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watch that author’s name please!

The M42 bus branch to 34th Street was discontinued in 2010 due to a lack of ridership. So what do we do when there is inadequate demand for bus service? We build a new subway instead, of course. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

The M42 to Javits wasn’t heavily used most days, and the Javits loop roadway was closed to all but private charter buses on many of those busy days, when M42 service would have been most useful.

As you know, the purpose of the 7 extension is to promote major development in the area – far more development than the M42 could possibly attract or serve – not to serve Javits alone.

The subway was not extended to meet existing demand but to stimulate real estate development for the Hudson Yards project.

Furthermore, the city offered to pay for the extension through tax increment financing, which funds an infrastructure improvement with a portion of the new property tax revenue that the improvement generates.

Why doesn’t this stimulation-of-development philosophy apply elsewhere in the city?

Where else do you think tax increment financing might apply to a new subway line?

In making their case for BRT, Pratt first dismisses extending any subway line because it is too expensive. They cite the $2 billion cost to extend the 7 line one mile in midtown Manhattan. They further cite the Second Avenue subway cost of $4.5 billion for the mile and a half of subway and three subway stations it provides, probably the most expensive subway per mile in the world. They ignore the fact that these subways are being built using the more expensive technique of deep tunneling, as opposed to traditional method of cut and cover which is how both the IRT and BMT Lines were constructed. Extending the Utica or Nostrand Avenue lines using cut and cover would cost a fraction of what it is costing to build the Manhattan subways.

Cut-and-cover causes extreme disruption along the entire length of the project for years. It also requires utilities to be relocated, which can add significantly to the cost. There’s a reason that most subway construction in developed settings is bored.

Why should there be? The agenda is clear. Build BRT instead of subways. So why do an objective analysis?

I don’t see an agenda. I see a promotion of a realistic approach to significantly improve transit service across the city. A subway-or-nothing attitude will most likely yield nothing, and that isn’t much of an improvement.

The biases in this study are obvious when the authors claim that BRT riders could achieve a similar riding experience as a subway, while ignoring the issue of greater capacity and lower operating costs per passenger that a subway affords.

Are you discussing rider experience or are you discussing capacity and operating costs? They’re entirely different things.

(If you want to say that the ride quality of a bus isn’t as good as the ride quality of a train, or that trains are faster and more reliable than buses even with the help of BRT, then you’re discussing rider experience. But for some reason that’s not what you brought up here.)

If passenger volumes aren’t particularly high, operating costs for rail are not necessarily lower – and capital costs are almost invariably significantly higher.

The development that is spurred by subway construction and the consequential economic effects are also ignored. This is similar to the MTA promoting Select Bus Service (SBS), a less sophisticated version of BRT, as a “subway on the surface,” which it is not.

As far as I know, the MTA has not promoted SBS as a “subway on the surface.” NYCDOT has used the term “surface subway,” but I think the comment by Marty Barfowitz is on-target.

Bloomberg uses the familiar “if you will build it they will come” quote, which he applies to the development of the Hudson Yards. So why wouldn’t the same philosophy hold true to stimulate economic development in Queens? There we have an abandoned rapid transit line since 1962, known as the Rockaway Beach Line (RBL), that is an eyesore and has been gathering weeds and debris for more than 50 years running through an area that is economically depressed.

With tax increment financing, the increase in property taxes funds the infrastructure improvement. Since this area is already developed, TIF would require upzoning. Do you think the community would support that, and do you think the new tax revenues would really be enough to support a new line along the Rockaway Beach Branch alignment? I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect the answers are no and no.

The line runs through Ozone Park, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill, Forest Hills Gardens, and Rego Park – not what I’d describe as particularly economically depressed areas.

Reactivation efforts during that time have failed; neither the city nor the MTA has pushed for it.

Critics state that reactivation would cost too much. However, the most valuable resource, a continuous right of way, is not being taken advantage of. That makes it vastly cheaper to reconstruct than building a new underground subway. There have been attempts recently to convert that right of way to a park dubbed “Queensway,“ much like the High Line. I will not get into that debate here. Suffice it to say that three Queens Community Boards, Nos. 5, 10, and 14, as well as the NY Daily News now support RBL reactivation.

I can’t speak for critics other than myself. Personally, I need to see more information before I can conceivably speak in favor. What sorts of trips would this service attract, and might they not be better served with buses on Woodhaven Boulevard than with trains several blocks to the east? If the new line attracts riders to the Queens Boulevard line, how do we keep them from riding the express, which is already carrying close-to-capacity loads with no room for expansion? And at the other end of the line, in the Rockaways, ridership at most of the subway stations is exceptionally low, so how can a major service increase be justified, especially given that, knowing what we now know about hurricanes, we probably don’t want to promote large-scale development in the Rockaways?

Yes, it’s nice to have the ROW available, but many more questions need to be answered before any conclusions can be made.

The study by the Pratt Center recommends four new BRT corridors and four new SBS corridors. (The difference is explained on Page 19.)

No, the study by the Pratt Center has two tiers of recommendations. Nothing is being proposed for SBS as opposed to BRT.

