Today’s Headlines

Hit-and-Run Driver Critically Injures 88-Year-Old Man Riding Bike in South Ozone Park (WNBC)
Queens CB Members Oppose Even the Smallest Effort to Reduce Parking Requirements (Forum, Q Chron)
Queens CB 5 Chair: Woodhaven SBS Street Safety Redesign Will Kill “1,000 Kids a Week” (Q Chron)
FiDi Parents Want Enforcement, Crossing Guard After Sidewalk Driver Injures Pedestrian (DNA)
DMV Delayed Hearing for Cooper Stock’s Killer Even After Vance Declined to Press Charges (Post)
Advance Covers City Council’s BRT Planning Bill; 2nd Ave Sagas Is Not Impressed
Suit From Limo Company Claims Uber’s E-Hail System Encourages Distracted Driving (Post)
Business for Yellow Taxis Is Down, But Maybe Not as Much as You Might Think (Crain’s)
Bronx, Uptown Electeds Call on MTA to Add Fordham Road Subway Line to Capital Plan (Scribd)
Here’s What Happens When the Person You Ram With Your Car Is an Off-Duty Cop (Advance 1, 2)

More headlines at Streetsblog USA

Larry Littlefield

“Bronx, Uptown Electeds Call on MTA to Add Fordham Road Subway Line to Capital Plan.”

What capital plan? You mean the last one? The one that just expired? If the MTA can finish all the projects in that plan, I’ll be surprised.

Meanwhile, the members of the NYC Council should talk the members of the state legislature. About retirement property in Florida and South Carolina, which is what they have been aiming for for themselves and their crowd for the past 20 years.

The MTA should be thinking about what subway lines and stations to abandon as ongoing normal replacement comes to an end. Either now or in five years, after another $20 billion is borrowed by Generation Greed.
urbanresidue

What is most surprising about that letter for a subway shuttle across Fordham Road is the absence of the Four Bronx Institutions Alliance (FBIA) – Fordham University, Montefiore Medical Center, The New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo. Why not extend the last bit from MetroNorth to the Garden and the Zoo? Do their business models rely that heavily on parking revenue? Or are they really just have such a staid, auto-centric leadership culture that they don’t even see the value of having their own subway station?
Andres Dee

The car service companies raise important points about the potential hazards of drivers using apps. That said, I predict that in 5 years, most “car-service” will be ordered via app rather than by voice.
Bobberooni

Prove me wrong, but I think a cross-town subway along Fordham Rd is a pipedream. The terrain is challenging, to say the least.
Bobberooni

This problem can be fixed with good app design, in-car bluetooth connections, etc. Maybe we need regulations for the car-service apps used by drivers.
Fool

Its called a bid system. Taxis and Limos have been dispatched in the matter for decades and is just a hypocritical push by a desperate industry.

Livery Cabs who used radio dispatch would put an announcement out on the radio that included the job location. The drivers would then race to key up the radio, transmitting their ID’s, first one to transmit would get the job.

Limo’s (Black Cars) would use Mobile Data Terminals running data over their radio. A job announcement would go out on a very tiny hard to read display in the car and a driver would still have to bid on accepting the job.

However, most of the industry with the move to cellular dispatch have abandoned the bid system and are now completely algorithmic.
ohnonononono

With limited resources, you gotta make the case for Fordham Road over other competing priorities. I’d think 125th St offers better crosstown bang for your buck. Obviously it’s of less use to somebody going from Pelham Parkway to Washington Heights, but if uptown gets a crosstown I don’t really see Fordham being the pick.

Also, it should obviously be woven into an existing line, as has been proposed by a number of groups with the 125th St curve of the 2nd Ave subway.

As to the big Bx institutions– yeah, I think their leadership mostly drive to work and don’t have a great grasp of transit issues. Look at how the Botanical Garden spent millions (including public money!) on that big parking garage next to the Metro-North station.
urbanresidue

It probably is, certainly for now with the MTA already so depleted on capital funds.

Still, it is disheartening that these cultural institutions don’t seem to have any dreams beyond the new parking garage, er, um, “multi-modal center.”

The Bronx institutions really need more vision:
http://urbanresidue.blogspot.com/2014/04/old-institutions-need-new-vision.html
Jonathan R

Great point. If you look at the directions page on Monte’s website, however, they list the subways first. I suspect that the orgs’ staff are all for better subway access, but the board members (who are probably 90% from the suburbs) discourage ‘unfocused’ projects like better community relations and better subway access.
sbauman

With limited resources, it’s important to get the priorities straight.

About 75% or 6 million NYC residents live within 1/2 mile of a subway entrance. We should spend our scarce capital dollars on providing better service to the 25% or 2 million NYC residents who live further than 1/2 mile from a subway entrance. That better service could be subway extensions, improved bus service or bike share.

NYC has been investing its dollars in areas already served by existing subways. Just about all the people who will be within 1/2 mile of the 2nd Ave Subway or West Yards extensions were already within 0.5 miles of a subway entrance.

There are priorities. About 1.2 million live between 0.5 and 1.5 miles from a subway entrance. This should be prime territory for improved bicycle facilities. It’s the least expensive way to provide these people with the fasted access to a subway. This means secure parking facilities at the stations for residents and bike share for visitors. Buses cost $500K to purchase and about $200/hr to operate. A lot of bike infrastructure can be purchased in lieu of conventional public transit for these people.

That leaves 200K people who live between 1.5 and 2.0 miles from a subway entrance and 500K who live beyond 2.0 miles from one. These are the people who should be targeted for improved bus service.

Consider the proposed Woodhaven-Crossbay Blvd SBS project. Virtually all the residents already live within 1/2 mile of an existing subway entrance. The talent and energy being expended to design and sell this project would have been better spent on projects designed to serve the 700K city residents who live more than 1.5 miles from a subway entrance.
AnoNYC

The eastern half of Fordham Road was recently rezoned to promote dense, mixed-use, transit oriented construction. Those automotive businesses are going bye-bye.

As for those more powerful institutions, I agree.
AnoNYC

Fordham Road/Inwood is a major cross town route that eventually deserves a subway. However, I do agree that right now 125th St should be prioritized because it would effect more people.

The city needs to upgrade the SBS 12 to full BRT along Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway and widen the sidewalks.
AnoNYC

I agree and IMO a Third Avenue rapid transit link is a must. Considering the proximity to Midtown and potential for redevelopment this is a no brainer.

Rebuild the Third Ave elevated and those automotive businesses and vacant lots will be transformed. Huge opportunity for housing. People in the west Bronx are already accustom to Upper Manhattan like density unlike trying to take on the NIMBYs of Brooklyn and Queens.

And I say elevated because NYC needs to do something and subways though more desirable are more expensive and take longer to construct.

Link it to the SAS.
AnoNYC

Because of shadows in the financial district, perhaps the city should consider numerous heavy planters along the edge of the sidewalk (or better yet along the side of the road) that double as bollards. The area could use a greening, mabey even benches along the sidewalk side.
Andres Dee

IMHO, in general, a car’s (and a app for drivers’) controls should be operable without having to look. That’s what I’m used to.