|
Developing a Long Range Transportation Plan
Click HERE for graphic. Long Range Planning Developing a Long Range Transportation Plan PT2211809 PT2211895 Contract D000642 Task 3.0 The preparation of this report was financed in part with funds from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, under the Federal Highway Act of 1956, as amended, and the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964, as amended. This document is disseminated by the New York City Department of Transportation in the interest of information exchange. it contains proposals offered for discussion purposes by the New York City Department of Transportation, which is responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the data presented. The report does not necessarily reflect any official views or policies of the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the State of New York, or the City of New York. The report does not constitute a standard, a specification, or a regulation. Prepared by: New York City Department of Transportation Michael A. Weiss Chief of Staff Edward S. Seeley Jr. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Deborah Molina,Erica Caraway Graphics TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II. Goals & Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 III. Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 IV. Mobility: The Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 V. Mobility: Congestion Management . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 VI. Expanding Public Transportation Capacity . . . . . . . . .74 VII. Other Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89 I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INTRODUCTION The task of preparing a Long Range Transportation Plan for the New York State portion of the metropolitan region should proceed from a thoughtful understanding of the unique needs and characteristics of its principle sub-regions. These sub-regions include the five counties of New York City, the two counties on Long Island, and the four counties in the Mid- Hudson Valley. Each sub-region is so large and complex that it constitutes one of the nation's major metropolitan areas by itself and merits its own long range transportation plan. But the fact that the sub-regions are closely integrated means that transportation problems in any one of them can affect all of them in various ways. Therefore, a truly regional plan is necessary. Such a plan should stress the interdependence and commonality of problems among the sub-regions, while not losing sight of their important differences. The purpose of this report is to identify key transportation issues confronting the New York City sub-region and to discuss some of the ways of addressing them within the context of a planning horizon that extends to the year 2015. This can help provide a framework for determining which of New York City's problems require regional solutions and which are best resolved locally. In defining these issues, the report attempts to reflect the general content and structure suggested in the June 1992 memo prepared by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) entitled Draft NYSDOT Guidance to MPO Long-Range Plan Development, hereafter referred to as "the NYSDOT Guidelines". GOALS FOR THE PLAN A Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should have two main goals: 1. To provide transportation systems that enable the city to achieve timely attainment and consistent maintenance of Clean Air Act and other legally mandated environmental standards without compromising economic growth targets. Available evidence suggests that most of New York City' s existing transportation systems may lack the functional capacity to accomplish this, even if economic activity remains frozen at current levels, unless major changes are made in when economic activity takes place during the day. 1 2. To provide the city with transportation systems that are capable of supporting an acceptable rate of economic growth through the year 2015 and beyond. The history of New York City over the past 175 years demonstrates that increases in transportation capacity must be provided in advance of new economic activity, and that the existence of new capacity often stimulates the growth of such activity. Achieving both goals will materially improve the lives of all New Yorkers. But defining these goals in the terms used above can help focus attention on how to achieve them rather than on whether we should try to achieve them. Since Goal One involves complying with federal law, there can be no question about whether it is worth achieving - only about how to achieve it. And achieving Goal one will go a long way towards achieving Goal Two. SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS 1. The Plan's priority goal should be to identify the transportation programs and projects that can enable New York City to attain Clean Air Act standards on schedule. Since attainment is required by federal law, accomplishing this goal must take precedence over the goal of economic growth. But it seems likely that programs and projects supporting Clean Air Act attainment will end up providing much of the new transportation capacity needed to support higher levels of economic activity. Therefore, an intelligently conceived Plan would make the two goals compatible. (see Section II.) 2. The Plan should emphasize timely completion of--the task of restoring New York City' s transportation facilities to a condition of good repair. It should also present a planning and funding framework - that prevents deterioration from recurring in the future. The pervasive deterioration of New York City's bridges, roadways, and public transportation facilities effectively reduced their functional capacity to move people and goods. This helped to increase roadway congestion,which worsened air quality and constrained the growth of economic activity. 2 The $18 billion spent since the early 1980's to restore these facilities has accomplished roughly 40 percent of the restoration task. The remainder (costing about $24 billion) should be completed as quickly as possible in order to recover the capacity that was lost through deterioration. The pace of completing restoration should be determined mainly by the need to keep transportation facilities operating while they are being restored, and the Plan should identify the annual funding levels needed to accomplish this. Allowing the pace of restoration to be slowed by inadequate funding could delay attainment of Clean Air Act standards, which can expose New York City to costly federal sanctions. Transportation facilities deteriorated because sufficient funds were not provided on a regular basis to cover the annual costs of on-going maintenance and capital depreciation. In effect, New Yorkers extracted a long series of involuntary "loans" from their transportation systems by paying considerably less than the true annual costs for these systems. While these loans freed up money for other public and private purposes, they also confronted the city with a $40 billion bill to overcome the effects of pervasive underfunding. It is important to realize that none of the $18 billion spent on restoration since the early 1980's represents new investment in transportation. It simply repays the old loans. The practice of underfunding transportation systems was made much easier by the fact that public sector accounting practices in the United States (though not in other industrial countries) either obscure or fail to recognize the annual costs associated with maintenance and capital depreciation. Therefore, a major step in avoiding future deterioration is to develop accounting practices and budget formats for public agencies that clearly identify the true annual costs of transportation systems. These costs should be segmented by Operations, Maintenance, and Capital Depreciation. This will show New Yorkers how much the transportation services that they depend on really cost each year, so they will know how much they have to pay as a society. The Plan should develop detailed guidelines for these new and more realistic accounting practices and budget formats. This is an essential element in the process of identifying future transportation funding needs and developing adequate sources to meet these needs. (See Section III.) 3 3. Roadway congestion is New York City's most serious transportation problem because it directly impacts air quality and the ability to attain federal Clean Air Act standards. Congestion is especially critical on the city' s highways, which experience excess demand by motor vehicles during most of the day. Unlike most urban areas, congestion is not limited to the normal commuting periods. It is pervasive during the midday hours as well. This means that the polluting effect of motor vehicles occurs over a much broader portion of the day than in other urban areas, and encompasses a wide variety of trips rather than being limited only to work trips. Restoring the highway system to a condition of good repair will increase its functional capacity and help Transportation System Management (TSM) measures, such as implementing a full- scale Incident Management Program to quickly identify and remove disabled vehicles that are blocking highway lanes. But there is no evidence so far that highway restoration and TSM measures can, on their own, reduce congestion to a level that is compatible with attaining Clean Air Act standards. Nor does available evidence indicate that expected improvements in on-board pollution reduction technology and less polluting fuel mixtures for motor vehicles can lead to attainment so long as congestion levels remain high during major portions of the day. Key strategies for attaining Clean Air Act standards include reductions in both the total number of miles traveled by motor vehicles during the course of a day and the average number of hours each motor vehicle is in operation. Each element of these strategies is related in somewhat different ways to the issue of congestion. Therefore, the Plan should include Transportation Control Measures (TCMS) of sufficient scope to complete the process of reducing congestion to levels that (together with technology improvements and other measures) are compatible with attaining Clean Air Act standards. The main focus of such TCMs should be on shifting trips away from city highways during periods of excess demand. There are three basic trip shifting strategies that should be evaluated in developing the Plan: 4 * Shifting trips to other roadways on which unused capacity either already exists or can be created through the application of TSM measures. * Shifting trips to other times of the day when demand is low enough to result in unused highway capacity. * Shifting trips to other transportation modes that do not use general traffic lanes on the highways. (See Sections IV and V.) 4. Opportunities for shifting trips to other roadways may be relatively limited because so many of these roadways also experience excess demand during much of the day. Therefore this should be regarded as a supplementary rather than primary strategy for reducing congestion. The best way to implement this strategy is to explicitly identify, map, sign, and publicize to motorists various sets of alternative routes between key pairs of trip origins and destinations. Real-time monitoring and communications systems could then be used to advise motorists while they are making trips of the least congested routes. However, none of this can be done until reliable O&D information becomes available for motor vehicles using each highway during each hour of the day. Since this information does not currently exist, key O&D pairs cannot now be identified (except by guesswork, which is too imprecise). A potentially useful variation of this strategy involves permanently assigning certain highway lanes (and possibly even entire highways) to vehicles whose trip purposes are considered to merit priority use of scarce highway space during high demand periods. Other vehicles would be confined to the remaining highway lanes or shifted to alternative roadways. In addition to high occupancy passenger vehicles (i.e. buses and vans), these priority lanes should also be available to vehicles making goods movement trips, service or repair calls, and trips carrying people to sales and other business meetings. Enforcement of priority lane use might be simplified by requiring all vehicles seeking to use these lanes to have commercial license plates (which could be a different color from regular license plates and could be made available at a 5 higher fee to any motor vehicle owner). A major problem with this trip shifting strategy is the risk that it would simply move congestion around within macro corridors. While this might relieve highway congestion, it would do little to improve air quality. If the use of alternative routes causes an increase in trip miles, the end result might actually be worse air quality because of an increase in daily motor vehicle miles of travel. This is a complex issue that requires careful analysis in order to determine the strategy's most appropriate role in the Plan. It is possible that its most effective use could be to supplement the two other strategies. (See Sections V and VII.) 5. Because most New York City highways are congested for much of the normal business day, the strategy of shifting trips to other times of day may have to involve moving them (and the economic activity that generates them) to the nighttime hours. Staggered work hours and similar traditional approaches for shifting trips away from high demand periods are likely to have little impact in reducing congestion on the city's highways. As noted earlier, excess demand is a problem during the midday hours as well as during normal commuting periods. The distribution profile of hourly highway traffic volumes indicates that excess demand is present on many highways during each hour between about 6 AM and 8 PM, and the commuting peaks are much less pronounced than in other urban areas. Therefore, modest shifts in the times when work trips are made do not appear capable of reducing congestion sufficiently to result in material air quality improvements. However, substantial amounts of unused highway capacity are available between 8 PM and 6 AM because a very high proportion of the city's economic activity still takes places during the daytime hours. If economic activity was more evenly distributed throughout the 24 hour day, excess demand on highways (which is generated by economic activity) would largely disappear. Therefore, the Plan development process should evaluate the benefits and costs of a long term program for shifting a significant proportion of the city's economic activity from the daytime hours to the nighttime hours in 6 order to achieve an equivalent shift in the hours when trips are made. The evaluation may show that such a radical trip shifting strategy is not feasible. But given the severity of New York City's air quality problems and the dominant role of motor vehicle congestion in causing them, it cannot be dismissed out of hand. * Such a strategy would, all by itself, eliminate excess demand (and therefore congestion) on city highways and all other roadways. It would also eliminate overcrowding on subway and commuter rail lines during normal commuting periods. * Since less roadway congestion would reduce average motor vehicle trip times, this strategy would reduce emissions from the city's most important source of air pollution - possibly by enough to minimize the need for measures to reduce total daily motor vehicle trip miles. * The strategy would free up reserve capacity on existing roadways and other transportation facilities to accommodate future growth in economic activity without violating air quality standards. * Most significantly, the strategy would accomplish all this without requiring major capital investments to create new transportation capacity, and without the need for controversial and potentially disruptive restrictions on motor vehicle use. It may be that the economic costs of implementing this strategy could be offset by a host of new economic benefits. For example, making use of commercial real estate during the entire day rather than just the daytime hours could mean more income for real estate operators and lower costs for business firms renting space (especially those that exploit the opportunity to expand operations without having to rent more space and purchase additional equipment). This is why large manufacturing plants in classic industrial cities typically operate two or three work shifts per day. Also, as the securities industry (which now operates 24 hours a day) has discovered, being open for business when Europe and Asia are open for business generates new opportunities to participate in high-growth markets around the world. But the social costs of turning New York into a true 24 hour city could be severe enough to make this strategy unfeasible. We won't know until this issue has been 7 studied comprehensively. In effect, the city would become home to two independent societies - a daytime society and a nighttime society - that would have relatively little contact with each other. Each society would require its own group of support services ranging from schools and other public services to retail stores to medical and other professional services. This would create more jobs, but it would also impose new costs. In addition, the physical and psychological impact on people of living and working entirely at night is not clear and needs to be studied. Whether or not such a radical strategy for addressing motor vehicle congestion is feasible in New York City cannot be determined until all the issues have been evaluated carefully. But its apparent benefits are so compelling that the Plan should explore it seriously, and be prepared to offer convincing evidence for its lack of feasibility if it is not recommended as way to address the city's congestion and air quality problems. (See Section V.) 6. Shifting trips to other transportation modes essentially means a much greater role for public transportation in New York City. This is widely regarded as highly desirable. But it is very complicated, time-consuming, and costly to implement for a variety of reasons. * The origins and destinations of the trips to be shifted must be compatible with those that can be served by available public transportation routes. But little information is currently available on the O&Ds of motor vehicles using city highways during each hour of the day. Therefore, it is not now possible to determine the proportion of trips during high demand periods that could not be shifted to existing public transportation routes for this reason. If this proportion turns out to be significant, this trip shifting strategy may not be effective until new public transportation routes serving the necessary origins and destinations are created - or until land use and other changes increase the proportion of trip O&Ds that public transportation can serve. 8 * Many kinds of motor vehicle trips may not be shiftable to public transportation because of other incompatible characteristics. They include goods movement trips, service and repair calls where the tripmaker must be accompanied by heavy tools or spare parts, trips to sales or other business meetings where the tripmaker must bring along bulky product samples or presentation material, trips with several interim stops between their principle origins and destinations, and trips by people whose physical disabilities make the use of public transportation impractical. Again, lack of trip characteristics information makes it impossible to determine the proportions of such trips on city highways during high demand periods. So there is no way to estimate the potential value of this trip shifting strategy in reducing congestion during these periods. * It seems likely that journey-to-work trips would constitute the largest proportion of trips that could be shifted to public transportation. Therefore, this strategy's effectiveness may be relatively strong during normal commuting periods which is a plus. Its effectiveness during midday hours, when there are many fewer work trips but when excess highway demand is still a problem, may be much lower - which is not a plus. * To maximize the strategy's effectiveness in shifting work trips, it may be necessary to increase the proportion of jobs in the city that are located in such commercial centers as the Manhattan CBD, downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City. These areas have good public transportation services, and people who work in them are more likely than those who work elsewhere to commute by public transportation. But any long term program to concentrate more of the city's jobs in these centers can involve complex issues of land use and tax policy. For example, many of the city's business firms locate in areas where auto commuting is the only option because of low rents. Therefore, some kind of commercial rent subsidy program might be necessary if more firms are to locate to centers served by public transportation. Such a program could be very costly. 9 * Many existing public transportation routes are seriously overcrowded during normal commuting periods. Therefore, new public transportation capacity may have to be created before this trip shifting strategy can be truly effective in moving work trips off city highways. This can be very costly and time-consuming, especially when the new capacity involves subway or commuter rail lines. * Many residents of the region must begin their trips to jobs in the city's main commercial centers by car because they live in areas where public transportation is not within reasonable walking distance. A large and well- planned network of park-ride facilities in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx maybe needed if significant numbers of these people are to have practical access to public transportation. Developing such a network will be especially difficult and costly in Brooklyn, which has the region's largest resident population and is also a major through corridor for work trips from other areas. The lack of space for large-scale parking lots next to public transportation stations (as at Shea Stadium in Queens and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx) may require building multi-level parking garages in air rights over railroad tracks. This can be very costly and could raise additional air quality issues in the local areas affected. * Attracting significant numbers of motorists to public transportation presents major challenges in consumer marketing that public agencies are not really equipped to handle. This issue needs to be evaluated in considerable detail in order to determine what mix of public transportation improvements, fare policies, disincentives for auto use, and reorientation of motorist psychology can be sufficiently effective, cost-efficient, and socially acceptable. Such an evaluation should be undertaken in the course of developing the Plan, and might be best handled by a private sector marketing firm that has a good record of success with consumer products. Despite its problems, this trip shifting strategy may have to be the Plan's primary strategy for reducing congestion - unless the concept of moving significant amounts of economic activity to the nighttime hours turns out to be feasible. (See Section V.) 10 7. If new public transportation capacity must be created to accommodate substantial shifts of highways trips to public transportation, most of this new capacity may have to involve subway and commuter rail facilities. Expanding New York City's express bus and passenger ferry networks are relatively low-cost ways to increase public transportation capacity. But both modes face significant limitations on the amount of new capacity they can provide. The express bus routes linking Manhattan with the city Is residential boroughs have been losing riders in recent years - and there is no evidence that these tripmakers have shifted to subways rather than to lower occupancy motor vehicles. Declining patronage could be evidence of the two serious problems these routes face in providing good service. One is roadway congestion, which degrades both the time and reliability of trips. The other is lack of off-street terminals within Manhattan. The congestion problem might be alleviated by establishing a large-scale network of priority lanes for commercial vehicles on city highways and river crossings (as discussed above) . The off -street terminal problem is more difficult and costly to address. Ideally, express bus terminals should have easy connections for passengers to other public transportation routes within Manhattan, and access to river crossings for buses that do not involve the use of local streets (two advantages that the Port Authority's bus terminal offers). Unless some way can be found to deal with the terminal problem, the functional capacity of Manhattan streets may seriously limit options for significantly expanding express bus service. Passenger ferries have become increasingly popular in recent years. Even so, they serve less than 1.5 percent of the people traveling to and from Manhattan each day. Their most serious problem is that they can only offer shore-to-shore service, and most people do not live or work within walking distance of shore locations. Therefore, ferry services must have good connections with other transportation facilities at each end (as does NYCDOT's Staten Island Ferry) in order to attract significant numbers of passengers. An eight-fold expansion of ferry service (and passengers) would be needed for this mode to capture even as little as a ten percent share of the daily Manhattan travel market. This would be a major undertaking, requiring an effective partnership between the public and private 11 sectors. The potential role that passenger ferries may have in providing new public transportation capacity is certainly worth encouraging. But would probably be limited to a relatively small niche market. Significant increases in public transportation capacity will probably have to involve the subway and commuter rail systems. Section VI of the report describes fourteen options for expanding the capacity of these systems. All provide additional passenger capacity to serve Manhattan, and eleven of them would also serve downtown Brooklyn or Long Island City. These options embrace three different strategies for expanding capacity. * Modifying existing lines so that they can run longer (therefore, higher capacity) trains. * Building new connections between existing lines that enable more trains per hour to be run. * Building entirely new lines. The fourteen options are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, any selected group of them could be moved forward incrementally over a period of several decades. But each option has a substantial capital cost, ranging from hundreds of million dollars to several billion dollars. Also, options in the second and third categories would result in higher annual operating and maintenance costs. (See Section VI.) 8. Developing effective TCMs to reduce congestion requires a carefully structured process that is highly targeted and based on detailed information about highway tripmaking. As noted earlier, there is a lack of comprehensive information about origins and destinations, trip purposes, and other key characteristics of trips made on New York City highways. Without such information, there is no reliable way to evaluate candidate TCMs in terms of the number of trips they could affect on any given highway during any given hour, their potential ability to improve air quality by reducing congestion, and how they could affect the activities of local business firms. 