But those projects, and others from the Lower Hudson Valley through New York City and Long Island, are all part of a plan. It's overseen by leaders throughout the New York metropolitan regions, including the county executives of Westchester, Putnam and Rockland. And that plan is called the Regional Transportation Plan. It's produced by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. And it's online now, for you to look at. Your comments are encouraged.

"All of the road improvements, the bridge improvements, transit improvements, things like replacements of buses, replacements of Metro-North (trains) ... They all have their genesis in this plan," said Jan Khan, NYMTC's project manager on the report.

Let me say upfront: This report is not the latest summer blockbuster. It ain't Grisham or Stephen King. But it makes a key point - there is a plan to keep the roads and bridges from clogging for good, to get trains rolling where no train now rolls, to speed up buses, and to get more people into car pools and van pools. Increasingly, it looks at other ways of getting around, such as bicycles.

It's not meant to be simply a list of projects chosen by planners and public officials. It's supposed to reflect what people throughout the region want. People can find the report at www.nymtc.org and can send in their comments by e-mail, fax or traditional mail. NYMTC spokeswoman Lisa Daglian said it was put together after workshops were held last year to give people a chance to spell out their priorities.

"It's really the gamut of what people are interested in," she said.

The projects are needed as the population grows in the NYMTC region - New York City, Long Island and Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. It's expected to grow to 14.4 million in 2035 from 12.5 million now, according to the report.

The council is formed by federal law, and we need it if we want federal bucks to pay for these projects. And we do. Maintaining the transportation systems we have now is expected to cost $290 billion for replaced equipment and buildings and $661 billon to maintain and operate - that's coming close to a trillion dollars - over 25 years.

"That's critical to the county because that is really the backbone of our entire transportation program, not only involving our mass transit, but our road projects," said Westchester County Transportation Commissioner Larry Salley. "It's the vehicle through which all transportation funding flows into the county."

Among the projects mentioned in the report is Westchester's plan for a souped-up bus service, called Bus Rapid Transit, down Central Avenue. Salley said the county is working with Yonkers, White Plains, Greenburgh and the state Department of Transportation to coordinate the plan. Bus Rapid Transit systems make for quicker rides by using lanes dedicated to the buses, traffic lights programmed to give the buses priority, and special stops that allow passengers to buy their tickets in advance.

Of course Manhattan gets a lot of attention in the report. Four "foundation projects" listed in the report are all at least partly in Manhattan. They are the extension of the No. 7 subway line, the construction of the Second Avenue subway, the creation of a line connecting Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, and the Access to the Region's Core, a rail tunnel from New Jersey to Manhattan.

When the Long Island Rail Road runs to Grand Central, the plan is to eventually run some Metro-North trains to Pennsylvania Station. With that, the railroad plans to create some stops along the Hudson and New Haven lines, which would use existing Amtrak tracks to get to the Penn.

The Lower Hudson Valley gets a spotlight, too. There's the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, expected to cost $16 billion; the bus service in Westchester; work on Interstate 84; and a plan to expand parking and build a new pedestrian bridge at the Southeast Metro-North train station in Brewster.

The final plan has to be in place by Oct. 1, Khan said.

A meeting will be held for the Lower Hudson Valley to talk about the report July 14 at the Westchester County Center, 198 Central Ave., White Plains. It will be held in two sessions, from 3 to 5 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. Comments may be sent by e-mail to Khan at jkhan@dot.state.ny.us; by sending a fax to 212-383-2418; or by writing to Mr. Jan Khan, NYMTC, 199 Water St., 22nd Floor, New York, NY 10038. The deadline for comments is 4 p.m. July 31.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The main principles of the report outlined a vision of sustainability and vibrancy that centered around critical transport solutions and completing the World Trade Center.

Director of the institute, Jack S. Nyman, said although the report was conceived in a very different market—it was printed just before the market “went south”—the recommendations are even more pertinent under the current conditions.

The Importance of Transit

President and CEO of Silverstein Properties, Larry Silverstein, said his company will build three towers along the eastern side of the 16-acre WTC. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) The Downtown 2020 report discusses six principles that its authors believe are essential to Lower Manhattan’s future. They include: reinforcing Downtown’s “historic urban structure” and building a sustainable future; creating new housing units to accommodate population growth; building more class A office space; reducing congestion and connecting Downtown regionally and globally through transport linkages; maximizing “access to the water’s edge”; and creating 24/7 entertainment and cultural districts.

The report was prepared by a team that includes representatives from Baruch College, New York University, and private companies including Real Capital Analytics, Grubb & Ellis, and Sam Schwartz Engineering. Connecting Manhattan locally, regionally, and globally through improved transportation systems and reducing congestion was a key topic discussed at WTC Tower 7 on Tuesday.

The Fulton Transit Center was identified as a crucial project to push ahead and complete before expected population growth added a million more people over the next 20-25 years.

“The problem is congestion,” said Joel P. Ettinger, Executive Director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. The council is responsible for highway, mass transit, and freight in New York City, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley.

“We have severe transit congestion … And we have real freight congestion,” Ettinger said. “If you think it’s bad now, just wait—this may be referred to as the good old days.”

The interconnection of transport and land-use dovetailed the transport priorities to match land development throughout the region. Five of the ten areas for growth and development identified by the Council are in the New York City region. They include Lower Manhattan, Hudson Yards, Jamaica, Downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City. The matching transport solutions include the Second Avenue subway, the 7 subway line, and access to region’s core—projects totaling around $582 billion. An expected $5 billion overflow of funding will fall well short of the $50-60 billion needed for new projects outlined in their report last month, Ettinger said.

Preparing for the Good Times

Elizabeth Berger, President of Alliance for Downtown New York, was adamant that Lower Manhattan not only has a future, “but could lead the future.” She said the area remains the business location of choice, proven by the 203 firms that have moved operations there since 2005. Between 2005 and 2008, employment increased by 26 percent in Downtown Manhattan, she said. The residential population Downtown has doubled sine 9/11, and tourism has almost doubled since 2003.

“We have to keep building and diversifying. We have to be ready for the next wave of investment and prosperity,” Berger said. She outlined the business community’s priorities, the first being the World Trade Center. “We have to keep this going. This is the single largest stimulus project in New York City. We need this project.”

The redevelopment of the WTC site will provide the office infrastructure that will be required to remain the business capital of the world when the economy recovers, she said.

The second priority is the Fulton Transit Center, Berger said. She said the Transit Center should have: “More capacity, better connections, and the kinds of passenger amenities that employees expect—as they get them in Midtown and every other international business center.”

Berger singled out the one square mile at the Stone Street intersection as a model commercial, residential, and tourism sector—coexisting in complementary way. “It’s the new world’s first live/work community. And the key is transportation.”

Professor Robert W. Burchell, from Rutgers University, stressed that transportation is an investment. “We can’t lose train services. We can’t raise fares,” he said. Improving access on the West Side and decongesting Downtown were important, and the stimulus “must mean doing existing projects.” Burchell proclaimed Manhattan as “the jewel” of sophisticated cities, outweighing London, Berlin, and Hong Kong—the main competition for top global city. “This is the address of choice.”

The projection of job losses through to 2010 is 200,000-270,000 and this, combined with a lack of credit and constrained Wall street bonuses, will significantly affect real estate, he said. The report recommends that New York City and Downtown continue to become more residential, including affordable housing.

President and CEO of Silverstein Properties, Larry Silverstein, said his company will build three towers along the eastern side of the 16-acre World Trade Center site.

The first, WTC1 (formerly known as the Freedom Tower), is now 135 feet above ground, he said. In the southeast corner of the site, Tower 4 is also rising. “The present schedule for Tower 4 is sometime around 2012, and the completion of Tower 1 is scheduled for sometime after that,” Silverstein said. “It’s important not to get deflected by what’s happening today.” Another cleared site that is ready to go will have a Four Seasons Hotel with a 912-foot residential tower on top, he said. The project will begin once the institutions come together and the banks start to lend again. “At the moment are they lending? No. Today? No. Tomorrow? Watch. Tomorrow they will start to lend again. We’re beginning to see the first signs of freeing up.”

Office space in the area will underpin the business for the future, he said. The WTC is where the spatial needs for business is, “when the economy comes back and the market starts to grow again,” Silverstein said.

Other panel members included Lance Jay Brown and Robert Paaswell, of Baruch College, Peter Salins of Stony Brook University, and Rosemary Scanlon of NYU Real Estate Institute. Other guest speakers included Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and Seth Meyer from the office of the deputy mayor.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

While leading a walking tour of the area, Mr. Gandy, one of the nation’s leading experts on bicycle and pedestrian design, recommended the use of roundabouts, flowered planters, crosswalk striping and art work to create a landscape that is safe and accessible to walkers as well as pleasing to the eye.

Richard Ward, a Village trustee and a longtime advocate of healthful transportation, believes the workshop was helpful in identifying areas for improvement that may later be included in a master plan.

“My long term goal is to improve our infrastructure to better accommodate walking, biking and scootering to the business district, the train station and the parks,” he said. “This will improve public health, reduce congestion, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and increase the availability of car parking spaces in the business district.”

In addition to Mr. Ward, workshop participants included: VOL Trustee Anne McAndrews; Town Supervisor Valerie O’Keeffe; Laura Siegal, legislative aide to Judy Myers; David Ciminesi and Maria Stanton from the Larchmont Traffic Commission; and Environmental Committee members Suzanne Frank and Jennifer Jensen.

