Happy New Year! This is what a NYC Subway rider had to deal with day after the New Years
Source: Imgur via Reddit
Trying to take the subway the day after New Years.Image Courtesy: Imgur via Reddit
Bold thinking! New York City Studies Hudson River Tunnel Plan To Extend No. 7 Subway Line to New Jersey
(Source: Wall Street Journal)
Image Courtesy: WSJ.com
The Bloomberg administration is exploring a plan to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River that would extend the no. 7 subway line to Secaucus, N.J, building on existing work being done on the no. 7 line, which is undergoing a $2.1 billion extension from Times Square to 34th Street and 11th Avenue.
The plan is an attempt to expand rail capacity and grab some of the $3 billion in federal money that had been set aside for a rail-tunnel project between New Jersey and Manhattan, according to multiple people familiar with discussions over the project. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spiked the rail tunnel three weeks ago due to concerns about cost overruns. Click here to read the full story
The WSJ also has a nice story that looks in to how the subway extension would transform traveling options (at least in the region) for the commuting public.
Related articles
- Extending No. 7 subway to Secaucus could provide alternative to killed ARC tunnel (nj.com)
- New York City proposes extending subway to New Jersey (reuters.com)
- Bloomberg administration looks at extending No. 7 subway line into Hoboken and Secaucus (nj.com)
- NY City proposes extending subway to New Jersey (reuters.com)
- “New York City-Secaucus Junction Transit?” and related posts (bridgeandtunnelclub.com)
- Transit pros say feds won’t pay to extend subway (nydailynews.com)
- Amtrak Won’t Revive Trans-Hudson Rail Tunnel Project (newyork.cbslocal.com)
- Amtrak, NJ Transit break off talks on reviving ARC Hudson River rail tunnel (nj.com)
- It’s Time for a Transcontinental Subway (blogs.forbes.com)
- Malloy Eyes Funds Marked For Hudson River Rail Tunnel (newyork.cbslocal.com)
New York’s LIRR delivers safety message via the Gap Rap – Look Down, Step Over and Watch The Gap!
(Source: WSJ)
How do you deliver rail safety message to the General public in the age of twitter and YouTube. Here is one such effort and it’s called Gap Rap (Warning: Geeky & Corny Video and Lyrics).
The music video, which premiered online Thursday, features LIRR Medical Director John Clarke — an army of fifth graders from Long Beach accompanying him as backup dancers — giving safety tips to railroad riders from Times Square, trains and LIRR stations. Here it is:
Dr. Clarke has a history of public-service raps. He’s taken on psoriasis (“No one knows the cause or why is brings drama”) and H1N1 (“If you have it stay at home so you don’t spread none”). The effectiveness of this effort is definitely worth watching in the months to come.
(Transportgooru’s Review: A full 10/10 for the thought to promote safety; 0/10 for the execution. Summary: Doc, please spend a couple of $$ and find some pros can can really deliver and pls. stick to what you know best – medicine).
Pedestrian Malls: Back to the Future
(Source: Room for Debate, a New York Times blog)
(Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times) In Times Square, pedestrians often find themselves maneuvering among cars blocking the intersections.
The pedestrian mall, the urban planner’s failed attempt to revitalize Main Streets during the 1960s and 70s, is back!
This week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that cars would be barred from several blocks of Broadway, including Herald Square and Times Square. He said the changes would relieve traffic congestion and crowded sidewalks – far different problems from what spawned the pedestrian malls of the 70s. And it’s not just New York that’s rethinking this old idea. San Francisco is considering restrictions on private cars on Market Street, the city’s main artery.
When do these car-free zones succeed? And why have they left streets deserted and unappealing in the past?
- Robert Sullivan, author
- Sam Staley, co-author of “Mobility First”
- Alexander Garvin, architect and former Planning Commission member
- Steve Davies, Project for Public Spaces
- Randal O’Toole, author of “The Best-Laid Plans”
Click here to read more.
Will a Car-Free Broadway Work?
New York’s Times Square to Become Pedestrian Plaza (temporairly, at least)
(Source: New York Times)
In 1997, one of my proposals was greeted with the usual thunderous silence. I proposed creating the Piazza Broadway by banishing cars from the the Great White Way near Times Square. It wasn’t a strictly original idea — a similar scheme had been proposed in the 1970s — although I do believe I was the first to suggest decorating the plaza with a statue of a three-card monte dealer and a pedestrian bridge modeled on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, to be called the Ponte di Tre Monte.
Anyway, the idea went nowhere — until today. Mayor Bloomberg planned to announce that Broadway will become a pedestrian-only zone around Times Square and Herald Square, according to my colleagues William Neuman and Michael Barbaro. The experiment will start in May and could become permanent if if it works.
Will it work? I’m biased, of course, and I can’t claim I based that 1997 proposal on any rigorous analysis. But today there’s a new tool for examining the proposal: a spreadsheet called the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, or B.T.A.. Charles Komanoff, the economist who developed it, calls it the first transparent and publicly available tool to gauge the varying impacts of changing the transportation options in a city with a dense central core, like New York.
Click here to read the entire article.