12 Attempting to implement TCMs that have not been analyzed from these perspectives could be very risky. They might simply move congestion around without producing any material improvements in air quality. And they could impose serious and unpredictable hardships on local business firms, especially on the thousands of small and medium-sized firms that are responsible for most of New York City's jobs. (See Section V.) 9. Trips by commercial motor vehicles should be given priority use of city highways and river crossings during high demand periods. Congestion levels on city highways during the normal business day provide clear evidence that overall trip demand exceeds highway capacity. Reducing congestion sufficiently to attain Clean Air Act standards seems likely to require shifting significant numbers of trips away from the highways during high demand periods. But the trips targeted for shifting should not include those made for commercial purposes. These trips should be given priority use of scarce highway space, which implies a major change in how commercial trips are regarded by government agencies and the general public. As noted earlier, commercial trips include those moving people in buses, van, and taxis; goods movement trips; service and repair calls; and trips to and from sales and other business meetings. These trips have certain important characteristics in common. ' * They have a direct business-related purpose that produces income for those who make them. The longer they take to complete, the more they cost. These costs flow through the entire local economy and end up being added to the price of everything we buy and sell. All else being equal, higher costs means a less competitive economy. Therefore, sound public policy dictates actions that enable commercial trips to be completed as rapidly as possible. * Many of them are highly time sensitive. It is not practical to shift them to other times of the day unless the economic activity that generates them is also shifted. 13 * With the possible exception of some commercial trips that involve moving people, they cannot be shifted to public transportation. If they are not made by motor vehicle, they usually cannot be made at all and the economic activity associated with them does not take place. In short, most commercial trips must be made in motor vehicles if they are going to be made at all. The best way to minimize the amount of air pollution that they generate is to arrange for them to be completed as quickly as possible. This can be done by giving them priority lanes on city highways and river crossings during high demand periods, so they are not delayed by congestion. Also, New York City's major parkways should be opened to commercial vehicles. This would expand the limited access highway network available to commercial vehicles by 88 percent, which is roughly equivalent to adding another 280 lane miles. Over time, the parkways should be reconstructed to eliminate the clearance problems that now limit their use by larger trucks and some buses. The Plan should evaluate certain revisions in the licensing procedures for commercial vehicles to reflect the following concepts: * The annual registration fees for commercial vehicle license plates should be based on vehicle weight and annual miles driven. * The fee rate for commercial plates should be materially higher than for non-commercial plates. * The possession of commercial plates should offer certain benefits not available to non-commercial plates, such as the ability to use priority highway lanes during high demand periods and to park or stand in curb lanes on local streets that are restricted to commercial vehicles. * Any motor vehicle owner should be able to obtain commercial plates (even for a standard automobile) if she determines that the benefits they provide are worth the higher cost. (See Section VII.) 14 10. To the extent feasible, a higher proportion of the freight being moved within New York City should be shifted from roadway modes to rail and water modes. Two issues should be considered by the Plan in addressing this matter. One concerns the number of tons of freight being moved per day. The second concerns the number of individual trips required per day to move these tons of freight. Increasing the proportion of freight tonnage moved by rail or water would reduce the number of daily truck trips within the city. Obvious targets for this kind of mode shifting include: * Through freight originating west of the Hudson and destined for locations on Long Island or northwest of the city (and vice versa). * Local freight with origins (destinations) west of the Hudson and destinations (origins) in the Bronx, Queens, and possibly Brooklyn. Much of this through and local freight reaches (or could reach) the region via rail lines that terminate in New Jersey. If better connections existed between the rail network west of the Hudson and the networks serving Long Island and the north, there would be less need to truck this tonnage across portions of New York City. But building new Trans-Hudson rail connections is an extremely costly undertaking. The benefits of such connections should be evaluated in detail during the Plan development process. A less costly alternative could be to move this freight on high-speed ferries. They could serve new, shorefront distribution centers in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Long Island, and Connecticut. This is another option that should be evaluated during the Plan development process. It is not yet clear how significant the impact of either option could be in reducing the number of goods movement trips by motor vehicle. There are thousands of individual buildings in New York City where goods must be dropped off or picked up each day. They include all the retail stores, small factories, and offices to which goods must be delivered on a daily or weekly basis. There is no possibility that any material percentage of these locations could be directly served by rail or water modes. 15 The best option for reducing the air pollution impact of these goods movement trips may be to arrange things so that they can be completed as quickly as possible, so that the amount of time motor vehicles making such trips are in operation is minimized. This can best be accomplished by giving these vehicles lane priority on highways and other roadways during high demand periods so that their trips are not delayed by traffic congestion. (See Section VII.) 11. Major improvements in landside access for JFK and LaGuardia should be implemented before the end of this decade. Nearly half of the 114,000 O&D passengers flying through the two City-owned airports each day are visitors who come here to conduct business or enjoy vacations. This means that their trips generate "export" business for the local economy. But there is increasing evidence that the problems of traveling between the airports and points of origin or destination within the region are discouraging people from visiting New York City. These problems arise from the fact that virtually all landside access trips are made in motor vehicles that must use portions of the heavily congested Queens highway network. The solution involves developing landside access modes that do not use highways and can provide the kind of service characteristics that will attract the majority of air passengers. The Port Authority has been studying the feasibility of building a wholly new transit system to connect Manhattan with JFK and LaGuardia. This initial focus on Manhattan is entirely appropriate. Manhattan generates 40 percent of the passengers using the two airports (45,000 per day) , and 60 percent of its passengers are visitors. Also, its air passengers add about 25,000 taxis trips per day to the traffic congestion on the East River crossings and the Queens highway network. If the airport transit system can become the dominant landside access mode for Manhattan air passengers, it would significantly reduce these taxis trips and therefore help attain Clean Air Act standards. The airport transit system being studied by the Port Authority would make use of contemporary "people mover" (or Automated Guideway Transit) technology, whose operations can be computer-controlled to minimize annual 16 operating costs. The Port Authority believes that an AGT system can offer highly attractive service characteristics and could be completed before the end of this decade - which is a major plus. The system's AGT technology is incompatible with the conventional rail technology used by the commuter railroads. Therefore, it could only provide no-transfer airport service to air passengers generated by Long Island and the northern suburban counties by building very expensive route extensions to reach these important market areas. This is a serious disadvantage, since there is increasing evidence that landside access problems are causing suburban air passengers to abandon JFK and LaGuardia for Stewart, Westchester County, and MacArthur airports. A proliferation of fully-developed commercial airports in the region would increase the cost to the airline industry of serving the region. The industry' s on-going financial problems could result in a dispersion of existing service among six airports instead of its traditional concentration at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. This would reduce flight frequencies and other service quality characteristics, making New York City a less convenient destination to reach by air and tending to discourage people who live elsewhere from traveling here for business and vacations. Theoretically, region-wide rail service to JFK and LaGuardia could be developed by making some relatively modest additions to the commuter rail network. But space constraints at Penn Station would prevent the Long Island Railroad from implementing new services between Manhattan and the airports until its connection into Grand Central Terminal is completed. There appears to be no likelihood that this connection could be completed during the 1990's. So the commuter rail option would be unable to serve the all-important Manhattan air passenger market until sometime after the year 2000. On balance therefore, the Port Authority's AGT system appears to be the only feasible option for serving Manhattan in this decade. But the Plan should address the question of how best to provide transit service to the airports from Long Island and the northern counties thereafter. (See Section VII.) 17 12. Telecommuting should be encouraged as a way to reduce the number of daily work trips made by automobiles. The increasing availability of low-cost fax machines, networked personal computers, and other telecommunications technology makes it possible for more people to work at home part of the time. The New York Telephone Company is actively promoting telecommuting and anticipates that, over time, between five and ten percent of those with jobs in New York City could work at home one or two days per week. To the extent that such people normally commute by car, telecommuting can help reduce the number of daily motor vehicle work trips. By easing traffic congestion during normal commuting periods and reducing daily motor vehicle miles of travel, telecommuting could therefore contribute to attaining Clean Air Act standards. It could also enable more people with physical disabilities or young children to participate more easily and fully in the city's labor force, which would expand the base of capable workers for business firms located in the city. For these reasons, the Plan should incorporate measures that facilitate and encourage telecommuting. Some of the issues it should address are outlined below. * Ways will have to be found to offset the revenue losses to public transportation systems from telecommuting. It is likely that the percentage of public transportation commuters who telecommute would be similar to the percentage for auto commuters. A five percent telecommuting rate would cost the subway system about $53 million per year and the MTA's commuter railroads about $17 million per year. These losses will have to be made up by something other than fare increases if telecommuting is not to inadvertently cause some public transportation riders to shift to cars. * Current Internal Revenue Service regulations no longer allow workers to deduct "home office,, expenses unless most of their work is done at home. Some firms may reimburse workers for their telecommuting expenses. But this may depend on the size of the firm and how "irreplaceable" the firm regards the worker (which tends to penalize lower income workers). Federal legislation to restore full deductibility of all home office expenses would help remove cost barriers that can discourage workers from participating in telecommuting programs. 18 13. It is possible that a "financially-constrained" Long Range Transportation Plan may not be sufficiently robust to achieve the congestion reductions needed for attaining Clean Air Act standards. The NYSDOT Guidelines define a Financially-Constrained Plan as one whose programs can be fully funded by a continuation of currently authorized local, State, and federal funding sources. Such a plan, which the Guidelines indicate should be the Primary Plan, cannot assume higher funding levels from these sources or the development of new funding mechanisms. NYMTC's analysis of transportation funding needs for the New York State portion of the metropolitan region suggests that a Financially-Constrained Plan may be able to complete the task of restoring deteriorated facilities. But it would fall short of adequately funding capital depreciation, which means a return to the old pattern of increasing deterioration. And it would provide no funds for expanding transportation capacity. Therefore, we should be prepared for the possibility that a plan consistent with the Guidelines may not be able to include the full range of transportation programs and projects needed to permit attainment of Clean Air Act standards. A much more costly plan could be necessary to accomplish this, unless we find it feasible to eliminate traffic congestion by shifting significant amounts of economic activity to the nighttime hours. Because of the federal government Is obsession with budget deficit reduction, most of the additional resources needed to fund a fully adequate plan would probably have to come from State and local sources. In such a case, the real issue is not whether we can "afford,, it. Rather it is what mechanisms can most efficiently and equitably generate the additional funds required for a transportation plan that provides for timely attainment of Clean Air Act standards. Fortunately, New York City is immensely rich. Its Gross City Product (a technical measure of its aggregate annual income as a society) is currently about $270 billion. Conservative projections indicate that this should reach $480 billion per year by 2003 and $920 billion by 2015. If we were to allocate only one percent of each year's GCP to expanding transportation funding capacity, new transportation dollars would total at least $40 billion by 2003 and $125 billion by 2015. This may be substantially more than is needed to fund an adequate transportation plan. 19 For these reasons, serious consideration should be given to developing a transportation plan that is not limited by the artificial (and possibly, unrealistic) ceiling recommended in the NYSDOT Guidelines. Instead, the Plan should include, f rom the beginning, all programs and projects needed to attain Clean Air Act standards on a timetable that is consistent with federal regulations and that avoids any risk of costly federal sanctions. This means that a major focus of Plan development should be on evaluating new State and local funding mechanisms that can provide additional transportation dollars to implement such programs and projects. Perhaps the best way to start is by developing a "transportation budget" for the city. This will identify (in dollars and in percent of GCP) how much is currently being spent by individuals, business firms, and public agencies to operate all of our various means of transportation, to replace facilities that wear out, and to expand our ability to move people and goods by acquiring more and better facilities. Such a budget will enable us to determine: * How much money can be made available for transportation in future years, given different assumptions about what percentage of GCP is appropriate to allocate to transportation. * The potential impact (on air quality, mobility, and economic growth) of allocating future transportation dollars among different strategic mixes of programs. Such programs would involve the obvious categorical areas, including private automobiles, commercial motor vehicles, and public transportation modes. They can also include the land use, tax, and other public policies that affect how and when and to what extent our various transportation systems are used. * Which funding mechanisms appear to be the best candidates for supporting transportation spending in an efficient and equitable manner. All this is straight-forward financial planning. But it is a key element in developing a Plan that has a realistic chance of meeting Clean Air Act and ISTEA requirements. And it provides essential information for the public participation process, without which no transportation plan is anything more than an academic exercise. 20 II. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES For the purposes of this report, Goals are defined as the strategic ends that the Long Range Transportation Plan is intended to achieve. Objectives are defined as the tactical means for reaching strategic ends. A. PLAN GOALS As noted in the Executive Summary, a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should have two main goals: 1. To provide transportation systems that enable the city to achieve timely attainment and consistent maintenance of Clean Air Act and other legally mandated environmental standards without compromising the city Is economic growth targets. 2. To provide the city with transportation systems that are capable of supporting an acceptable rate of economic growth through the year 2015 and beyond. Goal One: Environmental Quality Like most human activities, tripmaking can pollute the natural environment. It is only recently that society has begun to focus on how significantly the costs of pollution can detract from the overall benefits produced by economic activity. Various federal and state laws impose explicit standards for attaining and maintaining acceptable environmental quality. Recent amendments to these laws have broadened the class of substances that require control and the pollution sources that must be regulated. Failure to comply with these legal mandates would expose New York City to various sanctions that could reduce its level of economic activity. Theoretically, there are two general strategies available for meeting these legal mandates. One is to cut back economic activity to a level where the pollution it generates falls within the standards. The second is to improve and reorganize how we produce economic activity so that higher levels of economic activity can go hand-in-hand with better environmental quality. Since the first strategy is clearly unacceptable to most New Yorkers, the second is our only practical choice. 21 There are two tactical approaches for applying this strategy to transportation. 1. Find ways of reducing the amount of travel demand that is generated by a given level of economic activity. We should keep in mind that all travel demand is, in one way or another, generated by economic activity. Even a Sunday afternoon joy ride arises from economic activity, since the tripmaker's ability to afford such recreational trips depends on his income. 2. Accommodate travel demand in ways that generate less pollution. The spectrum of tripmaking alternatives ranges from walking (the least polluting) to using motor vehicles (the most polluting). New York City's Long Range Transportation Plan should encompass both tactical approaches. In doing so, it should begin by recognizing that most of the city's travel demand is accommodated by what are called 'mobile source vehicles". These are vehicles that have on-board internal combustion power plants. They include private automobiles, taxis, vans, buses, and trucks, and they constitute the city's largest single source of air pollution. This means that the region's heavy dependence on motor vehicles to accommodate travel demand must be addressed by the Plan in order to attain Clean Air Act standards. Motor vehicles generate their power by burning petroleum-based fossil fuels. The incomplete combustion of these fuels produces pollutants that degrade air quality. The most serious by-products of incomplete combustion include Carbon Monoxide, Volatile Organic Compounds, Nitrogen Oxides, and Particulate Matter. Three classes of factors determine the volume of pollutants produced in a given area during a given period of time. 1. One class involves the sheer number of motor vehicles in operation during that time and the number of miles they travel. More vehicles traveling more miles means more pollution. 2. The second class involves a variety of factors relating to the volume of pollutants produced by each vehicle. These include the type of fuel that the vehicle burns, the outside air temperature, the vehicles's engine 22 temperature, and how fast it is going. 3. The third class embraces various physical factors including wind speeds, humidity, the time of year, the degree of cloudiness, and the physical characteristics of the urban environment through which vehicles are traveling. There are four ways to reduce the amount of air pollution generated by motor vehicles. 1. Improve their combustion efficiency by some combination of better on-board technology and cleaner burning fuels. This is primarily the responsibility of the automobile and petroleum industries, which have initiated serious efforts in this direction. But government is responsible for assuring that on-board technology is maintained in good working order by means of regular inspection programs, and for assuring that cleaner burning fuels are actually delivered at the pump. Government may also have to provide incentives to speed up the turn-over of the city's motor vehicle fleet so that older vehicles with less effective anti-pollution technology are removed from service as quickly as possible. 2. Increase the proportion of "motor-vehicle-miles-of-travel" (MVMTS) made in high occupancy vehicles. When ten people travel five miles in a single bus rather than in ten separate automobiles, the air pollution generated by each traveler is significantly reduced. But this means that the ten people must have trip origins and destinations that the bus route can serve. Therefore, achieving a high proportion of MVMTs made in buses and other HOVs may require some rethinking about how the city locates and concentrates significant trip attractors like work places, shopping, and entertainment centers. this involves land use policy, which should be reflected in the Plan. 3. Increase the proportion of trips that are made in electrically-powered vehicles (subway and commuter trains, trolley cars, and battery powered delivery vans) rather than in automobiles, buses, and fossil-fueled vans. Electrically- powered vehicles produce less pollution than fossil-fueled vehicles because their power comes from a relatively few "stationary source" generating plants. It is generally easier and less 23 costly for society as a whole to improve combustion efficiency at a small number of generating plants that burn fossil fuels than on millions of motor vehicles. But reducing motor vehicle pollution through greater use of public transportation vehicles depends very heavily on a high degree of concentrated origins and destinations among tripmakers. Again, this ultimately involves land use policy. 