Swap the Suburban Payroll Tax for East River Bridge Tolls — Deal or No Deal?
Five Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John Bonacic, are making transit advocates an offer they can probably refuse. The payoff is appealing: state authorization for bridge tolls on the East River bridges. But the price they are demanding in return, the total repeal of the payroll mobility tax outside New York City, is too high to pay.
April 25, 2011
PlaNYC 2.0 Hints at Parking Reform, Touts Bike-Share, Lacks Transpo Focus
Four years after Michael Bloomberg launched New York City's sustainability agenda with congestion pricing as the marquee item, transportation reform is no longer the centerpiece of PlaNYC.
April 21, 2011
DOT to Red Hook: No Streetcar For You
Proposed Red Hook streetcars aren't worth the cost, according to the city DOT. In a presentation to community groups last Thursday [PDF], DOT revealed the results of its streetcar feasibility study and recommended against the construction of a line that would run from the Smith/9th subway station into Red Hook and up the waterfront to Borough Hall. The creation of a streetcar or light rail line along the northern Brooklyn or western Queens waterfront was a Bloomberg campaign promise in 2009.
April 20, 2011
Henry St. Placard Abuser Fends Off NYPD By Mixing Church and State
At this point, it's hardly news that the length of the Henry Street bike lane was filled with parked cars yesterday (see here and here). Being a Sunday, it was par for the course, though still infuriating, that churchgoers were taking advantage of an informal agreement with the police to snatch that lane away from cyclists and give it to parkers during services. Can it get more outrageous than the status quo? Yes it can.
April 18, 2011
To Curb Congestion, Parking Reform Must Be in PlaNYC Update
Three years ago, the Regional Plan Association held a panel on congestion pricing at its annual conference. The title of the discussion was "Making Cars Pay Their Way." At the 2011 conference last Friday, a similar panel on curbing traffic took the more generic title, "Strategies to Manage Congestion."
April 18, 2011
HUD Grant Will Lay the Groundwork for TOD in New York and Connecticut
From Suffolk County to New Haven, the communities of New York and Connecticut are planting the seeds for a serious investment in transit-oriented development in the years ahead. Funded by a $3.5 million grant from HUD's Sustainable Communities program, nine cities, two counties and six regional planning organizations have come together to develop regional plans for tying sustainable transportation and new development. Those plans are the first steps toward an impressive array of projects across the region, from new rail stations to new zoning codes around existing transit hubs.
April 15, 2011