Mr. Gandy will provide a written report with recommendations within the next few weeks to the Sound Shore Trailways Committee, a recently formed group whose mission is to improve accessibility to trailways and waterways for greater recreational use by residents. Chaired by Mr. Ward, the committee is exploring development of a master plan for Larchmont that addresses bike paths, walkways and kayak access. The committee also met recently with state representatives from the National Park Service to discuss improving access to the Larchmont Reservoir and Premium/Pine Brook marshlands areas.

The March 24th workshop was funded by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council and co-sponsored by the Westchester County Dept. of Transportation and the Rye YMCA. This is the second such workshop in Larchmont and Mamaroneck. In February 2008, a Safe Routes to School workshop was held to address walkability issues around local schools. These initiatives are part of the YMCA’s Activate America movement whose goal is to promote healthy lifestyles through increased physical fitness and healthy eating among both school children and the community at large.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

But he assured a gathering of high-ranking transportation officials in Manhattan that money would not be doled out like political pork. “This isn’t Albany people picking projects,” he said. Regional planning organizations will set the priorities.

Gilchrist also said, “We’re going to build a lot of competition into this process.” He was referring to a system being established to snag funding left on the table by other states.

Gilchrist said quick action will be needed, especially with the $2.4 billion in stimulus money the state received for roads and bridges. “We have to spend a good portion within 120 days and the rest within one year,” he said.

Stimulus money won’t be nearly enough to fund the many projects that the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council believes are needed in its region, which includes the city, Long Island and the northern suburbs. Joel Ettinger, executive director of the council, said at its annual meeting yesterday that only $5 billion in funding from various sources has been identified for projects that would cost $50 billion to $60 billion.

The bulk of the money will go to repairs rather than expansion projects, which are less likely to be shovel-ready. That should favor older, built-up cities like New York over areas like eastern Suffolk County. Steve Levy, the county executive, expressed concern about that at the NYMTC meeting. “We have nothing to repair. We have no infrastructure,” he said. “I’m one of those people who believe we need new construction.”

He said motorists can get stuck for an hour on a narrow, four-mile road connecting Sunrise and Montauk highways in the Hamptons.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The findings were presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a coalition of government agencies and major transportation providers, including the MTA, Port Authority and city and state DOTs.

The list of projects include completion of the Fulton Street Transit Center in lower Manhattan, a 10th Avenue station on the 7 line extension to the far West Side, bringing Metro-North trains into Penn Station and a train connecting lower Manhattan to JFK Airport.

Officials say the biggest obstacle to getting the projects built is funding.

"We estimate that it will cost in the range of $50 to $60 billion to complete these investments. Here's the problem, we've only identified $5 billion in available funds," said Joel Ettinger, New York Metropolitan Transportation Council.

The group also reiterated its support for four major projects already underway, including the Second Avenue Subway, the Long Island Rail Road link to Grand Central, the 7 line extension, and a new Hudson River rail tunnel.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The one-size-fits-all transportation project is going to have to give way to one that’s more tailored to preserving and enhancing the qualities -- the sustainability, the environmental qualities, the community values -- that make each city, each county across this country special. We're looking to sustain and build communities -- reinforce them in ways that work.

After the meeting wrapped up, I spoke to Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin to get her take on Barrett's remarks. "Building communities is very different than building roads," she said. "It's more about creating places that attract people."

Kind of gets you wondering whether there's a secret backchannel between Ray LaHood and the fine folks at Project for Public Spaces.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

Thomas Barrett Thursday addressed the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, which includes the counties of Putnam, Rockland and Westchester, and said the federal program will mean a significant boost to New York.

“There are a lot of projects that are ready to go and before long I think you’ll see the construction workers, the engineers, the electricians, maintenance crews and many others will be at work here on projects throughout New York, throughout Long Island, throughout the Lower Hudson Valley,” he said. “It will put people to work and I think more importantly move us toward some of our longer range goals as a nation.”

The stimulus gives New York “a helping hand,” said Barrett.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

-Tunneling for the Second Avenue subway line began. Small businesses along Second Avenue complained of business loss due to the noise and dust. An association of 40 businesses began the legislative process to garner financial support during the construction process. Their plan included a grant, property tax abatement, and a period of no sales tax to attract customers.

-Transit groups said the city must pare down on unneeded parking. They asked the city to do away with zoning requirements that force builders to provide a certain amount of parking whether the demands is there or not.

-New York Metropolitan Transportation Council held public workshops to gather ideas to develop a transit plan for the next 15 years. 2009 will be the year the details of that plan get hashed out and funding is allocated.

-New commercial buildings will be mandated to provide indoor bike racks. While the original proposed bill included current landlords, the change is a step in the right direction, said transit advocates. On the flip side, the State funds allocated to adding bike lanes were slashed in half for the coming fiscal year, delaying goals to make NYC thoroughly bike friendly by 2030.

-In other biking news, the Department of Transportation held a global bike rack design contest to find the shape of New York City's next standard bike rack. The winner's design was turned over to the city for popular adoption.

-To encourage city planners to develop mixed-use areas (residential and commercial) near transit hubs, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a non-profit group that promotes transit-oriented development (TOD), gave grants up to $50,000 each. The grants are meant to supplement municipal funds. Grants will be awarded next month.

-Parking laws got tweaked a bit. Now drivers may park for the maximum allowed time at nonfunctional meters whether they are broken or missing. Also, if street cleaning doesn't happen because of a snow storm, the city can no longer ticket you for not moving your car.

-The State Department of Transportation issued a report that said transit use grew since 2003. Meanwhile, the change in automobile travel remained stable, making it the first time since World War II that transportation growth occurred only in public transit. Of that change, bike travel grew the most, by 70 percent since 2002.

-To mend a $1.2 billion hole in the MTA budget, Albany commissioned former MTA head Richard Ravitch to come up with a solution for the ailing transit authority. He and his team came up with such ideas as tolling East River bridge users, a small across-the-board payroll tax, and a lock-key fund to be set up for the MTA. A few others, including City Comptroller William Thompson, also pitched in; Thompson suggested a weight-based vehicle registration fee that would discourage the purchase of SUVs. The MTA opted chose none of the suggestions, opting instead to raise fares by 23 percent in June, reducing the frequency of service, and cutting several bus and subway lines.

-Congress approved a nationwide plan to built 11 regional high-speed rail networks. The one to serve New York would take passengers to Washington, DC in under two hours, factoring stops along the way. The plan was inspired by such rail systems in Europe and Asia. The U.S. Transportation Secretary began soliciting proposals from entities willing to design, build, maintain, and operate such rail lines for their regions.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

Commuters stuck in traffic on the crumbling Tappan Zee Bridge surely must imagine what it feels like to travel free of gridlock, to remain constantly in motion, to arrive at their jobs feeling relaxed.

They could have that chance when a replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge opens, possibly as soon as 2017. Around the same time, they could have the option to catch a high-speed bus to take them across Interstate 287. Trains carrying them from Rockland County directly to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan could come later.

Many agree that investing in mass transit is the answer to address congestion that's predicted to occur soon - peak-period traffic in the I-287 corridor is projected to increase by 30 percent by 2035.

Change can't come soon enough for Lisa Mazza. Recent construction work on the bridge has made her commute home to Mount Vernon nightmarish. A 35-minute drive from Pomona Middle School, where she works as a teacher, often takes 75 minutes.

As a result, Mazza sees her two children, ages 10 and 5, less and less, as she scrambles to make sure their homework is done, lays out their clothes for the next day, and gets them each ready for bed.

"My husband and I are away from them the majority of the day," Mazza said. "I would like to sit down and eat dinner with them. I would like to hear about their day. When I get stuck in traffic, there's no downtime with them."

If she had the opportunity, Mazza would take a commuter train to Rockland and catch a bus that would drop her close by her job.

After six years and $57 million of study, the state has finally settled on a $16 billion solution for the region's transit troubles: replace the Tappan Zee Bridge, at a cost of $6.4 billion.

Then decisions will be made whether to first build a $2.9 billion high-speed bus network, which would mostly run in dedicated lanes along I-287 from Suffern to Port Chester, or a new commuter rail line. It would start from the existing Suffern train station, which is on New Jersey Transit's Port Jervis Line, hug the state Thruway across the new span to just south of Tarrytown, where it would connect with Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line and provide a direct ride to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. Its price tag would approach $6.7 billion.

How many people would use the two mass transit systems would likely depend on a combination of factors, such as the cost of the fare, frequency of service, travel times, and even the price of gas.

The biggest problem is, no one knows who will pay for any of it.

Nonetheless, the need remains.

Demand for mass transit

By 2035, the population in Rockland is expected to increase by 28 percent, to nearly 385,000 people. And in neighboring Orange County, it is projected to be 51 percent higher, approaching 570,000 people. Westchester County's population will remain more stable, growing only by 6 percent, adding up to 1 million residents.

"If you look at the growth by county and by the region, we see phenomenal growth forecast for the next 25 years. If nothing is done, we'll see more congestion," said Lisa Daglian, spokeswoman for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, which sets the planning agenda for Rockland, Westchester, Putnam, New York City and Long Island.

The demand is there, state officials say. By 2035, nearly 40,000 rides will be taken on the commuter trains and buses across the new bridge, with about 75 percent of them heading to and from New York City. More than 40,000 weekday trips would be taken within Rockland and Westchester.

These ridership forecasts were laid out in a recently released report that recommended the best types of mass transit to serve Lower Hudson Valley residents. They satisfy two major, but disparate, travel needs: getting to Manhattan directly from west of the Hudson River and suburb-to-suburb travel.

