Here’s an interesting tidbit from The Wall Street Journal today: With some federal seed money, New York City is going to invest in its own version of transit-oriented development in an effort to “revitalize areas around under-developed transit hubs.” According to the report, New York’s Department of City Planning will use the $3.5 million to explore ways to add housing stock and commercial development to areas along the city’s commuter rail lines. This should include spots in East New York and in the Bronx along Metro-North. The Journal says the city will search for ways to develop areas “around subway stops” as well.
What’s intriguing but also odd about this news is how New York City is one giant transit-oriented development. Outside of a few pockets of eastern Queens and southern Brooklyn, the entire city is close enough to a frequent bus route or subway stop to be well within acceptable walking distances. Rehabbing the area around the LIRR stop in East New York is more a matter of urban reclamation than transit-oriented development. The neighborhood is already well-served by multiple subway routes.
Ultimately, transit-oriented development through what are ostensibly low-income neighborhoods won’t work without a corresponding change in fare policy. It might be faster for a commuter to hop the LIRR in East New York to get to downtown Brooklyn or jump on the Metro-North stops through the Bronx to reach Grand Central. But the fares — $5 per ride off peak, $7.25 during peak hours — are far too high to convince riders to eschew the 3 train in Brooklyn or the 4, B and D in the Bronx. We’ll see how this goes.
24 comments
It’s more of a zoning thing. East New York is zoned for light manufacturing around the station (I think). I’d think stations like Hollis and Queens Village could be great candidates for 6-8 story or more residential developments within a quarter mile walk from those stations. There is too much low density residential zoning around train stations. Similarly, there are so many subway lines in south brooklyn, but they go through low density areas. why? it’s such a waste of good infrastructure. these stations should be surrounded by big, dense, apartment or condo buildings with ground level retail, etc.
Why? We won’t need that kind of scale everywhere. Four-family attached houses mixed with mixed use buildings can make splendidly dense, walkable neighborhoods.
No you don’t. But if your trying to leverage existing infrastructure we need to maximize areas where that are underutilized close to job centers and/or region’s core. That’s one way to prevent sprawl.
One thing to note and MAS has been pushing this — is that our zoning documents in NYC were written in the 1950s. They are BADLY in need of an update to reflect things like, oh, the lack of need for blacksmiths as well as other uses. (Apparently its very difficult to add a gym in NYC, reflecting some 1950s reality where gyms weren’t part of non-meatheads daily lives. Or something.)
So our zoning is piecemaal and not reflective of the kinds of research in planning and transit related development and walkable communities of the last 60 years. This also allows developers to juice the system because the system is so badly out of date.
No, we don’t NEED that kind of density, and I think neighborhoods that are more consistently 4-6 stories are some of the most pleasant (and European) to be in. However, it’s much easier to create a pocket of high density within a medium to low density area than it is to raise the allowable density for the whole neighborhood.
Like Christopher wrote, it’s about leveraging existing infrastructure in the most effective way. Transit use declines exponentially with distance to the station, so putting as much density as close as possible leverages that existing infrastructure most effectively.
It can lead to a “mini-downtown” or “village center”, if done right. Note: everything has to be “done right;” we can’t just give all this new FAR to developers without making them add nice public space, trees, wide sidewalks, ground level retail, etc. Many subway stops already are like that, creating small areas of hustle and bustle in an otherwise quiet residential area. The subway can support the higher density, and the area can become a nice commercial core for the whole neighborhood.
Besides, towers are cooler (my opinion).
What should be done, in worst-case scenarios, is both. Larger buildings and infill can be encouraged, anchored by a large development. However, it requires zoning and parking policy changes to work, or else it all goes to crap.
