Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Pols request outer borough transportation options

From AM-NY:

With more New Yorkers taking jobs outside of Manhattan, the City Council is urging the MTA and Department of Transportation to add quicker ways for them to get to work.

"More workers are commuting from Brooklyn to Queens, from the Bronx to Westchester, from Staten Island to New Jersey or Brooklyn than ever before and yet our city's transit infrastructure has not kept pace," transportation committee chair James Vacca told officials from both agencies Tuesday. Vacca added that many people feel compelled to drive to work because of a lack of mass transit options, saying, "If it means that a person is going to take three buses, that person is likely to get into a car."

The MTA and DOT said they were tinkering with ways to ease congestion, and were eyeing extra bus service in the outer boroughs, including adding Select Bus Service along Webster Avenue in the Bronx, Utica Avenue and Brooklyn and making changes to buses that go to LaGuardia Airport, such as creating bus lanes or collecting fares off-board.

The MTA is still mulling a plan to bring Metro-North service to Penn Station, but only after its East Side Access megaproject to bring Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central is completed in 2019.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have observed that motorists park cars around the parks and ball fields near the Queens side of the Throgs Neck Bridge. four to five drivers ,then carpool into the Bronx. i guess the toll prices are increasing to much. and we are in a depression now.

gasoline @ $3.75-4.30 /gallon will make carpooling a saving s each month.

Anonymous said...

Seems to me that the next big project should be that Triborough subway line using the Bay Ridge branch, the New York connecting railroad and the Hells Gate bridge.

Anonymous said...

Buses that move between Queens and Brooklyn? Any bus on the BQE in rush hours is going to be slower than the equivalent subway looping through Manhattan.

Anonymous said...

SBS/brt on Utica ave ?!?!?!?. THat line has one of the highest amounts of fare evasion in the city.The NYPD needs to do fare enforcement on bus lines !!!!

Anon123 said...

I know plenty of ex-colleagues who commune from Brooklyn to Queens due to branch relocation and better opportunities. None of them take the subway to work because that would add 45 to 90 minutes each way, and that's with the expected auto congestion taken into consideration. My old daily Brooklyn to Queens trip took over 1.5 hours, if the trains were running smoothly.

Maybe the G train could reduce the BK to QN commune time? No express track, slow and infrequent service, plenty of stops in between, inadequate transfer points to other subway lines at both ends. Maybe not.