The predictions were arrived at using sophisticated computer models that crunched enormous amounts of demographic and economic projections. The transportation council provided the data and software tool to calculate the forecasts. The Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 Corridor project team modified the model to show its proposed ridership.

Project team director Michael Anderson said ridership forecasts for 2015, 2020 and 2025 were expected to be completed next year.

"Transportation models are like weather forecasts. They will tell you more or less what to wear," but they are not crystal balls, DOT Commissioner Astrid Glynn said.

But Jerry Ilowite, a member of the South Nyack Planning Board, has a more fundamental question: What is a reasonable level of ridership to justify new mass transit?

Anderson said there is no minimum figure that justifies transit, but the project team had a good sense of where this project ranks nationwide among hundreds of other transportation projects to secure federal transportation funds.

The combination of BRT and commuter rail was chosen for several reasons, according to the project team's Transit Mode Selection Report. Both its capital and operating costs fell into the middle range of the various choices, but combining trains and buses offered the highest in travel-time benefits, fare revenue, new ridership and total riders. The selection also fared well in other key categories.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a Manhattan nonprofit that promotes mass transit and lobbied hard for BRT, has been examining the figures in the transit report to gain a better understanding of what led to the decision by the project team - made up of the DOT, state Thruway Authority and Metro-North Railroad - and what impact transit will have.

The preferred choice

Kate Slevin, Tri-State's executive director, said the state's choice "blows away" the other options based on ridership. Commuter rail in Rockland and cross-corridor Bus Rapid Transit would attract 79,900 daily riders in 2035. The next-closest option was rail in Rockland with BRT just across Westchester, which had 66,200 riders.

Slevin cautioned against reading too much into the forecasts, but said they served a purpose.

"They can still be used as a general guide," Slevin said recently. "They're not perfect but they're the best numbers that we have."

A rail tunnel project, being proposed by NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, for the first time figured into the project team's report.

The Access to the Region's Core, or ARC, project would provide a one-seat ride to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan to Orange and Rockland residents, via the Pascack Valley and Main-Bergen lines, who now have to switch trains.

The projects will complement each other, both sides said. Ridership will more than double to and from Rockland and Orange with ARC by 2030; the east-west Rockland line would provide close to 30,000 rides each weekday.

About two-thirds of the transit ridership will be in Rockland and Westchester, either between the two counties or within them. Most people would not travel the entire 30-mile corridor or even cross the Hudson but would use the new transit systems to travel from town to town, or a few stations apart. But with easier connections from Connecticut and Orange County, some of those riders will no doubt come from outside of the area.

Additional Facts

Farebox figures The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which advocates for increased mass-transit uses in the region, did its own analysis of the selected bus rapid transit-rail option to determine the farebox recovery ratio, which is the percentage of the operating budget made up by fares.

The higher the percentage, the less of a deficit the transit agency has to fill, said Kate Slevin, Tri-State's executive director.

This project has an overall 41 percent farebox recovery ratio, with bus rapid transit around the 50 percent mark, she said. The most lucrative transit systems reach 60 percent.

NYC Transit has a 58.9 percent farebox recovery ratio, NJ Transit's is 51.3 percent and Long Island Railroad's is 46.9 percent.

"This percentage is quite high and in line with some of the largest transit systems in the country," Slevin said in an e-mail.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The award, which was presented by state DOT Commissioner Astrid Glynn at a ceremony in Albany on Oct. 21, recognized his contributions over the last decade for developing a regional freight planning process.

"At the state Department of Transportation, our employees are one of our biggest assets, without which we would not be able to meet our mission of managing the state's transportation infrastructure," Commissioner Glynn said. "Governor David Paterson and I are proud to highlight the successes of these hardworking people."

The awards are presented annually to employees who demonstrate exceptional skill or dedication within one of four categories, including act of valor, career excellence, program or process advancement and project or individual accomplishment.

"For the last 10 years, Howie has brought a renewed emphasis and energy to freight planning in our region," said Joel Ettinger, executive director of NYMTC. "Considering that the vast majority of the freight in the tri-state region is transported by trucks on public roads - and that we expect to see a 47 percent increase in freight movement in our region over the next 20 years - this work is increasingly important to our communities and to our economic health. The work that Howie is doing really is groundbreaking and, without a doubt, he deserves this recognition."

Mann joined the NYMTC staff in 1983, and since 1999, has spearheaded regional freight planning. He is a nationally recognized expert in the field and has been in the forefront of critical freight-related studies and plans, including NYMTC's first Regional Freight Plan. He is currently overseeing studies looking at the potential to connect freight planning and land use planning through freight villages in the region, and at multistate coordination in the provision of truck rest stops in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Mann also convenes NYMTC's Freight Transportation Working Group and has made presentations to national organizations on freight issues.

"It's been rewarding and satisfying to work on a subject as unique as freight planning," said Mann. "I have had a great opportunity to contribute to a better understanding of something that affects everyone's life. As we continue to plan for the future of freight movement in our area, our past efforts will be the basis for the next steps and a rational plan for our region."

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council is an association of governments, transportation providers and environmental agencies that is a collaborative forum for regional transportation planning. The NYMTC region includes New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The New York Metropolitan Transit Council launched the free transportation information service on Thursday via phone and Web. “It’s a one-stop shop for travel, transit, and traffic,” said Joel Ettinger, the Council’s executive director. Not only can the service help commuters plan trips, but it can also alert them of emergencies, road and transit service conditions, and offer resources for alternative travel solutions, such as vanpooling and senior services.

New York State will be among eight States to activate their 511 number by the end of this year. San Francisco’s municipal government was the first to take up 511. The Federal Communication Commission designated 511 as each State’s transportation hotline in 2000. The FCC’s goal is to have each State on board by Sept. 30, 2010. So far, 32 States’ 511 hotlines offer full or partial geographical coverage.

At a time when more people are giving up driving, the service allows public transit patrons to better utilize available transit options. “You’ll be able to plan a trip from Buffalo to Montague without going on a highway,” said Todd Westhius of the New York State Department of Transportation.

By Web On www.511ny.org, commuters can use the multi-agency trip planner to select their start and destination locations using the trip planner. Hit the “Plan Trip” button and the next page will detail each leg of your trip on any transit agency. If there’s a hitch, say, construction or an incident, an alert will be displayed. Travel time and fare, along with walking maps, are prominently displayed.

Two maps that are based on the Google maps interface allow users to scope out the scene before they leave home.

The Transit Conditions map has checkbox options for weather, street closures, transit events, special events, and construction. For those who prefer lists to maps, all incidents are listed on a separate page as they are reported.

The Traffic Conditions map feeds the picture from public traffic cameras in addition to the features available on the Transit Conditions map.

By Phone Phone menu options are more limited than the 511 website. So far, English is the only language available. Dial 511 in New York State and 888-GO511NY (888-465-1169) if out of the area.

Expect to listen carefully to the menu options, as there are many. The user can speak their desired menu option or use the touchtone alternative. 511 has no human operators but the system can connect you to individual transit agencies’ operators.

The phone service is split into nine calling regions across the State. The system will detect the region you call from and tailor menu options accordingly.

The Upgrade Being a new service in the State, 511 has plans to flesh out their offerings. On the to-do list are applications for mobile devices, a customized homepage called My511, and RSS/XML feeds for travel alerts.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The New York State Department of Transportation unveiled "511," its new traffic and transit help line Thursday.

Travelers can get real time updates on road conditions as well as traffic reports.

Officials say it will soon include construction alerts and weather updates. They also hope to provide information on alternate routes as well as alternate modes of transportation.

"We're the only agency with a true statewide perspective of transportation operations," said 511 project director Todd Westhuis. "And a number of events both for us, and the MTA down here response to emergency events, forced us to realize that we need to do a better job of providing information to our traveling public."

Officials say the system will be up and running statewide by January 1.

Travelers can call 511 or visit 511ny.org.

Customers can also subscribe to the free 511 text service.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The workshop is open to all, and guests can drop in any time between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Monday in the meeting room in the Sea View headquarters of Community Board 2 at 460 Brielle Ave.

The goal of the workshop, hosted by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, is to determine priorities for initiatives eligible for millions in federal grants for community transportation services.

"We want to ensure that Federal dollars are going to provide services where and when they are needed, and that seniors, people with disabilities and low income New Yorkers are able to get where they need to go, when they need to go there," said Joel Ettinger, executive director of NYMTC.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a planning organization designed to look at the big picture and coordinate inter-agency efforts in developing a long-term vision for the region, recently held two public workshops on Long Island. Residents, advocates and local transportation experts alike shared with the council representatives their ideas for where the money should go. But the public comment period for the reevaluation, which is mandated in order to qualify for more funds, continues through the end of October. The funding goes toward all forms of transportation except aviation.

Among the ideas proposed by those in attendance at the Suffolk County and Nassau County workshops were: Developing more inter-modal facilities for freight rail shipping to lessen the need for long-distance trucking; building solar-powered electric car re-powering stations in Long Island Railroad parking lots; allocating boat ramps designed for an amphibious bus company; giving senior citizens door-to-door bus service; developing a bike path along the full length of Sunrise Highway.

Granted, there is no guarantee that any of the suggestions will be implemented, let alone included in the draft 20-year plan that will be issued next spring. Among the biggest projects soaking up the largest percentage of the funds for the region are: The LIRR’s East Side access project, which will link the trains with Grand Central Station; The 2nd Avenue Subway; The 7 Train Extension from the Times Square station to the West Side; The Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel, which would help alleviate the already near-capacity train tunnels that service New Jersey and beyond.

