Transit

When large numbers of pedestrians, trucks and cars battle for limited space, you get a traffic mess. When that traffic mess is in one of the nation’s first high-density garden communities, which now is also one of the nation’s most diverse communities, you get Jackson Heights.

This morning, the Bloomberg Administration announced the developer for the first phase of Hunter's Point South, a Long Island City project the city is billing as the largest middle-class housing project since Co-Op City and Starrett City went up in the 1970s. A team led by the Related Companies will be developing the first 900 units at what will eventually be a 5,000-unit complex along the East River.

If congestion pricing is going to resurface as a viable option to relieve traffic, help plug the enormous gap in the MTA capital program, and keep transit fares from ballooning in the years ahead, it won't come from the Bloomberg administration.

Since 2009, the Department of Transportation has been engaged in a major study of Jackson Heights' streets and sidewalks. At the request of community groups and with federal funding from Rep. Joe Crowley, DOT has been developing a plan to make the neighborhood safer, less congested, and more transit-accessible. After two years of research and community engagement, DOT will be presenting its first recommendations next Saturday, February 12.

From the Verrazano to Brooklyn Heights, passengers on the B63 can now make their rides more predictable. As of today, the MTA has launched a new bus tracking system that enables riders to find the location of every bus on the route either online or by text message. For riders who can send texts or check the internet from their phones, there's much less guesswork involved in determining, for instance, whether it will be faster to walk.

An erstwhile ally is getting back into the ring to fight for transit riders.

President Obama is expected to make a strong push for infrastructure spending during the State of the Union address tonight. Ahead of the address, the Transportation Equity Network organized its members and supporters to write to President Obama, telling their personal stories of why transit funding is crucial to their communities. In all, TEN will deliver 1,000 personal letters to the President asking him to support transit investments. A few have already been sent.

A new Republican proposal would eliminate federal subsidies to Amtrak; kill New Starts, the primary federal transit funding program; and make painful cuts to dozens of other federal programs. It’s a plan by the Republican Study Committee, which is trying to keep alive House Speaker John Boehner’s campaign pledge to reduce the budget by $100 million. Boehner himself has been backing off from the pledge, given the popularity of many of the programs the Study Committee is now proposing to axe.

Many transportation reformers were disappointed last week when the Pew Center on Global Climate Change released a report indicating that only clean car technology had a shot at significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The report dismissed smart growth development strategies and transit as trivial contributors to a lower-carbon economy.