With New York City’s subway trains jammed to capacity and more people than ever pouring into neighborhoods outside Manhattan, Mayor Bill de Blasio is embarking on an ambitious and expensive plan to create a fleet of city-owned ferryboats that would crisscross the surrounding waterways and connect all five boroughs.
At a cost of more than $325 million, Mr. de Blasio’s expansion of ferry service would be one of the biggest bets any city in the world has made on boats as vehicles for mass transit. The mayor predicts that the ferries would carry 4.5 million passengers a year, about twice as many riders as San Francisco’s ferry system handles.
Mr. de Blasio has promised New Yorkers that ferries will start running on three new routes, serving South Brooklyn, and Astoria and the Rockaways in Queens, by the end of June 2017, four months before he would stand for re-election. Additional routes to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and to Soundview in the Bronx will be added in 2018.
“Our aim is to make this thing as big as possible,” said Alicia Glen, the city’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development. “No guts, no glory.”
“We’re still living with the footprint of an early-19th-century transit map that didn’t contemplate the kind of job growth we’re seeing along the waterfront,” Ms. Glen said. The administration, she said, is trying to create a transportation network for “the new New York.”
Job growth along the waterfront? All I see there are giant residential towers filled with yuppies. That's who this is really for. Everyone else will have to do train-ferry-bus or some combination like that, which is impractical.
20 comments:
Let's not forget about the pending $2BILLION street car debacle. We could name a street plaza "Debacle Plaza" too!
Whether yuppies, immigrants, or anyone else disliked on this forum, they're all commuters. Unless there's a new technology overlay on the subway system that somehow dramatically increases ridership, new venues need to be explored and tried. Light rail, ferries, etc. And, whether they're going to or from a job is irrelevant to a roundtrip.
The point is that the typical commuter is not taking a ferry.
The new new york says Alicia Glen, the former executive for urban investing at the Great Vampire Squid Goldman Sachs, ain't that a bitch. (Can't say our Mayor didn't vet his staff properly with tone deaf declarations like this) This woman is a ghoul, and an incompetent and arrogant one too, since she allegedly didn't foresee the grotesque plundering of Rivington House and her defiance to the law to proceed with building towers in brooklyn heights despite a stop-work order and of course against the consternation of the community there.
She is also quite the vulgarian too. When asked to describe this psychotic and out-scaled city planning by a reporter she quipped that "We're getting shit done" (crude but apt in literal context)
Well if they consider job growth part-time and minimum wage service jobs in restaurants, app food bike delivery and housekeeping,and in bars or hotels, then they might have a slim but lame point to justify this, but these people mostly will be taking the bus over perpetually rundown cracked congested roads and the worst fucking transit system in the world and not enjoying the breeze, the sights and supposed tranquility on a boat.
On the bright side, this might mean that trolley bullshit might get kiboshed.
Fog, storms, wind, snow, ice will all affect the efficiency of any a ferry system, especially in the northeast. Not to mention cost.
When I lived on Governors Island (active duty CG), the effort was to get housing off-island because the ferries were so costly to operate. A short hop to Manhattan, yet too costly? I wonder how much this plan, serving the entire city, will cost?
It will more than likely be too expensive for the typical commuter
Well...It's not MY money!!!
I WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN THE SERVICE ACTUALLY STRATS RUNNING.
Only way this work is if you connect it to free transfers to the subways and buses, which with the Mayor's relationship (or lack of) to the Governor and Senate Republicans, will never happen.
Yes, the buses and subways and roads are crowded. We have too many commuters coming into the city to earn their income without contributing their fair share of taxes for the privilege of working here.
Bring back the commuter tax and this cash an be used for mass transit.
I see people paying over two bucks for a bus ride of a quarter or half mile.
We evolved from the ooze and now have feet why not use them?
Public transit that serves the entire city and not just the hipster areas? And only costs a tenth what that trolley service is supposed to cost?
If anyone besides DiBlasio was proposing this, I'd think it was a good thing.
So just think of how your commute will improve with this money. Great, eh?
Then threaten the councilman that represents your district to bring it home to you, or find someone who will run against them that will promise that.
If they want waterfront transit, let the developers and the people living in the buildings to pay for it.
Does this jackass Mayor know how long a walk it is from some east river dock to lets say Broadway ?
Is he crazy ?
Bring back commuter tax,ok,then long island should put tolls specifically for NYC residents entering LI,of course LI residents will be exempt
The "typical commuter" doesn't have to take the ferry. It's all based on pulling X% of commuters away from cars and subway to have an impact. It's all about whether the numbers work or not. But at this point, everything is worth examining to see what can work.
Make it personal. Go after your councilman like they do in Manhattan ... where THEY get results.
I don't know how this will benefit me in Central Queens, far from the water, but my friends in Far Rockaway are ecstatic that ferry service is coming back. They all swear by it. For that part of the city, at least, ferry service makes sense.
>Does this jackass Mayor know how long a walk it is from some east river dock to lets say Broadway ?
You know we have busses, right? In Manhattan, then even run frequently enough to be useful.
Why would we take some sort of transportation to the ferry, then take a bus once we get off the ferry? You can just take a subway the whole way.
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