4. Reorganize certain production techniques and activity locations in ways that lessen the need for motor vehicle trips to move people and goods. For example, suppose a person works five days each week at a work place that she can only reach by automobile. If she is able to compress her work week into four days (by working two additional hours on each of those days) , her average daily commuting MVMTs measured over the entire week will fall by 20 percent. If she is able to work at home for two days each week, her commuting MVMTs fall by 40 percent. if her work place moves to a location that she can reach by subway or commuter train, her commuting MVMTs may fall by 100 percent. Obviously, such reorganizations can involve significant financial and social costs that impact the efficiency of the economic activity involved (not always negatively). So careful trade-off analyses are necessary. Attaining Clean Air Act standards is not a matter of choice or discussion. It is a matter of complying with the law. Choices and discussion arise in connection with how New Yorkers will comply with federal law. Will we do it by reducing economic activity and accepting lower living standards? Or will we do it by making some changes in how we produce economic activity, so our living standards can rise? A meaningful Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should assume that we will make sufficient changes in how we accommodate travel demand and how we organize the economic activity that generates this demand so that we can attain Clean Air Act standards without restricting economic growth. In addition to certain land use and societal changes, the Plan may well require a full plate of the transportation programs and policies discussed in Sections IV, VI, and VII. Because of the magnitude of New York City's air quality problems, we should be prepared for the possibility that a Financially-Constrained Plan (as defined by the NYSDOT Guidelines) may be unable to include enough of these programs and projects. Therefore, the most prudent course may be to develop what the NYSDOT Guidelines refer to as a Desired Plan 24 that assures attainment of Clean Air Act standards, determine how much of this can be accommodated within a Financially Constrained Plan, identify any funding shortfalls, and seek new resources to eliminate the shortfalls. Goal Two: Economic Growth When we talk about New York City's transportation systems, we are talking about its economic future. Because transportation systems do not exist for their own sake. They exist primarily to bring together people, goods, and services in transaction markets that produce economic activity. Any given level of economic activity in New York City generates a demand for travel that its transportation systems must be able to accommodate. If these systems are inadequate, the level of economic activity is constrained and the city's living standards are unable to grow as rapidly as they could. This is analogous to the mechanical conveyor systems in an automobile factory that move auto components to the various locations on the assembly line where they are added together, piece by piece, to become a finished automobile. If we want higher output from the factory, we must increase the capacity of its conveyor systems. Failure to do so prevents any material increase in factory output, no matter how much more skilled and efficient assembly line workers become. Like many other infrastructure systems, transportation is a "leading edge,, system. Transportation capacity must be provided in advance of the economic activity that it is designed to support, not after the fact. The construction of the Erie Canal in the early nineteenth century illustrates this. Once the Erie Canal was completed, New York became the only East Coast port city that had direct access to the high-potential hinterland beyond the Appalachian mountains. This gave the city a jump-start towards becoming the nation's commercial capital. During the next hundred years, construction of intercity railroads, mass transit lines, limited access highways and commercial airports cemented New York's position as a high- growth international center offering a wealth of economic opportunities for its residents. In each case, construction of the transportation systems came first. It was then followed by the increases in economic activity that made these opportunities possible. This enabled New York's economy to grow more rapidly than the national average. 25 During the last thirty years, there has been no material expansion of New York City Is transportation systems. Instead, significant elements of these systems were allowed to deteriorate to a point where their ability to accommodate trip demand was reduced. It is no coincidence that the city's long term rate of economic growth fell below the national average during this period. There was no longer enough transportation capacity to support the higher-than-average growth rates typical of earlier periods. If this trend is allowed to continue, New Yorkers can look forward to only modest improvements in their living standards, and to increasing shortages of resources to meet essential social needs. That is why the Number Two goal of the Plan should be to restore, expand, and reorient the city's transportation systems in ways that support the kind of economic growth that New Yorkers desire for themselves and their children. To accomplish this, further research is needed to quantify the relationship between transportation capacity and economic activity. This relationship does not necessarily have to be established with great precision. Rather, its aim should be to show order-of-magnitude links between levels of investment in new transportation capacity and the resulting higher levels of economic activity. This will allow New Yorkers to make their own judgements about relative trade-offs between more investment in the near term (which they will have to pay for) and greater economic benefits in the long term (which they and their children will enjoy) . A meaningful public participation process requires that New Yorkers be in a position to make such judgements, and the Plan should provide them with the necessary information. All of which suggests that the Plan should be driven in part by long range goals for economic growth in New York City. The three hypothetical scenarios outlined below illustrate the impact that various economic growth rates can have on future living standards. * Minimum Growth: averaging 0.5 to 1.5 percent per year (after adjusting for inflation) . By 2015, economic activity and living standards in New York would be 13 to 45 percent higher (after adjusting for inflation) than in 1990. * Moderate Growth: averaging 1.5 to 2.5 percent per year. By 2015, economic activity and living standards would be 45 to 85 percent higher than in 1990. 26 * High Growth: averaging 2.5 to 3.5 percent per year. By 2015, economic activity and living standards would be 85 to 136 percent higher than in 1990. As noted above, higher levels of economic activity generate higher levels of travel demand. Therefore, New York City's choice of an economic growth target will determine the level of investment it will have to make in order to provide enough transportation capacity to achieve this target. In a nut shell, this means that the willingness of New Yorkers to invest in transportation will go a long way towards determining their future living standards. New York City has many unique advantages that can enable it capture more of the high-value jobs and income an increasingly vigorous and interconnected global economy will generate in the future. But these advantages cannot be exploited if we fail to provide the city with transportation systems able to accommodate the rising travel demand that such increases in economic activity will generate. Like the automobile factory described earlier, our willingness to work harder and smarter will accomplish little if we lack the transportation capacity to support more economic activity. Such a failure would mean that the new jobs and higher incomes that could be our's will end up in Tokyo, London, Paris, and the other world class cities that are already investing heavily in better transportation systems. They are doing so because they realize that such investments can boost their competitive position in the global economy. How can New Yorkers do any less? B. OBJECTIVES The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) has identified six "critical issues" that should be addressed in developing a Long Range Transportation Plan for the New York State portion of the metropolitan region. They represent six objectives that should be reflected in a plan for New York City in order to help define how effectively its transportation systems support the goals of attaining Clean Air Act standards and achieving higher levels of economic activity. NYMTC's six critical issues are: 1. Mobility: moving people and goods within the city easily, efficiently, and in a manner that is consistent with attaining Clean Air Act standards. 27 2. Infrastructure: the physical condition of the structures and facilities that make up the city's transportation systems. 3. Airport Access: the ability of air passengers and air cargo firms to travel swiftly and reliably between the city's two commercial airports and their points of trip origin or destination within the metropolitan region. 4. Intermodality: the ability of people and goods to move easily and efficiently between various transportation modes while traveling in order to make the most effective use of each one. 5. Safety: minimizing the real and perceived risks of making trips by all modes within the city. 6. Financing: how efficiently and equitably the costs of implementing a Long Range Transportation Plan for the city are funded. 28 III. INFRASTRUCTURE The pervasive deterioration of New York City Is transportation infrastructure was neither an act of God nor evidence of fumbling incompetence by public sector managers. It was simply due to a long series of annual "loans" that Society as a whole, acting through its public agencies, consciously and unconsciously extracted from the city's transportation facilities over many years. This practice is by no means unique to New York City. It is as American as apple pie and affects all public capital facilities throughout the nation except those that levy self- supporting user charges (such as the toll crossings operated by TBTA and the Port Authority). These involuntary loans took the form of chronic failures to provide sufficient funds each year to fully cover the true annual costs of transportation facilities, which must include both ongoing maintenance and normal capital renewal as well as operations. The lemonade stand accounting practices that are traditional in U.S. public sector fiscal reporting helped to mask these failures in New York City, as they did throughout the nation. As a result, the impact of persistently under-funding transportation facilities did not become apparent until deterioration had reached a point where their functional capacity had been significantly reduced. This often coincided with the realization that major rebuilding programs (i.e. "loan repayment") had become unavoidable in order to prevent large-scale breakdowns in the ability of transportation facilities to function at all - as happened with the West Side Highway in 1972. In New York City, these rebuilding programs are so extensive that they often disrupt normal operations on the facilities being restored for extended periods of time (for example, the reconstruction of the Gowanus Expressway is expected to take about ten years) . This results in travel delays that increase trip costs and end up being added to the price of nearly everything we buy and sell. Therefore, the true cost to Society of these involuntary loans is actually greater than the reported amounts spent for reconstruction projects. Since the early 1980's nearly $18 billion has been spent since the early 1980's to restore New York City's highways, bridges, and subways to a state of good repair. At least another $24 billion must still be spent before the ravages of deterioration are fully overcome. 29 But none of this spending represents new investment to increase transportation capacity in the city. It is simply repayment of the loans that we as a society extracted f rom the transportation systems that our grandparents built for us, so that we could use the funds for other public and private purposes. It is tempting to speculate about where we would be today if we could have used the $18 billion spent on restoration since the early 1980's to provide ourselves with new transportation capacity to support higher levels of economic activity. Would New York City's rate of economic growth once again be higher than the nation's rather than trailing it? Would there be less roadway congestion and better air quality? As part of achieving Goals One and Two, a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should provide for timely completion of the restoration process. Whether this can be done within the framework of a Financially-Constrained Plan is not yet clear. But it seems apparent that the practice of extracting loans from our transportation systems by chronically under-funding them is imprudent and unsound. The near-collapse of the subway system in 1980 is surely evidence of this. Therefore the Plan should also provide an overall fiscal structure that enables us to accurately identify the true annual costs of our transportation facilities and to generate the funds needed to cover these costs out of our current aggregate income as a society. IDENTIFYING THE TRUE ANNUAL COSTS OF TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES The true annual cost of any capital facility, whether it is a privately-owned factory or a publicly-owned highway or subway line, consists of three main components. They are operations, Maintenance, and Capital Depreciation. Fiscal prudence requires that all three components be accurately identified and paid in full each year out of current income. Ignoring them, deferring them, or borrowing to fund them simply leads to ruin. 1. Operations Capital facilities require varying amounts of "hands-on" activity in order to produce the goods or services that are their reason for being. The annual cost of providing this activity is the facility's "operating cost". A factory's operating costs pay for the labor force it needs to operate its production equipment, the raw materials purchased to turn into finished goods, plus the various ancillary goods and services like electric power 30 that are needed to make production possible. A subway line's operating costs pay for its operating personnel, plus the electric power and other things needed for trains to run. A highway's operating costs pay for traffic control personnel, emergency services, electric power for lights, plowing snow in the winter, etc. Since operating costs must be paid more or less as they are incurred (through employee salaries and payment of supplier bills), they cannot be evaded except by making direct, conscious reductions in the facility's output. 2. Maintenance Capital facilities also require varying amounts of ongoing maintenance to keep them functioning efficiency. The annual cost of these activities are the facility's "maintenance costs". In a factory, production equipment must be oiled and cleaned and kept in tune, floors must be swept to avoid accident hazards, minor repairs must be made and new parts installed to prevent serious breakdowns. Similar maintenance activities are needed for a subway line. Trains must be cleaned and serviced, tracks and signals must be inspected and kept in good repair, and periodic repairs must be made to tunnel and elevated structures to minimize the impact of time and operations. On a highway, maintenance involves keeping the pavement in good repair, cleaning and servicing drainage facilities, keeping the lights working, assuring that signs and lane markings are clear and in good condition, etc. Maintenance costs are easier to evade. In a wrong-headed attempt to generate "savings", certain maintenance activities can be deferred with no immediate impact on output. The main result is that capital facilities wear out more rapidly, and this can often be ignored for years. 31 3. Capital Depreciation Creating a capital facility involves an initial outlay of money to fund construction, equipment purchases, etc. These are capital costs and do not normally get charged as an annual cost in the year they are incurred. Rather, they are totaled together to constitute the facility's capital asset value when it is new. But once the facility is completed and is placed in operation, its capital asset value begins to diminish. In effect, the facility gradually gets "used up" because of the wear and tear of producing goods or services. After a certain number of years, the facility is worn out and must either be replaced with a new facility or substantially reconstructed. Private sector accounting practices require that the portion of the facility's asset value thus diminished each year be charged as a cost for that year. This annual cost is known as "capital depreciation" and must appear as a separate cost item in the income statement of a private firm. It is also subtracted each year from the asset side of the firm's balance sheet. (Capital depreciation should not be confused with tax depreciation, which is a mechanism for paying government subsidies to private firms and has nothing to do with the facility's diminishing asset value.) For example, assume that a new assembly line in a factory has a capital cost of $10 million and an expected useful life of ten years. In such a case, $1 million in depreciation costs will be charged to the factory's true annual cost for each of those ten years and will be included in the depreciation cost item on the income statement of the private firm that owns the factory. Theoretically, this implies that $1 million worth of revenue produced by the factory each year should be set aside to provide for the eventual replacement or reconstruction of the assembly line when it has reached the end of its useful life. In practice, the firm that owns the factory may "borrow" the $1 million each year to use for other purposes. These can include paying off some of the debt it may have incurred to build the assembly line, expanding the size of the warehouse that serves the factory, funding the start-up costs of a new advertising campaign to increase sales of the factory's products, or even paying bonuses to its top executives. But regardless of whether the firm borrows these depreciation funds for prudent or imprudent purposes, its 32 balance sheet each year will reflect the fact that the asset value of the assembly line has diminished by another $1 million. At the end of ten years, it will face the cost of replacing or reconstructing the assembly line. If it has prudently banked the depreciation funds, it will have cash on hand to help cover this cost. If it has invested these funds to grow its revenues and profits, its operations may be generating enough cash to fund replacement costs out of current income or enable the firm to borrow the necessary cash on favorable terms. But if it has squandered the depreciation funds, it may be unable to afford the cost of a new assembly line. In which case, it will have to struggle along with a worn out assembly line that causes production costs to increase because of frequent breakdowns and other inefficiencies. Eventually, the assembly line may fail entirely and the factory will no longer be able to produce anything. Within private sector accounting circles, there is some debate over whether computing depreciation on the basis of original cost (as in the example given above) fairly accounts for the loss of capital asset value. Some people argue that depreciation should be computed on the basis of replacement cost, which increases in each year because of inflation. It is now standard practice to include replacement cost depreciation figures in the notes that accompany a firm's financial statements, while original cost depreciation continues to be used in the income statement as one of the costs to be charge against the firm's revenues in computing net profits. Many financial analysts prefer to use replacement cost depreciation in evaluating a firm's ability to generate enough cash from its operations to remain viable and grow. Public sector accounting in the United States (though not in other industrial countries) does not recognize capital depreciation as an annual cost. This makes capital depreciation for public facilities an easy cost to evade because it is not even identified. The result is that the true annual cost of most public capital facilities in the United States (including New York City's highways, bridges, and subway system) is significantly understated. This allows us the luxury of imagining that our transportation services cost less than they actually do. Which enables us (as a society) to take some of the income that we should be using to pay for transportation and divert it to other uses. Until the full depreciation bill finally comes due, in greatly inflated dollars, as 33 happened in New York in the early 1980's. WHY NEW YORK CITY'S TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES DETERIORATED In simple terms, they deteriorated because we consistently under-funded the true annual costs of capital depreciation and ongoing maintenance. 1. Under-Funding Depreciation It was easy to under-fund depreciation because traditional public sector accounting practices make no provision for identifying this cost. But pretending that a cost does not exist cannot make it go away. Like the unpaid balances on a credit card, it simply accumulates year by year until the total deficiency becomes frighteningly large (as we saw during the 1980's) and the operating capability of the under-funded capital facility is seriously compromised. Some public sector fiscal specialists like to argue that debt service provides an adequate proxy for capital depreciation. This may be true in the academic sense. But experience shows that, in the case of New York City's transportation facilities, proxies are no substitute for the real thing. In a local government or public agency, debt service is the combined cost of annual interest payments on outstanding long term debt plus annual repayments of that debt. New York City's debt service policies are regulated by provisions in the State constitution. These provisions effectively require the City to pay off each issue of bonds in something close to equal annual installments over the useful life of the capital asset that the bonds were issued to acquire. Therefore, the fiscal specialists argue, these equal annual repayments of debt are equivalent to equal annual charges for capital depreciation. There are three problems with this argument. * At best, these debt payments can only reflect depreciation computed on the basis of original cost. But the reason why we want to identify depreciation costs for transportation facilities is to show the true annual cost that is incurred to produce transportation services. Since inflation raises the cost of replacing what has been worn out, it is more realistic to compute depreciation 34 on the basis of replacement cost. Therefore, even under ideal circumstances, debt payments are an inadequate proxy for depreciation because they understate its true cost. * The second problem arises because some of the past capital investments in bridge, roadway, and subway capital facilities were funded by federal or State grants. Since grants do not have to be repaid, there is no proxy cost shown anywhere for depreciation on the grant-funded portion of ' these facilities' capital asset value. This further understates the true annual cost of these transportation facilities. * Under current budgeting practices, repayment of city debt issued to build or improve bridges, roadways, and most of the subway system is shown only in the debt service portion of the City's expense budget, where it is lumped together with debt payments on bonds issued for other capital facilities. NYCDOT's operating budget shows the funds allocated each year to operate and maintain city bridges and roadways, but does not show debt payments on their bonds. The same thing is generally true of the Transit Authority's operating budget. Therefore, both budgets understate the true annual cost of these transportation facilities by failing to include proper allowances for even the proxy value of depreciation. Let us remember why capital depreciation needs to be identified as a distinct cost item. It is to show us how much of the transportation facility' s capital asset value is effectively being "used up" each year to produce transportation services. This tells us how much of our current income should be allocated to cover this cost, so we can make provisions to fund replacement or restoration of the facility on a schedule that prevents major deterioration. We have never made such provisions in the past, and we are not doing so now. How can we when the dollar cost of depreciation is nowhere identified accurately? Therefore, despite the $18 billion we have spent since the early 1980's to restore our badly deteriorated transportation facilities (and the $24 billion more we must spend in the future to complete the task), we risk repeating the same pattern of cost ignorance and underfunding that brought so many of these facilities to the brink of disfunction in the first place. 35 2. Under-Funding Maintenance Maintenance is a tempting cost to under-fund because the. results of doing so can remain hidden for years. But when they finally surface, they often show up in the form of a capital facility that has worn out and requires capital replacement years before the end of its theoretical useful life. Some budget mavens like to argue that this is actually a "smart" fiscal strategy. The cost of today's on-going maintenance is traded off for a larger capital replacement cost tomorrow. Since capital replacement can be funded by issuing long term debt while maintenance uses up current revenues, such a trade-off can end up minimizing the need for tax or fare increases to fund a given level of service. But studies done by NYCDOT of long term bridge costs indicate that this is really an illusion. If bridges are properly maintained throughout their lives, their aggregate annual funding costs for maintenance and capital replacement (after appropriate allowances for the different timings of these respective cash flows) is actually lower than under the "smart" strategy. In addition, service quality is higher on a properly maintained bridge and the lengthy disruptions required for full-scale restoration are avoided. It is possible that the same may be true for roadways and the subway system. Maintenance costs are not difficult to under-fund because, as with depreciation, they are not clearly identified. By long tradition, public agency operating budgets group all costs under two gross categories that are object-oriented rather than function-oriented. * Personnel costs, which include employee salaries and wages, fringe benefits, and pension payments. * Non-personnel costs, which include all purchases of materials, supplies, and other goods and services from private firms. This kind of master format for public agency budgets may simplify the auditing process (to whom were public funds paid?). But it undermines the effectiveness of planning and accountability (for what purposes were public funds used?). 36 Just as with depreciation, the fact that the maintenance costs of transportation facilities were never clearly identified made under-funding them. year and year easy and virtually inevitable. Which accelerated the process of wearing them out. 3. Solving The Problem Three significant changes are necessary if we are to avoid repeating the process that brought New York City's transportation facilities to the brink of ruin and saddled us with a $40 billion restoration bill. First: we must revise the master format of public agency budgets so that they clearly identify all annual costs under functional categories that are meaningful. The revised format should show four cost categories: * Operating costs (including both employee salaries and purchases of materials and supplies). * Maintenance costs (again including both employee salaries as well as purchases of materials and supplies). * Interest costs on the outstanding long term debt issued to build or improve the agency's capital facilities. * Capital depreciation, computed on a replacement cost basis and reflecting the true original cost of the capital facilities (including any portion funded by State or federal grants). The sum of these four categories is the true annual cost of the transportation services that the agency is responsible for providing. Knowing this cost is the essential first step in providing adequate funding for transportation. Second: we must accept the responsibility of paying in full for the services we demand. Since transportation supports economic activity, and economic activity produces our income as a society, we cannot evade the need to allocate an appropriate portion of this income to paying for transportation. If we insist on paying less, we will have less transportation (one way or another), which inevitably means less economic activity and therefore less income. If we want our income to rise, we will need more economic activity and that requires more spending for transportation. 