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WPCNR TAPPAN ZEE NEWS. (News & Comment) By John F. Bailey. October 30, 2008 UPDATED 1:47 PM EDT: Some 35 citizens appearing for the latest Department of Transportation Public Information “seminar” on their Tappan Zee Replacement project at White Plains High School Tuesday evening learned there is no progress in determining how White Plains will be affected by the public transit winning system, a Bus Rapid Transit system envisioned by the DOT “army of engineers.”
In six months since last they addressed White Plains, the Department of Transportation Tappan Zee Bridge project of replacing the crumbling Tappan Zee Bridge has after eight years come to the conclusion the bridge needs to be replaced after 52 years of life with a new bridge they say will last 150 years and a Bus Rapid Transit System (as above), that no design or station locations throughout Westchester County have been determined, with a commuter rail from Suffern to Manhattan that may or may not be built, and plans for financing for it non-existent. (The sentence is deliberately long to make a point.)
Dennis Power, a City Councilman who attended the meeting Tuesday (shown above) told WPCNR today this is an extremely important issue facing White Plains that the city needed to pay attention to now. He said he was reserving comment until he talked with city commissioners and the administration about their input to date and how they expected to move forward in dealing with the DOT on the location of stations and bus routes in White Plains. Mr. Power and Ms. Lecuona were the only city officials at the meeting.
(Two days before New York Governor David Patterson and Governor Corzine of New Jersey pleaded before congress for a financial bailout of New York and New Jersey yesterday), the situation the DOT presented was no different than what they presented six months ago, other than, to say we’re going with Bus Rapid Transit, they are in the same place they were.
Nevertheless, 35 persons attending the latest public hearing heard all the reasons why the Tappan Zee could not be rebuilt. Five persons spoke at the public hearing after Michael Anderson the head of the project and other experts had explained the status of the project and the decision to go new bridge with eight lanes, built in one of three designs, supportive of commuter rail supplemented by a Bus Rapid Transit System.
Persons were allowed to give testimony for 2 minutes, at which point they were brusquely cut off. Persons were also allowed to give private testimony to a stenographer. The ground rules of the presentation did not allow commentators from the floor to ask questions, just state their opinion. I submit this is going through the motions. They don’t want your input when they cut you off on two minutes.
After two years of presenting hearings to the public, the Department of Transportation has not presented solid details on how the Bus Rapid Transit system, now the West-East rapid transit system of choice based on models in cities elsewhere that have generated new ridership. Commuter rail from Rockland County across the new Tappan Zee Bridge to Manhattan will be built third in the process as funding becomes available.
The glaring omission of the elaborate books, statistics, and diagrams of how Bus Rapid Transit routes would be built into the present I-287, Route 119, Westchester Avenue corridor was detail: where stations would go, where Bus Only Rapid Transit lanes would be incorporated.
Though persons making public comments could not ask questions there was a question and answer table paneled by DOT consultants and engineers where you could ask questions. This reporter was shown colorful maps of the White Plains area showing routes drawn on small thumbnails of the White Plains highway and street system.
What was missing were precise designs of locations of BRT Stations in WP, areas affected. I was told by Russell Robbins, (seated at table, foreground in above photo), Planning/Transit Manager that beginning in 2010 after the Environmental Impact Study is completed, those designs and routings would be designed.
Robbins added there was another possibility that instead of bringing the BRT lane in on 119, it might continue alongside the I-287 East West right of way and divert alongside the Metro North tracks right of way from I-287 down to the White Plains Transit Center, and continuing through White Plains routes on either Hamilton Avenue, Main Street or Martine Avenue.
That was reviewed by Tom Soyk, White Plains Traffic Commissioner last February. Soyk, according to city spokesperson, Melissa Lopez, said Mr. Soyk, last spring had “provided a detailed list of comments (on the routes) after that meeting (held in 2007). “
Now that the BRT system has been selected by the DOT as the East West transit mode of choice, as Ms. Lopez indicated last spring, Mr. Soyk will have more input on design and direction of the actual BRT routes through White Plains. As the Environmental Impact Statement proceeds, Mr. Robbins of the DOT explained to WPCNR, in a recent article, “these are conceptual alignments that will be further refined in the Environmental Impact Statement process with full participation of all municipalities and the public.”
