Firms envision ways for New York to absorb 9M residents
crainsnewyork.com
crainsnewyork.com
If there were a true high speed rail connection to smaller, much lower cost metros it might make them more attractive as branch office/commuter cities.
Amtrak as it is now frequently takes 8-9+ hours to get to across the state to Buffalo. Much slower than driving the Thruway. Intercity Amtrak service is poor due to:
* Ancient rails
* Large stretches of single track
* Passenger rail deferring to freight
* Reduced speeds due to degraded bridges and track beds, and outdated signaling
A modern, dedicated track for passenger rail could be fit mostly in the existing right of way. This alone would greatly improve service.
In the past few years New York State investigated several options for statewide rail improvements, and unfortunately ruled out any true high speed options. But even the most expensive improvements under consideration at $15 billion are cheaper than projects in NYC such as the Second Avenue subway (estimated completion at $17 billion for 8.5 miles!)
https://www.dot.ny.gov/content/delivery/Main-Projects/S93751...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_high-speed_rail#Proje...
The estimates in the first link you provided pegs travel time at 6 hours from NYC to Niagara Falls. Albany is already less than 3 hours on the Amtrak from NYC, but is still failing to "shed development pressure" from NYC. It's a chicken-and-egg problem: how do you convince jobs to move upstate without people, and how do you convince people to move upstate without jobs? Adding a train isn't enough unless it's quick enough to be a daily commute. There are other ways to entice residents but, at least in Albany's case, restrictive zoning and land use laws get in the way.
In the 1950s, the US federal government decided to go all-in on highways for medium and long distance travel. It would be costly to attempt to switch back to long distance rail now and would have a deep impact on American life. The reasons rail is so desirable in an urban context doesn't often translate to a medium or long distance route.
> even the most expensive improvements under consideration at $15 billion are cheaper than projects in NYC such as the Second Avenue subway (estimated completion at $17 billion for 8.5 miles!)
Sure, but in terms of how many people would be served by the 2nd Ave subway vs a long distance cross-state route (200k/day on the 2nd Ave subway vs 4m/year on the train line), it seems less absurd to invest that magnitude of funding on the subway.
Newburgh, Kingston, and New Paltz are all ghosts of their former selves (there used to be a train, Newburgh was the first city in the US with electric lights, etc.) instead of thriving. And they really could thrive - not in a farmers-market-and-smorgasburg way, but in a Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill way. Except better, b/c they would have public transport between each other and a major metropolis.
Not supertrains or hyperloop trains or complicated bullshit, straightforward European style trains that go from place to place fast and on time that we as a species figured out how to make work at least 20 years ago. Maybe 80 years ago.
Not fucking hanging trams across the Verazzano bridge. A train, on the ground or in a tunnel, with rails, and a place to sit, that goes fast, like every other fucking advanced country. An express train from the central business district to the airport. Seriously how fucking hard is this.
Here in NYC people actually like trains and will use them, they'll increase property values and bring more commerce and better quality of life. It's just an abject failure of our political system that we can't figure out how to build them in this region.
I'm kind of shocked that this would be allowed in Amsterdam, one of the most bike-friendly cities on the planet, considering how easy it is for bicycles to get their wheels stuck in the tram tracks while trying to cross them, and what a hazard trams are to bicycles and pedestrians.
The risk of injury is further aggravated by many of the pedestrians being drunk, stoned, or high on a large variety of substances easily available in the city, and many of them being tourists who are unfamiliar with the city and not used to expecting random trams popping out of the middle of nowhere while they're walking down an otherwise pedestrian- and bicycle-populated street.
Most people consider that uncommutable though people do it.
Poughkeepsie is 73 track miles from GCS and Riverhead is 75.1 track miles to Penn Station. The average speeds that would be need to bring these areas into the reasonable commuting range are not Shinkansen-esque.
Even within the official borders of NYC there are some areas with quite difficult commutes to Manhattan. Consider the Bay Terrace neighborhood of Queens. From there to the NYSE stock exchange via public transportation google maps recommends the Q13 bus to the Bayside LIRR station, a Port Washington branch train to Penn Station, and then the number 2 subway. Total trip length: 130 minutes, monthly cost: $330.14. Or consider co-op city in the bronx, from there to the stock exchange google maps recommends a .9 mile walk to the 5 train and then an hour long ride on that subway. If walking that distance was a problem you could take the Bx30 and then the 2 subway for a total trip length of 106 minutes.
