34 street dedicated bus lane to future light rail?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/nyreg ... et.html?hp

What I love about this idea is that it is a plant can be that can be put into action immediately. Once it is successful It can be upgraded to light rail.

This type of thing has happened before in NYC. The bike lanes became doubled to be the size of a normal lane then that lane was put next to the sidewalk with parking outside which was the step that required construction rather than paint.

Once 34 street is done is 42 far behind? Once both are done then why not make the bus a loop between the two offering access to javitts and the UN? Then why not upgrade to light rail for increase speed and capacity.

Then what about 14, 23 and 57 street corridors? They suck for crosstown corridors. They suck for bus speed too.

There is the issue of accessibility of the far west and east sides (even after the extension of the q to 96 street).

This could be the beginning of a light rail system in New York that makes it possible to get across town quickly, provides decent public transit options to areas underserved such as west Chelsea, hells kitchen, murray hill the un and yorkville, and in doing so eases subway congestion that would otherwise be very expensive to solve with new lines or extended platforms.

Or it could all just be a bus lane idea that will be gotten rid of by the next mayor.

Uh.....how about 125th St. The commuter population is ever growing, especially on the West Side, far upper West Side that is. 125th St, 145th St and 155th St are the WORST! How about a little love for uptown!

Dream on.

Light rail in the middle of manhattan these days is impracticable. We can't keep morons out of bus lanes, I can imagine some idiot with a delivery van double parking on the tracks.

Crabman1130 wrote:Dream on.

Totally correct.

But, I do think we could do light rail if there were the vision and political will for it.

What is interesting about the bus lane idea on 34 street is it will impact merchants with deliveries on that side of the street. This normally would be a huge stumbling block to similarly dedicated light rail lanes. If Bloomberg we going to be around for another 7 years then I would say there is a change of something like light rail happening, but I doubt his successor will be able to push something like this forward, but who knows.

L'mont wrote:Uh.....how about 125th St. The commuter population is ever growing, especially on the West Side, far upper West Side that is. 125th St, 145th St and 155th St are the WORST! How about a little love for uptown!

There's been talk out of the MTA that the SAS might one day be extended across 125th St. to the far West Side and Columbia's proposed expansion campus.
That however, is only on the "It would be nice to have" list.

One day light rail will come to New York. Not if, but when.

Read the article and deleted my previous post; I like this idea. I don't see anywhere, though, where LRT is contemplated. Although I'm not sure what the difference is functionally between LRT and street cars, my impression is this would be conducive to street cars; I just don't see it happening once the busses are up and running; you'd have to take the busses out of service to implement the rail infrastucture, and then you'd have environmental impacts such as catenary.

There are obviously key benefits to light rail over buses, but I think it needs to be thought of a system that will require a certain amount of critical mass--at least in planning--to get started. A single light rail line across 34 street ain't gonna cut it. But many cross town lines that are interconnected on the far west and east sides could be fantastic and with dedicated lanes could offer new yorkers something they aren't used to: fast surface transportation.

Crabman1130 wrote:Dream on.

So you say, but many predict that in the next 5 years, Hamilton Heights and the West 150's will move into an ever faster gentrification and that's going to mean a great deal more riders who are going to many different locations. Sad to think that we have less rail capacity, track wise, than 60 years ago....

I suppose light rail would be something, but hardly the same capacity as the real deal. Who knows, maybe if we spent less money on Section 8 and EBT cards we could build some real, new, world class infrastructure.


For now, I'll just dream on.....

L'mont wrote:

Crabman1130 wrote:Dream on.

I suppose light rail would be something, but hardly the same capacity as the real deal. Who knows, maybe if we spent less money on Section 8 and EBT cards we could build some real, new, world class infrastructure.
For now, I'll just dream on.....

While our current infrastructure state is fundamentally poor, social welfare programs are probably some of the smallest contributors to the state and federal government's fiscal woes. Poor fiscal behaviors, such as over reliance on borrowing, for example Pataki forcing the MTA to borrow for capital improvements, and poor revenue management, over reliance on real property taxes and not on income taxes, capital gains or corporate taxes on the wealthiest portion of society, are the real causes.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesameri ... ealth.html

As NYC becomes more and more densely populated, as fossil fuels become more and more expensive, the switch back to electric powered surface transportation, such as streetcars (re-branded "Light Rail") will not only become more feasible, but more necessary. This brief excursion into individually powered, mostly unoccupied vehicles, will come to an end.

In the meantime, we're getting a more pedestrian friendly 34th St.

Live in Nice, France where light rail is called a tram, but the Municipal Police mounted a great campaign, plus the traffic engineers, and the tram is doing great on Boulevard Jean Medicine (used to be as busy as 34th Street, but much traffic rerouted to lesser streets)

...Ken

Sarge wrote:... I'm not sure what the difference is functionally between LRT and street cars...

None.

If a streetcar line is constructed, it is still practical to have some buses share the track lane.

Dear God,
Let's have street-running light-rail in NYC, we beseech you.
Amen

One of the problems with light rail or even street cars on 34th Street is that there are two crosstown buses -- the M34 between 1st Avenue and the Javits, and the venerable M16 (which I rode for many, many years) between Waterside and Port Authority. If you replace the M34 with a streetcar or light rail -- easy enough to do in theory with this pretty much straightforward east-west route -- what do you do with the M16? You couldn't duplicate its route without running tracks down 2nd Avenue from 34th and over 23rd to Waterside as well as up 8th Avenue to 43rd Street and back down 9th. So unless you want to disenfranchise Waterside residents who have long relied on the M16 and commuters coming from Port Authority, you're going to have to have both streetcar/light rail and a bus.

BTW, Bloomberg nixed the proposed pedestrian plaza on 34th between 5th and 6th a few weeks ago.