Not to be outdone by Connecticut and New Jersey, it looks like New York State is also looking to join the highway widening party.
The Draft New York State FFY 2014-2017 Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) was recently released for comment, and once again, NYSDOT is dressing up a road widening to look like a much more progressive transportation project.
NYSDOT is proposing to extend the Long Island Expressway’s (LIE) westbound contraflow bus/taxi/HOV 3+ lane to 97th Street in Queens. The lane currently runs between the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and Calvary Cemetery/58th Street and is available for use between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. A contraflow lane such as this would add a lane through the use of a movable divider.
Although the $18 million project is being presented as something that will improve transit service, it looks like nothing more than a widening project — and one that will be paid for using limited Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality (CMAQ) money.
TSTC has advocated against HOV lanes on the LIE for years, because widening highways — even by just rearranging lanes during peak periods — doesn’t relieve congestion over the long term. Added capacity eventually fills up, resulting in the same congestion the widening was intended to alleviate.
One would hope that NYSDOT would have learned from past experience. In 2009 NYSDOT moved forward with a plan allowing cars with two or more passengers (HOV2+) to use the westbound bus-only lane on the Staten Island Expressway (SIE) – a lane added in 2005 for the express purpose of bus-only use. Once NYSDOT started allowing HOV2+ into the SIE lane, the department found that bus delays became more frequent and that 54 percent of vehicles in the HOV2+ lane were single occupancy vehicles, showing the conversion actually created a de facto general traffic lane.
If NYSDOT truly wants to mitigate congestion on the LIE, it could use the money to beef up bus service, transform the HOV lane into a bus-only lane, or convert the existing lane to a High Occupancy Toll lane, providing drivers (even single-occupancy drivers) real options to bypass congestion while also raising revenue for transportation.
This cannot be built soon enough! The LIE in Queens is a horror show. It’s absurd that such a key thoroughfare has only a 3×3 lane configuration. Don’t listen to the anti-car lobbyists! This is a modest improvement that needs to happen.
BS, they need more lanes on LIE!
Whether or not it’s an extra lane, an HOV lane is a good thing. But it should not be done the way it was farther east, with exits and entrances designed to cause car crashes. One should be able to get in and out at will IF one qualifies to be in it, and it should be usable 24 x 7. Of course, buses should be using it. And HOV cars. And there should be hefty fines for cheating.
THERE ARE SOOOOO MANY PEOPLE GOING IN AND OUT OF THE HOV ILLEGALLY AND NOT GETTING CAUGHT, THAT IT BLOWS MY MIND. THERE NEEDS TO BE A BETTER WAY TO ENFORCE IT BEFORE YOU START ADDING ON TO IT. THERE ALSO NEEDS TO BE A CLEAN UP DONE ON THE HOV SHOULDER SO THAT WHEN A BUS TRAVELS ON IT THE CARS BEHIND THE BUS DONT GET BLASTED WITH DIRT AND DEBRIS. ONE MORE THING, ON LONG ISLAND, THE ENTRANCE AND EXITS NEED TO BE MORE EVENLY SPACED AND MAYBE MORE OF THEM
Bus only lane will solve so many problems. Please do this as soon as possible. Traffic is crazy everyday. By the way it should cost 18 million to take an existing lane and paint a line on it
Traffic is getting worse. A HOV/clean pass lane will promote the use of express bus service as an alternative while at the same time promote the use of high mileage and electric cars. This is desperately needed and it is as simple as painting a line. The lane can be enforced through the use of cameras.
please do
What they need to do is extend it into the north fork, and build the other connecting roads that were supposed to have interchanges with it, like the Wantagh Parkway Extension, Bethpage State Parkway extension, Babylon-Northport Expressway, and such. I agree with R Troy that the way the HOV lane was built on Long Island was total crap.