I don’t know. There’s some really low density uses very often right near subway stations. I live between the Knickerbocker and Myrtle-Wyckoff stations on M. Right next to the Knickerbocker station is a 1 story building with a Bruger King and enormous parking lot with drive through. A half block away is a strip mall with parking in between the sidewalk and the businesses. (Including an Army recruitment station which feels the need to park on the sidewalk once a month.) A block from the Myrtle-Wyckoff station is a White Castle with huge, unused, parking lots and drive through and extra space devoted to nothing but lawn. It’s what a friend of mine calls “intra-city sprawl”. Low density, suburban style uses that are close to transit.
I don’t know what gives with the Myrtle-Wyckoff area. There are numerous suburban-style supermarkets around there too. The Brooklyn side of the border with Queens seems more Queens-like than the Queens side of the border.
Funny though, I was thinking of going by you later today to try Verde’s Coal Oven Pizza.
Myrtle Ave in the Queens side is actually a great example of what transit oriented development should be. There is street-level, pedestrian-oriented retail, a lot of which is under two or three stories of apartments.
The auto-oriented development near M train stations mostly exist in the Brooklyn side of Myrtle where the tracks are elevated above the street. This creates a dark, hostile environment for pedestrians that doesn’t attract the same thriving development that the Queens side did.
There is a lot of potential though for Wyckoff Ave, which was very industrial and is now full of underutilized space. The L train here runs under the street, so it doesn’t create the hostile environment that the adjacent M train does. There is already some pedestrian oriented retail development taking place there.
The key is for this kind of commercial development to continue to take place, maybe with the addition of housing, and not the sea of surface parking you see in front of Food Bazaar. (That parking lot breaks up Madison St, and I would love to see it dismantled and returned to the original grid.)
You know what it is, I think transit directly catalyzes development. I saw the google maps view of certain ‘low-density’ areas, and I think that any out-of-towner would argue that those are relatively urban in character. I don’t think we need to create downtown Brooklyns everywhere in the city, we’re already complaining about over-crowding and inadequate subway route coverage, why add to our agony? I say expand the system in a smart manner, and you’ll see the development that follows it directly.
The city definitely has an incoherent transportation policy. The MTA has little say in land use, if any at all, city law often mandates parking lots, and the EDC happily rapes neighborhoods with suburban-style developments.
The corner of West 181st St and St. Nicholas Ave, which is right above the no. 1 train and five bus lines, as well as two blocks away from the GWB bus terminal and three blocks away from the A train, has C4-4 zoning which allows only three-story-high buildings. I would think that developers would make money from putting at least 10-story buildings there with commercial and office space on the bottom floors and residential or office on the top.
They could do high rise like the ones over the Cross Manhattan Expy. That spot would be great for offices as the location has commuter bus access, and would bring workers in the counter peak direction during rush hr on the subway.
I gotta say, living in Forest Hills, it’s awfully convenient taking the railroad from Jamaica to Atlantic Term to get to Park Slope on the weekends for $3.50…
Yes, exactly. TOD has existed in New York since the els and Yorkville, the IRT and Upper Broadway and Times Square, and the BRT and Coney Island. What’s going on in East New York isn’t really developing an underused station, for both the L and the A/C are near capacity and the J/Z sucks, but run-of-the-mill gentrification of a blighted neighborhood.
East New York gets something like 8,000 riders per day. That’s not terrible, but considering it’s a major hub of numerous subway lines, bus routes, and the LIRR, it’s not nearly as good as it could be. That station could easily absorb another 10,000 riders. If the Triboro subway line is every built, it will seem foolish to not make East New York a major node in the city – for residential AND commercial development.
By your argument, any effort to increase density near stations in NYC (or anywhere for that matter) is government sponsored gentrification. I understand the logic behind that thinking, but reject it as overly broad and harmful in social, economic and environmental terms. The long term benefits of TOD are pretty well agreed upon across the socioeconomic spectrum, even by the NIMBYs that fight it.
In the case of TOD in built-up areas, it usually involves rezoning and developers capitalizing on constructing what is the highest and best use of a property that could not be realized under the previous zoning. This creates value, increases property values, and drives out low income renters. With proper rules and requirements for affordable housing; however, the existing neighborhood inhabitants do not have to be pushed out and their lives disrupted. The developers’ desire for profit can be leveraged by the city and the community to extract things like parks, environmental clean up, community facilities, transit improvements, etc.
