Archive for Brooklyn
Nov
30
BQE reconstruction shelved, but is it a loss?
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The BQE reconstruction will not move forward.
In mid-2010, after years of community meetings and design forums, New York State unveiled some ambitious plans to overhaul the BQE. With price tags ranging from a few billion to many billions of dollars, the proposals included a tunnel that would run underneath the Gowanus and Fort Greene neighborhoods to the Brooklyn Navy Yards that would allow for connections to the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges while siphoning traffic away from the always-congested cut in Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights. Despite the pie-in-the-sky nature of such a project, I liked the ideas behind it.
Today, though, we learn that the project will not go forward. The money simply isn’t there, and the state Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration do not consider repairs for the BQE and Gowanus Expressway to be “critical needs” any longer. “We assumed it was a necessity because they described the BQE as very deteriorated and substandard,” Brooklyn Heights Association Executive Director Judy Stanton said to The Post. “But if all they are going to do is continue Band-Aid repair work at the city’s expense, it won’t be sufficient.”
Rich Calder has more:
Blaming the national economic downturn, state and federal transportation officials said yesterday that they are abandoning plans to modernize and revamp crumbling stretches of the Brooklyn-Queens and Gowanus expressways…Cobble Hill activist Roy Sloane, who has been fighting for the BQE improvements for many years, said the decision to discontinue studying a highway makeover is a big blow to public safety.
“We were told by the state that the BQE was in danger of collapsing in the 80s,” said Sloane. “It’s also pathetic that they put all these years and effort in, spent money on all sorts of designs and are now dropping it.
However, a state DOT spokesman said recent inspections of the two highways showed they “do not require major repairs at this time.” Naomi Doerner, an urban planner who consulted the state DOT on the BQE project, said in an email that that the city and state “will continue to support efforts to ensure” the highway “remains a safe and reliable roadway in our transportation system.”
So it sounds bad that the state has decided roadways that a few years ago, could not withstand the pounding they took from daily traffic are suddenly sufficient just because the money isn’t there to replace them. That portends ill for the city’s aging transportation and transit infrastructure. But there’s a second side to this story that indicates perhaps it’s not such a bad decision after all.
Take, for instance, Cap’n Transit’s past coverage of the BQE plans. As the Cap’n astutely notes, transportation dollars are limited, and money spent to reconstruct roads in New York City will ultimately mean fewer dollars for competing transit projects. If the state spends a few billion to rebuild the BQE and tunnel through some Brooklyn neighborhoods, that’s a few billion dollars they can’t spend to build better transit service that would take cars off the road anyway.
In that sense, then, not moving forward with BQE reconstruction plans seems perfectly acceptable, if not ideal, for those who want to spend on transit to the exclusion of roads. Building, say, the Triborough RX line could have the same impact on traffic as constructing a BQE tunnel would, and the rail line would be a net gain for the environment and non-auto mobility as well.
Ultimately, if the physical infrastructure is secure, there’s no need to spend billions on a reconstruction. Spend those dollars, if they exist, on transit instead, and congestion will decrease. I’d still like to see the city move forward on plans to green the BQE trench as that would have a tangible positive impact on the Hicks St. neighborhood, but failing to build this multi-billion-dollar project that would increase road capacity isn’t a net loss for the city.
Nov
21
On transit improvements at Atlantic Yards
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Renderings of the Barclays Center show a new planned subway entrance, but we do not yet know how access to the platforms will be reconfigured.
At the crossroads of Atlantic Ave. and Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn rests one of the borough of Kings’ busiest subway stations. Over the next few years, it’s only going to get worse, but proposals to expand and adapt the station to new uses from the Barclays Center and, eventually, Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards complex have yet to see the light of day.
The brouhaha over the Atlantic Yards is a well-covered story. Under heavy pressure from local politicians, the MTA, as we know, sold out the air rights over the Vanderbilt Rail Yards to Bruce Ratner for well below-market. Originally, Ratner planned to build a new basketball arena for the Nets along with a massive mixed-use complex at the corner of three low-rise brownstone neighborhoods. Due to the financial crisis, though, the plans for the array of towers were shelved, but progress on the arena, set to open in September of 2012, has moved forward.