From the vast elaborate booklet on display at the Question and Answer table, only routes are displayed, with no renderings or lane design to show the public how the streets through White Plains would be affected – or anywhere along the east-west Central Westchester envision BRT “corridor.”
In the Transit Mode Selection Report document on the Tappan Zee Project website http://tzbsite.com, on page 2-12, the report states that BRT HOV/HOT lanes from Rockland County across the new Tappan Zee Bridge would end and “be limited to the use of exclusive bus lanes on local roads, dedicated busways adjacent to I-287, and buses in mixed traffic, where projected congestion levels determined…light enough to allow buses to travel at speeds that would maintain their schedules. Providing BRT on local arterials has the advantage of providing more stations…but overall travel times would be longer. “
the following paragraph describes how at this time the BRT lanes are to proceed through central Westchester, which appears to indicate an extra lane added alongside the right of way of I-287. The Transit Mode Selection Report states emphatically “I-287 and I-87 in Westchester County has been precluded from additional highway improvements such as the addition of HOV/H0T Lanes, based on the FHWA April 1998 ROD that provided selective safety and operational improvements along the highway.”
Continuing the use of dedicated bus lanes on Route 119 through Elmsford was considered, but rejected because of the heavily congested nature of the arterial (2 lanes each direction) and the negative impacts that would result from taking away the curb lanes (widening) for buses. Alternatively, an exclusive barrier-separated busway alignment adjacent to I-287 was developed. This alignment would rise up on a viaduct and cross over I-287 at Exit 1 and continue east on the south side adjacent to I-287 and drop down beneath the Sprain Brook Parkway (Exit 3) to an at-grade station – Elmsford East possibly at the Bed Beth and Beyond/Syms shopping center just west of Knollwood Road (Exit 4). (Proceeding) east of Knollwood Road, the alignment adjacent to I-287 continues to Exit 5 (Hillside Avenue). Directly east of Hillside Avenue , the busway would join the Exit 5 ramps (off I-287) and transition onto exclusive curbside bus lanes on Route 119 – Tarrytown Road for access into White Plains.”
A station would be located at the Westchester County Center. The Bus lanes (one-way pairs) would cross onto Hamilton Avenue and Main Street. Then of course there is the other possibility of a lane down the Metro North right of way from I-287, spoken of by Mr. Rollins.
Dennis Power and Milagros Lecuona, White Plains Common Council persons, attended the public meeting Tuesday evening but did not make public comment. WPCNR placed a call to Mr. Power to see if he had made a statement to a stenographer on considerations of routing BRT through White Plains
Mr. Power told WPCNR today, he did not offer private testimony to a stenographer, and was reserving comment until he spoke with city officials on how much input or expected input city commissioners, planners and the administration has had or expects to have in the structuring of Bus Rapid Transit through around or within the White Plains area. He told WPCNR this is a huge issue that the city has to address now.
This reporter came away with a sense of puzzlement. For 9 months of work, there is no visual rendering all along key spots on the central Westchester BRT route of how the road landscape will be affected; what businesses would have to be moved; what stations would look like; what lane closures and times of travel would be affected, if any. These are the details a plan needs before a decision – not after it. Otherwise you wind up with an Exit 8 in White Plains situation (the decimation of a neighborhood, lowering of realty values, years of inconvenience, for dubious benefit).
During the presentation Tuesday night, Mr. Anderson took pains to say that Bus Rapid Transit has worked in other cities and can work here. The designs and configurations of the routes and execution of them, in this reporter’s opinion should have come first before this decision on Bus Rapid Transit was made. The “hands-off I-287” decision made a decade ago appears ludicrous in retrospect and a testimony showing no advance planning by the Federal Government or the Department of Transporation, but an incredible lack of vision. Didn’t anyone realize a decade or more ago, the Tappan Zee was going start falling into the Hudson in ten years? I mean did they wait for the first concrete slab to drop? I know they started this commission but — there is no sense of urgency.
