Draft Report: To Withstand Storms, Build a Bigger Bus System

Read More: http://transportationnation.org/2013...er-bus-system/





http://transportationnation.org/wp-c...idge.jpg&w=940

Why not light rail with dedicated ROW then?

I agree, I don't see how more busses can be a good thing for the city. Light rail is cleaner and more liked.

WABC-TV NEW YORK

Ferry accident at Pier 11 injures dozens
Updated at 04:08 PM today

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...ork&id=8947393

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/images/wa...rrydamage3.jpg



Copyright ©2013 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.

Beam Charging is getting serious in NYC;

http://www.beamcharging.com/beam-locations.html

So go ahead and buy that Tesla Model S. Turns out NYC metro is a big push for the company with more sales outlets (5) than any other NA metro area. LA has 3, the Bay Area 2 and South Florida 2. Check out dealership locations;
http://www.teslamotors.com/findus/stores

Whatever became of the double decker trail program?

UPDATED 2:40 PM
High Bridge Restoration Effort To Revive Landmark Span
By: NY1 News

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJLMxD4YABg

http://media.ny1.com/media/2013/1/11...ea258f3f85.jpg




© 1999-2012 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

9:56 AM
MTA Begins "Fastrack" Repairs On B, D Lines Tonight
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...-lines-tonight

http://media.ny1.com/media/2013/1/14...dbc0485512.jpg




© 1999-2012 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

School bus strike
 

MTA Puts Brakes On Union-Endorsed Subway Slowdowns

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...bway-slowdowns

Yeah, I support worker's rights to unionize, but this smacks of extortion. It wouldn't matter 10mph v the current 15-25mph for suicides (you go to the rear of the platform) or the occasional slip/push. It's a train, it's hard to stop. Might there be 1 or 2 deaths fewer every decade by slowing down trains entering a station? Perhaps, but overall the TWU doesn't really care about that. This is a cynical way to increase overtime pay by tragedy and I'm gonna call it "foul".

UPDATED 6:52 PM
No End In Sight To School Bus Strike
By: Lindsey Christ

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...ool-bus-strike

http://media.ny1.com/media/2013/1/16...ebe66d5792.jpg




© 1999-2012 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

ugh!


South Ferry subway repairs could take 3 years, cost $600M

Last Updated: 7:57 AM, January 18, 2013

http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/...psf8e6ba59.jpg

Fixing all the damage inflicted on the South Street subway station by Superstorm Sandy may take up to three years.

Last month, the MTA said the repairs would take at least a year.

But on Thursday, the agency said it estimates that fully restoring the station would take much longer and cost $600 million.

That includes $350 million for physical repairs; $200 million for signal replacement; $30 million for third-rail equipment and $20 million for line equipment.

The South Ferry subway station, at Manhattan's southern tip, was inundated with water up to its ceiling during the storm.

The No. 1 train station underwent a $545 million renovation and expansion in 2009.

The station is a major conduit to the Staten Island and Liberty Island ferries.


http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/man...slB4kNxOlkhRKL

That's a real shame! What can you do though . . .

1:37 PM
Delta Plans Soaring Views At New JFK Terminal
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...w-jfk-terminal

http://media.ny1.com/media/2013/1/29...e63853be40.jpg




© 1999-2013 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

These were first installed during the Ed Koch era
 

9:57 AM
City's No Honking Signs Make Quiet Exit
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...ake-quiet-exit

http://media.ny1.com/media/2013/1/29...ec46d8cea6.jpg




© 1999-2013 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Yeah, I really liked the connected Whitehall/South Ferry station complex being able to transfer from the R to the 1 and vice-versa.

I hope they do bring it back but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/8426234903

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8378/8...c86334a8_b.jpg

10:44 AM
City Celebrates 100 Years Of Grand Central Terminal
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stori...ntral-terminal

http://media.ny1.com/media/2013/2/1/...a15c1a5990.jpg




© 1999-2013 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

12:52 PM
Manhattan Water Main Break Disrupts N, Q, R Service
By: NY1 News

http://www.ny1.com/content/transit/1...--q--r-service




© 1999-2013 NY1 News and Time Warner Cable Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...ticleLarge.jpg
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...ticleLarge.jpg


1924 - 2013

did i just read yet another proposal to expand the 7 train to nj somewhere? cant find it. railway age maybe??

I think thats dead for now and for the decade , the big push is for the Gateway which is badly needed....

found it -- the 7 train extension to nj is being promoted by realtors:


http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/...ew-jersey.html

Typical stupid , blood/money thirsty realtors.... Build the Gateway Project and shut up about NYC , NJ needs to focus on improving neglected Urban Jersey not giving Suburban commuters an easier ride to the city.....or pandering to the NJ Gold Coast....