Anyone interested in watching a version of the workshop can view the Manhattan hearing online at www.nymtc.org. A link for any last minute public comments can also be found on the website.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

NYMTC is in the process of creating a 2010-2035 Regional Transportation Plan that will provide a framework for future road, bridge, freight, mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian transportation improvements, as well as what, if any, federal funding will be available.

The Long Island meetings will be held:

From 3 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 6 in the Dennison Building media room, Hauppauge

From 3 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 7 in the Old Courthouse ceremonial chamber, Mineola.

Anyone who cannot attend the meetings is urged to send comments, ideas and suggestions to NYMTC through its Web site, www.NYMTC.org.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

NYMTC is beginning work on its 2010-2035 Regional Transportation Plan and is looking for public input to help it improve the region's transportation system - roads, bridges, freight and mass-transit facilities, and bicycle and pedestrian networks - and to figure out ways to pay for the upgrades.

Here’s the schedule:

- Putnam: 3-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. Sept. 22 at the county government complex in Carmel.

- Rockland: 3-5 p.m. and 6:30-8:30 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack in the fourth floor community room.

- Westchester: 3-5 p.m. and 6:30-8:30 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Westchester County Center in White Plains.

Comments, ideas and suggestions also can be made through Oct. 31 at NYMTC's Web site.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

Beginning Tuesday, Sept. 15, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) held community workshops in 10 counties to pool ideas and suggestions in allocating funds to various areas of regional and local transportation, including projects linking transportation systems, accommodating increased freight traffic, reducing car use, and conducting land use studies.

The energy generated at these workshops is remarkable, said Lisa Daglian of the NYMTC, who hasn’t missed a single workshop yet. “The intensity and passion that people bring coming in is incredible,” she said.

The workshops draw a wide cross-section of people, according to Daglian. “Some people come to all the workshops, there are some who haven’t even heard of us until they saw an article or events calendar in the paper, and some have been dragged in by their neighbors,” Daglian said. Newcomers open up almost immediately.

“We all live and work here,” she said. “These are all issues that pertain to all of us. For instance, how to increase pedestrian access? How to get people out of cars and into public transit?”

All the comments generated at these workshops are recorded and sent to appropriate agencies for consideration. Some ideas coming to fruition were born of such workshops—for example, bus rapid transit lanes and a traffic calming study in Downtown Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, transportation agencies are working to prioritize proposed projects in need of existing or additional funding. There are two lists of projects being submitted to the Program, Finance, and Administration Committee: the first, Resolution 260, deals with only reprogrammed funds and needs no new funding; and the second, Resolution 261, contains items requesting funds.

Resolution 261 is the big list. Some 78 items long, it contains projects under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Transit Authority and New York City Department of Transportation, among others. The projects run the gamut from new bike lanes to station renovations, each asking for up to 2.5 million dollars from the Federal government.

The NYMTC brings together transportation agencies that together oversee 65 percent of the State, including New York City, Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley.

By the end of the year, NYMTC is expected to share their plans for 2010 to 2035 with a Federal legislative delegation.

What’s on the Plate

The MTA is working on several projects—a new subway line on 2nd Ave. in Manhattan, due to be completed in 2015; connecting two Long Island Rail Road lines from Queens to Grand Central Station; and extending the 7 line to the west side of Manhattan.

Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) will connect midtown Manhattan and New Jersey via a new tunnel serving two rail lines under the Hudson River, which would require expanding Penn Station. The new tunnel will be used by Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.

Synching existing transportation lines is a theme in NYMTC’s plans. Plans are in the works for a new train that can operate on both manual LIRR and automated AirTrain lines, thus increasing options for fliers.

Since the rest of the world is moving toward using larger cargo ships, New York must think about deepening its harbors or raising the height of its bridges, according to Chris Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey during a NYMTC presentation on Thursday, Sept. 18.

Providing alternatives for regional air travel is another topic of discussion. “People flying between Newark and Philadelphia are chewing up valuable air slots,” Ward said.

Updates and webcasts of workshops will be available in the archives at www.nymtc.org.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

Queens commuters can give transportation officials a piece of their minds this Friday as the MTA will hold one of a series of interactive workshops where residents can voice their opinions on the state of the region’s transportation.

At previous workshops held this week in each of the five boroughs, commuters were encouraged to make comments and float ideas and suggestions about the state of their community’s transportation and its future.

In the past, these meetings have functioned as little more than lip service to frustrated straphangers, but according to Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit advocacy group that is beginning to change.

As regional public transportation issues become more pressing because of rising gas prices and increasing traffic and congestion, elected officials have begun to pay more attention, Norell said.

“These workshops traditionally don’t amount to very much,” Norvell said. “On the other hand, this could be a transformative year and transportation is becoming elevated as a city issue and elected officials are paying more attention.”

Transportation issues were big news in 2008. Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan may have stalled in the State Legislature, but regardless it made headlines and sparked passionate debate.

The meetings are convened by the Metropolitan Transportation Council, a quasi-governmental oversight arm of the MTA.

The NYMTC is the metropolitan planning organization for New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley. NYMTC was created in 1982 after the disbanding of the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, a metropolitan planning organization for the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

In 1991, the federal transportation act was passed to organize a regional transportation network around every city over a certain population. The NYMTC was charged with organizing the regional network and is intended to serve as a transportation planning forum to allow the 10 counties it represents to coordinate with each other.

The goal of the meeting is to discuss new transportation plans, NYMTC’s goals for the region and its development vision, and the regional socio-economic and demographic forecasts that will form the foundation of future plans.

At stake is the region’s transportation future, including where federal monies allocated.

An official at NYMTC said in a release, “Billions of Federal dollars will be spent over the next 25 years to improve the region’s transportation system and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) wants your input into how that money should be spent.”

At the Queens meeting, held at the Borough President Office, NYMTC will unveil its 2010-2035 regional transportation plan and lay out a long-range framework for improving the region’s transportation system – its roads, bridges, freight and mass transit facilities, and its bicycle and pedestrian networks—to borough residents.

The Queens workshop is scheduled from 3 to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 19, at the borough president’s office, Room 213, 120-55 Queens Blvd. in Kew Gardens.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

Robert DeBiase of Great Kills would like to see more options for bicyclists on Staten Island. So he came to one of two public workshops in St. George Wednesday hosted by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, or NYMTC.

"It's a very bike-able area, and yet almost nothing has been done," said DeBiase. "We have a few greenways that have been started and there's very little infrastructure."

NYMTC is a regional council mandated by the federal government that must formulate a long-term plan for how billions of federal transportation dollars are spent in New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley.

Some in attendance Wednesday suggested widening the Staten Island Expressway and improving public transit access to Brooklyn. The feedback from Wednesday's forums in St. George and 18 other forums held across the region will be incorporated into a plan covering 2010 to 2035.

"What we're forecasting as part of this plan is significant growth in population and employment for the region, for the city and even for Staten Island," said NYMTC planning group director Gerry Bogacz.

Patrick Hyland, the vice president of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, says the borough must take steps to accommodate that growth.

"Our road network really just can't handle the volume now," said Hyland. "If you project the population growth going out and registered vehicle growth going out, we have to start looking at other ways that other boroughs have. We don't have sufficient rail transport."

NYMTC must submit its plan to the federal government by October 1, 2009.

People can give feedback online through the end of October at www.nymtc.org.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

Starting Monday, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council will hold a workshop in each borough to get input on how to spend billions of federal transportation dollars earmarked for New York over the next quarter century.

"This is a chance for the public to tell us what's on their mind and how to improve the transportation system," said Jan Khan, who will oversee the workshops for the council, an association of government agencies, transit providers and environmental groups.

The public also can send suggestions to the council Web site, www.NYMTC.org.

The goal is to create a regional transportation plan to serve the growing city and environs through 2035. Council officials said they hope to hear ideas on everything from overhauling roads, bridges and mass transit to creating new bicycle and pedestrian networks.

"In the previous meetings, we have heard about things that we haven't thought of and received a lot of good feedback," Khan said.

But transportation advocates are divided over the significance of the public sessions.

"The real decision makers are in another room," said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. "The trick as an advocate is to discover that room, which is often the leadership of the MTA or the governor's office."

However, another advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives, is rallying its members to attend - via phone calls, postcards and 20,000 e-mails.

The group plans to push for improving bus lines and seizing street space for pedestrians through wider sidewalks and greenways. Transportation Alternatives will also lobby to complete the city's 1,800-mile bike master plan by 2015 - 15 years earlier than planned.

"I think this does sound like a historic opportunity to weigh in on the future of public transportation," said executive director Paul Steely White.

The Queens workshop is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 19, 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the borough president's office, Room 213, 120-55 Queens Blvd., Kew Gardens.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The council is holding workshops in each borough next week to hear ideas.

The goal is to create a regional transportation plan to serve the area through 2035.

For a schedule and list of locations of the workshops or to send a suggestion to the council, go to their website at NYMTC.org.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

RANDI MITZNER watched in alarm as the cost of driving to work rose from $15 a week three years ago to $35, then $40. One day last spring, she had had enough. Ms. Mitzner, a senior director of human resources at Education and Assistance Corporation in Hempstead, popped the question to her co-worker Charlene Middleton: Want to drive in together?

Now, four mornings a week, Ms. Middleton, a benefits manager, leaves her tidy brick-and-shingle cape in South Farmingdale at 8:10 and drives the two miles to Ms. Mitzner’s house in Wantagh. They alternate daily on who drives the next 10 miles, but on a rainy morning recently, it was Ms. Mitzner’s turn.

