A weekly roundup of good deeds, missteps, heroic feats and epic failures in the tri-state region and beyond.
Winners
New York Assemblymember Edward Hennessey — Assemblymember Hennessey called for $20 million in additional state funding for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and for tougher penalties on hit-and-run drivers.
NJ Transit and Wood-Ridge, NJ — NJ Transit and Somerset Development broke ground on a new train station in Wood-Ridge on Tuesday. The station will be the hub of a 70-acre transit-oriented redevelopment project.
NYPD — New York’s finest are cracking down on double parking in the Bronx, Washington Heights and Downtown Brooklyn.
Connecticut Metro-North riders — Governor Malloy announced the completion of a power supply upgrade on the New Haven Line between Westport and Harrison, NY. The project “provide[s] a “full backup power redundancy,” and is intended to prevent the kind of power failure that disrupted service last September.
Brooklyn and Queens bus riders — BusTime, the MTA’s real-time bus tracking system, made its official debut in Brooklyn and Queens this past Saturday.
Losers
New York City — A new report from the Center for an Urban Future says “the city needs to spend $47.3 billion over the next four or five years to bring its decrepit infrastructure to a state of good repair.”
Bergen County, NJ — More congestion is coming to Bergen County now that the American Dream Meadowlands mega-project is moving forward. But that’s not the only thing clogging up Bergen County roads. The County banned buses on the troubled Anderson Street Bridge as a safety precaution in September of 2012, and a year and a half later, the 400 NJ Transit buses that used to cross the bridge each day between Hackensack and Teaneck are still banned, and repairs on the bridge still haven’t begun.
Connecticut and Long Island drivers — It’s going to be a bumpy spring, as this year’s pothole season is expected to be especially bad in both Connecticut and Long Island.
Re: Bergen County – The situation is even worse than you suggest. Many years ago, buses crossed the Hackensack River on three bridges into Hackensack – Court Street, Midtown, and Cedar Lane/Anderson Street. As each bridge was weight-restricted (or totally closed), buses were rerouted onto remaining crossings. This added travel time for most travelers (except the few who could remain on a single bus for their trip to a more conveneint bus stop along the detour route) and added cost to NJ Transit as the detour routes added mileage and operator costs. It is critical that Bergen County fix all three bridges so that they can again accommodate buses.