Late last week, though, Ratner announced plans to build some of the Atlantic Yards towers in 2012. With some financing in place, Ratner will build a 32-story residential building at Flatbush Ave. and Dean Street. that will house 350 units. The current plans include 14 other residential buildings, including one of 50 stories.
Enter the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. In terms of those swiping in, the station is the third busiest in Brooklyn and the 30th most popular in the city. In 2010, over 10.1 million straphangers entered the station, and the station saw an increase of traffic of 4.4 percent over 2009. That tells only part of the story though as the station serves as a major transfer point between the subway and the LIRR as well as an inter-system transfer point between the 4th Ave. lines, the IRT and the Brighton Line.
So what happens when the Barclays Center and, eventually, the Atlantic Yards complex opens? Right now, the station has a variety of entrances from various street corners. There’s an entrance to the 4th Ave. platform at 4th Ave. and Pacific St., an entrance to the LIRR and the local Manhattan-bound IRT station in the Atlantic Center and an entrance to the Brighton Line off of Hanson Place. It isn’t perfect, but it works.
Meanwhile, changes are in store. As the renderings for the Barclays Center show, work on the arena includes a new street-level entrance to the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. station that will go from the plaza outside of the arena to, well, somewhere, and the fact that the “somewhere” is undefined is concerning. Over the past few weeks, I’ve asked the MTA for renderings of the subway improvements, and although the arena and work on subway access has been long-planned and will open in ten months, the MTA doesn’t yet have renderings. They have only schematics that have yet to be released to the public, and we have no idea how the flow of people will be improved or addressed at a major subway location in Brooklyn.
When the Atlantic Yards project was first negotiated, transit improvements were part of the deal. To add so many people to a small area right on top of an already-busy subway station was simply inviting transit capacity disaster, and Ratner pledged to improve the Atlantic Ave./Pacific St. subway station and also the LIRR terminal. So far, all we know for sure is that the subway stop will bear Barclays’ name when the arena opens. Anything else is conjecture.
Ultimately, these designs will be released for the public, but as Ratner begins to work on the new Atlantic Yards terminals, he shouldn’t get off so lightly. Transit improvements and a plan to address the added demand his units will bring must be a part of the planning process as his buildings move forward. To avoid the subject will leave straphangers out in the cold.
Oct
26
Rendering of the Day: NYU’s 370 Jay Street
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NYU wants to bring the Center for Urban Science and Progress to 370 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. (Rendering via NYU and The Real Deal)
As the MTA gears up to offload the long-idle Transit building at 370 Jay St., a familiar player in the New York City real estate market has emerged as a leading contender for the space. As The Daily News reports today, New York University is targeting 370 Jay St. as the future home for its Center for Urban Science and Progress. The plan, which would rely on significant contributions from the city, would help push forward an academic revival in Downtown Brooklyn.
Instead of competing with Stanford and Cornell for space on Roosevelt Island, NYU would prefer to overhaul the MTA’s former headquarters across from its Polytechnic campus. “It would make Brooklyn the urban center of the universe,” NYU Senior Vice Provost for Research Paul Horn said to The News. “There’s nothing anywhere near it on this scale.”
Erin Durkin has more:
Mayor Bloomberg is offering a powerhouse academic institution $100 million in construction costs, plus free land, to open the high-tech school. Horn said NYU would forego the land the city is offering on Roosevelt Island or other sites in favor of downtown Brooklyn. “It’s a terrific entrepreneurial center,” Horn said. “There are a lot of advantages to being there as opposed to isolated somewhere.”
[Horn] said NYU could build the center with $20-$25 million of the city money for infrastructure fixes and moving the MTA’s old equipment out of 370 Jay, and spend $450 million overall on a 200,000-square-foot project. It would launch CUSP in space at nearby MetroTech, with classes starting in 2013, then move into 370 Jay after a major overhaul.
