Livable Streets

How to Improve Travel Times and Transit Capacity?

Earlier this week, I received a request in writing from Gary Altman, the Legislative Counsel of the City Council to testify at a hearing on March 1st. The topic of this oversight hearing is: How do we achieve the PlanNYC2030's Sustainability Goal to Improve Travel Times by Adding Transit Capacity for Millions More Residents, Visitors and Workers? For reference here is the presentation on congestion (warning pdf) put out by the PlanNYC2030 folks.

By Glenn McAnanama

9:01 AM EST on February 22, 2007

Earlier this week, I received a request in writing from Gary Altman, the Legislative Counsel of the City Council to testify at a hearing on March 1st. The topic of this oversight hearing is: How do we achieve the PlanNYC2030’s Sustainability Goal to Improve Travel Times by Adding Transit Capacity for Millions More Residents, Visitors and Workers? For reference here is the presentation on congestion (warning pdf) put out by the PlanNYC2030 folks.

As I am learning in the process of making Upper Green Side an official 501c3 non-profit, there are limits to how much legislative lobbying that is allowed, but when asked in writing to testify at a legislative hearing, that is not considered lobbying but rather responding to a question asked by the legislative body.

So now that I know this is totally kosher for Upper Green Side to make an appearance, I thought I would pose this question to the esteemed readers of Streetsblog to write in here their top three answers to that question. And please consider the gamut of public policy alternatives that might help achieve this goal.

Photo: Sixth Avenue and 43rd Street at 1pm on Tuesday, February 20th – Blocked box, pedestrian crosswalk blocked.

Glenn McAnanama

Lifelong New York City resident, except for a year in Copenhagen during college. Both experiences have taught me a lot about good (and bad) urban design. I grew up in Staten Island and also lived in Astoria Queens for 5 years. Now I live in Manhattan where I founded Upper Green Side (www.uppergreenside.org), a local environmental group on the Upper East & West Sides of Manhattan.

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