Ms. Middleton is mild; Ms. Mitzner is brassy. As the car wove through Jerusalem Avenue traffic, they fell easily into chitchat. They talked about weather and gardening (both have tomatoes), last night’s Mets game, the coming workday, Ms. Mitzner’s body temperature (“Am I freezing you out in here? Sorry, bad flash morning”), and — it came up three times — the price of gas.

“Last night I saw $4.19!”

“Where?”

“Right by the Seaford-Oyster Bay. A Gulf station.”

Car-pooling, seen by many as a relic of the oil-shocked 1970s, is one of those worthy ideas that people always found easier to admire than to do. But in sprawled-out suburbs like Long Island, it is creeping back for brand-new hard times. High gas prices, road congestion, limited mass transit options and fears of global warming are giving Long Islanders a powerful incentive to change their ways.

After 23 minutes, the Middleton-Mitzner team arrives in Hempstead — a car-pooling success story at a time when not much else about driving a car feels exalting. Ms. Mitzner says the arrangement saves her $20 a week; Ms. Middleton maybe as much as $30. For both it’s their first car pool. “I could see it continuing into the future,” Ms. Middleton said.

There are plenty of signs that Long Islanders’ attachment to the one-car, one-driver habit is breaking down. Ridership in the Long Island Expressway’s high-occupancy-vehicle lane — for cars with two or more people — continues to climb, while it is down in the regular lanes from last year, says Eileen W. Peters, spokeswoman for the State Department of Transportation. Use of the roadway’s seven park-and-ride lots was up 12 percent in the first six months of this year, compared with the same period in 2007.

Web sites that match up potential car-poolers on Long Island report a spike in traffic over the past few months. The online classified service Craigslist reported a 67 percent surge in posts for Long Island ride-shares from May to June.

And spurred by state grants, a growing number of companies have, for the first time in a generation, begun offering incentives to car-pooling employees, like better parking spaces and gas allowances.

Some transportation officials and advocates even speculate that an actual long-term change in drivers’ behavior is under way, despite Census Bureau figures that have shown an overall decline in car-pooling since its post-oil crisis peak in 1980.

“Right now the behavior focus is on saving money and getting more bang for the buck,” says Lisa Daglian, spokeswoman for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, an association of governmental transportation bodies. Throw in anxiety over the environment, she said, and “this is an opportunity for sea change.”

“Three dollars a gallon was my breaking point,” said Elizabeth Torbenson, 32, a financial analyst and first-time car-pooler from Stony Brook. Some days her husband commutes with her — he to the Hicksville train, she to her job at Cablevision in Bethpage. She has another car-pooling partner for the other days, so they can use the H.O.V. lane.

Car-pooling has its challenges — tardiness, heavy perfume, clashing musical tastes — that can tax the fragile dynamic of the two-person ride-share, by all accounts the standard arrangement these days (three-or-more ride-shares are uncommon because of the difficulty in scheduling).

“You know, it’s sometimes very hard to car-pool,” said Henry Carlender, a project manager at Computer Associates in Islandia, whose ride-share arrangement collapsed, he says, after he was once left stranded. “There is a question of character, temperament. You need to be very careful about the people you choose.”

Politeness counts, particularly in the morning, said Aaron Gao, who car-pools daily from Shirley to Jericho. When his partner drives, he says, she tunes to WBLI. “I don’t like that radio, but I just keep quiet,” he said. When it’s his turn, he plays classical. “I don’t know if she likes it, but she doesn’t say anything.”

Preparation helps, too. “It’s a matter of planning: ‘I’m not going to have my car today, so I’ll do what I had to do tomorrow or the next day,’ ” said Brenda Litzky, director of vendor relations at Clear Vision Optical in Hauppauge, which won a $30,400 state grant in June to promote transportation alternatives for employees. So far 35 of them, about 32 percent of the staff, have signed on for car pools since November, she said.

Green impulse notwithstanding, Alan Pisarski, a transportation behavior analyst and author of “Commuting in America,” doubts that most drivers are in the grips of a teachable moment. It’s more like a simple cost-benefit adjustment, he says: time versus fuel. “If gas prices went back to two bucks tomorrow,” he said, “everyone would go back to driving alone tomorrow.”

Mr. Gao, whose employer, Harmon Associates in Jericho, allows him flexible worktime so he can coordinate with his ride-share partner, says he would happily call it quits if gas prices dropped to $3.50. “It’s not convenient,” he says, even with the $250 to $300 he and his partner save monthly and the hour he has shaved off his weekly commute. “Of course, you know what?” he says. “The H.O.V. lane is getting busier and busier.”

Overloaded H.O.V. lanes, in fact, could actually end up driving the car pool trend more than fuel costs, Ms. Peters said, especially if it someday takes three in a car to use the lane, not two. “Three people in a Prius,” Ms. Peters says. “That would be the ultimate commuter car, wouldn’t it?”

Marianne Carillo, president of Long Island Transportation Management, or L.I.T.M., a Melville company with a $2.5 million state contract to promote transportation alternatives in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, says bringing government agencies and private companies on board is crucial to stemming the traffic tide.

L.I.T.M.’s “Commuter Choice” program offers many services, from help with ride-matching and taxi vouchers (for missed rides) to Long Island companies with at least 30 employees. Participation is up 25 percent since June last year, she said.

“With that number we are able to outreach to approximately 110,000 employees,” she said, at places like Geico, Honeywell, the Northport Veterans Affairs Hospital and Brookhaven National Laboratories. Adelphi University, Oyster Bay Town and both Nassau and Suffolk Counties received awards this year from L.I.T.M. and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council for their traffic-reduction programs.

The Web site (www.litm.org) is open to anyone looking for a way to cut their driving time, and offers information on where to find bicycle lockers and park and rides and how to arrange for van pools, telecommuting and flex time.

Ms. Carillo said the number of Long Islanders using the car pool match-up site NuRide.com, linked on L.I.T.M.’s Web site, jumped 70 percent — about 2,000 people — since June 2007, perhaps reflecting an openness among younger riders.

But she says she would like to go younger, getting the word to children before they develop the drive-alone habit. Her company runs a poster contest in Long Island schools with the transportation council; last year there were 802 entries.

“Schools should run curriculum campaigns — like with smoking and safety belts,” she said. “Young riders are much more aware.”

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

“It’s free, it’s good for the environment, good for your health,” he said, beads of sweat collecting under his helmet and underneath his backpack, about 5 miles into his 12-mile ride. “And it’s a little dangerous, so you get a little thrill at the beginning and the end of each day.” He also gets satisfaction from beating cars across the bridge. “I love it,” he said.

Five minutes later, another commuter pedaled along. Henry Minnerop, a partner in a Manhattan law firm and “70-plus” years old, said he drives each day — year round — to Englewood Cliffs, and then bikes about 12 miles into Midtown. “I park my bike in the garage I used to use when I drove in,” he said before riding off. “There’s a gym in my office. I shower and come out looking like a lawyer.”

Once limited to dense urban environments, bike commuting has found a small but devoted following in the New York City suburbs. While there have been no formal studies of the trend, transportation experts and cycling advocates say the number of suburban bike commuters is growing.

“Anecdotally, we’re seeing an increase,” said Lisa Daglian, a spokeswoman for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a regional planning organization. Companies are increasingly offering amenities like bicycle racks and showers, she said.

In 2006, fewer than 1 percent of all commuters in the Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey, Long Island and Connecticut biked, according to the Census Bureau’s yearly American Community Survey and the Connecticut Department of Transportation. That number was up slightly in some areas from 2005, but barely more than the survey’s margin of error.

Nevertheless, transportation experts predict interest will continue to expand out from New York City, where an estimated 131,000 people bike to work each day. “Most bike commuters are intracounty,” said Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives, a bike advocacy group in New York City that tracks commuting patterns. “But bike commuting trends are definitely growing, interborough and between counties.”

While some cite the environment and rising gasoline prices as reasons to bike, most suburban cycling commuters say they do it more to get outdoors, to get moving and to make the daily commute a little more enjoyable.

“Going into the city, it’s drudgery,” said Tom Begg, 43, of Glen Rock, who began riding to work this year. A consultant and a triathlete, he is one of a group of hard-core bike commuters who gather between 5 and 6 a.m. each day outside a car wash in Ridgewood to make the approximately 25-mile ride into New York City.

One of the longest bike commutes belongs to Phil Riggio of Darien, Conn., who rides to and from his Midtown office three times a week. Mr. Riggio, a technology trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, began making the 40-mile, two-hour trip in March, shortly after his office moved to Manhattan from Darien.

Taking the train left “no time to exercise,” he said. “I just thought I’d combine the workout time and the commuting time.”

He said his co-workers were either very encouraging or think his commute is crazy. "The reaction is always one extreme or the other," Mr. Riggio said.

Robyn Guimont also rides to work. Three times a week she packs her backpack with a change of clothes, lunch and her laptop and rides seven miles from Glastonbury, Conn., to downtown Hartford. Her office provides a bike rack in its garage.

“I am a 54-year-old woman who has a husband and two grown kids, a full-time job and a house to maintain,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “So I always tell people, if I can ride to work, anyone can!”

Bike commuting also takes place from Long Island or the Hudson Valley, but riders find the routes are less straightforward and less pleasant.

“A suicide mission” is how Kenneth E. Harris, president of the Century Road Club, described a ride from Nassau County into Queens. “I don’t see how you could possibly do it.”

The State Department of Transportation has studied how to create “continuity and contiguity” for cyclists between Long Island and Queens, said Howard J. Mann, a bike and pedestrian transportation analyst at the Metropolitan Transportation Council. “There’s been a refocus on sharing the road, on making bicycle enhancements work,” he said.

