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Transit opens new Ridgewood Intermodal Terminal

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on August 20, 2010

New York City Transit officials and city politicians gathered this morning in Queens to celebrate the opening of the new Ridgewood Intermodal Terminal. Located at the Myrtle/Wyckoff L/M subway stop, the new terminal is designed to simplify a complex system of bus stops while facilitating a transfer between these buses and the popular subway lines they feed.

“This facility creates a much improved transfer point, making it easier for our customers to transfer between our bus and subway services,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said. “Additionally, our operating personnel will find it easier to pick up and discharge passengers on a street dedicated to bus boarding and unloading.”

The project cost $4 million with most of that provided by Assembly rep Catherine T. Nolan via the Capital Reserve Fund along with a $485,000 contribution of federal funds secured by House representative Nydia Velazquez. For the most part, the upgrades are aesthetic. Riders will benefit from new sidewalk canopies suspended from the elevated train lines that carry the M along Palmetto Street, and new benches and lighting mark the Terminal as well.

Transit operations too are simplified. No longer will the Q55, Q58, B13, B26, B52, and B54 buses stop at random spots throughout the area. Instead, Palmetto Street will be shut to all traffic except for buses and deliveries will serve as the centralized bus boarding area. “The residents of Ridgewood deserve reliable and effective transportation,” Velazquez said. “Establishing a new bus terminal and improving the station will not just enhance commuter service; it will also help rejuvenate the community by bringing more visitors to our city.”

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Queens

A facelift for the Jamaica Ave. elevated

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 21, 2010

Business owners and residents who work and live underneath the Jamaica Ave. el have long called upon the MTA to spruce up the tracks. (Photo via The New York Times)

When the current BMT Jamaica elevated open east of Cypress Hills in 1918, the city’s papers hailed this subway expansion project. The new line, part of a city-wide expansion effort, provided a fast, five-cent trip from Jamaica and Richmond Hills to Manhattan for just $2 million, and the rail route had space for, in the words of a contemporaneous report, “a centre track to be constructed for use of express trains at some future time.”

The third track never arrived because subsequent engineering studies determined that the vibrations would damage the elevated structure, and since then, the BMT Jamaica line has often seemed to be an afterthought in the eyes of those in charge of the subway. For the past quarter century, alleged one area business owner who has pushed the MTA for renovations, the elevated has been allowed to degrade, and rusty supports and flaking paint mar an otherwise lively neighborhood.

“Our avenue is clean and bright and very vibrant,” Maria Thomson, executive director of the Woodhaven BID said to The TimesDaily News, the MTA will overhaul the Jamaica Ave. el, currently home to the J and Z trains. As part of a $20-$30 million capital renovation set to begin next year, the authority will “rehabilitate steel girders and paint almost 3 miles of the line between the Cypress Hills station and 130th St.” The project should last approximately 30 months, and business owners — who have been promised similar renovations in the past — are holding their breaths. Perhaps the octogenarian elevated will shine again.

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Queens

New raised storm grates earn architectural praise

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 16, 2010

The new raised storm grates have earned aesthetic praise while keeping the subways flood-free. (Photo courtesy of the MTA on Facebook)

When an August 2007 rain storm completely flooded the New York City subway system, the MTA recognized a problem at street level. Because ventilation grates were flush with the sidewalk and fed directly into subway stations that weren’t very deep underground, numerous stations – particularly in Queens – were completely overrun with water.

To solve this problem, the authority proposed in late 2008 a reconceptualized subway grate that would also double as street furniture. By July of 2009, the $31 million flood-prevention plan was fully in place with grates along Sutphin and Queens Boulevards among other areas susceptible to flooding.

This week, the city’s Center for Architecture awarded Rogers Marvel Architects and di Domenico + Partners an Urban Design Merit Award for their work with the MTA’s flood mitigation streetscape plans. This award came as part of the juried prizes handed out each year at the American Institute of Architecture’s design awards luncheon. The flood mitigation pieces wil also be a part of an exhibit at the Center for Architecture (536 LaGuardia Place) now on display through July 3, 2010.

This project showed tremendous innovation and thought on behalf the MTA and then-CEO and Executive Director Elliot Sander. I’m glad to see it earning some recognition from the design community. For more pictures of the raised grates, check out this Facebook album.

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QueensService Cuts

Permanent G train service cut coming Monday

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 15, 2010

By and large, the service cuts the MTA must enact this summer will not go into effect until June 27, but for riders along the oft-neglected G train, the service cuts start this Monday. According to amNew York’s Heather Haddon, because of repairs to the Queens Boulevard line, Transit will begin to terminate the G at Court Square at all times starting on April 19 at 11 p.m.

Currently, the G train runs from Church Ave. in Kensington, Brooklyn, to Forest Hills from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. and on weekends, but that route is one that is more in name only than in reality. Due to track work, the G train saw Forest Hills during just three weekends in all of 2009, and this year, we’ve witnessed much of the same weekend service reductions.

