The Traffic Problem (Again)

Carolyn Curiel wrote an interesting op-ed—"Hey! Hey! I’m Walking Here! — How New York (and Other Big Cities) Should Solve the Traffic Problem"—in The New York Times about the crippling effects of traffic in New York City and the metropolitan area.

Key problems mentioned in the article are:

• trucks in Queens
• gridlock in Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island
• low-income people frequently have the longest commutes, often by car

Curiel mentions tolling bridges and congestion charges as ways out of the mess.

Sadly, many of the problems won't be solved this way. Much of the traffic comes from the suburbs. While much of the region is served by local bus service and commuter rail service, an interesting oversight in planning is how to best expand and utilize mass transit.

There are two separate solutions, and ideally both need to be implemented.

PATH Extensions
The first solution requires cooperation with suburban counties. While expensive, this solution might really be the expansion of the PATH trains to other points in the region. Among densely-populated places lacking heavy rail mass transit:

• The borough of Staten Island
  
• Bergen County, New Jersey
• Paterson, New Jersey
• Yonkers, New York (so immediately north of The Bronx that it's often confused as part of the city)
• New Rochelle, New York
  
• Long Island

These are all densely populated centers nearly or completely devoid of regular, speedy mass transit service. Southern Westchester has suburban commuter lines, as does much of New Jersey and Long Island.

Nobody wants to build mass transit anymore, but it's clearly the best solution. The region along the Hudson River in New Jersey has become densely populated enough that it would be ideal for an underground PATH four-track line mirroring the subway trunk lines in Manhattan. With two new cross-river tunnels built, one to Midtown and one to The Bronx, that region of New Jersey could potentially see immense growth.

A four-track tunnel under the Hudson River to The Bronx from somewhere north of Fort Lee, New Jersey, where population density decreases, could allow the trunk line to continue to Stewart Airport, which admittedly requires yet another crossing in the Hudson Valley. This has the benefit, however, of adding new mass transit options to Yonkers and other parts of the the Hudson Valley where none exist. Such options could be a boon to towns like Beacon and Newburgh. Keeping the service as a four-track trunk line allows for complementary local and express service between Manhattan and the distant airport, while benefitting many communities inbetween. The trunk line could be fed by the following interstate feeder services:

1. a two-track spur from Fort Lee to Paterson via local communities in New Jersey. This would provide direct access to Midtown Manhattan from these communties.
2. a two-track spur south from Jersey City to Staten Island via Bayonne. This would complement present PATH service and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail service, as well as any planned Staten Island light rail projects.
3. a two-track across The Bronx or Yonkers to places like Rye and New Rochelle. This would provide feeder service to the main trunk line and to the New York City Subway's present spurs in The Bronx that feed Manhattan trunk lines.
   

Another major component of PATH expansion would be to the three airpirts already in the region. A small expansion is all it takes to bring PATH to Newark Airport. A longer expansion to Kennedy Airport has the benefit of giving downtown Brooklyn access to the suburbs, yet is already somewhat on the table politically as a Long Island Rail Road expansion. Thirdly, there is no mass transit service except by bus to LaGuardia Airport.

Beltway Service On The Subways
The other way to improve transit in the city is entirely local, and should be the city's responsibility. The outer boroughs, except a part of Brooklyn and Queens, lack any sort of cross-town mass transit service. Most of the subways feed into Manhattan. The A Train could be expanded across The Bronx, and perhaps even under the East River to LaGuardia. Beltway service further out in Brooklyn and Queens is sorely missing.