The NJ vs NY mentality is increasingly pointless as the metro expands. Availability of transit is going to be a huge deciding factor as to where the growth will happen in the coming decades and NJ has long been falling behind. Between the Port Authority's handling of PATH and NJT's near total incompetence areas served by the MTA are already more attractive. Multiply this by a factor of ten when the ESA opens and MNRR starts running into Penn.

The fact is that NJ has failed to truly invest in keeping itself connected to the largest employment center in the country. The uncaring attitude from NJT following Sandy is making things even worse. This will not bring success for urban NJ.

Gateway would solve may of these issues but it isn't designed or funded so you're talking about 10-15 years to get it operating at this point if the money can even be gotten from the Feds. If the only real near term option on the table is an MTA 7 extension NJ should push for it to go all the way to downtown Newark to get the most benefit.

Secaucus is a wetland for the most part , a dying town....most bussineses are moving to Newark. Its not a NY & NJ Mentality , it doesn't make sense other then to service the Real Estate people and to Newark would be a stretch as most of the route is protected wetlands. The Gateway would solve all the issues as it would allow for NJT to expand the Regional and Inner Urban Rail Network..... The 7 would not allow the Regional Rail to be expanded.... NJT may have had an uncaring attitude , but the MTA is no angel when it comes to big storms Irene was a huge mess and left numerous trains damaged and the Blizzard of 2010 brought the system to its knees. The PATH learned its lesson , and its rolling stock wasn't damaged , it like South Ferry and the Subway system were flooded the different being the PATH is smaller and access points are tricky...but its fully up and running. PATH and NJT have gotten themselves under control in the last 2 years while the MTA is a runaway financial train , hikes every year....bad maintenance to trains and stations.....things NJT and PATH do very well.

Getting back to the Gateway Project its not just tunnels , its replacing Bridges an Interchange and the Newark Approaches....so its not just a small tunnel replacement but a larger regional project that has gained some steam engineering wise due to Sandy...

Not withstanding the other things in your post I don't agree with...Gateway isn't going to be completed anytime soon. There is no design, there is no money, and in the current political climate not enough will. I fully understand the benefits of the proposal but that alone doesn't improve it's chances of seeing service. I would like to see it done but I'm not holding my breath and if NY wants to do a project with NJ to bring in the 7 I don't see why people should stand in the way.

On second thought...never mind. If this happened I'd actually have to consider moving our business to Newark instead of Long Island City/Sunnyside.

Your right....its silly to argue or something that has a small chance of happening... Its Interesting you would chose Newark instead of Long Island City , is that due to the flooding.... Newark , Downtown Brooklyn and Midtown are the only flood proof CBDs in the region....

Secaucus isn't wetlands. The part near the station is an expressway, a TOD that's inexplicably on the wrong side of the expressway, a railyard, truck docks, and light industry. Of the four quarters around Secaucus bounded by the NEC and the Erie line, only the southwestern one is wetlands.

You still shouldn't be encouraging to build things there , Sandy flooded that area by 5 feet of water..... That area aside from the weird TOD is dying all the Industrial and what remains of the corporate jobs are moving to Newark same with Metropark.... The area to South is being turned into a wetland/Protected park.... Sandy was a huge scare to most , who are now looking to move , and it did give the Gateway Project is boost due to the Damaged Kearny JCT substation and highlighting the Portal Bridge Age and vulnerability...

Secaucus is where the infrastructure is. Pointless to talk about where the office jobs are moving when it's illegal to build high-density office buildings near Secaucus Junction due to zoning. Move the railyards and the storage facilities somewhere that's not as close to Manhattan by transit and build it up. Ideally you'd want to eventually map streets connecting to the residential part of Secaucus today; there are a few km in between, mostly far from the station, but at least part of that in between area is still near the NEC and they could open another station there serving local traffic; the cost of four-tracking everything up to the tunnel portal to avoid conflicts with intercity trains is by ARC standards a rounding error.

Or the region could spend $13 billion on avoiding Secaucus. Why not?

They were going to build High Density Office space back in the earlier days of the JCT but that fell through.... I'm not saying move the yards , but the area is slowly become vacant industrial wise....and commercial wise between Tax incentives and consolidations companies are moving to Newark....and Elizabeth... The plans are to slowly rezone and build TOD in all the areas down there , but its going to be messy and dead unlike nearby Harrison or Jersey City which has pedestrian flow on every street. These developments will most likely form a commuter town....just without the vibrant pulse. By 2030 all that area will be TOD without a Doubt , it be nice if they extend the HBLR from Tonnelle Ave down through Secaucus to JCT and back to Hoboken Terminal via Journal SQ that would really help the area.