The NYU plan calls for 50 faculty members – from civil, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer science and other fields – would teach 400 master’s students and 100 Ph.D. students at CUSP. “Improving security, dealing with disasters, a variety of problems that are absolutely critical and things the city will be worrying about anyway – this will have our institute focusing on creating solutions to those problems,” Horn said.
NYU has a reputation for utterly consuming neighborhoods it targets. This plan, though, would remove a blight from the streets of Downtown Brooklyn while delivering dollars to the MTA for its abandoned headquarters. The building will be subjected to an RFP process. I doubt, however, that this is the last we’re hearing of NYU’s interest.
Oct
12
Balancing parking, driving and bus lanes along the B44
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Plans for the B44 SBS include bus bulbs.
Over the past few years, the battle for street space has become a headline-grabber in New York City. On the one hand are folks who support vibrant street life. These folks argue for dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes and policies that promote pedestrian safety and mass transit over parking. On the other are those who believe that taking away a lane for driving or parked cars is an affront to liberty and freedom and that bike lanes are a part of the tenth circle of hell. Clearly, you know which side I’m on.
While the bike lane battles have been brewing in Park Slope and Williamsburg, the MTA and New York City DOT have been S-L-O-W-L-Y laying out plans for Brooklyn’s first Select Bus Service route. The new service will follow the path of the B44 along Nostrand and Rogers Avenues from Williamsburg to Sheepshead Bay, and throughout the planning process, it has received the usual array of windshield criticism. Community Board 15 voted it down due to its potential impact on parking while drivers complained that pedestrian-oriented improvements would take away space for their cars.
The MTA and DOT have been listening though, and now they’re making a case for their plan. Last week, they unveiled the latest iteration of the B44 SBS service, and while it still takes away some space for parking and auto lanes, businesses are rallying behind it because DOT has preserved capacity. In other words, by reallocating space from parked cars to vehicles in motion, the street will be more active. The latest presentation is available here as a PDF, and Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis offers up a thorough summary of the plans. He writes:
Nostrand Avenue SBS will, as in the Bronx and Manhattan, create dedicated bus lanes enforced by automated cameras and use high-capacity buses and off-board fare payment. With fewer stops, the bus will also spend more time in motion and less time starting and stopping. The Nostrand project will add another new feature: bus bulbs. By extending the sidewalk out to the street, bus bulbs mean that drivers don’t have to pull to the curb and back into the lane, resulting in a smoother and speedier ride. A raised curb means more level boarding onto the bus, advantageous for the elderly and the mobility-impaired. The extra space also means that the bus stop won’t crowd the sidewalk…
In order to preserve the same number of motor vehicle lanes during rush hour, where a bus lane is being installed DOT proposes turning the left parking lane into a through lane during the morning and evening peaks. This shouldn’t have too much of an impact on local merchants. At Nostrand and Empire Boulevard, only 14 percent of shoppers had driven to the area (and not all had parked on Nostrand). Further south, at Glenwood Road, only 13 percent of shoppers had arrived in a car.
Moreover, there’s a lot of room to add parking in other ways. On much of Nostrand and its cross streets, parking is currently free. The installation of meters will encourage drivers to move on once done shopping, freeing up space for others. The use of Muni-Meters will also allow more vehicles to park in the same area. Finally, loading zones and delivery windows will ensure that trucks have space at the curb rather than being forced to resort to double-parking.
This is transportation planning as it should be. In total, the amount of space constantly available for parked cars will dwindle, but what good are parked cars? They may provide transportation, but once idle, they sit lifeless in vibrant urban shopping areas. Muni meters will encourage turnover of parking spaces while buses, a major mode of transportation, will move more freely up and down the avenues. Cars won’t lose lanes, and businesses will gain loading zones. It’s a close to a win-win-win as one will find on the city streets these days.
Ultimately, though, this Select Bus Service suffers from the same problems that most of the MTA’s bus offerings do: While the route ends at the edge of the borough, most riders want to continue beyond that arbitrary border. The B44 SBS service would be far more useful if it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and provided a direct connection with the M15 SBS as well as the F train at Delancey St. That’s a dream for another day though. Next fall, Brooklyn will finally get its first faster bus route.