37 Third: fiscal soundness dictates that the true annual cost of transportation should be funded entirely by current income - which can include user fees, tax levy funds, and grants from other levels of government. This means an end to the traditional practice of issuing debt to fund capital replacement and restoration, which is economically unsound. Each year's true cost must be accepted as a legitimate charge against Society's current income for the transportation services it receives in that year. It is not appropriate to charge any of it against future income, which is what happens when we issue debt to fund capital replacement. If these practices are followed on a consistent basis, capital facilities will not deteriorate in the future because there will always be sufficient funds for proper maintenance and capital replacement. If these practices is not followed, these facilities will inevitably deteriorate. Just as they did in the past. It was probably unavoidable that the massive transportation restoration programs begun in the 1980's had to be funded in large part by new debt issues (rather than out of current income) , because their cost was so enormous. This practice will undoubtedly have to continue until these programs have been completed and the capital facilities in question have been fully restored to a condition of good repair. But let us be clear about what this means. In restoring our deteriorated transportation systems, we have been repaying the loans that we extracted from them during previous decades. This "investment" (as we like to call it) added no new transportation capacity to support more economic activity. The f act that we funded these restoration programs by issuing new debt simply means that we took out new loans to pay off old loans, which effectively shifts a large portion of the loan repayments (plus interest) to our children and grandchildren. Under the circumstances, there may be no other alternative. But we cannot allow it to happen again. Therefore, an effective Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should address the issue of how we can fund our transportation needs in a fiscally sound manner. This issue is discussed further in Section VII. 38 IV. MOBILITY: THE BASICS The NYSDOT Guidelines imply that the Mobility portion of the Long Range Transportation Plan should consist of two basic elements: * Programs and projects whose main purpose is Congestion Management. In non-attainment areas like New York City, the primary focus of Congestion Management should be on attaining Clean Air Act Standards. * Programs and projects whose main purpose is Economic Development. This definition is especially appropriate for New York City, since the two elements correspond directly to the two main goals of a Long Range Transportation Plan for the city. As noted previously, these goals are (1) to assure timely attainment and ongoing maintenance of legally mandated air quality standards, and (2) to provide sufficient transportation capacity to support increasingly higher levels of economic activity. At the same time, the NYSDOT Guidelines underscore the common link between the two elements within the broader context of Mobility - which is a Plan objective and a NYMTC critical issue. This section and Section IV will concentrate primarily on the Congestion Management element and its impact on attaining air quality standards. But many of the programs and projects needed for Congestion Management will also support Economic Development. THE CONGESTION PROBLEM Highway congestion is New York City's most serious transportation problem because of its impact on air quality, and because of the high costs it imposes on business activity. Congestion has become steadily worse during the past generation as incremental increases in economic activity generated higher levels of trip demand that were not offset by meaningful increases in roadway capacity. In fact, the functional capacity of New York's highway system actually declined during this period. Part of this decline was due to pervasive infrastructure deterioration, which was discussed in Section III. The rest was due to the rising incidence of random lane blockages because of the vehicle accidents and breakdowns that are an inevitable result of worsening congestion. As motor vehicle trip demand saturated the city's highway system, two undesirable phenomena appeared. 39 * The physical parameters of congestion spread. It moved down the roadway hierarchy as motor vehicle tripmakers sought ever more ingenious travel routings to avoid congestion - overflowing from limited access highways to other arterials, and then to local streets that had to assume the unintended function of serving as through routes. It also spread outward from the Manhattan CBD (where congestion has been a fact of life for more than a century) to pervade the neighborhoods of the city's residential boroughs. * The temporal parameters of congestion spread. It moved outward from the two traditional journey-to-work peaks into the shoulder periods as increasing numbers of motor vehicle tripmakers modified their hours of travel to avoid the ever-broadening peak periods. Until it spread like a flood tide across the entire business day and into the evening hours. The consequences of highway congestion are many. But they can be grouped under two problem categories. The first concerns attaining Clean Air Act standards. The second involves economic costs. Addressing the first problem category has clear priority because it involves complying with federal law. The Clean Air Act requires New York City to attain and maintain specified standards for air quality. Existing levels of motor vehicle congestion make this impossible. Therefore, the city's Transportation Plan must address congestion because of its relationship to Clean Air Act standards. As Section II indicated, motor vehicles constitute the city's most important source of air pollution. Congestion itself is evidence of this, because it demonstrates that too many trips are being made in motor vehicles relative to available highway capacity. Congestion also exacerbates air pollution by lengthening trip times (which causes vehicles to spend more time per trip producing pollutants), and by increasing the volume of emissions per minute of trip time for those pollutants whose emission volumes are inversely proportional to vehicle speed. Some reduction in vehicle emissions can be anticipated from cleaner burning fuels and better on-board pollution control technology. But there is no evidence as yet to support the hope that these improvements will be sufficient by themselves to enable New York City to attain Clean Air Act standards - even if its economy ceases to grow. This confronts New York City with three alternatives. one is to seek legislative or administrative wavers of Clean Air Act requirements, so that the City will not be subject to federal 40 sanctions for allowing the present situation to continue indefinitely. For a variety of reasons, this alternative does not seem like a very promising one. The second alternate is for the city to reduce motor vehicle trip demand by shrinking economic activity to a level that is compatible with attainment of Clean Air Act standards under existing tripmaking patterns. This may require the city to shed a significant percentage of its jobs and residents. Such an alternative implies that the Plan goal of economic development (which is socially mandated) must be sacrificed to the Plan goal of attaining Clean Air Act standards (which is legally mandated) Very few New Yorkers are likely to be comfortable with this. The third alternative is for the city's Transportation Plan to develop and implement effective Congestion Management measures that make the goal of economic development fully compatible with the goal of attaining Clean Air Act standards. This report believes that the third alternative is the only viable one. It should be made the central theme of New York City's Transportation Plan. The second problem category involves economic costs because a high proportion of motor vehicle trips on New York City highways are directly related to conducting business activity. Fare-paying passengers are being transported (in buses and vans). Goods are being moved (in trucks and vans). Service and repair calls are being made (mainly in vans but also in conventional automobiles). Business meetings and sales calls are being driven to (mostly in conventional automobiles). The cost of each trip is heavily influenced by the time it takes to complete. Highway congestion lengthens trip times and therefore increases transportation costs. Also, expectations of congestion by commercial vehicle operators cause them to allow extra time when scheduling trips, which reduces the amount of business a vehicle can do each day and adds further to average trip costs. The resulting higher costs flow through the city's economy and end up being added to the price of everything we buy and sell. All else being equal, a more costly economy is a less competitive economy. Therefore, congestion acts to constrain the underlying growth rate of economy activity in New York. If the air quality problem did not exist, the cost problem would dictate that congestion receive serious attention in the city Is Transportation Plan because of its relationship to economic development. Congestion Management measures can be grouped into two general categories. * Measures that are designed to maximize the functional capacity of New York City's highways at all times. 41 * Measures that are designed to reduce motor vehicle trip demand on congested highways during high demand periods - by shifting substantial numbers of trips to less congested roadways, to periods of lower demand, or to lower-polluting transportation modes. MAXIMIZING FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY A highway's design capacity is a measure of how many vehicles it can process during a specified time period (such as one hour) under ideal conditions. Such conditions include an absence of any physical barriers to the free flow of traffic. In the real world of New York City, conditions are rarely ideal. Therefore, the actual number of vehicles that a highway can process during a specified time period (which is its "functional capacity") is usually less than its design capacity. How much less depends on the nature and severity of "friction barriers" to the free flow of traffic. In some cases, their practical effect is the same as removing an entire lane or two from service. This functional "narrowing" of New York City highways is so pervasive and widespread during much of the day that the usual objective measures of congestion often understate its true extent. Therefore, the Transportation Plan for New York City should place high priority on correcting the conditions that reduce functional capacity. There are two classes of conditions that can cause functional capacity to fall materially short of design capacity. They are "Steady-State Conditions" and "Random Conditions". 1. Steady-State Conditions These are conditions that are in effect all day and every day until they are corrected. They embrace a wide variety of pavement surface, structural, and design deficiencies. * Pavement Surface Deficiencies In a dense but free-flowing traffic stream vehicles sharply reduce speed whenever they encounter a stretch of rough pavement. This sudden speed reduction ripples like a sea wave back through the trailing traffic stream, gaining amplitude as it goes, until vehicles well back of the deficiency point can be brought to a virtual stop. The effect is to reduce the highway's functional capacity for a considerable distance 42 behind the rough pavement stretch. When the highway is part of a complex network (as in Queens) this can also reduce the functional capacity of connecting highways whose pavement surfaces are in good condition. Many New York City highways have enough lane miles of pavement surface deficiencies to significantly reduce functional capacity throughout considerable deficiencies should be corrected through an aggressive resurfacing program that also includes highway service roads and connecting secondary arterials. NYCDOT has already developed and is implementing such a program. It is designed to eliminate all existing deficiencies by 2000 and keep new ones from occurring. But this can only be accomplished if adequate funding remains available. * Structural Deficiencies Structural deficiencies are much less noticeable to motorists - until they result in a major failure, as happened on the West Side Highway in 1972. But short of failure, they can accelerate the kind of pavement deterioration that reduces a highway's functional capacity. NYCDOT has also developed and is implementing a program to correct structural deficiencies. It is designed to eliminate them by 2000 and prevent new ones from occurring. * Design Deficiencies Design deficiencies embrace a variety of geometric barriers to the free flow of traffic that are inherent in the design of a highway or highway network. They can include discontinuous service roads, inadequately long merge and diverge lanes at interchanges, and major discontinuities in the network. In many cases, these deficiencies do not become barriers until demand has reached a sufficiently high level. Most such deficiencies require substantial new construction to eliminate. In New York City, the space needed to accomplish this may not be available within existing highway right of ways. 43 A new and potentially significant class of design deficiencies has been suggested by Joel Cohen, a mathematician at Rockefeller University. Cohen has applied a mathematical phenomenon known as "Braess's Paradox" to show that adding links to a roadway network can often increase trip times and worsen congestion. It is possible that the reverse may also be true - that blocking off certain existing links during high demand periods could actually decrease trip times and reduce congestion. This counter-intuitive phenomenon merits further investigation as a possible way to maximize functional capacity. 2. Random Conditions Random conditions consist of lane blockages that arise due to vehicle breakdowns and accidents. The probability that a given vehicle will have a breakdown or accident while traveling on a highway is extremely low. But so many vehicles are making highway trips at any given time that the probability of a lane blockage somewhere on the system due to a breakdown or accident approaches 100 percent. In effect, each highway is likely to have at least one lane blockage in progress at all times during major portions of the day. Therefore, its functional capacity suffers what amounts to a permanent reduction. Even if all steady-state conditions were eliminated, random conditions would prevent functional capacity from ever equaling design capacity. Because vehicle breakdowns and accidents are random events, their location and time of occurrence cannot be predicted. The only solution is to identify them as soon as possible after they occur and take quick action to deal with them. A properly structured, city-wide Incident Management program is needed to accomplish this. Such a program would have three main components: * Continuous monitoring of all highways in order to spot vehicle breakdowns and accidents as soon as they occur. This may involve some combination of television cameras, helicopter surveillance, and radio-equipped monitoring vehicles cruising each highway. 44 * Rapid removal of disabled vehicles from the highway' s active lanes. If the monitoring vehicles are tow trucks, and if enough of them are cruising the highways, they could accomplish this. * Until the lane blockage is cleared, redirect upstream traffic to alternate routes in order to minimize congestion build-ups behind the blockage point. This exploits one of the advantages that is inherent in the complexity of New York City's roadway networks, which offer a variety of alternate routes within most highway corridors. Information about the lane blockage and the alternate routes for avoiding it must be conveyed to motorists before they reach the relevant decision-point intersection. This can involve such things as Variable Message Signs and voice messages through car radios. This category of measures will help reduce highway congestion by maximizing functional capacity. But it cannot eliminate congestion during high demand periods or provide a sufficient capacity reserve to accommodate future economic growth. Doing this requires implementing the second category of Congestion Management measures, which is discussed in the next section. 45 V. MOBILITY: CONGESTION MANAGEMENT CONGESTION MANAGEMENT: THE THEORY Congestion on a given New York City highway occurs when motor vehicle trip demand exceeds the highway's functional capacity. We can appreciate the pattern of how congestion develops by looking at the diagram on the next page, in which a generic highway's Volume (the number of vehicles per hour passing a fixed reference point) is plotted as a function of Demand (the number of vehicles per hour seeking to make trips on the highway). When Demand is low (the left-hand portion of the curve) Volume is a simple linear function of Demand. An increase in Demand of 100 vehicles per hour will result in a Volume increase of 100 vehicles per hour. As Demand increases, this linear relationship decays. Further increases in Demand result in less than one-for-one increases in Volume. The reason for this is simple. Higher levels of Demand means that more vehicles are traveling on the highway. This causes the bumper-to-bumper space between vehicles to shrink, which forces drivers to reduce speed in order to maintain safe stopping distances. Since Volume is also a function of average traffic speed, reductions in speed result in less Volume for any given level of Demand. At the Demand level shown by Dc on the chart, the highway is processing its maximum volume of vehicles per hour (shown as Vm on the chart) . It has reached Capacity. As the chart shows, any further increases in Demand will actually reduce Volume. Therefore, Dc represents the lower boundary of what can be called Excess Demand. And excess demand produces congestion. Highway demand cannot be measured directly. But it can be computed from data on volume and speed, both of which can be measured directly. The process involves calibrating (for the highway in question)the general equation for the Volume curve discussed above, then plugging in volume and speed data. Within the traffic engineering community, the classic response to pervasive conditions of excess demand is to increase highway capacity. This can involve widening the congested highway by adding more lanes, or building an additional highway to siphon off some of the congested highway's demand. In New York City, this classic, supply-focused response to congestion is not feasible because of the high density of urban development. So the only way to manage congestion on the city's 46 Click HERE for graphic. highways is to concentrate on the demand side of the equation. MANAGING DEMAND For the purposes of this report, Demand Management is defined as the process of developing and implementing Transportation Control Measures (TCMS) that can eliminate excess demand on New York City's highways. It is the key strategic approach for addressing highway congestion, which we regard as the city's most serious transportation problem because of its impact on air quality. TCMs eliminate excess demand by shifting motor vehicle trips away from the over-saturated highways to which they are applied. Trip shifting can take any of three forms. * Shifting trips to other roadways on which unused capacity exists or can be created. * Shifting trips to other times of day when demand is low enough for the highway in question to have unused capacity. * Shifting trips to other transportation modes that do not use the highway's general traffic lanes. Obviously, trip shifting should target the hours when excess demand is present. On New York City highways, these hours appear to cover most of the day - which presents some interesting problems. The chart on the next page shows the hourly distribution of recorded traffic volumes on New York City highways. It shows that: * Average hourly trip volume is 4.2 percent of the twenty- four hour total. * 87 percent of total daily highway trips are made between 6 AM and 10 PM. During this period, average hourly trip volume rises to 5.4 percent of the day's total (1.3 times greater than average hourly volume for the entire day) . * 42 percent of total daily highway trips are made during the normal AM and PM commuting periods. During these periods, average hourly trip volume climbs further to six percent of the day's total (1.44 times greater than average hourly volume for the entire day). * 30 percent of total daily highway trips are made during the midday period, between the two commuting periods. Average hourly volume during this period is 5.1 percent 47 Click HERE for graphic. of the day's total (1.2 times greater than the average hourly volume for the entire day). But on some heavily congested highways (such as the Van Wyck Expressway) nearly half of the day's trips are made during this period. * 22 percent of total daily highway trips are made during the nighttime period (8 PM to 6 AM). Average hourly volume during this period is only 0.53 times as great as the average hourly volume for the entire day). Among other things, these distribution patterns suggest that excess demand on New York City highways is not limited to commuting periods, as is the case on highways in most other urban areas. It is also a problem during the midday period. Therefore, the impact of congestion on air quality occurs for most of the day. This means that trip shifting cannot focus only on work trips and the hours when most work trips are made. It must encompass all trips and all hours when excess demand is present. If we assume that most work trips on city highways are made during normal commuting periods (which appears to be the case) , then it is likely that a high proportion of the trips made during the midday hours between commuting periods are non-work trips. These include: * Various kinds of business trips, such as moving goods, making service and repair calls, attending sales and other business meetings, etc. * Various kinds of non-business trips, such as going shopping, traveling to entertainment or vacation locations, social visits, trips to the doctor, etc. Since each kind of trip has certain unique characteristics, it follows that non-work trips are considerably more diverse than work trips. Therefore, the hours when non-work trips predominate may be more complicated to deal with than the hours when work trips predominate. Trip shifting strategies need to reflect this. To do so, it is first necessary to break down hourly volumes into trip categories that are defined by such essential characteristics as: * origins and destinations. * Trip purposes. * Type of vehicle used. * Number of interim stops between initial origin and final destination. 48 * Number of vehicle occupants. * Time sensitivity (how important it is that the trip be made during the hour in question). At the present time, it is not possible to develop such breakdowns because insufficient information exists about these characteristics for trips on city highways. Such information must be obtained and organized into easily accessible databases before trip shifting can move beyond the kind of theoretical discussions that constitute the bulk of the following sub-sections. TRIP SHIFTING: TO OTHER ROADWAYS In some highway corridors during certain times of the day, there may be roadways or routes on which unused capacity either already exists or might be created through appropriate Transportation System Management (TSM) measures. In such cases, excess highway demand could be reduced by shifting some trips from the congested highway to these other roadways. The potential number of trips that could be shifted from any given highway during any given hour cannot be determined until adequate trip characteristics data for that highway is available. This kind of trip shifting represents a structured formalization of the ad hoc measures already practiced by sophisticated motorists who have, on their own, searched out alternative routes that enable them to bypass congested highways. For example, many car service drivers in southern Brooklyn know that the Kings Highway/Linden Boulevard/Conduit Boulevard route to Kennedy Airport is a more reliable option than the traditional Belt Parkway route during much of the day. In some cases, the use of alternate routes may increase trip mileage. All else being equal, this can be undesirable from an air quality standpoint. one of the basic strategies for attaining Clean Air Act standards is to reduce total motor vehicle miles of travel. But alternate routes may still contribute to attaining these standards if they offer a positive trade-off between shorter trip times and longer trip miles. Even so, trip shifting to alternative routes may have relatively little impact on improving air quality. The following steps are required to implement this trip shifting approach.. 1. Identify key origin and destination pairings for trips within each macro corridor during each hour of day. Most of the O&D data needed to complete this step does not yet exist. It will have to be gathered and organized before TCMs of this kind can be developed. 49 2. Define and map several different roadway routes for each O&D pair. 3. Analyze hourly traffic volumes on each route to determine where reserve capacity exists. This will probably require that new traffic counts be conducted at carefully chosen locations on many of these routes. 4. Evaluate opportunities to expand capacity on these routes by implementing appropriate TSM measures. These may include re- timing or computerizing traffic lights to speed up traffic flow, eliminating curb parking during certain hours to free up lanes, and channelizing different classes of traffic with signs and lane markings to avoid conflicts. 