For New Yorkers, this is but the first of many service cuts, but this one comes with a tradeoff. Overall, 201,000 straphangers along the Queens Boulevard line will find themselves waiting longer and making an extra connection at Court Square to reach their ultimate destinations. According to MTA documents (PDF here), 11,000 riders will have longer weekday evening and late-night rides and 105,000 riders on Saturday and 85,000 riders on Sunday will have increased travel times. Transit, though, will run three additional evening G trains during the weeknight peak times to provide more frequent service along the rest of the IND Crosstown line.

And so it begins.

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AsidesQueens

Transit wraps 7 line work three weeks early

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on March 11, 2010

For Queens residents who live along the 7 train, the last few weekends have been headache-inducing, to say the least. With no 7 trains between Times Square and Queensboro Plaza, those heading east (or into the city) had to find alternate routes involving transfers, shuttle buses or the N and R trains. This work was to continue for the next three weekends, but Transit announced earlier this week that the work had wrapped up ahead of schedule. For Queens residents, this came as welcome news indeed.

“We were able to accomplish a lot of extremely important work in a shorter time period than we had planned and we are grateful for the patience of 7 Line riders for whom this service is a lifeline on the weekend,” NYC Transit President Thomas F. Prendergast said in a statement. “After meeting with the community, we took another hard look at what we could do to restore service as quickly as possible.”

Transit says they replaced the tracks on the curve leaving Vernon-Jackson and installed a new switch at Hunter’s Point station. Workers shored up the tunnel wall in the Steinway Tube and installed the elevator shaft at Court House Square. With this announcement of an early completion, 7 train riders are in for a smooth ride until after the baseball season when Transit plans to conduct track work near the 111th St. station.

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AsidesQueens

An expansive rail solution for Southeast Queens

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on February 25, 2010

Southeast Queens — the area of the city’s largest borough out beyond JFK Airport — currently sits in something of a transit dead zone. It’s served by subway lines on the north and south and has the AirTrain and LIRR tracks running through certain neighborhoods, but the rail transit options are not integrated in a way that promotes convenient or face commutes from the eastern edges of New York City into Manhattan’s Central Business District. While certain bus rapid transit/select bus service plans are on the table to address some Jamaica-area bus service improvements, rail options are rather mentioned by planners looking to improve access.

In an interesting and thorough piece at The Transport Politic, Yonah Freemark explores a few solutions to the Southeast Queens problem. He first proposes a city-subsidized fare for Long Island Rail Road that would keep intra-city travel costs the same as a MetroCard swipe. Doing so would allow for faster, better and cheaper commutes for residents in the Queens neighborhoods such as Rosedale and Queens Village that are serviced by LIRR but not New York City Transit. He then proposes a few additional stops in southeast Queens and urges a new Jamaica-to-Howard Beach AirTrain line that would serve as a connector between the A and E/J/Z with stops at Liberty Ave. and Linden and Archer Blvds.

Freemark’s plan is an interesting one in that it uses existing infrastructure and would require relatively low-cost investments by the city, state and MTA. For an area of New York City far from the job hubs of downtown Manhattan and long underserved by transit, implementing any aspect of this plan would go along way toward encouraging transit use in a car-heavy area of the city. [The Transport Politic]

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BrooklynQueens

The G Train: Not Perfect, But Closer

by Lilit Marcus
written by Lilit Marcus on July 29, 2009

Hi, everyone. My name is Lilit Marcus and I’ll be doing some guest posts over the next couple of days while Benjamin is away. My normal home is over at Save the Assistants, but I’m happy to have the opportunity to branch out a little bit.

As Benjamin noted last week, many riders are happy with the new G train extension to Church Avenue in Brooklyn. I live in Williamsburg close to the Metropolitan G stop, and I’ve been a longtime fan of the train – my boyfriend of two years lives in Long Island City, and I’ve told people we might not be together if dating him meant I had to go into Manhattan and switch trains twice. I’ve also had a soft spot for the G train ever since reading Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, where the protagonist notes that the G is the underdog of the subway system, suffering from insecurity because it’s the only train that doesn’t touch Manhattan.

While the G extension further into Brooklyn is a great (albeit temporary) start, there are two other issues I’d like to see the G address:

1. The G, in order to be even more efficient, needs to extend one stop further past Court Square and go to Queens Plaza. This would connect the G easily with the E, V, and R lines. When the G used to run more reliably to Forest Hills on nights and weekends, it made it a lot easier for G riders to connect with other lines in Queens. Before the extension to Church Avenue, I also thought it would be great for the G to somehow go to Atlantic Avenue, but I can deal with walking from the Fulton Street stop.

2. Get some more damn cars. It’s great that the G now has a longer route and serves more neighborhoods (and that it extends to Coney Island many weekends in place of the F), so it’s more than time to have more than four cars per train. How many of you have had the classic “first time on the G” moment when you realize that you’re standing at the wrong end of the platform and have to haul ass in order to squeeze into the last car? The G isn’t the Times Square/Grand Central shuttle, OK? Time to give it more capacity.