Sep
13
With Brighton work over, B express returns
Posted by: | CommentsWith the station rehab work along the Brighton Line wrapped up, Brooklyn B and Q train riders are in for a treat. For the first time in three years, B express service will return to the trench on October 3. The sign from Transit says it all.
Sep
09
Under the El: Thoughts on urban development
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One Brooklyn native has proposed building a pedestrian space underneath the Culver Viaduct. Rendering by John McGill.
Thanks to a confluence of history and economics, many of New York City’s streets outside of Manhattan’s Central Business District are lined with elevated train tracks. From Astoria to Woodlawn, from Coney Island to Williamsburg and even through Morningside Heights, elevated train lines soar over city streets. How to incorporate these structures into the urban landscape has long proven to be problematic for New York City planners.
In certain parts of the city, the elevated trains are less intrusive than in others. The 7, as it travels above Queens Boulevard, occupies an elegant structure away from pedestrians and the flow of traffic, but the N and Q tracks through Astoria darken the streets below while impeding the flow of both people and traffic. One area in Brooklyn — the space under the Culver Viaduct — is a particular wasteland of former and current industrial usages mixed with an urban void.
A walk or a drive past the Viaduct on the border between Park Slope, Gowanus, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook isn’t very scenic. The trip passes through row houses overshadowed by the looming structure, a Lowes warehouse store and some industrial spaces that look abandoned. Until the train goes back underground at 4th Ave. and just south of 2nd Place and Smith Street, the area is an odd nothingness of quasi-development. It doesn’t have to be this way.
While digging through some old emails this week, I came across a post from the Architectural League of New York’s Urban Omnibus blog. Written by Brooklyn native John McGill, it explores possible development schemes for the area underneath the Viaduct. While the city has turned a former rail line into a popular public space and burgeoning tourist attraction, they could do something similar to the space under a current rail line.
McGill seems to call his proposal the anti-High Line as it doesn’t rely on deactivating a rail line. Rather, it is, he says, “an opportunistic repurposing of existing, functioning infrastructure to address the need for a vibrant and coherent public realm.” The proposal itself enters into some architecturally technical areas. After all, you can’t redevelop the space in and around the Viaduct in such a way that would threaten the structural integrity of the active train tracks above.
The plan itself would incorporate access to and views of the Gowanus Canal — a Superfund site that will eventually be cleaned — and relies upon the shuttering of a concrete plant, the only active business in the area. With some modifications to the Viaduct itself, McGill then proposes a variety of uses:
Four types of “preservation” emerged as essential to the architectural strategy: preservation of sunlight, of structural stability, of limited footprint at ground level, and of existing (historic) character. Informed by these criteria, Underline offers four potential modes of intervention: the creation of flexible space for public assembly; precast concrete decking hung from above on steel rods as a public landscape “ribbon;” pure infill at ground level; and adaptive reuse of, or interface with, existing adjacent structures…
Preserving this set of desirable existing conditions results in a series of distributed spaces connected by a linear public park. This establishes a sequence of unique visual experiences as one moves along, offering glimpses of unexpected adjacent activities, the regular appearance of moving trains overhead, and the rhythmic discharge and departure of passengers to and from the stations at either end of the project site — not to mention views of the city currently reserved for F and G subway riders.
Despite being distributed, however, the program is arranged in discernible clusters so that points of access to each component of the project are clearly legible from the street. Starting from the south, the first of these might contain an EPA monitoring station and public exhibition space, a café, public outdoor amphitheater, rock-climbing wall, and classrooms. The next section consists of covered outdoor basketball courts and a small public fitness center and lap pool, and in the final group retail and production spaces. Because each element is knit into the whole by the landscape ribbon, a loose affiliation emerges between both related and unrelated events in time and space.
It’s a fascinating plan really and one that New Yorkers do not see too frequently. It takes an underused urban space at the confluence of numerous neighborhoods that also supports key infrastructure and turns it into a potentially popular urban destination. Eleven months after McGill first published the proposal, we can also say that it’s not going to happen, and Brooklyn is worse off for it.