5. Prepare new maps and brochures for motorists that enable them to quickly identify the route alternatives between key O&D pairings and shows them the normal levels of congestion to be expected on each route during each hour of the day. Route alternatives can be color-coded for easy identification, with the same code being used on signs along the routes. 6. At interchange locations between alternatives (which are decision points for motorists) , provide clear information about how to access each alternative. This may include the use of variable message signs and eventually Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) technology, especially in cases where the best alternative may depend on traffic conditions that change throughout the day. 7. Repeat Step 3 each year to keep abreast of changing conditions. Do route revisions as necessary. On some highways, it may be appropriate to reserve one or more lanes in each direction for classes of trips that are considered to merit lane priority. These classes might include trips made in HOVS, as well as goods movement, service call, and other business related trips. Vehicles displaced from the priority lanes would be shifted to alternative (probably non-highway) routes. Since the vehicles being used for qualifying trips will generally carry commercial license plates, enforcement can focus on restricting the priority lanes to vehicles carrying such plates. This issue is discussed in more detail in Section VII. Special-purpose highway lanes are attractive in theory. But they can pose certain problems in practice that must be addressed if such lanes are to work effectively. 50 * The highway's physical geometry may complicate vehicle turn-offs at exits and interchanges if it includes both special-purpose and general traffic lanes. One way to avoid this might be to reserve all lanes on certain highways in a macro corridor exclusively for priority trips. An example might be the portion of the Long Island Expressway between the Cross Island Parkway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. All lanes on this portion could be reserved exclusively for vehicles with commercial plates. Other vehicles making east/west trips through Queens would be shifted to the parkways and to defined alternative routes on other roadways. * The displacement of non-priority vehicles from the highway could involve volumes great enough to saturate the alternative routes. The end result might simply be to shift congestion from one roadway to another without achieving any overall improvement in the macro corridor. In such cases, shifting trips to alternative routes may make sense only as a supplement to one or both of the two other trip shifting approaches. TRIP SHIFTING: TO OTHER TIMES OF DAY A common example of this approach to trip shifting involves the concept known as Staggered Work Hours. Its goal is to flatten the commuting peaks at each end of the normal business day by broadening them. To accomplish this, employers are encouraged to participate in region-wide programs that spread the beginnings and ends of work shifts over periods that may be as long as one hour at each end of the day. Some employers retain the normal 9 AM to 5 PM work shifts. Others adopt 8:45 AM to 4:45 PM shifts. Still others adopt 9:15 AM to 5:15 PM shifts. And so on. The end result is to move some work trips away from the commuting peaks and into the shoulder periods. For several reasons, this classic approach to trip shifting may offer only modest benefits in New York City. * A high percentage of the city's auto commuters (much higher than in other metropolitan regions) have a good deal of control over when they start and finish work because they hold executive jobs or are principals in the firms they work for. In an effort to avoid the worst periods of highway congestion, many of them are already (and informally) staggering their work hours. They often do this by arriving early at their work places and staying late, a phenomenon that is consistent with the workaholic personalities of those career-driven New 51 Yorkers who can afford (and perhaps need) to commute by car. This is reflected in the broadness of the two commuting peaks shown in the hourly trip distribution chart presented earlier. * These commuting peaks are less sharply defined than is typically the case on highways in other urban areas. As the chart shows, hourly trip volumes climb above 6.5 percent (of total daily trips) during the 6 to 7 AM period, average over five percent during the midday hours, peak out at 6.8 percent during the 5 to 6 PM period, and do not fall below five percent until the 8 to 9 PM period. This reflects the widespread practice of staggered work hours among New York City's auto commuters, plus the high volume of goods movement, service call, and other non-work trips on city highways throughout the day. These factors suggest that TCMs involving formal programs to stagger work hours would be of little value in reducing highway congestion. But this does not invalidate the basic concept of attempting to shift motor vehicle trips to other times of the day. As the trip distribution chart indicates, average hourly trip volumes on New York City highways are comfortably below 2.5 percent between the hours of 8 PM and 6 AM when much unused highway capacity is available. Motor vehicle trip demand is low during this period of the day because there is little economic activity taking place to generate it. Despite New York City's cherished reputation as a twenty-four hour city, most of its economic activity still takes place during normal business hours, and this is reflected in high trip volumes on city highways during these hours. Therefore, a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should evaluate the implications of shifting a significant portion the economic activity that now takes place during normal business hours to the hours between 8 PM and 6 AM. Such an action would automatically shift an equivalent proportion of trip demand to these nether hours. Purely from a transportation perspective, the positive implications of such a radical approach to trip shifting could be monumental. To appreciate this, consider the benefits of shifting half of daytime economic activity to the nighttime hours. * Such an action would, all by itself, eliminate congestion on highways, and on all other city roadways (including most Manhattan streets). It would also eliminate overcrowding on subway and commuter rail lines during normal commuting periods. 52 * By reducing motor vehicle trip times (because of less congestion), it would lower emissions from this most important single source of air pollution in the city. while total 24 hour motor vehicle trip miles would be little changed, the reduction in total motor vehicle trip times during each 24 hour period could represent a major step towards attaining Clean Air Act standards. Therefore, it would contribute significantly to attaining Clean Air Act standards. * It would free up substantial reserve capacity on existing transportation facilities to accommodate future growth in economic activity. This would represent a major contribution to furthering the Plan goal of economic development. * Finally, it would accomplish all this without requiring any major capital investments to create new transportation capacity. From a transportation perspective, this would make it by far the least costly way to achieve both Transportation Plan goals. It might even be possible to do so within the framework of a Financially-Constrained Plan. The advantages of this will become increasingly apparent in subsequent sections of this report. But the compelling benefits of this radical approach to trip shifting are not without substantial economic and social costs. In effect, these costs arise from the fact that New York City would become the home of two largely independent societies - one that lives during the day and one that lives at night. Each society would require a full range of supporting services from both the public and private sectors. Some of these are already provided on a 24 hour basis (such as police and fire protection, supermarket and certain other retail services, and hospital emergency services) . But much more would be needed. A few obvious examples will illustrate this. * City schools would have to be open all night as well as all day to serve the children of families whose breadwinners work at night. While this may limit the need for new school construction to accommodate a rising student population, it would require a new nighttime staff of teachers and administrators to duplicate the daytime staff. * Most retail stores (not just supermarkets) would have to operate 24 hours a day. However some smaller stores might decide to concentrate on serving only daytime or nighttime customers. The same is true of doctors, lawyers, CPAs, and other self-employed professionals. 53 * While the subway system already operates around the clock, its nighttime operations are greatly constrained. Full-time 24 hour operation would require some increases in personnel, whose costs would only be covered by increased fare revenue if overall economic activity in the city were to rise as a result of expanding the business day to 24 hours. The economic costs to the private sector might be the easiest problem to overcome. Many industrial cities elsewhere in the country have large manufacturers that operate their factories on a two or three shift basis (mainly to maximize the return on their substantial investments in plant and equipment). Local business firms in these cities have long since accommodated themselves to the reality of having significant portions of their customer base work at night. In New York City, a 24 hour business day could generate economic benefits for business firms that would more than offset new costs. For example: * Being open for business when Europe and Asia are open for business could enable more local business firms to participate aggressively in the global economy rather than simply the domestic economy. This is something that the securities industry has already discovered as trading markets have proliferated around the world. Many firms in this industry now operate on a 24 hour basis so they can trade in every world market, not just those in the U.S. * Local business firms can expand their productive capacity without having to rent more space and buy additional equipment. As with large manufacturing plants in classic industrial cities, the same space and equipment can be used by more than one shift of workers each day. This means that the true cost of adding additional workers by instituting second and third shifts is significantly lower than adding them to a single daytime shift - as the securities industry has found. * Under certain circumstances, operators of commercial real estate may be able to increase their rent revenues by charging somewhat more for space that is actively used 24 hours a day. In effect, some of the cost savings accruing to firms that expand capacity by adding shifts would be shared with landlords. * High density commercials areas like the Manhattan CBD would be able to accommodate more jobs without the need for one-to-one increases in new office space, telephone and electric power capacity, and water and sewer capacity 54 (the cost of which is ultimately passed on to the employers who create these additional jobs). The ability of such areas to accommodate more jobs is especially beneficial from an air quality perspective. People who hold jobs in these areas are more likely to commute by public transportation than by car, since existing public transportation route structures are focused on providing access to these areas. The social costs of a 24 hour work day may turn out to be more significant than the economic costs. The impact on the physical and mental health of people who consistently work at night is not clear, though data from industrial cities where round-the-clock work shifts are common may provide some answers. The disruptive effect on multi-worker households when one worker takes a new job that requires working a different shift from other household members could be as severe as a job change to another city. Finally, the impact on New York City's overall social structure of having largely independent daytime and nighttime societies needs to be studied carefully. Since the city has long been the home of numerous ethnic societies that often have relatively little contact with each other, it is possible that this impact could be accommodated at least as easily as it has been in classic industrial cities. Despite the obvious problems, the advantages of this approach to trip shifting are so compelling that it cannot be dismissed out of hand. It costs and benefits should be seriously evaluated in developing a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City. TRIP SHIFTING: TO OTHER TRANSPORTATION MODES There has been a great deal of general discussion about the desirability of shifting many trips now made by motor vehicle to public transportation. But there has been little serious thought given to the complications inherent in trying to accomplish this. It turns out that these complications are extremely tricky. To understand why, let us consider the Queens macro corridor as an example. All of the highways in this corridor are seriously congested for much of the business day. At the same time, the corridor is served by six high-capacity passenger rail lines. Reading from north to south, they are: * The Flushing IRT Subway Line. * The Long Island Railroad's Port Washington Line. * The Queens Boulevard IND Subway Line. 55 * The Long Island Railroad's Main Line. * The Jamaica BMT Subway Line (with its Myrtle Avenue branch). * The Fulton Street IND Subway Line. In theory, it seems to make sense to try and relieve highway congestion by shifting trips now made in motor vehicles to these passenger rail lines. But in practice, there are many problems. * During peak commuting periods, both LIRR lines and three of the four subway lines are already accommodating passenger loads that exceed their design capacity in the direction of prevailing demand. Until more passenger rail capacity is built in Queens, shifting trips from highways to rail lines is not feasible during these periods. * Only the LIRR Port Washington Line and the Flushing IRT Subway Line have significant amounts of unused parking capacity available (at their Shea Stadium stations) . The other lines are effectively inaccessible to tripmakers starting out in eastern Queens and Long Island if they must begin their trips by car. Therefore, it is not now possible to shift these tripmakers to the rail lines. Providing adequate park-ride capacity at stations on these lines is complicated by the shortage of underdeveloped land in the vicinity of stations that are easily accessible from the highway network. Most new park-ride facilities at these locations may have to be costly multi-level structures in order to maximize parking capacity of what little land exists. * All of the rail lines are focused on the Manhattan CED. Therefore, motor vehicle trips using Queens highways that have origins or destinations north, west, or south of Manhattan cannot be shifted to these rail lines. Since little information exists about the hourly volumes of trips with these O&D characteristics, there is currently no way to determine how many trips are "unshiftable" for this reason. Therefore, the hour-by-hour impact on highway congestion in Queens of attempting to shift trips to these rail lines cannot be estimated until such information becomes available. * Because of the nature of the service provided by these lines, the only trips now made in motor vehicles that could be shifted to them are non-stop trips made by "ambulatory people". This rules out: 56 - Goods movement trips. - Service or repair trips in which the tripmaker must be accompanied by heavy tools or spare parts. - Trips to and from business meetings in which the tripmaker must be accompanied by bulky product samples or presentation displays. - Trips that require one or more interim stops between their primary origins and ultimate destinations. - Trips by people whose physical disabilities make the use of traditional public transportation modes impractical. Little information currently exists about the hourly volumes of these five categories of unshiftable trips. But they are believed to account for a significant proportion of motor vehicle trips on New York City highways, especially during the midday hours between commuting periods. How significant this proportion is cannot be determined until the necessary trip characteristics information becomes available. This is not to argue that shifting trips to public transportation is an inappropriate strategy. It will undoubtedly have to be a primary congestion mitigation strategy for New York City, unless further analysis is able to demonstrate the feasibility of shifting a substantial portion of the city's economic activity to the nighttime hours. But implementing a strategy of shifting highway trips to public transportation is likely to be a complex, costly, and time consuming undertaking. The following tactical issues will have to be addressed to make it work. 1. Job Concentration People who work in the Manhattan CBD are more likely to commute by public transportation than people who work elsewhere in the city. This is mainly because the region's public transportation systems focus on moving people to and from the CBD. Therefore, it follows that (all else being equal) locating an increasing proportion of the city's jobs in the CBD will lead to an increasing proportion of its work trips being made by public transportation rather than by 57 private automobiles. To a somewhat lesser extent, the same would be true if a higher proportion of the city's jobs were located in downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, Jamaica, Flushing, and Harlem all of which are accessible by public transportation to large portions of the region's labor force. This suggests adopting a long term policy of encouraging job location in these commercial centers and discouraging it elsewhere. which is not as simple as it sounds. Some firms cannot locate in these centers because the services they provide are location-specific (for example, supermarkets and other local retail stores must be located in the neighborhoods they serve) . But many firms whose products or services are not location-specific avoid the centers that are accessible by public transportation because they cannot afford the rents. Under free-market, un-subsidized conditions, the cost to landlords of commercial space in these centers tends to be higher than elsewhere because high land costs dictate the construction and operation of multi-story buildings. These landlord costs must be passed on to tenants. No information currently exists about how many New York firms now located outside the centers are unable to afford free- market rents within the centers. If this number is sufficiently large, a long term job concentration strategy designed to increase the proportion of work trips made by public transportation may require public subsidies in order to bring at least some rents in the centers down to affordable levels for many business firms. These subsidies could include below-market mortgages (perhaps through a "Mitchell-Lama" program for commercial space) and reductions in City taxes levied on buildings whose owners who agree to offer low-rent commercial space in the centers. Other subsidies might include the availability of low-cost electric power and telephone service to qualifying employers locating in the centers (possibly paid for by downward adjustments in City taxes levied on Con Edison and New York Telephone) . The direct cost of these subsidies would fall on the City itself. But some of this forgone tax revenue would have to be offset by increases in State aid. Clearly, a job concentration strategy may involve City and State tax policies as well as City land use policies. It is feasible? There is no way to tell until it has been studied properly. Such a study should be undertaken as part of developing a Long Range Transportation Plan 58 for New York City. But three points should be kept in mind. * Relocating jobs to these centers increases the probability of more work trips being made by public transportation rather than private automobiles. But it would have little impact on city-wide use of commercial motor vehicles for goods movement, service calls, and trips to business meetings. Such trips may account for a significant proportion of the highway congestion that occurs between commuting periods, though little information currently exists on their hourly volumes. This issue is discussed more fully in Section VII. * Locating more jobs in these centers will cause them to generate more goods movement and service call trips, most of which will have to be made by motor vehicles. While this would simply shift such trips from other parts of the city (assuming no change in total city jobs) , the additional congestion that these trips may encounter within the centers could lengthen their trip times and therefore cause some increase in both air pollution and trip costs. This is an issue that will have to be addressed. * The availability of below-market rents for commercial space in centers that have good public transportation access could motivate some business firms to relocate to the city from the suburbs. Such relocations might be accelerated by new federal requirements that firms employing more than 100 people participate in programs to discourage auto commuting and encourage commuting by public transportation. Such a relocation effect would benefit New York City. But it would raise political problems with the suburban counties, who might respond by attempting to block projects designed to provide the increased public transportation capacity needed to make job concentration feasible. The key to resolving such problems may lie in helping the suburban counties to realize two things. One is how much their economies stand to gain if more of their residents work in the city rather than in their home counties. The second is that having more of their residents work in the city (so they can commute by public transportation) rather than locally (where they must commute by automobile) may help the suburban counties address their own roadway congestion and air pollution problems more easily. 59 This is something else that needs to be evaluated as part of Transportation Plan development. 2. New Public Transportation Capacity It seems inevitable that new public transportation capacity will have to be provided in the future if a strategy of shifting motor vehicle trips to public transportation is to be implemented in a meaningful way. Section VI discusses the new capacity issue in some detail. For the purposes of this section, the following points should be kept in mind. * Some new public transportation capacity may be created by expanding express bus and passenger ferry services. But material increases in capacity will require the construction of new passenger rail facilities, perhaps to a degree not seen in New York City since before World War Two. * Passenger rail construction is very costly - so much so that New York City will not be able to go it alone on such projects. Most will require a regional consensus. Essentially, this means that the development of new public transportation capacity for the city can be held hostage by the suburban counties out of concern that it could lure away too many of their local business firms. if this new capacity turns out to be a necessary condition for attaining Clean Air Act standards, then the possibility exists for the suburban counties to hold decision power over whether or not the city will attain the standards. Serious thought should be given to ways of resolving this potential problem. * The cost of passenger rail construction may mean that material increases in public transportation capacity could not be accommodated within a Financially- Constrained plan (as defined by the NYSDOT Guidelines). This raises the possibility that a Financially- Constrained plan may not enable the city to attain Clean Air Act standards on schedule. If so, would such a plan be unacceptable under ISTEA requirements? Could the City obtain a stretch-out of Clean Air Act schedules if such a plan was adopted? Would these considerations mandate a plan that emphasizes "social engineering" to shift substantial amounts of economic activity 60 to nighttime hours as its key strategy for attaining Clean Air Act standards? Could they mandate a plan that requires New York City to shift massive amounts of capital funds from other needs to transportation - or to impose higher taxes to generate the funds needed - if shifting economic activity to nighttime hours was found to be not feasible? Answers to these questions are needed before basic decisions can be made about the strategic direction to take in developing a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City. * In addition to being costly, passenger rail construction takes a long time to complete. Recent experience suggests that completion time may have to be measured in decades rather than years, unless new funding mechanisms for such projects are developed quickly and ways are found to speed up the approval and construction processes. These factors may become important issues if the city's Transportation Plan emphasizes shifting motor vehicle trips to public transportation as its primary strategy for attaining Clean Air Act standards. 3. Improving Access To Public Transportation Substantial portions of the region's labor force do not live within convenient walking distance of public transportation lines that provide access to New York City's main commercial centers. This "residential interface gap" needs to be addressed if a strategy of shifting motor vehicle trips to public transportation is to be practical. In some cases, the creation of new public transportation capacity could also bring it within walking distance of more people. But probably not enough people to have a material impact on the interface problem. Since a comprehensive re- housing of these people is obviously not possible, ways will have to be found to bring people to public transportation lines. It is possible that feeder bus and van routes could be established in relatively high density residential areas to bridge the interface gap. Such routes already exist in areas like eastern Queens and appear to be reasonably effective. But their operating costs per passenger tend to be high and they involve extra fares for riders. 