An Informal Transit System Hiding in Plain Sight: Brooklyn’s Dollar Vans and Transportation Planning and Policy in New York City Eric L. Goldwyn Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Eric L. Goldwyn All Rights Reserved Abstract An Informal Transit System Hiding in Plain Sight: Brooklyn’s Dollar Vans and Transportation Planning and Policy in New York City Eric Louis Goldwyn New York’s transit system serves millions of riders each day; the local newspapers complain about the lack of funding for infrastructure projects; and the City Council regularly hosts hearings about Bus Rapid Transit, bike-share, road safety, e-hail taxis, and gondolas. Transportation issues matter to New Yorkers, but these debates, at the policy level, often focus on technology, budgets, and regulations rather than the needs and experiences of passengers. This focus on “technical” matters allows planners and politicians to confine transportation debates to the realm of experts rather than engage the broader public in them. The failure to address the needs of passengers in Brooklyn and Queens has led to the development of dollar vans. Dollar vans are hybrid bus-taxis, also known as jitneys, that provide vital transportation links to more than 120,000 riders per day and operate beyond the control of the formal transit system governed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). While this ridership pales in comparison to the daily ridership on the subway or bus, it does rival bus ridership in cities like Dallas and Milwaukee and dwarfs the 50,000 peak ridership achieved by Citi Bike, New York’s celebrated bike-share system. More important, the durability of the vans reveals the failures of the existing formal system to serve all New Yorkers. I argue that this failure is important for three reasons. First, the vans respond to a geographically specific problem: adequate access to inadequate service. The vans thrive in busy transit corridors where MTA-owned buses come too infrequently, are overcrowded, or are regularly stuck in traffic. On these busy routes, the vans provide a more reliable ride and alternative for transit-dependent populations looking to bypass the faltering bus system. Second, regulations fail to reflect daily practice. This gap between practice and policy leaves van operators and passengers in an awkward limbo that criminalizes an industry and jeopardizes the mobility of entire neighborhoods. Third, since the vans operate outside of the formal system, traditional metrics, such as ridership, travel time, vehicle revenue miles, etc., are not collected and compared against the metrics of other modes operated by the MTA. As long as the vans remain an unknown quantity, it is impossible for the City and State to serve transit-dependent populations in Brooklyn and Queens. In this dissertation, I use a mixed-methods research design to probe the world of the vans and argue that continued regulatory uncertainty, long the friend of the vans, has the potential to upend them as development pressures and capital investment in Central Brooklyn intensifies. Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ ii Introduction: Dollar Vans, Jitneys, and Informality ..................................................... 1 Chapter Two: A History of New York City’s Dollar Vans .......................................... 34 Chapter Three: Hear Me Honk .......................................................................................... 69 Chapter Four: An Informal Transit System Hiding in Plain Sight ....................... 106 Chapter Five: The Anatomy of a New Dollar Van Route ......................................... 131 Chapter Six: Policy Recommendations and Future Research .............................. 153 Appendix 1: Survey ............................................................................................................ 165 Appendix 2: Letter Template for Van Operators ..................................................... 