There are many many sensible transit projects. The big problem is that we have seemingly lost the ability to do transit projects in any sort of reasonable cost or time in the greater NYC area. I've posted some theories on why I think that is on here in the past, but the best thing you can do to get an overview of the issues involved is read this blog: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/
I remember reading that there were proposals to extend the present-day 7 line from Flushing to somewhere around Bayside in the late '60s or early '70s, but these were abandoned due to NIMBY-ism.
I actually have known of a few people who regularly commuted from Poughkeepsie (and a few other similar-distance places in Connecticut and New Jersey) to the city.
There was an initiative to leave alot of room for new subway. To start with, this is more NJ to NY. But still.
https://nec.amtrak.com/content/hudson-tunnel-project http://www.hudsontunnelproject.com/
From what I was reading, alot of the area or new buildings is elevated. To allow for new subway and rail lines.
http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/hudson-yards-city-on-stilts/
There are also new units in this area. But what is the price, and how afforadble will they be. There are new apartments coming up. But how many are bare essential without amenties. Where they push forward cheap living. Rather than a lavish experience.
http://www.hudsonyardsnewyork.com/live/
Even with all this I look at Amtrak, and I don't see it. I mean it feels upscale compared to public transit. By that I mean there are bathrooms, cafe, business class, more comfortable chairs etc. This is priced as premium service to me. So when I look at Amtrak it's great, but it's priced out of line for a daily commute option. Daily commute, high transit is a sardine can. Pack people in tight, ship em as quickly as you can from A -> B.
Some Quick Points One Way to Philadelphia
* Public Transit 8$ @ 1 -> 1.5 hours * Amtrak Peak Hours 10 Minutes 50$(NE Regional) 75$(Acela) * Amtrak Non Peak 10 Minutes 100$(NE Regional) 125$(Acela)
This is not New York, but I saw similar prices NYC to Phil.
Look at their Monthly pass about 700$. For me DE -> Philadelphia I pay 250$ a month in transit fares. If we look at either of those numbers my base house rent is 1k in DE. I add in the cheap public transit option. I can get a no frills apartment, 15 to 20 minutes from work, compared to a 2.5 hour ride. Add in the premium frills travel package. I can get something fancier closer to center city.
This is completely barring the constant budgetary issues with the public transit. That they're not making enough to support their employees. Risking constant strikes. It's cyclical. The cost of living goes up, the public transit employees need more money to live. Fares go up, and people are pushed further away.
https://www.amtrak.com/take-the-trains-across-america-with-u...
This is not dismissing public transit, or high speed rail. I would love to see it. But the infrastructure investment and end cost, is difficult to figure out. When I add in the cost for a monthly pass/frequent rider program. The time to travel, and everything else. Why not pay just a bit more and live near work.
People commute using: NYC Subway, PATH, NJ Transit, LIRR, MetroNorth.
Also, while you can now buy tickets on your phone, they still use a very labor intensive process of having conductors walk up and down the aisles and check tickets twice per trip. That contributes to the LIRR very high operating costs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_commuter...
The article has one of those conceptual drawings of super-lightweight monorail structures. There's nothing wrong with monorails; lots of cities in Asia have them. But the rail is far more bulky than that drawing. Here's a real suspended monorail, in Chiba.[1]
Want real changes? Extend that all the way to Manhasset.
Relating to the first proposal, from Gensler, there already exists a proposal called the Triboro RX[0] to add transit along existing freight rail lines that run from the Bronx through Maspeth and Bushwick, ending up in Bay Ridge.
This sort of project, if implemented well, would bring people and development to these areas. Unfortunately, it's difficult to obtain money for a prospective project such as the RX that wouldn't immediately benefit existing NYC residents. One could make a case that residents of transit-starved Maspeth would appreciate the new train line, but they also might be politically opposed, as it would bring upheaval and development to the neighborhood.
Aecom's proposal also suggests new transit: that 1 train extension could make a big difference. Red Hook has always been transit-starved, but, as with Maspeth, I can see grassroots opposition to the community upheaval that would result from a 1 train extension.