61 A large-scale expansion of park-ride facilities in the city's residential boroughs could be the most effective way to improve access to public transportation, especially for suburban residents. The most effective park-ride network might consist of a small number of high-capacity facilities strategically located in Queens, Brooklyn, and the ]Bronx at public transportation stations that are easily accessible by highways. Four such locations already have the necessary parking facilities, though each faces problems in becoming a truly effective park-ride facility. * Shea Stadium in Queens is surrounded by parking fields whose capacity could be increased by building multi-level garages. It is served by the Flushing IRT Subway Line and the Long Island Railroad's Port Washington Line. However, neither of these lines has any reserve capacity for new passengers during peak periods (Section VI discusses how this might be remedied) . Also, highway access can be congested during much of the day. Finally, there can be conflicts with baseball game patrons during the season. But none of these problems is insurmountable. * The air passenger parking field next to the subway station at Kennedy Airport could also have its capacity increased with multi-level garages if this became necessary. It is served by the Rockaway IND Subway Line, which provides good service to downtown Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Decent service to Long Island City and midtown Manhattan would require building the new Central Queens Subway Line discussed in Section VI. Highway access to this facility is via the perennially congested Belt Parkway. * Immediately to the north of the Kennedy Airport facility (and on the same subway line) is Aqueduct Race Track, whose horse-racing days appear to be numbered. The Port Authority has considered redeveloping this site for airport-related and other activities, and could also include substantial park-ride capacity close to the existing subway station. This location has the same potential and problems as the Kennedy Airport location, including the need for better subway service to Long Island City and midtown Manhattan and access via the congested Belt Parkway. 62 * Yankee Stadium in the Bronx is surrounded by parking fields and multi-level garages. It is served by IRT subway lines running down both sides of Manhattan and the Concourse IND Subway Line whose trains run down Eighth Avenue. It could also be served by Metro-North trains to Grand Central if a passenger station was provided (as has been proposed). Highway access is via the Major Deegan Expressway. Making use of this location as a park-ride facility would require negotiations with the Yankee baseball organization, which have not always been easy in the past. Brooklyn and its highways generate more auto trips to Manhattan than any other county in the region. Although it is generously endowed with subway lines, it has no suitably located sites for large-scale park-ride facilities that could siphon some of these auto trips into the subways. These would have to be created from scratch, perhaps by building multi- level garages in the air rights over railroad tracks. Providing adequate park-ride facilities in Brooklyn is likely to be a costly and complicated undertaking. But it is probably a necessary one. Park-ride is a concept that has been the subject of much discussion as a way to make public transportation more accessible to more people. But implementing this concept on a sufficiently comprehensive scale to be meaningful is not easy. Even so, its challenges will have to be overcome if the strategy of shifting motor vehicle trips to public transportation is to be practical. 4. Marketing Public Transportation For the purposes of this report, "marketing" is defined to include all measures whose purpose is to motivate tripmakers to shift from motor vehicles to public transportation. This includes both incentives to encourage public transportation use and disincentives to discourage motor vehicle use. An effective program for marketing any consumer product or service should be designed on the basis of reliable information about target customer needs, wants, perceptions, and hang-ups. Therefore, even if the three factors discussed above can be satisfactorily addressed, it is still necessary to determine whether public transportation can be "sold" to enough motor vehicle tripmakers to make the shifting to public transportation strategy worthwhile. This analysis needs to be 63 undertaken as part of developing a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City. Some market research information already exists about the attitudes that motor vehicle tripmakers have towards public transportation. Some of the most interesting was compiled for the Manhattan Auto Use Decision Study, which was commissioned by the MTA in the late 1980's. The heart of this study was a series of focus interviews conducted among Manhattan auto commuters residing in various parts of the region, who volunteered to participate. These interviews uncovered a wide range of negative perceptions about public transportation, many of which revealed more about the psychological hang-ups of these tripmakers than it did about actual (and therefore remedial) public transportation shortcomings. Solely on the basis of these interviews, restructuring public transportation's "image" would seem to be more important in attracting motor vehicle tripmakers than tangible improvements to public transportation facilities and services. But since the focus group participants were volunteers rather than being randomly selected, there is no basis for assuming that their perceptions and hang-ups are necessarily representative of motor vehicle tripmakers in general. Until the significance and pervasiveness of these perceptions can be tested statistically, it may be best to concentrate on the tangible issues that common sense suggests may influence the choice of tripmaking modes. Some of these are discussed below. * It is still not clear what impact fare levels have on public transportation use. Subway and bus fares are quite low, though significantly higher in inflation- adjusted dollars than twenty years ago. Commuter railroad and express bus fares are much higher. Also, many tripmakers must pay several fares to complete a trip - bus and subway, commuter railroad and subway, even bus and commuter railroad and subway. Making trips by public transportation requires overt payment at the point of entry, while many of the costs of making motor vehicle trips are deferred or hidden. More analysis is needed of the perceived costs of public transportation vs. motor vehicles. The region's policy has been that public transportation passengers should pay a fairly significant portion of operating costs through fares, without reference to what the costs of using motor vehicles may be. We need more information to 64 determine whether a major revision of this policy may be needed - one that links fare levels more closely to air quality and ' transportation goals rather than to financing needs. It is possible that fares may have to be reduced in order to attract sufficient numbers of motor vehicle tripmakers to public transportation. But there is also some evidence that express bus and commuter railroad passengers may regard high fares as a welcome screening measure that reduces their risk of having to ride with "undesirables". So it is possible that high fares on certain public transportation modes (though not on subways) might be more effective than low fares in attracting auto users. * Price disincentives for motor vehicle use are often suggested as effective ways to motivate tripmakers to shift from cars to public transportation. The costs of motor vehicle use can be increased by raising gasoline taxes, instituting tolls on key roadways and having their rates fluctuate with demand, and linking auto registration and insurance rates more progressively to the number of miles driven per year. But such measures are very tricky. They can heighten the perception that New York City is an unreasonably high cost environment, and end up reducing motor vehicle use mainly by reducing economic activity. * Public transportation comfort levels may have to be increased, especially on the subways. Now that air conditioning is universal and interior noise levels on subway trains are lower than on commercial airliners, comfort is mainly a question of how much space is available for each passenger. Standards for space per passenger determine passenger capacity. If more generous space standards must be adopted to raise comfort levels, this would have a significant impact in determining how much new public transportation capacity must be created. * The issue of making public transportation more accessible to more people was discussed above. From the marketing perspective, the importance of accessibility may lie in enhancing the perception that it is "better" (i.e. faster, more time-predictable, less stressful, less risk of high-cost auto accidents) to make many trips by using public transportation for the portion through high density environments. This can encourage the tripmaker to drive to a park-ride facility. 65 * All the hard evidence suggests that the issue of personal safety while using public transportation is almost entirely a perceptual one. For example, even though most people seem to believe instinctively that the subway is "dangerous", the facts show that it is actually one of the safest environments in the nation. But just because the issue is perceptual does not diminish its importance. People must have confidence in the inherent safety and security of a public transportation environment before they can be persuaded to make use of it. However, building this level of confidence requires more concentration on the psychological factors that enhance personal feelings of safety rather than on futilely expensive attempts to display police officers on every train and in every station. The right colors, the right lighting, even the right music may contribute far more to creating an ambience of safety than doubling the size of the Transit Authority's police force. Much more information is needed about how to exploit these psychological factors. Finally, we should be aware that work trips are likely to constitute the majority of trips that can be shifted to public transportation. This means that the major impact of this strategy for reducing highway congestion would be during normal commuting periods. As noted earlier, most New York City highways also suffer from congestion during the hours between commuting periods, when non-work trips appear to account for a high proportion of total trips. If trips falling into the five "unshiftable" categories described above constitute a significant proportion of non-work trips made during these hours, this strategy may have little impact on reducing highway congestion and improving air quality between commuting periods. There is no way to estimate the potential magnitude of this impact until adequate trip characteristics information becomes available. DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE TCMs Thus far, most of the discussion about using TCMs to shift motor vehicle trips away from congested highways has been general and relatively abstract. This was necessary in order to clarify the underlying principles behind this approach to congestion management. But the actual process of developing effective TCMs is by no means abstract. It must be done in a highly explicit and focused manner. Each highway congestion problem has to be identified and 66 Click HERE for graphic. evaluated individually. This requires a detailed review of each New York City highway during each hour of the day. It also requires careful analysis of how each candidate TCM is likely to impact the individual congestion problem being evaluated, the levels of air pollution generated by such congestion, and the various categories of motor vehicle trips that would be affected. A broad brush application of one or more TCMs to the highways in a macro corridor risks accomplishing little more than to shift congestion from highways to other arterials and local streets. While this may improve the flow of highway traffic, it would fail to address area-wide air quality problems within the macro corridor. Attaining Clean Air Act standards requires that excess motor vehicle trip demand be eliminated from macro corridors - not simply shifted around within them. The flow chart on the next page illustrates the basic steps that should be followed in developing effective TCMs to manage congestion on New York City highways in a manner that is consistent with attaining Clean Air Act standards. It is taken from the first draft of NYCDOT's technical report Developing Transportation Control Measures To Mitigate Congestion And Improve Air Quality on New York City Highways. The summary presented below covers the essential highlights. It deals with the boxes in the flow chart that are below the horizontal dotted line. Step 1: Identify A Congestion Problem On Highway X A congestion problem is defined as a condition in which user demand (measured by Vehicles Per Hour) on a given highway during a given hour exceeds the lower value of: * The highway's functional capacity in terms of attaining and maintaining Clean Air Act standards within its macro corridor; or * The highway's functional capacity in terms of maximizing traffic volume. In each case where such a problem is found to exist, a Congestion Reduction Goal is computed. This is the amount of user demand (in Vehicles Per Hour) that must be shifted away from the highway during the hour in question to eliminate the congestion problem and achieve measurable improvements in air quality. Also prepared is a Trip Demand Allocation database for the highway during the hour in question. This relational database breaks down total demand by: * Its key categories (in number of trips per hour), 67 including work trips, goods movement trips, service and repair trips, trips to sales and other business meetings, shopping trips, entertainment trips, trips by people with physical disabilities, etc. * Its major areas of origin and destination (in number of trips per hour). * Its vehicle types (number per hour). Step 2: Identify A Potentially Effective TCM Professional judgement is used to select a candidate TCM for detailed evaluation. This judgement reflects: * The magnitude of the Congestion Reduction Goal computed in Step 1. * Analysis of the Trip Demand Allocation database. * Qualitative evaluations of the results of simulating traffic flows on the highway itself and within its macro corridor during the time period in question, under various assumptions about changes in user demand. * TCMs that have already been determined to be effective for other portions of the highway or other highways in the macro corridor. Step 3: Evaluate The TCM The evaluation process focuses on two issues: * Does the candidate TCM have enough potential for addressing the congestion problem to be worth bothering with? * Is the TCM practical to implement? Determining the TCM's potential involves estimating the number of Vehicles Per Hour it could theoretically shift away from the highway during the period in question. For example, assume that the highway's westbound Congestion Reduction Foal for that period is 2,000 Vehicles Per Hour, and the TCM involves shifting some trips now made in motor vehicles to a paralleling subway line. As we saw earlier, shiftable trips for this TCM could not include: 68 * Goods movement trips. * Service or repair trips where the tripmaker must be accompanied by heavy tools or spare parts. * Trips to business meetings that require transporting bulky product samples or presentation boards. * Trips by people whose origins or destinations cannot be served by the subway line. * Trips by people who must make one or more interim stops between their initial origins and final destinations. * Trips by people whose physical disabilities make subway travel impractical. If analysis of the Trip Demand Allocation database shows that 2,200 single occupancy motor vehicle trips are candidates for being shifted to the subway (because they do not have any of the characteristics listed above) , the TCM is theoretically capable of mitigating the congestion problem by itself. Evaluating whether the TCM is practical to implement involves a series of judgements based on analysis of the specific issues involves. In the case of the TCM just described, the analysis would have to address such issues as: * How much reserve capacity does the subway line have during the time period in question to accommodate the trips that must be shifted? * If significant numbers of the motor vehicle tripmakers have.trip origins beyond walking distance to the subway line, are there ample and easily accessible park-ride facilities at stations on the line, so that they could drive part way and take the subway the rest of the way? * Do the demographic characteristics of the tripmakers provide reason to believe that significant numbers of them could be induced to shift to the subway? * Can things be done to improve the perceived trade-off in favor of subway use among these tripmakers - involving such issues as trip costs, trip time reliability, accident hazards, and personal comfort? * Is the TCM cost-effective in terms of its one-time implementation costs and on-going operating costs? * Can funds be made available to cover implementation and operating costs? 69 DECISION POINT: Is The TCM Worthwhile? Making this decision involves answering the following questions: * Does the TCM have the potential for solving the congestion problem all by itself, and is it practical to implement? (If Yes, go on to Step 4.) * If the TCM cannot solve the congestion problem all by itself, can it make enough of a contribution to be worth considering and is it practical to implement? * (If Yes, goon to Step 4. Also go back to Step 2 and select another TCM to evaluate for its potential to complete the solution to the congestion problem.) * Does the TCM have too little potential to be worth pursuing further? (If Yes, go back to Step 2 and select another TCM for evaluation.) * Is the TCM impractical to implement? (If Yes, go back to Step 2 and select another TCM for evaluation.) Step 4: Develop An Implementation Plan For The TCM A TCM implementation plan should include the following components: * A step-by-step description of all processes and procedures needed to put the TCM into operation, keep it in operation year after year, and measure its actual impact on congestion and air quality. * A timetable for completing the implementation processes and procedures. * An implementation budget, itemizing all one-time costs and identifying the funding sources to cover these costs. * An operating budget, itemizing all on-going annual costs and identifying the funding sources to cover these costs. 70 As the description given above indicates, the TCM development process must have a precise, highly targeted, explicitly structured, and strongly quantitative focus ' if it is to produce TCMs that can be effective in reducing highway congestion and improving air quality. This means that: * Each New York City highway should be evaluated individually. Each hour of the day (in each direction) on the highway should be evaluated individually. And each portion of the highway experiencing a congestion problem should be evaluated separately. This micro approach is not intended to rule out the application of a single TCM to more than one portion of the highway, more than one hour during the day, or more than one highway within a macro corridor. It simply helps to assure that no highway congestion problem is overlooked. * Highway congestion should be defined in strict numerical terms, measured by Vehicles Per Hour. * Explicit Congestion Reduction Goals for each highway should be defined in terms of the number of Vehicles Per Hour that must be shifted during the time period in question in order to solve the congestion problem. * Candidate TCMs should be evaluated in terms of the number of Vehicles Per Hour they are theoretically capable of shifting from the highway. This enables each one to be assigned an Effectiveness Rating that shows what percentage of the Congestion Reduction Goals it has the potential to achieve. The description of the development process indicates that new design tools and quantitative information are needed before serious efforts to develop TCMs can begin. These tools and information are reflected in the flow chart boxes above the horizontal dotted line. Therefore, the first general task in beginning the development process is to prepare the design tools and obtain the information. CONCLUSIONS Shifting significant numbers of motor vehicle trips away from New York City highways during the normal business day appears to be a necessary condition both for attaining Clean Air Act standards and for supporting higher levels of economic activity. Trips can be shifted to alternative routes that have reserve capacity, to nighttime hours when all highways have reserve capacity, and to public transportation. 71 * Shifting trips to alternative routes may have some potential for reducing highway congestion. But it would not reduce total vehicle miles traveled and could simply end up transferring congestion from highways to other roadways. In such a case, it would contribute little to improving air quality. This suggests that it is best regarded as a supplemental strategy rather than a primary strategy. * Shifting trips to nighttime hours by shifting economic activity to these hours may be the "simplest" strategy from a transportation perspective. It would, by itself, eliminate congestion on all city roadways and on public transportation lines. This would have a material impact on improving air quality. It would also free up reserve capacity to accommodate future economic growth without violating Clean Air Act standards. And it would minimize the need to build new transportation facilities. Therefore, it could achieve Goals One and Two without requiring major new transportation investments. But the extent of its disruptive impact on New York City's economic and social life remains to be determined. if this impact is judged to be too disruptive, the strategy would not be practical. * Shifting trips to public transportation would probably have the most impact on reducing total motor vehicle miles of travel, which is a key strategy for improving air quality. But it is very costly, time-consuming, and complicated to implement. It also seems best suited to work trips and may have relatively little impact on reducing the volume of non-work trips, especially those made in commercial motor vehicles. Further analysis is needed to determine whether this trip-shifting strategy could be sufficiently effective by itself to make attainment of Clean Air Act standards possible. If not, it may have to be combined with some shifting to trips to nighttime hours. * Transportation Control Measures are the discrete mechanisms for shifting trips away from congestion highways during high demand periods. Developing effective TCMs requires a carefully structured process that is quantitatively focused and targets each congestion problem separately. * A sound TCM development process requires considerably more information about tripmaking in motor vehicles than currently exists. We need to be able to disaggregate trip demand on each New York City highway during each hour of the day by such characteristics as origins and destinations, trip purposes, types of vehicles used, 72 number of vehicle occupants, and number of interim stops. Each hour's trip volume (on each highway) must be subdivided into work trips, goods movement trips, service and repair trips, trips to and from sales calls and other business meetings, shopping trips, entertainment trips, etc. Without such information, we have no way to estimate how many trips a TCM has the potential to shift,how much congestion it could eliminate, what kind of air quality benefits it may yield, and what its impact on economic activity might be. Gathering this information in a statistically reliable manner and organizing it into easily accessible databases is therefore the first step in beginning to develop effective TCMS. * Any attempt to blindly implement TCMs that have not been developed through a well-targeted, quantitatively oriented process similar to the one described above could be very risky. At best, such TCMs may simply move congestion around, decongesting highways at the expense of other roadways, without producing any material improvements in air quality. At worst, they could seriously disrupt economic activity in New York City and impose higher costs on everyone. 73 VI. MOBILITY: EXPANDING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION CAPACITY The previous section mentioned that increases in public transportation capacity may be needed in order to implement a strategy of reducing highway congestion by shifting trips to public transportation. It also noted that work trips will probably account for most of the trips shifted. This means that public transportation's greatest impact in reducing highway congestion would be during the hours when auto commuters constitute a high proportion of highway users. Its impact would be much lower during hours when non-work trips (especially trips made in commercial vehicles) predominate. Therefore, assessing the potential value of this strategy must await reliable information about the characteristics of various kinds of motor vehicle trips on New York City highways during each hour of the day. At the same time, it is becoming apparent that public transportation capacity limitations during commuting periods may be imposing an important constraint on the number of jobs that can be accommodated in high density commercial centers like the Manhattan CBD, downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City - where workers are most likely to commute by public transportation. All else being equal, these constraints could lead to a rising proportion of new jobs being located elsewhere in the city, perhaps in areas where auto commuting is the only realistic option. This suggests that increases in public transportation capacity serving the commercial centers may be needed even if the strategy of shifting highway trips to public transportation is not widely implemented. Otherwise job growth in the city could significantly increase the number of work trips made by car, which may be incompatible with attaining Clean Air Act standards. This section will discuss some of the options available for increasing public transportation capacity. These options are grouped under three categories. * Expanding express bus capacity. * Expanding passenger ferry capacity. * Expanding passenger rail capacity. 