Twelve of the 21 major bridges and tunnels into and around New York City provide access for bikes. These include the Cross Bay, the Bayonne, the Goethals, the Marine Parkway and the Triborough Bridges, as well as the four East River bridges into Manhattan. The Henry Hudson Bridge was closed to bike traffic last summer, according to the Department of Transportation.

In addition to those who ride into the city, commuters like Brendan Conk of South Orange ride bikes between suburban towns. “I kind of fell into it,” he said of his rides to Jersey City, where he works for an investment bank.

Mr. Conk said he saved about $400 a month on parking and gasoline. But his route — through Newark and Belleville and along Route 7 — can be dangerous: “I have close calls with cars all the time. And I’ve had kids throw rocks at me.”

The Hudson Valley is more bucolic, with a network of greenways — some of them part of the East Coast Greenway, a kind of Appalachian Trail for cyclists — connecting towns for commuting as well as recreation, via off-road paths.

For those who ride into Manhattan, the George Washington Bridge, with its comfortable path, provides the only directly bikeable way. Because of this, the bridge gathers commuters of various types. Dr. Muller, the Mount Sinai doctor, said he sees three categories of riders on the bridge, based on their bikes.

“Multithousand-dollar road bikes headed for the long rides up to Nyack and Bear Mountain (always in Spandex), those like me who ride more modest road bikes to professional jobs on one or the other side of the river (often in Spandex), and young men who look to be from Latin America riding beat-up old bikes to jobs in North Jersey (never in Spandex),” he wrote in an e-mail message.

This is the other side of the bike commuting coin: those who ride to work not by choice but by necessity. For these commuters, who are disproportionately Hispanic, the daily ride can be especially dangerous.

As the heat rose outside the Home Depot in West Hempstead on Long Island, small groups of day laborers gathered under short trees alongside the parking lot. Here and there, heavily used mountain bikes were locked up; their owners had already found work. Jorge, who said he came to the United States from Guatemala 20 years ago, was among three dozen men still waiting for a nod from a contractor, and he leaned on a bike he said he had borrowed from a friend.

“The gas — it’s too expensive to use a car — you got to use a bicycle,” said Jorge, who would give only his first name. “We do this because we don’t have a lot of money. A lot of people do this here.”

Bike commuting takes on a greatly different aspect in this dusty parking lot. No one talks about green living or exercise. There are no showers and no bike racks. The only place to clean up is at a spigot on the side of an empty house nearby, and to lock up, the trees.

“Overwhelmingly, Hispanics are more likely to bike to work,” said David Mejias, a Democratic Nassau County legislator from North Massapequa, “and they overwhelmingly make up the fatalities.

“They are going to work at odd times, coming home at night from working in restaurants and bars,” he added, “and they have no reflective gear, no helmets.”

In 2006, Mr. Mejias worked with community groups to hand out safety equipment, but he said the problem persists. “It was unbelievable how many people were affected by this,” he said. “It’s a problem Islandwide.”

In 2006, 45 cyclists were killed in 5,402 reported accidents across New York State and 642 accidents and 5 deaths were reported in Connecticut, the most recent data available from the states’ transportation departments. In New Jersey, there were 2,299 accidents reported involving bicycles and 7 deaths in 2006; those numbers increased to 10 deaths in 2,319 accidents in 2007.

As interest in bike commuting has grown, so have the calls for safer riding options.

“There has been an increase in the number of people calling with bike questions, like ‘What is the status of the routes?’ and also complaints, like, ‘This road isn’t safe,’ ” said Edward Buroughs, deputy commissioner of planning in Westchester County. Most future road projects will have bicycle aspects, he said.

Transportation officials and local governments have stressed the importance of using safety gear like helmets — and, at night, reflective vests and bike lights — to reduce the risk of accidents.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The award recognizes organizations who demonstrate a strong commitment to economic and environmental issues through a commuter benefits program. To be eligible for the Regional Commuter Choice Award, an organization must provide quality service and elicit high participation for their program through a marketing campaign that encourages the use of buses, carpools, bicycling, and/or walking as alternatives to driving.

The Regional Commuter Choice Award Committee, which received more than 50 entries, twice as many as in previous years, chooses one winner from each of the participating regional areas: New York City, Long Island, Rockland, Westchester, and Putnam. Adelphi University, the only regional institution of higher education to receive this honor, was selected as the Long Island winner in the large business/organization category in recognition of its extensive free shuttle service and parking incentive program.

The University shuttle service, coordinated by the Department of Public Safety and Transportation, transports students, faculty, and administrators to and from nearby train stations, bus terminals, and shopping centers. The shuttles bussed approximately 196,793 passengers and made approximately 1,197 runs per week to 10 regular pick-up and drop-off locations in the area last year.

Adelphi's parking incentive program helps to prevent the overcrowding of campus parking fields. The program reimburses students, faculty, and administrators who park off-campus at the nearby Garden City Pool and provides a shuttle that runs between the parking site and campus every 15 minutes.

Adelphi University was presented the Regional Commuter Choice Outstanding Achievement Award at a ceremony hosted by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, on Tuesday, June 24, 2008.

For more information about the Adelphi University shuttle service or parking incentive program, please visit: http://administration.adelphi.edu/publicsafety.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The third annual Regional Commuter Choice Awards have been presented by Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef and New York Metropolitan Transportation Council Executive Director Joel Ettinger.

The awards were presented to employers that provide innovative ways for their workers to commute, said Ettinger.

“These employers look after their employees to try to find ways so that they don’t have to drive in a car alone to work,” he said. “These employers are looking at innovative approaches to get people onto transit, to get people into carpools and to get people into vanpools and in some cases, even bicycle or walk to work.”

The Leadership Award was presented to Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Outstanding Achievement awards were presented to the County of Rockland, Dress Barn and Lamont-Doherty. The Innovator award was presented to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades received the Rockland County Executive’s Leadership Award as well as an outstanding achievement award. The observatory employs about 480 people.

The County of Rockland and Dress Barn Inc. in Suffern also received outstanding achievement awards. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in Pearl River received the innovator award. The county employs about 3,300 people; Dress Barn, about 350, and Wyeth, about 3,100.

The Commuter Choice awards, now in their third year, are designed to draw attention to employers who advance the county’s economic and environmental health through such green programs as car and vanpooling, bicycling, pre-tax transit benefits, telecommuting and flex-time.

The awards were presented Wednesday by Scott Vanderhoef, the Rockland County executive, and Joel Ettinger, executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, in a ceremony at the Pearl River train station.

Contact
Lisa Daglian
212.383.7241

The Willowbrook college netted both the New York City Department of Transportation's prestigious Leadership Award and an Innovator Award for its strides in easing commutes for its staff and students.

The annual awards ceremony, held by the city and state DOTs, New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, Metropolitan Mobility Network and CommuterLink, recognizes businesses and institutions that make significant contributions to the environment by offering commuter benefit programs.

Finance professor and transportation expert Dr. Jonathan Peters, and Dr. Mike Kress, vice president for technology systems at the college, accepted the award on its behalf.

"It's nice to be recognized for the work we've been doing, trying to bring new ideas and help the community," Peters said. "We take it from the laboratory and get it out into the community and help people have a better day going to and from work." Students have widely embraced the shuttle service, which runs between the campus and the St. George Ferry Terminal, shaving about 20 minutes off a one-way trip on the bus. In addition, research being done at the college has helped experts better understand some of the problems facing Staten Island in terms of traffic and transit options, and has helped the MTA agree to expand bus service along the S93 route, which brings Brooklyn students to and from school.

"Receiving this distinguished award would not be possible without the hard work and dedicated vision of our faculty and staff," said Dr. Tomas Morales, CSI president. "And we are proud of Jon Peters, Tom Tyburczy, and interim Provost Mike Kress for helping make this extraordinary achievement possible." Staten Island University Hospital won an honorable mention for its encouragement of carpooling and transit use among its employees, as well as the availability of bike racks and on-site showers and lockers, for cyclists to get ready for the workday. SIUH also offcers free valet parking service for carpools of three or more employees, an option used by 66 staffers.

"I think it's great that the businesses are taking these steps to reduce congestion," said John Galgano, CEO of CommuterLink, an organization that arranges carpools for commuters traveling in similar directions.

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"Let's face it," said Joel Ettinger, executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, "less cars on the road adds up to less traffic congestion, less fuel being consumed at $4.25 a gallon, reduced carbon emissions, better air quality and an improved quality of life."

The council, made up of local governments and agencies that oversee transportation planning, held its third annual Nassau awards ceremony at the Long Island Rail Road's Hempstead station.

Suffolk awards will be handed out Tuesday in Hauppauge.

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System won awards for leadership and innovation.

With 38,000 employees, North Shore-LIJ began working with nonprofit Long Island Transportation Management to set up a carpooling program that allows workers to schedule their trips online and earn discounts from local retailers for participation.

North Shore-LIJ also runs a free shuttle and offers some full-time employees the option of working three 12-hour shifts per week.

Ettinger said the work program saved 1,200 trips in single-passenger vehicles this past year.

In addition, the council recognized Adelphi University, which has expanded its shuttle service from one driver making 20 to 30 stops a week eight years ago to 20 drivers on 10 buses carrying some 200,000 passengers last year. The service connects students and staff with local LIRR and bus service.

Nassau County was recognized as well for offering pretax commuter benefits and a carpooling program to its employees.

The number of nominees has doubled since the council began handing out awards three years ago, Ettinger said, calling that "a strong indicator that employers are stepping up."

