bike lanes and a city-wide 20 mph speed limit.
Zagster and Roseland Developers — Residents of two Jersey City luxury apartment buildings will soon have their own bike share program thanks to a partnership between Roseland and bike share provider Zagster.
NY State Sen. Adriano Espaillat — Sen. Espaillat said Select Bus Service on 125th Street in Harlem would have “vastly improved public transit for uptown residents that rely on this bus line every day. It is disappointing that this balanced and sensible proposal has been canceled.”
Losers
NY State Sen. Bill Perkins and NYC Councilmember Robert Jackson — Due to opposition from Perkins and Jackson, the New York City Department of Transportation and the MTA abandoned plans to bring Select Bus Service to 125th Street in Harlem, where nearly 80 percent of households do not own cars.
NY Assemblymember Joe Borelli — Borelli is calling on the State to add a lane to the West Shore Expressway, which he erroneously believes would ease congestion.
Adding a 4th lane to the SI expressway in both directions the entire length from the VZ Bridge to the split for the West Shore Expressway would do more to ease traffic, as long as it is an HOV lane during rush hours from 6am to 10am and 3pm to 8pm, but was open to all noncommercial vehicles all other times. Just like the HOV 4th lane is currently being used between the Queens / Nassau line out to exit 64 in Suffolk county.
[…] last year’s budget-$24.1 million in 2014 versus $22 million in 2013-which, with the help of a Federal Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC) grant, will be used for the expansion of Sunday bus service throughout Suffolk County. This is the first […]