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| Re: Air Train Proposed To Connect (7) Line With LaGuardia Airport; video (1335036) | |||
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Re: Air Train Proposed To Connect (7) Line With LaGuardia Airport; video |
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Posted by Union Tpke on Thu Jan 22 15:55:51 2015, in response to Air Train Proposed To Connect (7) Line With LaGuardia Airport; video, posted by gOlD_12tH on Tue Jan 20 11:59:31 2015. LOGIN Capital New York CITY HALL ALBANY MEDIA POLICY CAPITAL PROSearch T F T F 7-to-LaGuardia plan prompts transit-advocate uproar A rendering of the AirTrain. (Governor's office) Tweet Share on Facebook Share on Tumblr By Dana Rubinstein 5:41 a.m. | Jan. 22, 2015 follow this reporter On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo declared LaGuardia Airport’s lack of rail access “inexcusable” and promised to fix the problem by building a train to the plane by way of Willets Point. By Wednesday, the transportation-nerd backlash was intense. “If you’re going to build transit, you have to have more criteria than just avoiding public opposition, and I think that’s why this route was chosen,” said Jon Orcutt, the former policy director at the New York City transportation department. “As proposed, the project would do next to nothing to improve access to the airport,” wrote Yonah Freemark, a well-regarded transportation blogger, on the Transport Politic. MORE ON CAPITAL North Cove Marina license awarded to Cuomo allies Capital Politics Digest: Jan. 22, 2015 Bharara: Silver sought to ‘monetize’ public office ADVERTISEMENT “Cuomo’s proposal is something of a mess from a transit planning perspective,” wrote Second Avenue Sagas blogger Benjamin Kabak. Some critiques were less harsh in tone, but only marginally less damning. “We should have something more like the Heathrow Express, where you pay $25 one way to get on a real train where you have a seat and a luggage rack and you go to central London,” said Nicole Gelinas, a transit- and infrastructure-focused fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who added that she thinks the governor's proposal "would be better than nothing and people would use it.” “I applaud the governor for at the very least taking this on as an important issue and putting forth an actionable idea,” said David Giles, research director at the Center for an Urban Future. “I do think it would be a mistake to spend a half billion or more on AirTrain without seriously studying the alternatives.” So what is the governor’s proposal? There are only bare bones so far. It would be an elevated train to LaGuardia Airport much like the AirTrain that connects subway riders to JFK Airport. Cuomo says it would be 1.5 miles long. (Freemark questions how accurate that number is). It would run along Grand Central Parkway and, by Cuomo's estimation, cost roughly $450 million. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which Cuomo jointly controls with New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and the M.T.A., which Cuomo effectively controls on his own, would build it together. It’s not clear which authority would foot the bill or how, exactly, either authority could afford it. (The governor's press office didn't answer that question, though a spokeswoman did say the project would be subject to an environmental impact study.) Politicians have longed for rail access to LaGuardia since at least Mario Cuomo’s time. “Gov. Mario Cuomo tried to advance a one-seat ride elevated ‘monorail’ plan that would have provided a grand tour of Queens— beginning at the old Alexander's dept store at 59th St. and Lex. crossing the Queensboro Bridge past Queens Plaza, then continuing to LGA, then on to Willets Point and on to Jamaica and JFK Airport, with a spur to Howard Beach,” said former New York City Transit executive George Haikalis in an email. “Gov. Pataki trimmed this to the Jamaica-JFK and Howard Beach-JFK segments, that are today's AirTrain.” He called the younger Cuomo’s rendition of the older Cuomo’s plan “costly and circuitous.” It’s the circuitous part, and the sense that Cuomo is privileging airport-using business travelers over regular New York transit users, that’s irking transit people. In order for riders to get from Manhattan to LaGuardia via this still-aspirational AirTrain, they would either have to take the 7 train past LaGuardia Airport to Willets Point and then backtrack by way of the AirTrain, or travel along the infrequent Port Washington branch of the Long Island Rail Road to the same stop. "The 7 is well-connected, but you have to go to the end of the line and you pass LaGuardia to get there,” said Orcutt. “And the Long Island Rail Road is pretty negligible, because it’s not to the main line so it doesn’t connect Long Island to the airport at all.” And then there's the question of crowding on the 7 train. In 2001, when the M.T.A. was considering extending the N train through Astoria—a plan that is pleasingly direct and politically difficult—M.T.A. planning director Bill Wheeler was asked why the 7 train couldn't simply be extended to LaGuardia instead. "Wheeler said that the high capacity of passengers the 7 Train has each day, unlike the N Train, makes branching service off from that line a more difficult and less viable option," according to an article in the Queens Chronicle. When Capital asked the M.T.A. what had changed since then, M.T.A. spokesman Adam Lisberg pointing to signaling improvements coming to the 7 line. "We’re installing CBTC on the 7, which will be up and running by 2017 and will increase capacity along the entire line," he emailed. "The Governor's Office consulted the MTA and the Port Authority and determined the 7 line was the less expensive option and we the least intrusive to neighborhoods," added Beth DeFalco, a Cuomo spokeswoman, when asked to comment on the backlash. Or, put another way, it beats having nothing. “Of course they have better options,” said Steve Sigmund, a former Port Authority executive who's now executive director of Global Gateway Alliance, a group that supports improvements to New York's airports. “The N train would be a one-seat ride. It would be great, it would be preferable to having a two-seat ride. But those better options have never happened. They’re probably not going to happen. They encounter lots of community opposition. This one encounters a lot less. In the category of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, this is a significant improvement to what’s there now.” http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/01/8560609/7-laguardia-plan-prompts-transit-advocate-uproar?top-featured-1 |
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