Even people who use the Long Island Rail Road often have no choice other than to drive to stations, railroad president Helena Williams said.

"We always struggle with the issue of parking at the train station," she said. "But we need to realize parking is not always something we're going to be able to expand."

Regional Commuter Choice Awards winners

Here are winners of the 2008 Regional Commuter Choice Awards, given in recognition of efforts to reduce traffic. They were named by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, an organization of governments and agencies that oversee transportation planning.

Leadership Award:

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System: Offers carpooling and a free shuttle to many of its 38,000 employees. Some employees work three 12-hour shifts each week to lessen commuting costs.

Outstanding Achievement:

Adelphi University: Provides a year-round shuttle that served 197,000 passengers last year.

Art Leather Manufacturing Co.: Employees created carpool and van pool programs.

Nassau County government: Offers carpooling and commuter benefits to employees.

Town of Oyster Bay: Offers carpooling programs to employees.

Innovation:

North Shore-LIJ Health System - For programs mentioned above.

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With the ever growing interest in local foods, Railex may not, at first, seem like a sustainable solution to our current food system. However as consumers continue to demand out of season lettuce and strawberries, a cost effective, diesel truck alternative to meet these demands is an environmental asset. Each train saves 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel and avoids the release of 85,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalents.

And that is just the first train route! Railex has plans to expand its territory, beginning in September they will run a similar train from California to New York, with plans to add facilities and acquire track in Tennessee and Florida, connecting all 4 corners of the US. Each route removing diesel trucks from the roadways and avoiding significant CO2 emissions from the air.

Railex operates cost effectively on routes greater that 150 miles, and has therefor not pursued regional distribution from its facilities, ie. upstate NY to Hunt's Point in the South Bronx. However they are committed to building relationships and collaborating with Amtrak. Through such collaboration a distribution line from Selkirk, NY. to Oak Point and Hunt's Point may be possible....Cleaner Air for South Bronx!

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Lisa Daglian
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6/12/08 - Commuting Patterns

In 2006, 7.2 million people entered and left the Central Business District on a typical business day, according to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council's annual Hub Bound Report. That is an increase of 3 percent over the previous year. Of those travelers, 5.1 million used public transportation - an increase of 4 percent over 2005. Bicycle riders entering the district - defined as the area below 60th St. in Manhattan - rose 33 percent over the prior year, but still account for less that 0.5 percent of all travelers.

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To the editor:

Changing the driving habits of Americans is no small task, and whether we have reached the tipping point - with soaring gas prices, traffic congestion, aging infrastructure and environmental concerns - remains to be seen. "More commuters take mass transit" (May 27) recognizes the increasing burden on our transit systems and the efforts of transit management associations like MetroPool to help employees share the commute.

In this region, many companies have stepped up to create commuter incentive packages that encourage employees to share the ride, take transit or telecommute. Three years ago, the region's transportation planning organization, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, created the Regional Commuter Choice Awards to recognize area employers who encourage "greener" commutes.

This year, more than 50 employers have been nominated for the awards for their efforts to get employees out of single-occupancy vehicles through ride-sharing, walking, biking or using transit. From Fortune 500 companies to local restaurants, the contributions of each of these nominees help reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality in the region.

For more information about commuter choices, people can contact CommuterLink in New York City and MetroPool in the Lower Hudson Valley. Information is also available at www.nymtc.org.

Joel Ettinger

New York City

The writer is executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council.

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Organizers of the "Good to Go" event said it had two main goals.

One is to inform older residents about safe-driving techniques and transit options available locally.

The other is geared toward land-use and transportation planners, government officials and senior care providers about making the community more accessible to older residents who don't drive or have trouble getting around.

The conference will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday in the fourth-floor Raso Room at the Palisades Center in West Nyack. There is no cost to attend, but registration is suggested.

Gerri Zabusky, executive director of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, which matches Rockland residents 55 and older with local nonprofit groups that could use their help, encouraged residents to attend to help fill in transportation gaps.

"If they know all that is offered then they know what is missing and they can advocate for that. We want them to be an informed consumer," said Zabusky, who, as a member of the Safe Older Driver Consortium of Rockland, helped plan the conference's workshops.

Patrick Gerdin, Rockland's principal transportation planner, said that with the first of the baby boomers turning 60 this year, adults 65 and older will make up 20 percent of the nation's population by 2030. Rockland already is among the top counties nationally in terms of the percentage of its population who are seniors.

With those demographics in mind, Zabusky said public officials and real estate developers should plan accordingly. For example, pedestrian lights could be timed to allow seniors to cross the street, entrances at senior complexes could be built wide enough to accommodate TRIPS buses, and parking spots for seniors only could be added closer to shops.

"It really is to realize the consciousness and heighten the awareness of planning people so they can accommodate seniors' needs," Zabusky said.

Lisa Daglian, spokeswoman for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, which sets the planning agenda for the region, said people not only are living longer, but also working longer, meaning reliable mass transit in the suburbs is even more crucial.

"As they opt out of or because they may not be able to drive any longer, it's still important for them to get around, to get where they need to go, to get where they want to go," Daglian said last week.

AARP, the transportation council, the Safe Older Driver Consortium of Rockland, the county Office for the Aging and the county Department of Planning are co-sponsoring the event.

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On any given night, there is a need for 1,300 truck parking spaces in area rest stops, forcing 18-wheelers to park along highway ramps or local roads, the "North Jersey Truck Rest Stop Study" found.

At issue, freight experts say, is safety.

With the amount of miles driven by truckers in New Jersey expected to nearly double by 2030, officials want to protect motorists from sleepy truckers and make sure that drivers hauling petroleum, lumber and other commodities over interstate highways have a safe place to rest, fill their bellies and their gas tanks, and even shower.

"It's important that truckers be able to rest when they need to because they need to be aware of what is going on," said Howie Mann, associate transportation analyst for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. "There have been a number of crashes in and around the area."

From January through November 2006, there were 3,897 tractor-trailers involved in crashes in New Jersey — 707 involved injuries, according to state crash data.

The study, by the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, recommends expanding the Vince Lombardi service area in Ridgefield and the Molly Pitcher rest area in Cranbury to accommodate more trucks. It also suggests that a truck stop be built in the Newark and Elizabeth port area — strategically close to Routes 78 and 95.

Federal law requires truckers to rest for 10 hours after 11 hours on the road. But it's tough to find a place to park, especially in North Jersey, said Gail Toth, executive director of the New Jersey Motor Truck Association.

"You go up to Vince Lombardi and it's packed," she said. Ideally, she said, truckers would like to have a place to rest, shower, eat a healthy meal and make repairs.

"We recognize the need," said Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando. "We certainly respect the report's findings, and we will be taking a very close look at it."

Transportation Department spokeswoman Erin Phalon said the agency supports the recommendations and is working with Newark to identify a location for a truck parking site. But the state DOT has stopped short of committing to a project.

Phalon said the department operates 28 rest areas around the state, and will spend approximately $1 million on rest areas in fiscal year 2008. In fiscal year 2009 that amount will decrease, with approximately $922,000 spent on rest areas, she said.

The study, completed earlier this year, is part of a larger look at the availability at rest areas for truckers. New York and Connecticut have launched similar studies, Mann said.

Mann, who is wrapping up the $120,000 study of truck stops in the New York, Lower Hudson Valley and Long Island region, will also put together a multi-state truck stop inventory and assessment that will include New Jersey and Connecticut. He said a final report should be complete by summer.

Ted Matthews, director of freight planning at the NJTPA, said it makes sense to look at truck parking needs as a region.

"We suspect when you look at all of the regional studies, you will find that there are synergies there where the impacts on New Jersey are in part caused by things happening in New York and the impacts in New York are caused by things happening in New Jersey and Connecticut," he said. "It is because of how traffic is flowing."

Connecticut is expected to complete a broad study of rest areas, including truck parking, by this summer, said Stephen Delpapa, transportation supervising planner, for the Connecticut Department of Transportation.

Connecticut currently has a deficit of 1,330 truck spaces on a daily basis, he said. "They're parking on shoulders and on off-ramps," he said.

The North Jersey report, which cost $224,932, was turned over to the state Transportation Department and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority in January.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, who chairs the Transportation and Public Works Committee, said he tried in the past to create legislation for trucker parking, but it failed because it is unpopular with residents who don't want to see a rest stop near their homes.

Wisniewski said he supports the study's findings and that the transportation committee will likely review them.

But he says it is a safety issue that must be addressed.

"There are hours of service regulations that truckers have to adhere to," he said. "When they reach that limit, they've got to stop."

"They're either going to pull over to the side of the road or they're going to run illegally and operate beyond their hours of service," said Wisniewski. "Do we want 80,000 trucks parked on the side of the road, or do we want sleep-deprived truckers?"

Links referenced within this article Find this article at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/newyorkmetro/Give_truckers_a_break.html

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April 17, 2008 - An estimated 7.2 million people entered and exited Manhattan’s central business district-below 60th Street-on a typical weekday in 2006, up 3% from 2005. Virtually the entire increase came from public transportation, up 188,000, or 4%, to 5.1 million, according to a New York Metropolitan Transportation Council report issued yesterday. One million people entered in private vehicles, down 0.7%.

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More trucks are coming, and that means new rest stops
by Journal News: Khurram Saeed

April 9, 2008 - The state Department of Transportation plans to spend the next couple of years asking truck drivers about ways to improve public and private rest areas and trucks stops along New York's highways.

The Truck Intercept Survey will cost $600,000, and no doubt some overburdened taxpayers will contend that's a lot of money to find out what kinds of facilities, services and amenities truckers favor.