As for 4 tracking , that would come with the Gateway Project , and is needed....in the morning Amtrak and everyone crawls....with 4 tracking Amtrak would speed through although Secaucus's weird design might make that hard...but still faster then today. They already started clearing a path for the new ROW.... 4 tracking along with an upgraded Kearny JCT which was never fully built , will allow for more M&E trains to enter the NEC without messy up the schedule. In the Morning if your on the M&E you have to wait for NEC trains to clear , although this applies to any time of day. Sometimes takes up to 10 mins before you can merge onto the NEC. All the plans call for using current ROW through Secaucus not around it...unless i read wrong....

High Rise Proposals

http://galaxyrising.com/ee/images/ph...ecaucus/01.jpg

http://galaxyrising.com/index.php?/t...n_in_secaucus/

TOD...

http://policy.rutgers.edu/vtc/tod/ne...ecaucusMAP.pdf

Those towers look like one of the TODs around the lesser-used SkyTrain stations here. Sorry. Around the more heavily used stations, this is possible with a town center created from scratch at the same time SkyTrain opened. Only Secaucus should plan on doing this on larger scale, first because New York is bigger than Vancouver, and second because New York has very few places where this TOD intensity can be done without needing to spend tons of money on one tunnel.

No we chose LIC for MTA access, proximity to LGA/JFK, it's growth prospects, and environment. We looked at Newark, Jersey City, Brooklyn, and LIC. Newark ended up at the bottom of the list even though it was the best deal financially by far.

I can't see Secaucus Junction getting any kind of development until there is some sort of all-day frequent transit service, even if the zoning allowed it.

There is service every 10-20mins all day to NYC and Hoboken every 10-30mins along with Bus Service.

Even if that were true, it's hardly "frequent". It's not quite true though. Scheduled mid-day weekday headways reach as high as 34 minutes to NYC, and as high as 56 minutes to Hoboken.

Anyways, when I saw frequent I'm talking no more than 12-15 minutes at the VERY MOST to NYC. That's the kind of frequency that attracts dense TODs.

Mid day trains are half full....not packed like Rush hr there's no demand for extra trains nor space. The Gateway will allow for more trains to be added , currently during the down times Amtrak takes full advantage of that and sends its trains up... Theres also a bus which no one uses , that comes every 10-15mins....most of the day , it goes into the Industrial areas before heading along Route 3 to the PABT. There are high density developments going up in Stamford , White Plains , New Brunswick , Newark , Harrison....frequency doesn't mean anything in this region although on the branch system developers are afraid to invest intill upgrades are done. But for the most part as long as its hourly offpeak and bi-directional developers don't seem to care nor do commuters as trains are half full....sometimes near empty...

Even if there was demand, where is there room to build a walkable TOD (walkable meaning not only within the TOD itself, but to/from the train station):

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Secau...ew+Jersey&z=16

The station is hemmed in by a freeway, freeway ramps, and marshland

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Secau...ew+Jersey&z=18

That parking lot is the only obvious place.

If they can squeeze 22 tph at rush hour not including Amtrak, they can squeeze 6 tph midday. It's actually better for capacity utilization because those trains don't need to sit in yards in constrained CBDs.

Ridership on hourly off-peak trains isn't a good gauge of ridership on usable trains. There's no development there. Might as well tell me that there's no off-peak service on the West Coast Express at all, so why bother investing in slower rapid transit to Port Moody and Coquitlam? And yet once the trains are usable by people who aren't suburban peak-hour commuters, they're more usable, and ridership projections say the slower Evergreen Line will get 70,000 daily passengers vs. 11,000 on the (longer, faster) West Coast Express.

Frequency means everything, everywhere. Stamford and White Plains are getting a trickle compared to what Brooklyn is getting, and don't even compare well with secondary rapid transit-oriented centers in Vancouver. Again, look at Metrotown.

Who cares about train headways? The real question is why would want to live or work in Secaucus?

I'm not advocating TOD there.....and its for those reasons and the whole flooding issue.... Any site , TOD or not fills up fast near Rail Stations in this region as long as there's direct access to Manhattan or an Job hub like Newark , Stamford , White Plains. The site across from the station has done very well , 80% leased last time I checked but this was before Sandy....developers and renters have been leaving flood prone areas....or shifting plans around.

Most of the People who live in Secaucus live near Route 3 in the residential area in the Northern part of the city. Secaucus was a huge Industrial/Commercial hub employing tens of thousands at its peak years ago but now thats shifting to Newark. So you have all these crazy TOD proposals which after Sandy no one is going to want to live down there along with it being isolated.