74 EXPANDING EXPRESS BUS CAPACITY Establishing more express bus lines is a relatively quick and low cost way to provide modest increases in public transportation capacity. Their routing flexibility simplifies the task of bringing access to public transportation within walking distance of more people at both ends of their trips. While most existing buses generate air pollutants, their pollutant volume per passenger tends to be considerably less than when these passengers travel by automobile. Also, it is more practical to have a high percentage of buses using lower- polluting fuels like compressed natural gas than to achieve the same percentage among automobiles. New York City has two very different express bus networks. One is centered on the Port Authority bus terminal in midtown Manhattan and spreads out across central and northern New Jersey and into Rockland County. It provides direct access to Manhattan (which most New Jersey rail lines lack) via bus-only lanes in the Lincoln Tunnel, and its off-street terminal keeps buses off local streets. Its patrons appear to regard it as a good alternative to commuting by car. These advantages have enabled it to become the nation's largest and best express bus network. The city's other express bus network connects its residential boroughs with the Manhattan CBD. It lacks both off-street terminal facilities and bus-only lanes for Manhattan access. Available evidence suggests that most of its patrons regard it as ah alternative to commuting by subway rather than by car - possibly because it offers greater likelihood of a seated ride, and because its higher fares are seen as screening out "undesirables". Ridership on these express bus lines has been declining in recent years, but there is no evidence that former patrons have returned to the subway rather than becoming auto commuters. The experience with these two different express bus networks suggests that two things are necessary if an expansion of express bus capacity is to be a practical undertaking. 1. Lane priority on highways and river crossings. An important advantage that public transportation must offer if it is to attract commuters from cars is trip time reliability. It is also desirable that trip times be shorter than by car, though this may be less important than minimizing the incidence of unpredictable delays. Express buses can offer neither advantage unless they have lane priority at least at river crossings (as the New Jersey buses have in the Lincoln Tunnel) and preferably on highways as well. This can be accomplished by reserving lanes for commercial vehicles on the East 75 River crossings and the highways that connect to them. (Section VII discusses reserving lanes - or even entire highways - for buses and other commercial vehicles in more detail.) 2. Off-street bus facilities in Manhattan. Existing express bus lines are designed to provide public transportation to and from the Manhattan CBD, and this is likely to be the case with most new express bus lines. But simply adding more buses to Manhattan streets during high demand periods means more congestion, which diminishes trip time reliability for express buses. Building new off-street bus terminals in Manhattan is an obvious but tricky solution. Such terminals have to be located in the right places if they are to work effectively. The Port Authority bus terminal is ideally located, providing both direct access to all five subway lines in the Times Square area and the new Forty-Second Street Trolley, and to reserved lanes for buses to and from the Lincoln Tunnel. The closest thing to an equivalent location for a new bus terminal appears to be the air rights over the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which is conveniently near stations serving three subway lines. Something similar is needed in the east midtown area to serve express buses from Queens and the Bronx, but space availability is a serious problem. Express buses offer a number of advantages as a way to expand public transportation capacity. But the amount of new capacity they could provide may be limited by the number of additional buses that can be added to the streets in the Manhattan CED, unless more terminals like the Port Authority's can be built. EXPANDING PASSENGER FERRY CAPACITY During the 1980's, the revival of passenger ferries provided some modest increases in public transportation capacity serving Manhattan. They could have the potential for providing more significant increases in the years ahead. The main problem with passenger ferries is that they can only offer shore-to-shore trips. Since most people neither live nor work within convenient walking distance of shore locations, ferry terminals must provide good connections with other transportation facilities. NYCDOT's Staten Island Ferry, which carries most of 76 New York City's ferry passengers, has excellent connections with public transportation lines at each of its terminals. So far, the development of new ferry routes has mainly been left to private entrepreneurs seeking what they hoped were profitable niche markets to exploit. This experience indicates that the public sector will have to play a much larger role in the future if passenger ferries are to contribute meaningfully to increases in public transportation capacity. Private entrepreneurs must, of necessity, focus on the profitability of their enterprises. There is no evidence as yet that this can lead to a passenger ferry network large enough to make a material contribution to increasing public transportation capacity. * Top-down planning is needed to lay out a comprehensive regional network of ferry routes that connects the Manhattan CED with appropriate shorefront locations in the residential boroughs and the suburban counties. This kind of planning is best done by a public agency whose goal is to maximize ferry capacity. The operation of the individual routes can be franchised to private operators. * Shorefront terminals outside Manhattan should be developed as "park-sail,, facilities in order to attract auto commuters. This means that they should be easily accessible by highway and provide adequate amounts of secure parking for automobiles. The cost of developing many of these terminals may require public funds unless they also include ancillary commercial facilities such as restaurants or marinas. * A single terminal in lower Manhattan for all passenger ferries should be developed as part of the reconstruction of the Staten Island Ferry terminal. This location has good connections to Manhattan subway and bus lines for passengers whose job locations lie beyond walking distance from the terminal. * Two new terminals may be needed to serve midtown Manhattan - one on the Hudson shore and one on the East River shore. The Hudson terminal should be located where it can be served by the proposed 42nd Street Trolley. The East River terminal may have to be served by one or more crosstown bus routes unless it becomes possible to extend the Trolley to this terminal. * A fairly large fleet of high-speed, all-weather ferries will be needed if reasonable service frequencies are to be offered during commuting periods. The cost of acquiring such a fleet (plus the facilities needed to maintain it) may be too great for private operators to handle on their own. It may be necessary for a public 77 agency to purchase the fleet and lease it for nominal fees to private operators. This would be similar to the arrangement under which NYCDOT buys buses for private bus operators in the city. * Basic policy decisions about fare levels are needed in order to attract sufficient numbers of passengers, and the right kind of passengers (i.e. those who would otherwise drive to Manhattan). Experience so far suggests that there may be a reasonable market for ferries as an up-scale transportation mode that is priced accordingly. This could help assure that fare revenues fully cover operating costs, and may also help to attract auto commuters. But some routes may have to offer much lower fares if they are to meet ridership targets. Such routes might require public subsidies in order to cover operating costs (as is the case with private bus lines in New York City). Passenger ferries appear to have good,potential for making some contribution to more public transportation capacity. But realizing this potential will require comprehensive, top-down planning and a fairly substantial capital investment. An effective partnership between public agencies and private operators may be the best way to accomplish this. EXPANDING PASSENGER RAIL CAPACITY Large increases in public transportation capacity will probably require expanding passenger rail capacity. Although the capital costs of doing this are high, operating costs per passenger, tend to be lower than for express buses and passenger ferries. Also, the polluting impact of electrically-powered trains is very low. There are three ways to increase passenger rail capacity. * Modify existing rail lines to accommodate higher capacity (which usually means longer) trains. * Build connections between existing rail lines that enable more trains to be operated during high demand periods. * Build new rail lines to supplement existing lines and extend service into areas not currently served. The remainder of this sub-section describes some of the opportunities in New York City for utilizing each approach to increase passenger rail capacity. Further analysis is needed to determine which opportunities may make the most sense. 78 (An example of a methodology that can be used for such analysis is illustrated in NYCDOT's May 1992 report Reducing Subway Overcrowding At the Manhattan CBD Cordons, Volume 1: The Queens Cordon. This report also provides a detailed assessment of six options for increasing subway capacity through the central Queens corridor. The options make use of all three approaches described above.) 1. Modifying existing rail lines to accommodate higher capacity trains. This approach increases capacity by enabling existing lines to operate trains that can carry more people. Its main advantage is that it has little impact on operating costs, since it does not require running more trains to achieve increases in capacity. A second advantage is that capital costs per 1000 passengers of new capacity is likely to be much lower than the equivalent costs of building new rail lines or building new connections between existing lines. Since new capacity is provided only on existing lines, this approach does not extend rail service into areas not currently served. Some examples of this approach are given below. * Rebuild the express lines of the IRT subway system to accommodate longer (and possibly wider) trains. Existing tunnel clearances and station platform lengths limit the IRT system to trains that are both shorter and narrower than can be operated on the IND and BMT systems. This means that IRT trains typically have only 79 percent as much passenger capacity as IND and BMT trains. If the IRT express system was modified to accept IND/BMT type trains, its capacity would be increased by 27 percent. This would require some tunnel reconstruction to accommodate wider trains as well as extension of express station platforms to accommodate longer trains. If the modifications were limited only to longer station platforms, the capacity increase would be 20 percent (assuming trains lengths were increased from 10 cars to 12 cars, using existing IRT cars). However, if station platform extensions allowed the operation of 13 car trains of IRT cars, the capacity increase would be 30 percent. 79 IRT express trains operate between the Bronx and Brooklyn, running down the east side (Lexington Avenue) and west side (Broadway/Seventh Avenue) of Manhattan. These trains are among the most overcrowded on the subway system during peak periods, which is evidence of high demand levels in the areas they serve for commuting trips to and from the Manhattan CBD and downtown Brooklyn. * Rebuild the Flushing line to accommodate longer trains. Even though it is not connected to the IRT system, the Flushing line operates IRT cars (in 11 car trains) because of restricted clearances in the Steinway tunnels under the East River. It is also one of the most overcrowded subway lines during peak periods. Modifying the Flushing line to accommodate 14 car trains would increase its capacity by 27 percent. This would eliminate current overcrowding and provide a 15 percent reserve capacity for future growth. * Rebuild the express tracks of the Eighth Avenue and Fulton Street IND lines to accommodate longer trains. These lines serve the A train, which runs between northern Manhattan and central Brooklyn via Eighth Avenue in Manhattan and Fulton Street in Brooklyn. During peak periods, the A train is overcrowded at both the 60th Street and Brooklyn cordons of the Manhattan CBD. Modifying these lines to accommodate 10 car trains (of R44 and later car classes) rather than the current eight would increase passenger capacity by 25 percent. * Rebuild the express tracks of the Queens Boulevard IND line and all tracks on the Sixth Avenue and Culver IND lines to accommodate longer trains. These lines serve E and F trains running between Jamaica and Brooklyn via the Manhattan CED. During peak periods, trains serving Queens are among the most overcrowded in the subway system. 80 Modifying these lines to accommodate 12 cars trains (of R44 and later car classes) would increase E and F train capacities by 44 percent. This would eliminate present overcrowding and leave an 11 percent reserve for future growth. 2. Building connections between existing passenger rail lines that enable more trains to be operated. This approach increases capacity by connecting existing lines in judicious ways that allow more trains to be operated during high demand periods. It has been used on the subway system in the past to increase passenger capacity without the need for building entire new subway lines. The most notable example is the "Chrystie Street Connection" in lower Manhattan, which began operating in 1968 and integrated the previously separate IND and BMT systems into a single giant (and awesomely complex) system. Since this approach relies on running more trains to achieve capacity increases, it increases operating costs by requiring more train crews and additional trains to be maintained. Some opportunities for new connections are described below. * Connect the Queens Boulevard IND line to the new 63rd Street line. This is an active MTA project and has been approved for federal funding. It involves building an underground track connection in Long Island City between the express and local tracks of the Queens Boulevard line and the upper level of the 63rd Street line, which runs under the East River into Manhattan and connects with both the Sixth Avenue IND line and the Broadway BMT line. This project will allow the operation of more trains between Queens and Manhattan during peak periods by making use of a new (already completed) subway tunnel under the East River. It would increase the Queens Boulevard line's passenger capacity by 34 percent. This could eliminate present overcrowding on E and F trains and provide a 14 percent reserve for future growth. It would also leave available half of the track capacity of the 63rd Street line's upper level for additional subway connections. 81 * Connect the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal. This project is being studied by the MTA as an option for increasing LIRR passenger capacity to and from Manhattan during peak periods. it involves building two new track connections. One would connect the LIRR tracks in Long Island City to the lower level of the 63rd Street tunnel, which runs under the East River to approximately Second Avenue in Manhattan. The second connection would run from Second Avenue to the commuter rail tracks leading into Grand Central, which has platform space to accommodate additional commuter trains during peak periods. The increase in passenger capacity provided by this connection would eliminate present overcrowding on LIRR trains during peak periods and provide a significant reserve for future growth. Some of this reserve could be used by LIRR trains that currently use Penn Station, which would free up platform space in Penn Station to allow New Jersey Transit to operate more commuter trains across the Hudson River. Therefore, this connection could theoretically provide additional passenger capacity across both the Queens and Hudson cordons of the Manhattan CBD. * Connect the Long Island Railroad's Port Washington line to the upper level of the 63rd Street line. Such a connection would involve converting the Port Washington line into a high-speed (and possibly premium-fare) subway line operated by the Transit Authority. It would extend subway service into northeast Queens for the first time by making use of the track capacity still remaining in the upper level of the 63rd Street line after the connection with the Queens Boulevard line is completed. Port Washington line subway trains would run down the central spine of the Manhattan CBD via either Sixth Avenue or Broadway. If we assume that Port Washington subway trains would offer more seats than regular subway trains (in order to justify the premium fare and avoid comfort reductions for existing Port Washington line passengers) , this connection would increase total Queens subway capacity by about 19 percent. If Queens subway passengers altered their choices 82 of subway lines to take advantage of this new capacity, present peak hour overcrowding on Queens subway lines could be eliminated and there would be a seven percent reserve to accommodate future growth. The removal of LIRR Port Washington line trains from Penn Station would free up platform space for other commuter trains. These could be additional LIRR trains serving its other lines, additional New Jersey Transit trains, or some combination of both. * Connect the Long Island Railroad's Atlantic Avenue line to the BMT system in downtown Brooklyn. This represents another conversion of an LIRR line to a subway line, with the connection being made to BMT tracks running through the DeKalb Avenue. it would make possible direct subway service from southeast Queens to Manhattan, via Jamaica (with transfers to and from LIRR trains) and central Brooklyn. If additional track capacity was needed across the East River, this could be provided by adding two more tracks to the Manhattan Bridge as part of its reconstruction. * Connect the local tracks of the Brighton BMT line to the Culver IND line in Brooklyn. The Brighton line is a four-track subway line running between Brighton Beach and Prospect Park. At Prospect Park, its local tracks effectively terminate and only its express tracks continue on to downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan. The local tracks could be connected to the Culver Line in Park Slope by building a new subway tunnel under Prospect Park. This connection would double the passenger capacity of the Brighton line, improving its ability to serve (via feeder - bus) the residential neighborhoods of southeastern Brooklyn and possible the western end of the Rockaway peninsula. * Add a third subway track to the Williamsburg Bridge as part of its reconstruction. Currently, the Williamsburg Bridge has only two subway tracks. These connect at either end with 83 three-track subway lines. Addition of a third track on the Bridge would eliminate merging constraints and enable more trains to operate in the direction of prevailing demand during peak periods. 3. Building new passenger rail lines. Building new rail lines has two advantages. It increases passenger capacity quite substantially. And it enables more passengers to be served more directly, by extending rail lines into areas that currently do not have such service. The last completely new passenger rail line built in New York City was the Queens Boulevard line, which opened in stages during the late 1930's. Since that time, there have been substantial increases in residential development and population in the outer reaches of the city, especially in Queens and on Staten Island. Most residents of these areas must use feeder bus services to reach existing rail lines, which means paying an extra fare and is often an incentive to use automobiles. The downside of new rail lines is their high cost. Capital costs are substantial because of the many miles of new construction needed. Operating costs are also increased because new lines mean running more trains, maintaining more trains, and maintaining more miles of track and structures. Additional operating costs may be offset when new lines generate new passengers. In the context of this report, the purpose of building new rail lines is to provide the capacity needed, within the corridors where it is needed, to implement a strategy of shifting trips now made by motor vehicles to public transportation. Some examples of new rail lines are given below. * The Second Avenue Subway line. As designed by the Transit Authority in the early 1970's, the Second Avenue line would run from Co-Op City in the Bronx, down the east side of Manhattan, to a terminal on the southeastern edge of the Financial District. In addition, two separate track connections with the upper level of the 63rd Street line would be provided. 84 One connection would allow some Second Avenue trains from the Bronx to turn west onto the 63rd Street line and run down the central spine of the Manhattan CBD on the Sixth Avenue IND or the Broadway BMT. The second connection would allow some 63rd Street line trains from Queens to turn south onto the Second Avenue line to reach lower Manhattan. Both connections are highly desirable and would help integrate the Second Avenue line into the IND/BMT system. A third connection (not included in the early 1970's design work) should be added if work on the Second Avenue line is resumed. Instead of terminating in the Financial District, the line should turn roughly east at this point and run under the East River to Brooklyn, connecting with the local tracks of the Fulton Street IND line at its Court Street station (now the location of the Transit Museum) . This would restore the original concept of the Second Avenue line as an integral trunk line of the IND system. The lack of a separate Manhattan entry for the Fulton Street line's local tracks reduces this overcrowded line's passenger capacity by 50 percent, since local trains and express trains must share the same pair of tracks in the Fulton Street tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Therefore, completion of the Second Avenue line with this connection would also double the Fulton Street line's passenger capacity, as well as completely integrating the Second Avenue line into the IND/BMT system. The main reason why the 70 year planning history of the Second Avenue line has never yielded a working subway is because its high capital cost and lengthy construction period always seem to place it just beyond our functional reach, so postponements become inevitable. The best way to avoid this in the future might be to adopt an "incremental" approach to its construction that would yield relatively early transportation benefits for each additional stage of investment. Here is an example of such an incremental schedule. - Begin by extending the proposed Forty-Second Street trolley line northward in a reserved right-of-way on Second Avenue and across one of the existing Harlem River bridges to a park-ride and express bus transfer facility in the South Bronx. 85 - Extend the trolley line south along the Second Avenue alignment to the Financial District. - Build new tunnels (to IND standards) for the trolley line under the Harlem River and under the East River to Brooklyn. - Over time, construct subway segments (to IND standards) for the trolley line under Second Avenue. - Once the entire trolley line has been placed underground, its conversion to full subway operation is a relatively simple matter. - Thereafter, the line would be extended through the Bronx (on the surface, utilizing available railroad right-of- ways) to eventually reach Co-op City. Such a scenario might take a long time to play out completely. Possibly even as long as another 70 years. But during this period, new increments of service would be coming into operation. And we would retain the option to stop at any point (for a few years or forever) without losing the benefits of the investments already made. * The new Central Queens subway line. This project would restore the original concept of the 63rd Street line's upper level' as the Manhattan entry for a new subway line through central Queens. In its revised configuration (which would run mainly on the surface), this line would: - Proceed east from the end of the 63rd Street line in Long Island City and a passenger transfer station with the Queens Boulevard line at Queens Plaza; - Come to the surface in Sunnyside Yard near the Long Island Railroad main line; - Continue generally east on the surface to Rego Park, utilizing space made available within the Long Island Railroad right-of-way; - Turn south onto the abandoned (but restorable) right-of- way of the LIRR Rockaway branch; 86 - Proceed south to a connection at Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park with the IND Rockaway line. This line would accomplish two things. It would provide substantial new passenger capacity through the most overcrowded portions of the central Queens corridor. And it would provide faster and more direct service to midtown Manhattan for residents of Woodhaven, Ozone Park, and the Rockaways. Better service from the Rockaways might also spur development in Arverne, which is the largest area of undeveloped ocean-front land in any city in the world. The Central Queens line would partner neatly with the Port Washington subway line, since both could use the same tracks between Woodside and Sunnyside Yard. In such a case, the two lines would have exclusive use of the upper level of the 63rd Street line. The track connections with the Queens Boulevard line would then be used to provide greater operating flexibility during temporary service disruptions (which is an important plus in minimizing the extent and time duration of such disruptions). * The Flushing Line Extension to New Jersey. The MTA and the Port Authority are exploring the possibility of extending the Flushing line westward under the Hudson to a park-ride and rail transfer station in Secaucus. This would greatly expand public transportation capacity between midtown Manhattan and New Jersey. It might be possible to initiate service without the need for a costly new river tunnel by running trains through one of the Lincoln Tunnel's three tubes. This would mean diverting two lanes worth of auto commuters to the park-ride facility in Secaucus. A new rail tunnel under the Hudson could be built later. * The Staten Island Subway line. This line would bring subway service to Staten Island. It would run from a connection with the IND system in lower Manhattan, under New York Bay to St. George and a connection with the Staten 87 Island Rapid Transit line to Tottenville, which would become part of the subway system. The connection point in Manhattan could either be with the Eighth Avenue line's stub-end terminal in the World Trade Center, or with the Second Avenue line at the southeastern corner of the Financial District. A major benefit would be the possibility of instituting subway service on SIRT's North Shore branch as far west as the New Jersey Turnpike, where a park-ride facility could be built. This would provide a rail alternative to Manhattan for central New Jersey residents who now drive across Staten Island, the Verrazano Bridge, and through Brooklyn. Central New Jersey could be the location of much of the region's new residential housing during the next twenty years, and its residents may require new rail access to Manhattan in order to be able to work there. 