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BusesQueens

Queens pols back borough-based BRT plans

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 8, 2009

Over the last few months, I’ve written about the joint effort between New York City’s Department of Transportation and the MTA to expand the city’s nascent bus rapid transit program. As part of the planning for BRT Stage Two, NYCDOT is hosting seven borough-specific workshops designed to identify travel corridors ripe for this transit expansion.

Last week, the traveling BRT show hit up two locations in Queens for feedback from the borough’s most underserved borough. While Queens enjoys the benefits of numerous subway lines, intraborough travel is very disjointed, and the quickest routes often involve heading into and back out of Manhattan. If any borough stands ready to enjoy the increased connectivity between subway lines and transit hubs that bus rapid transit can provide, it is Queens.

As expected, the reports from the workshop were fairly routine. Local store owners are concerned that decreasing street capacity for cars and parking lanes will negatively impact business. Increased transit though should improve efficiency and encourage mixed uses of the very same streets held hostage by automobile traffic and congestion.

DOT officials and transit advocates painted a sunnier picture. “If people are looking for short-term improvements to their transit service,” Joe Barr, NYCDOT’s direct of transit development, said, “this is really a good way to deliver that.”

While the usual suspects offered up support, more encouraging were the words from elected officials at last week’s event. Both John Liu and Eric Gioia, city council members representing various parts of Queens, recognized the impact BRT could have on the burgeoning borough. BRT, noted Liu, could link Flushing and Forest Hills, and Gioia praised it as a way to alleviate transit problems in Long Island City.

This is definitely good news. The city’s council members have a tenuous history of lukewarm support for break-through transit programs. Congestion pricing wasn’t embraced, and many have questioned the wisdom of spending billions of dollars on seemingly limited subway expansion plans. If council members are prepared to embrace BRT proposals, NYCDOT and the MTA should do all it can to exploit that support.

As megaprojects move slowly in New York City, bus rapid transit lanes could institutes quickly and cheaply. When the studies are through in a few weeks, the city’s agencies should move fast to act. We’ll all benefit from it.

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AsidesQueens

Mets/Willets Point stop facing access complaints

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on April 13, 2009

When Citi Field opens later tonight, Mets fans long used to the odd configuration of the Shea Stadium subway stop will find themselves facing a renovated station. While the station — with its new Mets-Willets Point name and $15 million makeover — is now somewhat handicapped accessible, it features a few odd quirks. For instance, the wheel chair ramp services only the Main St.-Flushing-bound platform. Mets fans leaving for Manhattan will have to ride a 7 train one stop and then transfer to a Manhattan-bound train.

As Heather Haddon details in Urbanite, disabled rider advocates are not happy about this odd configuration. “It should have been made a priority,” Michael Harris, head of the Disabled Riders Coalition, said to Haddon. “I’m frustrated. This was an opportunity to try to make the station right,” John Sheehan echoed. “If you sit in a game for two or three hours, you want to go home like everybody else.”

For its part, New York City Transit recognizes that this set-up is less than ideal, but as Haddon notes, even half of an accessible station is better than fully inaccessible station. “We have been able to take the first step into making this station at least partly accessible,” NYC Transit President Howard Roberts said to the amNew York reporter.

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BrooklynQueens

G train advocates dismayed by MTA’s ‘grave injustice’

by Benjamin Kabak
written by Benjamin Kabak on June 27, 2008

At the end of last week, when New York City Transit announced that some service increases were heading our way in July, one line was noticeably absent from the list. That line was, of course, the IND Crosstown train, better known as the G train.

In fact, in writing about the service changes, Times transit reporter William Neuman explicitly mentioned the G train:

One line that had been scheduled for more service in the original proposal last December but was not included in this round of improvements was the G. Riders on the G often complain of long waits between trains. Officials said the G did not exceed the loading guidelines.

In English, that means that, based on metrics set by NYC Transit, G train capacity and wait times were within acceptable margins. In other words, tough.

G train activists — some of the more vocal in the system — were outraged. “The M.T.A. has done a grave injustice to G train riders and commuters in Brooklyn if it fails to enact service enhancements,” Hakeem Jeffries, Assembly representative from Brooklyn said late last week.

What Mr. Jeffries conveniently left was his anti-congestion pricing stance. While bemoaning the fate of service along a train important to his constituents, Jeffries didn’t offer up a mea culpa on his stance surrounding a plan that would have brought in money for the MTA to fund service upgrades.

This is, of course, nothing new for beleaguered proponents of the G train. While not the most devoted blogger, Teresa Toro’s Save the G organization has long fought for more service on the only major subway line to eschew the borough of Manhattan. And in this case I have to side with Toro, Jeffries and G train riders.

The MT’s loading guidelines view service overall. It’s true that the G train on weekends and off-peak times is mostly empty, and the ten-minute intervals between trains is manageable. But during rush hour, as residents from Gowanus to Greenpoint to and from Forest Hills to Long Island City scramble to make their G train connections, the four-car and six-car trains are packed to the gills. While the MTA needs to balance G train service with the demands of the Queens Boulevard trains, the G — particularly in the norther stretches of Brooklyn — needs more rush hour service. How and when it will happen is anyone’s guess.

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