Zero negative impacts on traffic are projected because travel using these projected routes will be so quick that riders will leave their cars at home in favor of these new BRT and SBS routes. That claim is also unsubstantiated.

I’m sorry, where do you see that claim?

How can they make such outrageous claims?

As far as I can tell, they don’t.

They do that by using a few statistics gathered by the MTA such as: the Bx12 SBS corridor saw a 7 percent increase in ridership and a 20 percent travel time savings while the M15 saw a reduction in traffic congestion and similar ridership increases. They further state that wherever SBS has been installed, bus speeds have increased without an increase in traffic congestion. Then they apply those statistics across the entire city.

Oh? Where do you see this?

Now here is the other side of the story: The 34th Street SBS, as implemented, not as envisioned, resulted in increasing bus speeds a negligible one minute or two.

Between 2008, when the bus lanes were installed, and 2012, running times on the M34 dropped by 23%, from 33 minutes to 25 minutes from river to river. When construction of the bus bulbs is completed, I expect that running times will improve a bit more.

Staten Island riders did not leave their cars at home in favor of the S79, nor did M15 riders.

It’s certainly not obvious to me that the S79 hasn’t attracted any trips that in the past would have been made by car. Do you have a source for this?

Most M15 riders don’t own cars in the first place, to leave at home or otherwise.

As the Pratt paper puts it: “Driving a car is not an option for many of the families now living in what were once auto-dependent outlying neighborhoods. At approximately $8,000 per year (the median cost of owning and operating a mid-priced car), the average cost of car ownership represents 20 to 25 percent of a moderate-income household’s income, compared to the $2,688 cost for unlimited transit use by two adults. Congestion throughout the city already consumes hundreds of hours of residents’ time each year; increased car traffic undermines community safety and quality of life, as well as adding to greenhouse gas emissions.”

Some M15 riders in fact were former subway riders.

Of course. And therefore…?

Traffic congestion along Hylan Boulevard has greatly worsened, much to the ire of motorists.

Oh? Do you have any proof that traffic congestion has “greatly worsened”?

All I’ve seen is a steady flow of whining from self-entitled motorists who think that they should be granted freedom to do whatever they want whenever they want wherever they want. They are upset that a traffic law is actually being enforced. To add insult to injury, the people who benefit are bus riders, who many Staten Island motorists see as beneath them.

Also, although First and Second Avenue traffic may not have worsened, no data was collected along adjacent avenues such as York, Third or Lexington Avenues to determine traffic effects there.

Traffic volumes on First and Second Avenues remained steady. There was no diversion to other avenues. Whatever traffic changes may have taken place on those other avenues, they didn’t come about because of SBS.

We do need more SBS and some BRT routes, but we need to consider all the options, not only the one we are promoting. This study promotes BRT along Woodhaven Boulevard for the simple reason that it is at least six lanes wide, and makes believe that the parallel abandoned RBL one half mile to the east does not exist. We cannot just assume no negative traffic impacts along Woodhaven if general traffic lanes are removed, as this study does just because First and Second Avenue traffic was not negatively impacted. I would not want doctors using that type of logic to perform surgery on me.

This paper merely calls for further study of BRT, in particular on the eight proposed corridors. It doesn’t reach any conclusions. Would you not want doctors to be willing to study new approaches to solving old problems?

Similarly, in proposing a BRT Line to JFK Airport (a worthwhile goal), they choose an infeasible route along the narrow portion of Linden Boulevard, ignoring the underutilized Bay Ridge Division of the LIRR, 1.5 miles to the south. Parking would have to be banned along the entire narrow portion of Linden Boulevard, which is a residential street, for a BRT line to possibly work without negatively affecting emergency vehicles. Otherwise, left turns would significantly delay all traffic, especially truck traffic, as Linden Boulevard is the only truck route across central Brooklyn.

Even the “narrow” part of Linden Boulevard is plenty wide. I don’t see this as a show-stopper.

In making this proposal, not only did no one even bother to check a Google map to learn that 39th Street between Third and Ninth avenues, where this line is proposed, is so narrow (only three lanes wide including only one lane of parking, not two) that not only could it not support a physically separated BRT lane, an exclusive SBS lane is also out of the question on that street.

I’m impressed that you can make out exact streets on the map in the paper – I certainly can’t. But, quoting from the paper: “Between Bedford Avenue and Sunset Park, the east-west streets are narrower, but efficient connections to the Sunset Park waterfront appear to be possible.” If a small section of the route doesn’t have bus lanes, that’s not the end of the world.

Similar problems exist along Junction Boulevard where the Woodhaven BRT is proposed.

Again, so what?

We need impartial studies like the one underway by Queens College investigating RBL reactivation, not bias ones like the one by the Pratt Center where only one side of the story is presented. We must not rule out real rapid transit expansion that developed the city and could revitalize parts of it today.

I don’t see anything biased about this paper. It’s a call for further study of BRT along eight corridors. Nothing’s being implemented just yet – there isn’t anywhere near enough information.

I have no objection to a study of the RBL either, but I get very nervous when people have already reached a conclusion.