One of the major reasons why subway construction has stalled over the past 60 years is a public aversion to elevated lines. With the noise and dirt and debris that an above-ground subway causes, residents do not want to see these structures — which are much cheaper than a bored tunnel — dominate the landscape any more than they already do. But just maybe it’s possible to develop an elevated train with the neighborhood in mind.
Jun
21
Map of the Day: Smith/9th closed until 2012
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In the grand scheme of New York City’s subway system, the Smith/9th Sts. station along the IND Culver line isn’t a very popular one. Averaging just under 4000 passengers a day in 2010, it was only the 287th most popular stop around. Despite its low ridership, it is both one of the most picaresque and precarious in the city. The highest station in the system with views of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan skyline, the viaduct on which it sits has been draped in a protective sheathing for years, and the station has been badly in need of a rehab.
Since late 2007, the MTA had been planning a full station overhaul for the Smith/9th Sts. stop, and for the past few years, they have warned community boards and neighborhood groups of a looming 2011 full station closure. When the service cuts came last year, the authority warned that it would not be able to provide additional shuttle bus service, but when zero hour arrived yesterday and the MTA shuttered the station until next March, people were still upset.
Both Carroll Gardens’ Patch site and NY1 covered frustrated commuters, and the two resulting stories are among my favorites in local outrage. Red Hook residents, who clearly drew the short straw here, will have to take a bus ride either into Park Slope or Downtown Brooklyn to reach their trains, and while these folks complained the most about the state of the station and the safety concerns of the Culver Viaduct, they now are going to complain about the MTA’s fixing up the station as well.
My favorite quotes came from Henry Ramos who spoke to a Patch author. “I am pissed,” he said. “I’m like ‘What am I gonna do now?’” Ramos comes from Williamsburg regularly, and despite a partial platform closure for three months, numerous signs and years of outrage, he wanted even more signs that he probably wouldn’t have read anyway at the station.
Furthermore, he’s bemoaning the fact that the bus isn’t a free shuttle. “If you don’t got a MetroCard for the bus, you gotta walk,” he said. Does that mean he was hopping the turnstile to board the subway? If he has a MetroCard for the bus, he has a free transfer for the ride to Red Hook. But then again, it’s far easier to complain about something long expected than it is to plan ahead.
Once the work on the viaduct that doesn’t require trains to be re-routed is finished, the station will reopen. For those in Red Hook and the southern ends of Carroll Gardens, it’s going to be a long nine months.
Apr
22
Streetcars, like the Dodgers, won’t return to Brooklyn
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DOT has determined that this streetcar route is simply too expensive for the city right now.
Once upon a time, the New York City Department of Transportation viewed streetcars as the next great thing for Brooklyn. “We’re looking back to the future,” Janette Sadik-Khan said a few months ago. “Streetcars remain part of the transportation mix in cities from Toronto to Melbourne, and we need to consider all options to improve transit access in underserved neighborhoods like Red Hook.”
Now, though, DOT is singing a different tune. With advocates howling, the Department of Transportation has wrapped up a six-month study by determining that streetcars are too expensive and won’t deliver benefits to Red Hook without major changes in the city’s development policies.
The topline determinations are clear: The ideal route would cost $176 million to build and would set back the city $7 million a year to operate. Even worse, the line would increase transit use from Red Hook by only 12 percent — or 1822 daily riders — over the current bus routing as DOT determined that most denizens of the area do not own cars and already rely on the bus for subway access. More problematic though are DOT’s determinations that the area simply isn’t planned properly for streetcar transportation. As Red Hook isn’t zoned of high-density, mixed-use areas, streetcars do not make fiscal sense right now.
The feasibility report – a 73-page PDF available here — drills down in depth on the city’s study. And yet, over and over again, DOT comes back to the issue of cost. “The estimated cost based on the conceptual design of the preferred alignment amounts to approximately $176 million in 2011 dollars,” the report says. “Given the current economic environment, it is questionable whether the City could raise the funds for this substantial capital investment. Moreover, in light of the unfavorable feasibility considerations related to the actual operation of such a system, it is uncertain that a streetcar, while technically feasible, is the most efficient option for meeting Red Hook’s transit goals today.”
