Transit

Transportation infrastructure is big business. With tens of billions of dollars at stake, nobody tracks the financial health of the state's transit and road systems more closely than the construction industry. And right now, the future of transportation funding in New York is hazy indeed.

For many who have heard of Medellín, Colombia, the name brings to mind the drug-related violence of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was often described as the most dangerous city in the world.

As a New Yorker in DC for the National Bike Summit this week (stay tuned for the upcoming Streetfilm), my eyes popped at the sight of the ample-yet-filled-to-capacity bike racks at many Metro stations. Bike-to-Metro trips increased at a rapid clip in the aughts, and in 2010 WMATA, the agency that runs Metro, laid out a plan to triple the number of riders who arrive by bicycle by 2020 and quintuple the volume by 2030. Most stations outside the downtown core already have dozens of racks and secure bike lockers.

This is the second in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. A previous installment covered pedestrian improvements in the city and a third will discuss its bicycle planning.

The calls for rapid transit on the Tappan Zee Bridge are coming from more places across the Hudson Valley. This week Orange County Executive Edward Diana joined his colleagues in Westchester and Rockland Counties to demand that bus rapid transit be built on the new Tappan Zee span. Local governments on both sides of the river, too, continue to sign on in support of new cross-county transit, which the Cuomo administration removed from the project, disregarding a decade of public planning.

New York City is coming up on the four year anniversary of a moment that will live in infamy for transit riders and sustainable transportation advocates: the demise of congestion pricing, which was put down in the state Assembly without a vote on April 7, 2008. The city lost a great opportunity that day to fund its transit system while relieving the city's most congestion-choked streets from suffocating traffic.

The threat of service reductions and fare increases always loomed large over the transfer of Long Island Bus service to a private operator. After Nassau County refused to assume its share of costs for the service, international private transit provider Veolia Transport was brought on to take over from the New York MTA at the beginning of the year.

Staten Island's North Shore is one of the city's great sites of opportunity. The neighborhoods along the Kill Van Kull are twice as dense as the rest of Staten Island, but lack any transit option beyond the bus. There are historic town centers at St. George and Port Richmond, but car-centric planning deadens street life. The waterfront, much of which still hosts a vibrant maritime industry, is only accessible to the public at three locations in six miles.

The New York City Council doesn't like the MTA's budget. And really, who would? Fares and tolls are scheduled to rise in 2013 and again in 2015, bus lines cut in 2010 aren't scheduled to ever come back, and the MTA is assuming net zero increases for transit worker compensation. It's a product of worldwide financial crisis and Albany fiscal skullduggery, and it isn't pretty.