167 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 168 i List of Figures Figure 1 Access to Jobs 19 Figure 2 Pirate Van vs. Commuter Van 37 Figure 3 Commuter Van Passenger Bill of Rights 63 Figure 4 Commuter Van Decal Pilot 65 Figure 5 Informational palm card 66 Figure 6 B32 Bus Route Map 77 Figure 7 Annual Bus Ridership 79 Figure 8 Total Vehicle Seizures 87 Figure 9 Van seizures 88 Figure 10 Appendix to the TLC Budget 92 Figure 11 New York City Car Ownership Rates 112 Figure 12 What is Your Hourly Wage? 116 Figure 13 Why Van Riders Choose Vans Over Buses 121 Figure 14 Commuter Van Travel Times 125 Figure 15 B41 Bus Travel Times 126 Figure 16 Flatbush Avenue van route map 128 Figure 17 Caribbean Population Along Flatbush Avenue 2000 138 Figure 18 Caribbean Population 2008-2012 139 Figure 19 Population Change in Five Census Tracts 140 Figure 20 West Indian Population change in Five Census Tracts 141 Figure 21 Census Tract Percentage West Indian 142 Figure 22 Caribbean Population Along New Route 2000 143 Figure 23 Caribbean population Along New Route 2008-2012 144 Figure 24 West Indian Population Change in Five Census Tracts 145 Figure 25 Looking southeast on Berriman Street 2012 148 Figure 26 Looking southeast on Berriman Street 2014 149 Figure 27 The Flatbush and East New York routes 151 Figure 28 Newer, larger vans on Flatbush Avenue 153 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not be possible without the help and guidance of friends, family, colleagues, and the people I have met along the way. Without the generosity of the people I interviewed from the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Department of Transportation, Department of City Planning, New York City Council, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and all of the people associated with the vans, there would be nothing but some misguided thoughts based on conjecture and a few articles I read while riding the subway. Thank you Aaron Reiss, Avi Flamholz, Cuthbert Onikute, Annalisa Liberman, and Jonathan Izen for all of your help with mapmaking, collecting surveys, and computer programing. Ali Rasoulinejad always came through with historical City Council documents and transcripts when I needed them. These invaluable contributions allowed me to improve my arguments and visualize my data clearly. My colleagues at Columbia provided support, encouragement, and completed dissertations that I have looked to for formatting guidance. My cohort—Dory Thrasher, John West, and Banke Oyeyinka—provided friendship and room for intellectual exploration. Jigar Bhatt and Lauren Fischer always asked questions and encouraged me as I developed my ideas. Laura Lieto graciously read a chapter and sent me comments all the way from Napoli. Jonathan English provided thoughtful feedback on a number of chapters and our conversations, meals, and walks have always been productive and fun. A number of friends have taken an interest in my work and have volunteered to read a chapter or listen to me explain my thinking. Nick Klein was one of the first iii people to read my earliest attempts at the dissertation. Daniella Gitlin sat with me and helped me with my writing. She also inspired Chapter Three’s title, “Hear me Honk.” Ann Smith pushed me to return to school and pursue my doctorate. Liliana Greenfield-Sanders took on the unenviable task of editing two chapters. David Parker’s twenty-year friendship has made me the person I am. His intellect, critical mind, and wit remind me that I have a long way to go. My committee—Paige West, Robert Beauregard, Elliott Sclar, and Steven Gregory—engaged with my ideas and writing and provided the occasional kick in the pants or kind word when I needed it. Each of them helped me understand abstruse concepts or introduced me to entirely new worlds, for which I will be forever grateful. My advisor, David King, always allowed me to go off and pursue the ideas and methods that interested me. He always made me justify my decisions and think about existing literatures and methods, but he supported my choices and reminded me to assert myself as a scholar. My family is my rock. Marc, Ellen, Caroline, Alex, Joyce, Norman, Rouben, and Charlotte have monitored my progress and taken my hint to change the topic when I no longer wanted to discuss my work. My mom and dad have always believed in me and nurtured my ideas. I cannot imagine doing this without their love and support. My mom’s excellent example of how to be an academic has stayed with me during my time at Columbia. As a child, I watched her write and re-write, prepare her classes, and negotiate life at the university all while being my mom. My dad’s boundless curiosity and enthusiasm are two qualities I have tried to bring to my iv research. Both parents have been patient listeners, sage advisors, and irrational conspirators. v Introduction: Dollar Vans, Informality, and Jitneys The Present is the Future Being uninformed is rarely a virtue. Being uninformed while regulating an industry is never a virtue. In this dissertation, I argue that the City and State of New York’s current regulatory approach to dollar vans fails to match the practice of dollar vans in portions of Brooklyn and Queens. This dissonance creates an opportunity for the City and State to re-organize