Perkins + Will's proposal to rezone the Newtown Creek industrial zone would meet more of the residential need in the Bushwick area, but the transit in that region is not yet sufficient to meet a huge influx of new residents: the L and the M are already heavily loaded. The bus network would prove less useful than expected for interesting historical reasons: NYC's bus network exists along legacy streetcar routes that abruptly terminate along borough borders (for what I imagine were political regions prior to borough unification in 1898), and this section of Bushwick lies along the Brooklyn/Queens border. So, the bus lines in the area don't always make sense or take you where you need to go.
Some of the other ideas don't really relate to handling an influx of 9M residents, but are in the Robert Moses vein of improvements (i.e. leveraging existing yet overlooked details creatively to benefit the public), particularly the "under highway" public space and the "subway stations as public plazas" ideas.
The Javits Center and schoolyards ideas are kind-of silly, and the suspended tram line, while a cool idea, wouldn't be worth the money.
If you really want to push the limits, throw in low-speed maglev so reduce rush hour commute time:
http://www.china.org.cn/business/2016-11/01/content_39610565...
Something that travels at 100mph would allow much farther commutes to Manhattan.
Good. I think we all learned our lesson from Robert Moses the first time around...
> It's time for New York to think big again.
No! Think small, local, and build from a bottom-up design.
Perhaps we should make sure we don't let a racist man who could not accept criticism plan public works at a dictatorial level. But what sort of lesson did we learn about large scale public works in general?
What does this mean, practically?
The general trend in American urban planning has been highly prescriptivist and precise. Suburbs often have bylaws that prevent "too many" businesses of a particular sort in an area. It's based on a very centrally-planned vision for cities where you get your groceries from there, your haircuts there, and entertain yourself at that entertainment complex.
Using a place against its original planner's precisely envisioned purpose is verboten. No, you can't have another supermarket in the neighborhood. No, there is already another coffee shop too close to this proposed one. No, you can't repurpose this land for a playground, because the children are supposed to play over there.
Urban areas experience it too - if you've worked in a modern American downtown you've no doubt walked by the countless plazas that are deserted. Benches and tables that looked real good on the architectural renderings but are severely disused. Big office buildings fronted by "public space" that not even its own tenants use regularly.
This has been especially severe in public housing projects - they were designed with idyllic parkland and courtyards, which their designers envisioned as isolated utopias, but ultimately ended up being deserted, dangerous, and hotbeds of crime, because they were never where people wanted to be, and was just void space.
The opposite of this is something that resembles more of the free market - mixed use, relaxed zoning, so that the community can decide the amenities and businesses it needs. Maybe there should be a second supermarket, maybe that empty lot could be a playground.
The struggle between top-down prescriptivist and bottom-up market-like urban planning is a huge one. In many ways Americans crave the efficiency, character, and benefits of living in the bottom-up neighborhood, but also crave the precise, reliable, and ordered nature of top-down cities.
An actual "free market" - i.e., little to no zoning whatsoever - would likely be rather unpleasant. Sorry Houston.
In this school of thought the ideal urban planner sketches out the broad strokes while allowing natural forces to fill in the spaces, but of course, there is considerable disagreement over what exactly the broad strokes entail.
Houston is a great example of what you get with unbridled suburban sprawl. Much of the city isn't dense enough to justify real mass transit, which is part of the problem you are seeing. It's a great example of how to keep land prices low and automobile miles high, but not much else from a city planning point of view.
If anything onerous suburban zoning tends to be far more painful than onerous urban zoning.
The lack of livability is the result of overly restrictive zoning. Instead of putting supermarkets and movie theaters where people want them, they go where planners have deemed The Proper Place. Most suburbs are characterized but this, and it turns out top-down planners aren't actually very good at foreseeing what residents want, and what will create the greatest quality of life for them.
Agree with all the points about sprawl and toxic car-centric lifestyles, but even in its own context, these neighborhoods are still failures.
I've personally never lived in Houston, but there's almost no major city in America where you can find actually lax zoning. In almost all places it's all incredibly restrictive - if anything urban areas tend to be a bit more lax (they at least entertain the idea of mixed-use development). Overplanning is the disease, and both urban and suburban places can manifest it.
I agree that there's a distinct lack of planning in Houston which is a problem. But those aren't necessarily the same thing.
