GuestView BRT a short-sighted solution, at best

GuestView
BRT a short-sighted solution, at best

Kate Slevin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign seems confused. In her “Guest View” (June 4), she draws her conclusions about the best future transportation modes in the I-287 corridor based on current destination counts. What this methodology fails to consider is at least threefold.

To some degree, existing transportation patterns have been caused by the lack of options available to west shore commuters: There is no direct, one-seat rail or bus transit to employment hubs in Yonkers, the Bronx, Harlem and Grand Central. The further south along these destination routes one travels by car, the more discouraging the commute becomes. Nor does Slevin consider the wealth of potential employment opportunities available in the opposite direction. There is presently no rapid transit available north and west bound from existing New York metropolitan hubs to destinations in Rockland and Orange counties. (Slevin erroneously depicts Rockland County as a bedroom community. She is 30 years behind the times.) Current commuter patterns might have been different, had rail transit been available across the I-287 corridor. But, as it stands, Orange and Rockland counties cannot readily draw from the employee base otherwise available in communities to the east and south.

One option for commuter rail transit is to cross the Hudson River and continue south on the east shore. Slevin ignores this option and would have us believe that the only option for rapid transit would carry passengers across Westchester to the Connecticut border along the I-287 corridor. She ignores the important north-south and south-north bidirectional morning and evening commutes. If through sound planning commutes had been encouraged from and to different destinations, the I-287 corridor might not suffer the congestion it now experiences. And as Newburgh’s Stewart International Airport grows into a fourth major New York metropolitan airport, public rapid transit to and from suburban and urban centers will be best served by rail, as part of a new network.

Finally, “bus rapid transit” is an oxymoron. Whereas buses may navigate easily on dedicated lanes of I-287 (as long as one bus is not disabled ahead of them), once buses exit the transit lanes to pick up passengers waiting in existing grids, off-highway circulation routes to and from bus stations promise to be slow and arduous. Until bus technology improves, riders will be subject to herky-jerky stops and starts, and nauseating diesel fumes. This experience in its entirety is far from comfortable.

Slevin’s BRT is a solution that would annihilate economic development in Orange and Rockland counties, and choke employee/employer opportunities both south and north-west. All to the “benefit” of those commuters and employers who are already stuck with traffic patterns devised by less visionary planners. To me, Slevin’s solution will provide us with more of the same. It is, at best, shortsighted and, at worst, chauvinistic.

Jan Degenshein is an architect in South Nyack and chairman of the Rockland Business Association’s Economic Development Committee. Reach him at jan@degenshein.com.

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