Special Reports

With the clock winding down on the legislative session in Albany, Queens activists are making the case for the Move NY toll reform package. Volunteers with the Riders Alliance and Transportation Alternatives rallied at the foot of the Triborough Bridge Saturday to call for a tolling system that works better for drivers and transit riders than the city's current hodgepodge of free bridges and priced MTA crossings.

During the Bloomberg era, there was no bigger backer of congestion pricing than Kathryn Wylde, director of the Partnership for New York City, a downtown business group. Wylde, a confidante of Mayor Bloomberg, spearheaded the Partnership’s 2006 Growth or Gridlock report that provided both quantitative firepower and political cover for the mayor’s congestion pricing proposal the following year. The executive summary, a powerful account of traffic congestion’s drain on city and regional job creation and business competitiveness, culminated with this admonition: “Traffic is worse every day. The time to act is now.”

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer is calling on DOT to study making 14th Street a bus-only thoroughfare while L train service is disrupted during Sandy-related repairs.

Eight more Assembly members are supporting the Move NY toll reform plan, which would cut traffic and raise revenue for transit by increasing the price of driving into the Manhattan core while lowering tolls on outlying bridges. The Move NY bill (A09633) now has 23 sponsors in the 150-member Assembly and four (all Democrats) in the Republican-controlled, 62-member State Senate.

For the first time, a state legislator is sponsoring legislation in Albany to enact the Move NY toll reform plan. By creating a more rational toll system in New York City, the plan would significantly reduce traffic and raise revenue to invest in improving transit.

More than three years after it was approved by Brooklyn Community Board 1’s transportation committee, construction on the West Street segment of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway is finally underway. The Department of Design and Construction confirmed that current work on West Street is related to the greenway.

The news that Sandy-related repairs will require closing one or both directions of the L train under the East River (the “Canarsie Tube”) for one to three years has understandably caused panic among the estimated 230,000 daily passengers who rely on it. Businesses in Williamsburg that count on customers from Manhattan are also concerned about a significant downturn in sales. When the Canarsie Tube was shut down on weekends only last spring, it was bad enough for their bottom line, and this will be much worse.

Gothamist dropped a bombshell earlier this week: To repair Sandy-inflicted damage to the L train tubes between Manhattan and Brooklyn, the MTA will have to suspend service through the tunnel for large chunks of time.

Two of the region's papers laid out their Albany 2016 agendas in New Year’s weekend editorials. Both led with ethics reform, but the similarities ended there. One paper boldly called on the legislature to "adopt some version of the innovative Move NY tolling-and-congestion pricing plan." The other was silent on transit and traffic, even as it spurred Gov. Andrew Cuomo to "lead on climate change.”