Chapter 1: Project Purpose and Need

<ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Chapter 1: </li><li style="flex:1">Project Purpose and Need </li></ul>A. INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the need for the proposed Manhattan East Side Transit Alternatives (MESA) project. Existing deficiencies in providing transit service on the East Side of Manhattan are summarized, based on the project’s Interim Report No. 1, Draft Inventory and Review of Current Operational and Service Issues (July 1996), and subsequent assessment of current and future conditions. The identification of problems has been a major factor in determining the project’s goals and objectives, also detailed below, which themselves form the basis for the evaluation of alternatives (see discussion in Chapter 2). This chapter also describes other major investment studies and planning programs that affect the proposed action and its goals, and discusses the review and approval processes. B. PROJECT IDENTIFICATION/LOCATION The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), in cooperation with MTA New York City Transit Authority (NYCT),* are undertaking a Major Investment Study (MIS) to consider options for improving transit access and mobility on Manhattan’s East Side. As shown in Figure 1-1, the alternatives would provide service to an area including Lower Manhattan, the Lower East Side, East Midtown, the Upper East Side, and East Harlem. A secondary area, just west of the primary area south of 59th Street, has also been considered in this MIS. The primary project area contains a variety of land uses, encompassing the dense commercial districts of Lower Manhattan and East Midtown (the third largest and largest central business districts [CBDs] in the nation, respectively), the ethnically diverse residential neighborhoods and shopping districts of the Lower East Side, the elegant shopping and hotel districts along Fifth and Madison Avenues, the city’s most affluent residential neighborhoods (e.g., Sutton and Beekman Places in East Midtown, Fifth and Park Avenues in the Upper East Side), several major medical and learning institutions (New York University; Hunter and other CUNY colleges; and Beekman, Beth Israel, Bellevue, NYU, New York, Lenox Hill, Mount Sinai, Metropolitan, and North General Hospitals), the intensely developed residential areas of the Upper East Side (generally east of Lexington Avenue), and the homes, housing projects, and lively shopping areas of East Harlem. The secondary area adds Soho, the Herald Square shopping district, Times Square, the theater district, the Clinton residential neighborhood, and the remainder of Manhattan’s CBD, centered primarily along Sixth Avenue. In the primary area, only the Lexington Avenue line (4, 5, 6 lines) provides full north-south rapid transit service. South of 64th Street (primarily in the East Midtown zone), several east-west lines *The legal name of MTA New York City Transit is New York City Transit Authority. 1-1 Manhattan East Side Transit Alternatives MIS/DEIS (Q, N, R, 7, Shuttle, and L) cross the area and connect to other north-south services. The N and R trains provide north-south service along Broadway from 57th Street to Lower Manhattan. Several subway lines serve the Lower East Side (F, B, D, Q, and J, M, Z), but these do not offer direct north-south service on the East Side, and their stations are at some distance from residents living in the easterly portions of the neighborhood. In contrast, Lower Manhattan at the island’s tip is served by the great majority of the city’s through subway lines. On the surface, a regular grid of north-south avenues and cross streets serves most of the study area. Bus service is available on all major north-south avenues (except Park Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal) and all major crosstown routes. C. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION OVERVIEW As Manhattan developed during the 19th century, its growth was supported by expanding transit service. Elevated train lines brought New Yorkers to Manhattan’s center from northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. By the 1890's, the Sixth and Ninth Avenue elevated train lines (combining to one service north of 53rd Street) provided rapid transit to the west side, and the Second and Third Avenue “els” served the east side. All lines offered connections to the Bronx and all were supported by surface transit in the form of trolleys. A separate network of elevated lines in Brooklyn served Lower Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge. The first two decades of the 20th century saw construction of subway lines through the study area as well, and by 1920, those traveling to, through, or from the East Side could choose to take one of three north-south rapid transit lines: the Lexington Avenue (subway), and the Second and Third Avenue els. (In 1921, the els carried 384 million passengers.) As the subway network expanded, however, and lines were added to and from Queens, Manhattan’s els became less and less popular with New Yorkers. They began to shut down in the 1930's, and by 1942 the Second Avenue el was discontinued with the promise of a new subway line on that route. The Third Avenue el was closed in 1955. Although the Sixth and Ninth Avenue els were replaced by the Eighth and Sixth Avenue subway lines on the West Side, no such improvement occurred on the East Side, even though it is the more densely developed of the two areas. For the last four decades, only the Lexington Avenue line (4, 5, and 6 trains) has provided north-south rapid transit service through the East Side. The closing of the els took place during a time of great growth in the city. The economy of the city was strong through the late 1940's, the 