Starbucks, anyone?

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, which sets the planning agenda for the region, also is in the middle of conducting its own survey looking at the need for new truck stops in the Lower Hudson Valley and Long Island. Agencies in New Jersey and Connecticut have completed their own analyses, which will be integrated into the council's study.

Long-range planning is crucial, council spokeswoman Lisa Daglian said. Freight traffic in the region, which includes trucks and barges, is expected to increase 47 percent between 1998 and 2025. Currently, 300 million tons of freight moves through the region each day - 80 percent by truck.

"The numbers are bearing out," said Daglian, citing population growth, economic development and lifestyle changes for the growing demand in the tri-state area.

Along with truck associations, Daglian said the council is working with shippers, ports, air cargo facilities and the general public.

The surveys also are about safety - both of truckers and those who share the roads with them.

Kendra Adams, president of the New York State Motor Truck Association, noted both surveys are also focusing on truckers' needs.

"There's an underlying problem that they're trying to address, and that is the lack of commercial parking for tractor-trailer drivers," Adams said Monday. "In New York and across the nation, there's a severe lack of available truck parking for that purpose."

New federal rules require that interstate truck drivers can work no more than 14 hours in a 24-hour period - and they can drive for only 11 of those 14 hours.

That's where the safety aspect comes in, said Adams, whose organization is working with the state DOT and the state Thruway Authority on the trucker survey.

There is a lack of places in New York, particularly in the Lower Hudson Valley, for tractor-trailer drivers to safely pull over and sleep.

Many park at travel plazas on the Thruway, which are not meant to accommodate so many trucks for so long. Not only do the truck drivers park there, but when the lots get full, they park along the shoulders and the ramps leading to and from those sites, creating an unsafe situation, Adams said.

"They're in a position where they don't have much choice," Adams said.

There are 27 travel plazas along the 641-mile Thruway, providing everything from fuel to restrooms to food. But the challenge locally, at both the Sloatsburg and Ramapo travel plazas, is that there is no room to expand, said Ramesh Mehta, the Thruway Authority's Hudson Valley director.

Mehta said the travel plazas are meant for short stays, but truckers regularly spend the night, sleeping in the cabs of the trucks.

Truck driver Gurjeet Singh, who travels between Quebec, Canada, and Baltimore, stopping at ports in New York and New Jersey, said he doesn't have many choices near New York City.

"There are not many good places," Singh said.

Making the roads hospitable to the truck drivers is not only about keeping state highways safe, it also makes good business sense.

Adams said truckers paid $1.4 billion in taxes and tolls in 2005, representing 29.9 percent of all taxes and fees on public roads in New York, even though trucks represented just 6.3 percent of all traffic. To be specific, there was a total 137.5 billion vehicle miles traveled on 113,000 miles of public roads in the state in 2005; trucks traveled 8.6 billion of those miles.

The state DOT has hired a Texas firm, NuStats, to conduct the two-year survey. Teams later this month will begin working at rest stops and parking areas in western New York, focusing on interstates 81, 90, 390 and the Thruway. They'll seek out drivers, whose participation is voluntary.

By late summer, the survey teams will head to our area.

The state DOT has 36 rest areas, including ones in Bedford and Brewster along Interstate 684, and will likely evaluate I-84, Route 17 (the future I-86) and the Thruway.

Next year, DOT spokeswoman Carol Breen said the survey teams will concentrate on the Northway and the central part of the state.

"Basically they're going to have a conversation with truck drivers, to see what is working, and not working and what they need to better do their jobs," Breen said.

Eventually the data collected by the state DOT and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, whose study wraps up this summer, will be used to figure out gaps in current service, what more is needed and locations for future rest areas, although neither study plans to propose specific locations for the truck stops.

"In the future, when we're redoing rest stops or building new ones, we want to have a good sense of what they need," Breen said. "We want to make things comfortable for them."

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Agencies eyeing transportation
for the future
by Newsday: Steve Ritea

March 14, 2008 - With up to 2 million more people expected to live in the region that encompasses Long Island, the city and the lower Hudson Valley by 2030, different agencies and governments agree they must work together to successfully plan transportation for the future.

"Simply put, if we do nothing, we'll look at the congestion today and say, 'Those were the good old days,'" Joel Ettinger, executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, said during the group's annual meeting yesterday at New York University's Kimmel Center.

Made up of local governments and agencies that oversee transportation planning, the organization brings together officials from the state Department of Transportation, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and county officials such as Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi.

Ten growth areas identified by local council members, each in need of particular attention as plans for enhancing transportation move forward, include the Nassau Hub and the Hauppauge- Brentwood area.

The Nassau Hub, which includes Uniondale and part of East Garden City, could see development of an additional 6.5 million square feet of commercial space and 1,186 more residential units by 2030. The Hauppauge-Brentwood area, including a strip along the Sagtikos Parkway, also could see 5.2 million more square feet of commercial development, as well as 9,000 new residential units, according to the council.

"We believe the fates of the city and the region are interwoven," said Suffolk Chief Deputy Executive Jim Morgo, who yesterday attended in place of Levy, the council's new co-chair. Suozzi also did not attend but sent a representative.

Ettinger noted the importance of capital projects such as East Side Access, the plan to connect the Long Island Rail Road with Grand Central Station by 2015, in keeping the region moving forward over the next few decades.

Long Island Regional Planning Board executive director Michael White said a lack of proper planning, which in the past hasn't focused enough on regional and transportation needs, has led to suburban sprawl in Nassau and Suffolk.

"We have not been associated with smart growth," he said, but added he is hopeful that is changing.

Growth potential

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council is targeting five areas for commercial and residental development in New York City and another two on Long Island.

NEW YORK CITY

Location Commercial space to be added Residential units

Hudson Yards 28 million square feet 12,600

Lower Manhattan 10.6 million 10,800

Downtown Brooklyn 5.4 million 1,000

Long Island City 5.1 million 300

Jamaica 4.7 million 5,380

LONG ISLAND

Nassau Hub 6.5 million square feet 1,186

Hauppauge/Brentwood* 5.2 million 9,000

*Sagtikos Regional Development Zone

SOURCE: New York Metropolitan

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The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council said by properly developing those areas, which includes the Interstate 287 corridor in Rockland and Westchester, with strategic transportation investments, they could provide nearly 25 percent of the office space and close to 10 percent of the housing to meet future needs. The other eight growth areas the council identified were: Route 311 at Interstate 84 in Putnam; Hudson Yards in Manhattan; Lower Manhattan; downtown Brooklyn; Long Island City and Jamaica, both in Queens; Uniondale/Garden City in Nassau; and Hauppauge/Brentwood in Suffolk.

"Simply put, if we do nothing, we'll look at the congestion today and say, 'Those were the good old days,' " executive director Joel Ettinger told more than 100 people at New York University's Kimmel Center in Manhattan. Collectively, the growth areas could contain 40,000 to 70,000 residential units and 70 million to 90 million square feet of commercial space. NYMTC, which handles transportation planning for the region, said the selected areas afford the best opportunity for manageable growth coupled with existing or new mass transit. The council said specific details would be up to individual communities.

The popularity of marrying transit and land use is increasing. Two million more people are expected to live in the metro area by 2030, stressing an already overburdened transportation network.

"It's crunch time for transportation in the NYMTC region," New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said, noting that the city's proposed congestion pricing plan was a start. Council members yesterday voiced their support for four crucial projects they already had committed to: the Second Avenue subway; the No. 7 line extension; East Side Access, joining the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal; and Access to the Region's Core, which will build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River for more NJ Transit trains.

The council did not include the project that would replace or rebuild the Tappan Zee Bridge and add mass transit because it was still in the planning stages.

At the two-hour meeting, several leaders from the 10 counties - Rockland, Westchester, Putnam, Suffolk and Nassau and the five that comprise New York City - that belong to the council, said they'd put aside their own transportation agendas for a collective vision.

It's the first time in its 25-year history that NYMTC has crafted a vision to guide growth in the area. State DOT Commissioner Astrid C. Glynn called it a "very significant and rather groundbreaking agreement" among council members.

Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said the need to plan and work collectively was driven by "an economic reality."

Westchester County Andrew Spano, who co-chaired the council for the past year, said the vision gave each county "comfort."

"All of us in the suburbs recognize the engine that New York City is and the benefit that it is for us," Spano said.

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If you think congestion in the city is bad now, just wait until 2030, when a million more people are expected to live in the city, and millions more in surrounding areas.

"We're going to have exploding growth in population and employment, and if we do nothing, this will be considered the good old days," said Joel Ettinger of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council.

To absorb all those people, mass transit will have to play an important role. At least, that's the thinking behind a plan presented Thursday by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a coalition of government agencies and major transportation providers, including the MTA, Port Authority and city and state DOTs. The plan identifies 10 areas in the region where growth is most desirable, including five in the city:

• Hudson Yards on Manhattan's far West Side;

• Lower Manhattan;

• Downtown Brooklyn;

• Long Island City;

• Jamaica.

"We are hoping that as we encourage growth and receive growth, that the growth can be served in significant part by transit," said State Transportation Commissioner Astrid Glynn.

The group also repeated its commitment to four major transit projects already underway: the Second Avenue Subway; East Side Access, that's the Long Island Rail Road link to Grand Central; the 7 line extension to Manhattan's Far West Side; and a project known as Access to the Region's Core, a new Hudson River tunnel that will accommodate New Jersey Transit trains.

The Metropolitan Transportation Council is also looking at what future projects might be necessary in the coming decades and will present some of those ideas later this year.

Link to Story

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