Well White Plains growth has slowed to small infill , Stamford ,Harrison, Norwalk , New Brunswick , Newark and Yonkers have quite a few projects underway or to break ground later this year. Stamford has at least 4 cranes up at the current time another 6 projects will break ground by summer , same with Harrison.... As for the Rail itself , most of the Satilite cities are 10-20 miles outside NYC , would NYC service make sense out their? They already have 4-8 trains per hr....I think thats enough...

Part of the problem is that the headways are not consistent, which is partly a result of interlining between Secaucus and Penn. There might be two trains 6 minutes apart, then 28 minutes between the next two. If there could be one train in each direction exactly every 12 minutes midday, that would be better than the staggered lines as they stand.

As for Stamford, White Plains, etc., those are the downtowns of good sized cities on their own right, and are their own regional draws. That is not what the term "TOD" is usually used to describe. That's like calling Lower Manhattan a "TOD".

White Plains has 3 tph off-peak with terrible connectivity to destinations in New York that aren't Grand Central or East Harlem, and that's less than enough for dense infill. 4 cranes? In Vancouver that'd be considered a failure.

Secaucus, meanwhile, is not 10-20 miles outside the city. It's 5 miles. It's the same distance to Manhattan as central Queens, where riders abandoned the LIRR's hourly service in favor of the subway in the 1920s, forcing station closures.

3 an hr , is all right , they do plan on bumping that to 4-6 an hr...I think by this summer... This area is just taking off again , so 4 cranes per city or neighborhood is alot. By the end of the year there should be 12-20 cranes in certain parts of this metro.... The LIRR service structure should change once ESA is completed of course this is 2019....and Queens is getting 2 new stations and 1 upgraded station by then.

Secaucus has stereotypes and now a flooding haze hanging over them , which aside from the one TOD and apartments near Route building any large scale TOD is going to be a tough sell. Its isolation and lack of "Live , work , play" attraction also plays into its shrinking future. Which is why after this TOD is completed , I don't see others coming along. This is different then the Vancouver Metro or Toronto Metro which are booming everywhere , growth is generally happening in either in the Core Cities or Satilite cities. Everywhere in between has had a few successes and mostly failure even with great transit....

Yeah, and these are going to underperform, because the service to those new Queens stations will still suck. Forest Hills, a secondary center of Queens, only gets 1 tph off-peak, with fares that aren't integrated with the subway. Local subways near city limits in Wakefield and Far Rockaway get far more ridership than the parallel commuter rail lines. Without accepting that New York commuter rail needs to be rapid transit-ified, not a dime of investment is worth it. 3 unevenly spaced tph don't cut it, and haven't for at least a century.

Vancouver is booming everywhere because it's legal to build here. New York has the demand for more housing, but it's illegal to build in many of the closest-in areas due to zoning, building permit difficulties, and historic district landmarking. That's why the entire region is so expensive, with housing prices well above construction costs. Make it legal to build and they'll come, especially this close to Manhattan. If people are gentrifying Inwood, they'll come in to Secaucus, which is closer to Midtown.

I don't think the new stations will unperformed , Sunnyside JCT will give access to the growing LIC job hub and connect to the future MNRR Hell Gate line along with a quick walk to the E,M,R trains.... there's no way the LIRR will mess up those schedules. Then there's Elmora or Corona on the Port Washington Branch which would get 2-3 TPH....which is decent , could be better... The MNRR in The Bronx mainly serves as a reverse commuter line rather then a inbound commuter rail line.....although this doesn't apply to the Hudson line where its inbound for Riverdale , Spuyten Duyvil , and Marble Hill and the Hell Gate line will be both....inbound and outbound.

But why such emphasis on Secaucus which I don't think will last nor survive....its dying....even the new developments are dead....aside from being occupied by commuter couples without children. We should be focusing on Newark , Paterson , and Elizabeth along with Bridgeport areas with enormous amounts of land , yet no one touches it due to old stereotypes....same with Secaucus and now its even worse due to Sandy. If you fight the stereotypes then you'll see more construction and the region will balance it self out. Its not really the legality , its the culture of the region and the stereotypes... Thats slowly changing the NJ Gold Coast has boomed over the last 15 years , Newark is just starting to blossom but has a long way to go. Theres also the slow decontamination process of parts of the region , it take 10-15 years before certain areas are completely cleaned up and ready to build on in Urban Jersey and the Outer Borough's.

2-3 tph is not decent for an urban neighborhood. It's the kind of schedule that makes people continue to take the subway and ignore commuter rail.