1950's, and the early 1960's. The removal of the noise, shadows, and barriers created by the els helped to fuel a development boom on the Upper East Side (high-rise residences) and in East Midtown (primarily office buildings). This coincided with a sharp reduction in industrial uses in the “far” east side and construction of a number of public and publicly assisted housing projects on the Lower East Side, Upper East Side, and in East Harlem. By the mid-1960's, it was clear that rapid transit service on the east side of Manhattan was deficient. As the then-chairman of MTA, William Ronan, noted, “You can’t go on building office buildings, apartment buildings, without planning for adequate transit.” MTA proposed a new Second Avenue subway line for the East Side and actually began construction in 1972. But the project became a casualty of the city’s fiscal crises of the early 1970's; subway construction stopped in 1975. Construction of office and apartment buildings has not stopped, 1-2 Chapter 1: Project Purpose and Need however; despite a hiatus in the 1970's and another in the early 1990's, the study area has seen substantial commercial and residential development in the past two decades and is expected to see considerably more through 2020, the project’s analysis year. The purpose of the MESA study is to address the problems and deficiencies associated with continuing growth on Manhattan’s East Side served by an aging and inadequate transit infrastructure. Issues of transportation service, congestion, and socioeconomic needs are discussed below. STUDY AREA PROBLEMS AND NEEDS INTRODUCTION Manhattan’s East Side is densely developed with residential, retail, and commercial office uses, and includes two of the largest central business districts (CBDs) in the nation, East Midtown and Lower Manhattan. With nearly 700,000 residents and some 1.2 million jobs at the core of the greater metropolitan area, the primary study area plays a key role in the overall travel patterns throughout the region. Each day, millions of people travel in the study area as they commute to and from work. Most of these trips begin outside the area, but area residents also account for a large number of trips (about 18 percent). Those who work in the study area overwhelmingly make their “journey-to-work” on public transit: as reported in the 1990 U.S. Census, 78.5 percent use the subway, bus, rail, or ferry to get to and from their jobs during the morning and evening rush hours. The overall numbers are large enough so that even the relatively small percentage of trips by car (13.5 percent) translates to about 60,000 autos during the AM peak hour (assuming an average auto occupancy for each of 1.64, the average auto occupancy rate for vehicles entering Manhattan between 7 AM and 10 AM in 1995, as reported in the New York City Department of Transportation’s 1995 Manhattan River Crossings, published in 1997). Most (77 percent) of the journey-to-work trips to the study area come from the five boroughs: Manhattan (30 percent), Brooklyn (18 percent), Queens (18 percent), the Bronx (8 percent), and Staten Island (3 percent). Other areas, in descending order of trip contributions, are New Jersey (10 percent), Nassau County (5 percent), Westchester County (4 percent), Suffolk County (2 percent), Connecticut (1 percent), and Rockland County (less than 1 percent). In addition to work trips are trips made for other purposes, including shopping, entertainment, and tourism (the study area contains many of the city’s major museums, monuments, and other tourist attractions). During the AM peak hour on an average weekday, approximately 72,000 Lexington Avenue line subway riders, 22,000 bus passengers, and 35,000 Metro-North passengers enter the East Side business district. This level of activity has, in many cases, far exceeded capacity. The level of crowding on the Lexington Avenue subway system, in particular, has significantly affected reliability and comfort. The system cannot attract new riders because uncomfortable conditions and unreliable schedules at times force customers to change their transit route or mode. Further, with only one line serving most of the East Side, subway stations are often too far away from the residents and workers they are intended to serve. Above ground, the city’s streets and highways are ill-equipped to take on any extra demand. Indeed, traffic flow, which has doubled since the 1940's, is a major contributor to the region’s air quality problems. High levels of crosstown traffic, heavy pedestrian volumes, goods deliveries, 1-3 Manhattan East Side Transit Alternatives MIS/DEIS double-parking, and the large number of buses needed to accommodate excessive demand have all combined to make chronic, severe congestion throughout the city’s busy streets. Without some action, this situation will not abate. Employment and population in the primary and secondary study areas are expected to increase in the future, with 320,730 workers and 73,620 residents added by 2020. The remainder of Manhattan, which influences travel through the study areas, will also see population and employment increases. STUDY AREA PROBLEMS AND NEEDS Five categories of interrelated needs have been identified in the MESA study area, as described below: Capacity Capacity refers to the physical ability of a transportation system, or any of its elements, to carry travelers from one point to another. The capacity is defined as an amount (“volume”) of passengers or vehicles that can be accommodated by a street’s traffic lanes, or by an intersection, subway tunnel, bus, stairwell, platform, train or sidewalk (or the combination of any of these) during a specified time frame, such as an hour or part of an hour, a peak period (three hours, normally during the “rush hour”), a