In addition, in places like East New York, with frequent parking lots and abandoned or semi-abandoned buildings, development can occur as infill that improves the streetscape and creates value.
Just because New York built itself around subway routes doesn’t mean the zoning and built environment reflect the best use of the area today, for the same reason that the garment district has turned from warehouses to condos. Does NYC really need or want what was built in East New York decades ago in a different time in a different economy at the peak of the auto/highway/suburb age? No.
Don’t forget, construction in most of the city would be TOD. It’s the singling out of ENY that I mind. It doesn’t make sense from a transit point of view, since it doesn’t add to an underused line: the station itself is underused, but stations further downstream on the L and A/C are more crowded. The best development from NYCT’s point of view is one that generates reverse-peak trips, off-peak trips, and trips that terminate short of the most crowded point. Columbia’s metastasis into Manhattanville at least has that logic into it, though that obviously isn’t why the city approved the rezoning.
If there was more TOD (or gentrification or whatever you want to call it) around the ENY LIRR station, I would assume that a lot of the people would be attract to live there, not by the prospect of being able to access Manhattan (which can be done from a lot of places by taking the subway and local bus), but by the prospect of being able to have an easy reverse-commute. The fares to Westchester from the Bronx are actually fairly reasonable. The problem is that many trains bypass the stations in the Bronx, but that problem will solve itself if more people live around the station and use it.
I do agree that the fare policy should be rewritten to encourage more use of the commuter rail system within NYC. The fare should be $3.75 all times (or possibly raise it to $5.50 during rush hours) to encourage use for trips within NYC (even if they have to add extra trains, it is still cheaper than having to run extra local buses to reach the subway)
Try telling a rider from Scarsdale or Bronxville that those empty seats next to her is going to be filled by a bunch of people getting on at Tremont, and that Metro-North is encouraging them to ride, and, well, so much for that idea. It’s sad, but we know it’s true.
I dunno, lots of “those kind” of riders get on LIRR at Jamaica and its never seemed like a big deal to the business suit crowd from Nassau.
The LIRR sucks for reverse commutes and will continue to suck until they stop running trains one-way on the Main Line at rush hour. To say nothing of the completely unwalkable suburban stations…
The peculiar redundancy of the LIRR Atlantic Ave line and the roughly logically parallel Fulton St rapid transit service was first commented on as soon as the Fulton St El was constructed in the 1880s. I suspect that if the East NY LIRR station is little used, it’s because Canarsie line and probably the Fulton St line are close enough provide more affordable and useful transit options. (I wonder if there are data measuring how many people arriving at Alantic Terminal by LIRR proceed to the subway, thus raising the peak-trip one-way cost to $9.50)
If you want to complain about MTA duplicity. The LIRR has 2 routes through South Jamaica. The locals dont use them due to cost and/or lack of stations (which came first ? ;-)), and would rather spend 2 hours on a bus and then E to get to Manhattan than spend the money for LIRR or an Express Bus, then we have census figures that South Jamaica has the longest by time commute in the USA. What ever happened to the plan to turn one of the LIRR lines into the E train? Jamaica was better off with the El than the shorter and missing stations (check out how lifeless de-Eled Jamaica Ave is) Archer Avenue. Will shouting and racism and affirmative action in the 21st century get the MTA to stop paying attention to Manhattan for once in 20 years?
“Outside of a few pockets of eastern Queens and southern Brooklyn, the entire city is close enough to a frequent bus route or subway stop to be well within acceptable walking distances”…you obviously have never spent any time on Staten Island or did you just forget that it is part of NYC???
Define “acceptable walking distance”. Guidelines state that nobody anywhere in NYC (except for communities that oppose having buses run near them) should be more than 1/2 mile from a bus route. Except for the far South Shore, which doesn’t have frequent service, almost everywhere in the city falls under these guidelines.