Opponents have risen a stink about this study. In numerous emails to me, Bob Diamond of the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association claims DOT’s figures are misleading. He claims DOT’s capital cost estimates at $26 million per mile are far too high and cites a 2001 effort by Portland which cost the Oregon city just $13 million per mile. DOT too cites to that effort and claims that construction costs in Portland have risen to $22 million per mile today. It also claims, not incorrectly, that construction costs in New York City are significantly higher than they are on the West Coast.
Meanwhile, as Streetsblog noted, other concerns dominated the report as well. Despite low car ownership rates in Red Hook, DOT did not feel comfortable with removing parking spots, and many alignments seemed to require significant curb cuts and some use of eminent domain in order to ensure adequate turning radii for the streetcars. The most damning critique though, as Noah Kazis writes, concerns cooperation amongst city agencies. He says:
A final objection, though, seems to reveal either a lack of coordination between city agencies or a study designed to reject the streetcar in advance. Having looked at streetcar projects in other cities, DOT found that installing the transit line would only promote economic development if it was paired with changes to the area’s land use planning. Noting that the Department of City Planning doesn’t have any plans to upzone Red Hook’s residential areas or otherwise plan for growth, the DOT study concludes that the “current City development/land use policy is not complementary to streetcar as an economic development driver.”
So while Diamond says that he’ll continue to fight for streetcars in Brooklyn, DOT has other ideas in mind. They want to instead improve sidewalks, bike lanes and bus service into and out of Red Hook and will attempt to better integrate the neighborhood into subway access plans. Yet until they actually follow through with these plans, Red Hook will remain an isolated area with sub-par bus service and subway access. Streetcars could have been a panacea for the area, but like the bankrupt Dodgers, they won’t be making a return to Brooklyn any time soon.
Apr
15
Brooklyn express buses restored amidst political pressure
Posted by: | CommentsThe X27 and X28 express buses from, respectively, Bay Ridge and Bensonhurts to Midtown will be revived following a deal with the MTA struck by State Senator Marty Golden and Councilmember Vincent Gentile, the Brooklyn Eagle reported this week. The two buses had been eliminated due to low ridership last summer amidst the MTA’s service cuts, but Golden and Gentile, who helped file a lawsuit challenging the cuts, claimed that seniors and the handicapped needed this express routes. “The new routes were not working for the people of my district,” Golden said. “On a regular basis, I received emails and phone calls from people waiting at bus stops. The commute, based on the new routes and schedules, was almost double for many, and people were selling their homes, changing their hours at work, hiring second babysitters, and the list goes on.”
I’m happy for these neighborhoods that are getting their bus service back, and the politicians are too. “By restoring service on the X37,” Gentile said, “the MTA has acknowledged that south Brooklyn commuters have been shortchanged when it comes to transportation.” But while terms of the revival were not announced and cost figures are unclear, I have to wonder why these politicians wait until after the fact to act and why their actions are simply knee-jerk ones designed to restore a bus or two. Instead of seeking out institutional changes that will protect our transit services in advance, these politicians are simply pandering to their constituent demands. That’s no way run a public transportation agency, let alone an entire city or state.
Jan
12
Media Hit: BIT on the Culver Viaduct
Posted by: | CommentsAs the Culver Viaduct controversy swirled last week, the local Brooklyn media profiled the upcoming work and brouhaha over those who were unaware of the F train shutdowns. On Friday afternoon, reporter Lauren Moraski interviewed me from the Smith/9th Sts. station to discuss the work and Brooklynites’ reactions to it. The story aired earlier this week on Brooklyn Review on the Brooklyn Independent TV station, and I’ve embedded the clip above.
Regular readers of SAS know the story by heart by now, but Moraski managed to track down a few more commuters who were surprised by the station closures. One wants to see a shuttle bus that, due to MTA budgetary problems, won’t run while others will just have to hoof it to Carroll St. While riders all along the F line in Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and Kensington will suffer, Red Hook residents drew the short end of the straw. With limited subway service and no added bus lines, it’s going to be a long year for those who rely on the F for their commutes.