The snail’s pace of this planning executed by this Department to build one bridge is troubling. After six months months, White Plains, Tarrytown, Elmsford, Harrison, Rye and Port Chester have no idea how their communities will be physically affected by a Bus Rapid Transit line or – a commuter rail line for that matter.
Despite the smug, self-congratulatory attitude by the Department of Transportation that they are involving all the stakeholders – those stakeholders are not being listened too – or maybe it’s because not enough stakeholders, especially government officials have been paying attention and demanding more detail.
What have the stakeholders been saying? Have they been thinking? It does not look like it to me.
It is as if I was doing a model train layout and went out and bought the trains and the track without knowing how big my traintable was going to be or how big my cellar was.
Charts, DVDs and public meetings where questions cannot be asked and answered on the spot with anything but generalities and no specifics is not planning – it’s railroading to a preconceived notion.
The DOT Tappan Zee Project, and I have been following it now for three years – has always proceeded with a prejudice towards the bus transit system. It really shows. Showing how a rail route might go through the county east to west was even less detailed, meaning it was never considered a serious option in the first place.
A real Rapid Transit Bus System has to have buses every 6 minutes during a rush hour, because if you have to wait 20 or 30 minutes, you may as well drive — especially in Westchester County. How many buses, how fast, how long a ride? Is this what they envision? Will there be north-south coordination on the County bus routes? Please!
And this process has to speed up! They have taken eight years to ram a solution through that no one even knows the ramifications on real estate values and city ambience at a time when real estate values are dropping.
More glaring is they have never explained or shown in any presentation where the new bridge is going to go and how it is going to connect to the present I-287, I-87 plaza. Is there going to be a whole new plaza? Will they have to take property on the north and south of the present plaza? One of the key problems of the TZB is the curve into the present toll plaza. If the new bridge is going to curve into the old plaza, you’ll be creating another problem. This is basic! Public officials have to be asking questions like this. Stakeholders? They are more like enablers.
Of the five speakers Tuesday evening at the hearing, one woman from a commuter rail group deplored making commuter rail the last part of the project to be delivered. Another speaker pointed out the fact that the bridge is already using a five lane system to handle existing traffic meant that the 4 lanes in each direction was already obsolete. (This is debatable since the five lanes were created due to the construction steel plates that slow down traffic.) A representative of Richard Brodsky demanded the DOT provide details of models for public-private financing “forthwith.”
Another speaker deplored the expense and suggested the old bridge be kept, rehabilitated and be used as a compliment to the new bridge (instead of being removed). This is a stroke of enlightenment. It is amazing none of the geniuses working on this project for eight years have not considered this. This is the bridge that could be used for rail, perhaps, or for the bus lanes. Just a thought.
By the sheer ineffectiveness of this process, the DOT has made the project much more difficult to finance and execute and places hundreds of commuters lives at the mercy of the decaying bridge. I tell you when the superstructure collapses killing hundreds, the press conferences and the memorial services will be filled with bureaucrats, saying “we vow that this will never happen again.”
It is an example of the ineffectiveness of the Department of Transportation, its lack of planning, professionalism and common sense.
We never would have beaten the Nazis if we had waited for the Department of Transportation to get us across the Rhine with a bridge.
When Louis Cappelli designs a project he knocks it out in weeks, works out the kinks quickly with far less engineers than the DOT has and shows you vivid drawings of what he has in mind. If the DOT had done this there would be far less questions. And I would not be writing this column, because the DOT would have shown us some thinking.
If fact let’s bring in Louis on the project now. I would feel more comfortable.
How can you do an Environmental Impact Statement on this bridge project when there is no specific idea of what will be put into the environment?
One thing is sure, the DOT engineers have assured themselves of a lifetime project that will keep them on the state payroll consulting, designing, building this boondoggle for another 9 years at your expense.