Further there are good local neighborhoods popping up all over, especially wherever the light rail is going. All without any zoning whatsoever.
I think you are missing the degree to which zoning is needed as a tool for effective planning.
Okay, so enlighten me! I totally understand how zoning and planning theoretically go hand-in-hand so that you build stuff near transit, and have transit near stuff, and the like.
But Houston's problem is that all the first-round development happens outside city limits. Meaning that the overarching plan (if there was one) would still not be able to influence in any way what's happening in places where the city has no jurisdiction. So how would zoning inside the city limits do anything to influence people building outside city limits?
In most cities the size of Houston you'll have a denser core with some strong arguments for living there, and these are strengthened by city planning, which zoning is part of. Houston has very, very little of that. Why buy a place in the loop if I still have to get in my car for most things I need or places to be? Part of the problem is lack of planning, and part of the reason is that lack of zoning allows redevelopment without much (any?) thought about impact.
I'm not suggesting zoning is at all the only issue, but it is part of why Houston is such a mess as a city in many ways. While I agree with another respondent that zoning can be part of the problem too, I disagree that it is inherent. It's a tool for planning, and can be used well or poorly.
Because traffic is a total nightmare, because they keep building bigger freeways and making it possible for people to live further and further out. They're exacerbating the problem, not helping it. That road planning is done 100% without zoning too, I might add.
But I agree with your point that doing smarter stuff at the denser core might make it easier to entice people inwards and perhaps start Houston growing up instead of out. What's interesting is that people are actually starting to do that now; suburban houses inside the loop are incredibly expensive so most of the new development goes like:
1. buy a $500k, tiny house for the land
2. tear it down
3. build 4-8 townhomes instead
4. sell each for 200k-300k
It's getting denser, though not fast enough to make traffic any better.
For what it's worth, $500k is still very cheap compared to many metros - a comparable house in many cities would be twice that. 3-4 times in (much of) NY, the bay area, Toronto, Chicago, Vancouver.
I think we are making the same point about infrastructure progams there - but traffic still sucks (although it's nothing like some cities) if you live in the core, but you still have to drive all over to do basic things.
But where prices are low enough and lots are big enough, that's absolutely how new housing is being built.
You can't buy nearly any detached homes in some metro cores today for less than a million. "Cute little house in the Heights" equivalent is more like 2-3 million.
It's possible to see his legacy as a series of lessons and pros and cons.
I care a lot more about bulldozing the South Bronx.
And I don't know you so I won't presume, but just about everyone who I've heard complain about Moses and the South Bronx has literally no relationship with the borough and couldn't name three major streets there.
Moses did bad things to the south Bronx, and Sunset Park, and rail transit. He did amazing things with bridges, and democratized access to the shoreline. And many other things. Like I said, his legacy is complicated.
The beach existed long before Moses, and he didn't exactly invent the idea of going to the beach.
Public accessible beaches and parks for hemmed in city dwellers back then in the era of tenements and no air conditioning were not at all common, creating something like Jones Beach was a major public good.
The story of Moses's contributions is generally one of incredible progress and public good in the first era of his career, followed by an increasing descent into arrogance and lust for power that was ultimately highly destructive in many cases.
It's an interesting and nuanced story. Were you to know the first thing about it you'd likely agree.
I imagine it'd work to just build upstate a ways instead of focus so much energy on the parts of the city directly facing the water.
That said I think the solution will be pretty simple. When we have to, humans are really good at moving dirt. We do it less often now because of the impact on the environment, but if there was a will then it's solveable. I would expect to see a dike ringing Manhattan in my lifetime. The city is currently encircling Manhattan with a "greenway" which is basically a strip of bike lanes & walking paths. Imagine that, but raised 20 feet.
I think the same treatment will be useful for Brooklyn & Queens. I would close off some of the rivers that go into the boroughs (e.g. the Gowanus) to make the area that needs to be closed off smaller. That will be a bit disruptive to some industrial sites, but nothing crazy.
All of this works because each square mile of NYC is worth so much money and has been built up. I'd worry a lot more about suburban coastal areas where the density doesn't rally support building protection on that level. The urban areas will justify it, but if you live on the beach in NJ or LI, rising sea levels will be a major problem.