day, or a year. Volumes are compared to capacities (this is known as a volume-to-capacity, or “v/c” ratio) to determine severity of crowding on a transportation system. The limited capacity on all transportation system elements, given the extraordinary travel demand in the study area, has led to the following specific study area concerns: !Overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue Line Trains. The Lexington Avenue line carries very high volumes of passengers. In 1994, on an average weekday, a total of some 645,300 passengers entered the stations between Bowling Green and 125th Street. This was the highest of any segment in the city. Because of these high volumes, the trains are overcrowded, particularly during the AM and PM peak hours. For example, in a 1995 survey, over 30 percent of the express train cars leaving Fulton Street during those peak hours carried more than the guideline capacity of 110 persons per car. More than 80 percent of the train cars traveling southbound in the morning at the 86th Street station were observed to be over capacity; and at Grand Central Terminal, this condition was observed in 85 percent of the cars. At Union Square in the evening peak, 55 percent of the northbound cars were observed to be over guideline capacity. !!Overcrowding in Lexington Avenue Line Stations. Stations on the Lexington Avenue line, which is one of the oldest subways in the city, have generally low passenger capacity (compared with some of the stations constructed later). The inadequate platforms and stairwells and their use by great numbers of passengers entering, exiting, and transferring in the stations have led to overcrowding and congestion, particularly during peak periods. Inability to Meet Demand on North-South Bus Lines. The three most heavily used bus corridors in the United States all fall within the study area boundaries (First/Second Avenue, Third/Lexington Avenue, Madison/Fifth Avenue). All of these routes are often very crowded, with many standees; the most crowded locations are in East Midtown and the Upper East Side. In addition, north-south buses are scheduled as often as every 2 minutes 1-4 Chapter 1: Project Purpose and Need during the peak hours to meet the considerable study area demand. This frequent service, combined with high ridership (which increases the time it takes to let passengers leave and enter the bus, called “dwell time”), heavy street congestion, double-parked cars and other blockages in bus lanes and at bus stops, and the timing of traffic lights can alter the orderly flow of buses, so that later buses catch up to delayed buses, and they all arrive in a bunch at the next bus stop (“bus bunching”). This creates gaps in service (increasing travel times) and also contributes to surface traffic congestion. It is also an indication that bus service is operating beyond its practical capacity. !Severely Constrained Vehicular Traffic. Traffic volumes in the study area are very high and have been relatively constant since 1985 at about 11 million vehicles per day. Congestion is widespread throughout the study area, but particularly severe in East Midtown, which has two of the major portals to Manhattan—the Queensboro Bridge and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel—and is the center of commercial activity in the city. Approaches to the Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges are also regularly overcrowded. Streets south of Delancey Street on the Lower East Side and in Lower Manhattan are often crowded because of relatively high vehicular volumes, irregular street patterns, and narrow streets. Transit Accessibility Transit accessibility refers to the distance that a resident, worker, or visitor is from rapid transit. For purposes of this study, a reasonable distance is considered to be approximately a 5- to 10-minute walk to/from a subway station or bus stop. !Study Area Neighborhoods have Poor Transit Accessibility. A 5- to 10-minute walk from Lexington Avenue eastward extends to approximately Second Avenue, assuming the pedestrian does not need to turn north or south more than a block or two. For locations on streets between subway stops, the 5- to 10-minute walk would take someone no farther east than Third Avenue, because of the time spent heading not only east but also north or south. Given the shape of Manhattan’s eastern shore, this leaves considerable portions of the study area far from a subway. The greatest concentrations of residential population thus denied reasonable rapid transit accessibility are in the Upper and Lower East Side neighborhoods (about 30 percent of study area residents), but some residents of East Harlem and East Midtown face the same problem. Portions of the Lower East Side and East Midtown are accessible to east-west subways, but, particularly on the Lower East Side, connections to north-south lines are not convenient. At the time of the MESA study’s basic data gathering (1995), there was no free transfer between subway and bus, so that many of those living far from a subway stop were forced to pay two fares.* !Lack of Local Service to Lower Manhattan. Local service on the Lexington Avenue Line is not available south of the Brooklyn Bridge station. This forces passengers to transfer at Brooklyn Bridge or another express stop to travel to the heart of the city’s financial district *Because basic data for the MESA study was gathered in 1995, “existing conditions,” as assessed in this report, do not include a free transfer between subway and bus. The assessment of future conditions, both without and with project alternatives, includes the free transfer, which was instituted in July 1997. 1-5 Manhattan East Side Transit Alternatives MIS/DEIS or on to Brooklyn. The transfer contributes to overcrowding on train platforms and lengthens travel time. Travel Time Travel time refers to the amount of time spent traveling from the trip’s beginning (“origin”) to its end (“destination”). Total trip time includes the time spent using each type (“mode”) of transportation (e.g., walk, bus, subway, rail, auto, bicycle). Waiting, boarding, transfer, and alighting time are also included. Travel time is related to capacity and to accessibility. Where a system is congested, generally expressed as a high volume-to-capacity ratio, travel time increases—it takes longer to pass through the turnstiles, negotiate the stairs, and get on and off trains; the trains are delayed in the stations and miss their schedules, causing further back-up in the tunnels, and bus and other vehicles travel at lower speeds. And where rapid transit is not readily accessible, requiring a long walk or transfers and waiting, travel time also increases. The types of travel time problems that plague the study area’s transportation system are as follows: !Excessive Dwell Times. Train dwell times (the time a train is stopped within a station to open its doors and let passengers on and off) are overly long at many of the Lexington Avenue line stations due to the large number of passengers getting on and off and overcrowding in the train cars. The excessive dwell times decrease a train’s ability to maintain its schedule, with the result that there are slow-downs and back-ups all along the line during peak periods. This decreases speeds and increases travel time on all trains (not just the ones with excessive dwell times) and has the effect of reducing the hourly capacity (trains per hour) of the system. !!!Slow Train Speeds During Peak Travel Times. Due largely to excessive dwell times, train speeds are markedly slower during peak times than at other times, a condition that runs counter to the service goals of the system. For example, the maximum scheduled peak-hour travel time on the Lexington Avenue express line between Bowling Green and 125th Street is 32 minutes, compared with 23 minutes at other times. Very Slow Bus Speeds. Because of traffic congestion, bus speeds are often very slow, with unpredictable delays occurring throughout the day, particularly during peak travel times. For example, the average north-south bus speeds during the weekday midday peak on most routes are between 5 and 7 mph; during a Saturday afternoon, the speeds range from 7 to 9 mph. Slow Vehicular Speeds. High traffic volumes and frequent congestion lead to slow speeds for all vehicles traveling on study area streets. As noted above, bus bunching, which often results when the bus system is operating beyond its practical capacity, also contributes to overall traffic congestion. The slow speeds make any travel through Manhattan during peak periods time-consuming and inefficient. High traffic volumes moving at very slow speeds contribute to a deterioration of air quality (cars and trucks are less efficient at slow speeds and thus produce greater amounts of air pollutants). 1-6 Chapter 1: Project Purpose and Need Flexibility Flexibility refers to the adaptability of a transportation system to accommodate the travel demands within the system if one component of the system fails. In addition, flexibility refers to a system’s ability to accommodate future growth. As noted below, the problems described above contribute to unpredictability and lack of reliability, which greatly decrease the transportation system’s flexibility. !!!Unpredictable Subway Service. Due to such volume related problems as high dwell times, overcrowding, and congestion on platforms, subway service is frequently unpredictable. These conditions serve to decrease the reliability, flexibility, and potential for intermodal connections between public transportation systems. Unreliable Bus Service. As discussed above, traffic congestion, operating over capacity, and bus-bunching create unreliable bus service. This decreases flexibility of the system and makes transfers (which are often required with bus travel in the study area) particularly difficult. No Ability to Accommodate Future Growth. The existing transportation system in the study area is already congested from high travel demand that it cannot fully accommodate. Population and employment are predicted to continue to increase in the study area, so that in the future travel demands will only increase. Further, other transit projects, if built, will add to ridership on East Side subways and buses (see below for a discussion of MTA/Long Island Rail Road [LIRR] East Side Access). The existing system cannot accommodate all of this future growth. Environmental and Socioeconomic Concerns The lack of capacity and resulting congestion on the city’s transportation system contributes to the deterioration of a range of environmental and socioeconomic conditions. These include air quality, neighborhood character, and the economic vitality of the city’s regional and local commercial areas, as described briefly below: !!New York City is currently designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a non-attainment area for carbon monoxide and ozone, both of which are associated with internal combustion sources, such as vehicular traffic. Without good public transit access, people tend to seek alternative travel modes, principally taxi and automobiles. These trends, if allowed to continue, would result in increased emissions of air pollutants. Preventing further deterioration of air quality is an essential component of the project.

Chapter 1: Project Purpose and Need

Details

Download

Copyright

We respect the copyrights and intellectual property rights of all users. All uploaded documents are either original works of the uploader or authorized works of the rightful owners.

Support