88 VII. OTHER ISSUES The NYSDOT Guidelines described a broad array of issues that should be reflected in the Long Range Transportation Plan, and indicated that the manner of doing so might differ among metropolitan areas. Many of these issues have already been discussed in previous sections of this report. This section explores issues that are either not addressed elsewhere or were mentioned in the context of another issue but still merit more detailed discussion. COMMERCIAL VEHICLE TRIPS This issue represents an expansion of what is commonly known as goods movement. For the purposes of this report, Commercial Vehicle Trips are defined as all non-commuting motor vehicle trips that are made for purposes directly related to business activity. They are made in motor vehicles that normally (but not always) bear commercial license plates. Such trips are made for one or more of the following purposes: * To move various kinds of freight or "goods", including deliveries to end users and pick-ups from producers or distributors. Many such trips can involve one or more stops between their initial origins and ultimate destinations. "Delivery route" trips have many such interim stops. * To make service or repair calls. These trips usually require the tripmaker to be accompanied by tools and spare parts. Motor vehicles are the only practical way to make these trips. * To attend business meetings and make sales calls, especially when the tripmakers must bring along product samples, presentation materials, and other business- related items that are only practical to transport by motor vehicle (many of which may not currently bear commercial license plates). * Commercial transportation of people in buses, passenger vans, medallion taxis black cars, and other licensed vehicles offering service on a fare-charging or for-hire basis. 89 Little information is currently available about the hourly volumes, origins and destinations, multiple stop characteristics, time-sensitive nature, and weekly frequencies of such trips on New York City highways. But it is possible that they may account for a significant proportion of highway trips made during the hours between normal commuting periods when (as noted previously) many highways experience serious congestion problems. Therefore, it is very important for the development of an effective Long Range Transportation Plan that reliable information about these trips be obtained for each hour on each New York City highway. Commercial vehicle trips have two characteristics in common. * They have a direct business-related purpose (other than normal commuting) that produces income for the vehicle owner or operator. As such, their volume is tangible evidence of the complex inter-relationship between economic activity and tripmaking. Some of these trips are generated by economic activity (a dress factory orders rolls of fabric to fill a hurry-up order for Macy's). Some produce economic activity (a sales presentation results in production orders that cause people to be hired and goods to be purchased from suppliers). And some fall into both categories (a service call to repair a broken air conditioner at a mainframe computer installation is prompted by the need for the computer to process weekly payrolls for clients, and the repair requires the purchase of replacement parts). * Because of their nature, it is not currently practical for these trips to be made by any mode other than motor vehicle. In most cases, public transportation is not a realistic option. If they are not made by motor vehicle, they cannot be made at all. And if they are not made, the economic activity that generates them or that they generate does not occur. These two characteristics suggest that such trips may merit some degree of priority in allocating the use of highway lane space. when there is not enough lane space for all trips that Seek to use highways during a given period, then it may be appropriate to displace trips that are not clearly commercial in order to free up space for those that are. This concept represents a 180 degree change in New York City's implicit policy for allocating highway space. Roughly 47 percent of the city's limited access highways (i.e. all the parkways) are currently off-limits to most vehicles bearing commercial license plates. And there is wide-spread sympathy for the periodic ground swells of public pressure to "ban trucks" from certain roadways during certain times of the day. In general, most New Yorkers seem 90 to assume that the city's highways belong primarily to non- commercial vehicles, and that commercial vehicles should be allowed to use them only if they don't get in the way. The end result is to increase the time it takes to complete commercial vehicle trips. Since commercial trip costs are a direct function of trip times, higher transportation costs are added to the price of everything we buy and sell. We may have reached the point where we no longer have the luxury of assuming that highways are mainly for private automobiles. New York City's -Transportation Plan should seriously evaluate a policy that would assign priority for highway use to commercial vehicles during high demand periods. This would accelerate completion times for trips that directly impact economic activity and that can only be made by motor vehicles, which may be the most practical way to minimize the air pollution they generate. Such a policy could be implemented in the following ways. * The parkways would be opened to all commercial vehicles that can fit within present height constraints at overpasses (NYCDOT has proposed a pilot project to begin accomplishing this). Over time, the parkways would be reconstructed to eliminate these constraints so that they could eventually accommodate all commercial vehicles that can now use the expressways. This would expand the highway network for commercial vehicles by 88 percent (or 93 route miles) and eliminate such major gaps as the lack of an east/west highway for commercial vehicles across southern Brooklyn. * Priority lanes on highways would be open to all vehicles bearing commercial license plates, rather than being limited only to buses and other high occupancy passenger vehicles. On some highways, this might require establishing additional priority lanes to accommodate the volume of commercial vehicles without restricting the free flow of traffic in these lanes. * Some highways would be reserved exclusively for commercial vehicles during high demand periods, with non- commercial vehicles being shifted to paralleling roadways. An obvious example might be the Van Wyck Expressway between Northern Boulevard and the Nassau Expressway. Private automobiles making north/south trips across Queens could use the Cross-Island Parkway, the Grand Central Parkway, the Van Wyck's service roads, and Cross Bay/Woodhaven Boulevard. 91 Some people argue that many goods movement trips within the city could be shifted from trucks to rail if better connections were available between the Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island rail network and the rail networks north and west of the city. This issue needs to be evaluated seriously as part of developing a Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City. But two points should be kept in mind. * There is no evidence as yet that better rail connections would significantly reduce the number of goods movement trips by motor vehicle. This is not to say that a major proportion of goods tonnage could not be moved by rail. But the number and distribution of individual pick-up and drop-off points for goods in the city is so great that it is difficult to imagine how any material proportion of them could be served by rail. The reality seems to be that the number of motor vehicle trips to move goods will remain high and be closely linked to the level of economic activity. * For the most part, the other categories of commercial vehicle trips also cannot be shifted to rail. Therefore, the number of such trips will remain high and be closely linked to the level of economic activity. All of which underscores the importance of recognizing the need to accommodate what may be substantial volumes of commercial vehicle trips on New York City highways. If new information shows this to be the case, then our best strategy is to arrange things so these trips can be completed as quickly as possible - in order to minimize their air pollution impact. On some highways during certain periods of the day, achieving this in an effective manner may require displacing non-commercial vehicles in order to free up lane-space. AIRPORT ACCESS John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport are both owned by the City of New York and operated under lease by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. They are critically important components of New York City's transportation infrastructure. Unlike other transportation facilities discussed in this report, their purpose is to serve the movement of people and goods between New York and other metropolitan regions in the nation and the world. But they can only do this effectively if they have good transportation links to market sources within the city and the region. Their existing links are poor and becoming worse. The importance of JFK and LaGuardia arises from the following factors: 92 * They provide New York City and its metropolitan region with what is probably the world's best air travel service. More direct commercial flights are available to and from more cities at more times of the day than any airport system in any other metropolitan area can offer. As a result, no place of any consequence in the world is more than a day's flight from New York (which could be what helps defines "a place of consequence") . This provides vitally important support to New York's major "export" activities. It enables the city to attract visitors from all over the world, who come here to conduct business and enjoy vacations. * JFK is the nation's largest air cargo airport, and an active "air package" business is developing at LaGuardia. The increasing demand to move high value, time-sensitive, and perishable goods by air makes this a high-growth segment of the air travel industry and a source of more jobs at good wages for New Yorkers in the future. * The movement of people and goods by air has made JFK and LaGuardia twin centers of a large local industry serving the air travel market. With nearly 60,000 employees, the two airports are the largest job centers in Queens and directly or indirectly support more than 200,000 other jobs elsewhere in the region. The most serious problem that JFK and LaGuardia face is one of "landside access". Both were designed to be served exclusively by motor vehicles using the Queens highway network. But traffic congestion on these highways has made getting to and from the airports increasing time-consuming and unpredictable. This affects air passengers (most of whom are visiting the region from somewhere else to conduct business or enjoy vacations) , airport employees, airline flight crews, and air cargo firms. Landside access problems threaten New York's future economic growth in two ways. one is the obvious disincentive they pose for visitors. Flying to JFK and LaGuardia from almost anywhere is relatively easy and convenient. But traveling between the airports and points of ultimate origin or destination within the region is difficult and becoming more so. If increasing numbers of visitors come to the conclusion that making trips to New York is "too much of a hassle" because of landside access problems, the city's competitive edge as a world commercial capital and tourist mecca could diminish. The second threat posed by landside access problems is the incentive they provide air passengers with origins and destinations in the suburban counties to fly through Stewart, Westchester, and MacArthur airports, which are often easier for them to reach by motor vehicle than JFK or LaGuardia. This developing trend could 93 lead to pressure to develop these suburban facilities into full service airports. The airline industry would thus be faced by the need to serve the region through as many as six commercial airports rather than the present three, which is a very costly undertaking. The industry's pervasive financial problems might force it to dilute flight frequencies and non- stop destinations now available at JFK and LaGuardia in order to provide more service at the suburban airports. This would diminish the quality and convenience of air travel service at the city's two airports, which would become a further disincentive for visitors to make trips to New York. Clearly, JFK and LaGuardia need to be provided with some kind of effective public transportation that does not involve the use of the Queens highway network if their landside access problems are to be addressed satisfactorily. Ideally, both airports should be linked to all parts of the region with public transportation services that avoid congested highways. This would enable the airline industry to concentrate all its activities at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. There would be no need to make large capital investments developing the suburban airports, which could be limited to general aviation or redeveloped for non-aviation purposes. (For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see NYCDOT's March 1992 report Airport Development Policy.) At one time, it was assumed that subway extensions might be an effective way to provide non-road public transportation for the airports. But analysis of air passenger characteristics shows that their landside access needs cannot be served effectively by subway. This leaves us with two basic options. one is the commuter rail option, and the other is the airport- dedicated transit option. 1. The Commuter Rail Option In theory, the region's extensive commuter railroad network already provides the basic infrastructure for an array of direct (no-transfer) rail services between JFK and LaGuardia and such important generators of air passengers as Manhattan, Long Island, the northern suburban counties, and even New Jersey. The new construction needed would be limited to two relatively short LIRR branch lines to each airport, plus three additional rail junctions in Queens. The diagram on the next page shows how this would work. Such an "airport rail network" would allow air passengers to travel through satellite airline terminals located at suitable rail access locations in Manhattan, Nassau, Westchester, and possibly other counties in the region. 94 Click HERE for graphic. They would travel between the satellite terminals and their points of local origin or destination by motor vehicle (which is unavoidable because of the widespread distribution of their O&:D points) . But they would travel between the satellite terminals and the airports by rail, bypassing congested highways, and with no need to change trains on the way. No-transfer rail service seems to be essential if public transportation for air passengers is to be effective. There is no evidence as yet that significant numbers of air passengers would patronize an airport rail service that requires them to change trains in the course of their landside access trips. In fact, one of the reasons given for the low ridership on the new airport transit link serving Orly Airport in Paris is the need for air passengers to transfer to a commuter rail line in order to reach downtown Paris. The new rail line into JFK could also be used to move air cargo to and from the airport if air cargo "collector/distributor" warehouses were built at key locations on the rail network throughout the region. This would free the air cargo industry from its current over-dependence on roadways for local transportation, which would improve delivery times and help hold down costs. (For a more detailed discussion of the commuter rail option, see NYCDOT's July 1991 report The Zurich Model For Landside Access To JFK & LaGuardia Airports.) But there is a serious barrier to implementing this option. At the present time, the Long Island Railroad lacks the capacity to serve the airports from Manhattan during commuting periods because of constraints in Penn Station. It could only provide no-transfer train service to air passengers by taking trains away from commuters during these periods, which is clearly not feasible. It might be able to offer air passengers the option of transferring to and from special airport trains at a station in Queens. But, as noted above, there is no evidence that such a transfer requirement would be acceptable to significant numbers of air passengers. The best option for overcoming the Long Island Railroad's capacity problems appears to be the proposed connection between its main line in Long Island City and Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan via the lower level of the 63rd Street tunnel. As noted in Section VI, this project is being studied by the MTA as a means of providing more train capacity for Long Island commuters. It would also 95 enable the Long Island Railroad to operate no-transfer airport service from Manhattan. But it is still in the early planning stages and its completion is not expected until some time in the next century. The inability of the commuter rail option to serve Manhattan air passengers before the end of the 1990's is a major drawback. Manhattan is by far the region's most important air travel market, generating 46 percent of LaGuardia's passengers and 32 percent of JFK'S. Manhattan passengers (most of whom are visitors) also confront the most serious landside access problems because of traffic congestion on the East River crossings and the highways in Queens. They require effective airport transit service before the end of this decade if JFK and LaGuardia are to remain viable. 2. The Airport-Dedicated Transit Option In an effort to address the landside access needs of Manhattan air passengers in this decade, the Port Authority has been conducting detailed studies for an entirely new Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) system to link Manhattan with JFK and LaGuardia. It would use one of the proprietary "people mover" technologies, which are not compatible with the standard "heavy rail" technologies now used by the commuter railroads and the subway system. These technologies are lighter and more compact than heavy rail and are typically operated under some form of computer control, which minimizes operating costs and enhances service flexibility. As currently planned, the AGT system would begin at a Manhattan terminal near the Queensboro Bridge, cross the East River to Long Island City by using the Bridge (which once carried elevated train and trolley cars) , and reach LaGuardia by using space that can be made available in the right-of-ways of the Hell Gate rail line, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and Grand Central Parkway. From LaGuardia, the line would turn generally south and utilize space that could be made available within highway right-of-ways to reach Shea Stadium, Jamaica, and JFK. Transfer points with existing commuter rail and subway lines could be provided in Long Island City and at Shea Stadium and Jamaica. Short branch lines could also be added to serve downtown Flushing and the eastern reaches of Jamaica. The map on the next page shows the system's general route configuration. 96 In terms of serving Manhattan air passengers, the AGT system approaches the ideal. It could offer fast and frequent service, with train capacity closely tailored to demand. Its automated operating capability would make its operating costs significantly lower than a traditional heavy rail system. And the Port Authority believes that it could be in operation before the end of the decade. But in terms of serving non-Manhattan air passengers, the AGT system seems less than ideal. Theoretically, air passengers with origins and destinations on Long Island could access the system by transferring from LIRR commuter trains at Jamaica. Air passengers with origins and destinations in the northern suburban counties (east of the Hudson, at least) could transfer from Amtrak or possibly Metro-North trains at the new station that has been proposed for Long Island City. But again, there is no evidence that significant numbers of air passengers would be willing to make such transfers and a fair amount of evidence that they would not. Another possibility would be to provide a satellite airline terminal on the AGT system at Shea Stadium, which Long Island and northern counties air passengers would access by motor vehicle. The AGT system could only provide no-transfer service for Long Island and northern counties passengers if extensions to the basic system described above were built into these areas, following existing rail or highway right-of-ways. This is technically feasible, but it is very expensive because of the many miles of new construction required (a problem that the commuter rail option avoids by making use of the existing rail network). Also, air passenger density in the suburbs is much lower than it is in Manhattan. This means a poor trade-off between the marginal cost of extensions into the suburbs and the marginal revenue increases from new AGT riders. There has been no discussion of whether the AGT system might also be able to move air cargo containers between JFK and an on-line collector/distributor center in Long Island City. It is not known how feasible this might be, but it should be explored by the Port Authority. In making judgements about how best to provide the non-road public transportation services that JFK and LaGuardia require, the following points should be kept in mind. 97 Click HERE for graphic. * Serving Manhattan air passengers has the highest priority and should be accomplished before the end of this decade. The Manhattan market is the region's largest and most concentrated, which makes it the easiest and least costly to serve. It is also the most important market because it consists mainly of visitors, whose trips here contribute significantly to New York City's economy. Finally, it is the market facing the most serious landside access problems. Given the inability of the Long Island Railroad to serve Manhattan air passengers in this decade, the AGT system appears to be the best bet. But only if it can be completed before the end of the 1990's. If financial or other problems make this impossible, then serious consideration should be given to accelerating construction of the Long Island Railroad connection into Grand Central so that the commuter rail option can become viable sooner. * Unless new evidence surfaces to contradict existing evidence, we should assume that only no-transfer airport transit service will be able to attract significant numbers of air passengers. The AGT system can provide this for Manhattan air passengers, but not for suburban air passengers without lengthy (and costly) extensions. The commuter rail option could provide this for all air passengers eventually, but not for Manhattan air passengers in this decade. * Development of the suburban airports as full-service alternatives to JFK and LaGuardia risks diminishing the quality of air travel service for New York City and the whole region, which is a negative for economic growth. This means that ways will have to be found to provide suburban air passengers with effective, no-transfer, non- road public transportation services to and from the city's airports. Do we accomplish this by swallowing the high cost of extending the AGT system into the suburbs? Do we build the AGT system to serve Manhattan first and phase in the commuter rail option for the suburbs later? Is there room for both services at the airports? Do we build the AGT system as an "interim" facility to serve Manhattan and supplement (or replace) it later with the commuter rail option to serve the entire region? These are some of the questions that have to be addressed in resolving the landside access problems that threaten the long term viability of JFK and LaGuardia. * Available evidence does not support the instinctive assumption that the best way to address landside access problems is to build new links that connect the airports with existing public transportation facilities. Analysis of the Port Authority's very detailed 1990-91 Air 98 Passenger Survey indicates that Manhattan air passengers would derive little benefit from links between the airports and subways or local buses. What they appear to need most is a link between the airports and Manhattan's taxi system, which could serve a collector/distributor function within Manhattan for a fast and reliable airport transit system. The AGT system has excellent potential for being such a link. * To preserve and strengthen JFK's role as the region Is air cargo hub, ways must be found to relieve the air cargo industry of its dependence on overcrowded roadways for local cargo movements. The commuter rail option could do this by enabling air cargo containers to be moved on and off the airport by rail. It is unclear whether the AGT system could offer the same opportunities, but the Port Authority should evaluate this. Other possibilities include lane priority for air cargo vehicles on certain roadways in the vicinity of the airport (which was discussed above) , and using high- speed container ferries to move air cargo between JFK and collector/distributor warehouses on the East River and perhaps the New Jersey waterfront. TELECOMMUTING Telecommuting is a new name for the old practice of having employees do some of their work at home. In its new guise, it relies heavily on low-cost fax machines, networked personal computers, and other telecommunications technology to link employee homes to their work places. Obviously, an employee who spends the day working at home does not make her normal two commuting trips that day. Therefore, telecommuting has some potential for reducing the number of work trips in New York City - many of which are made by car during high demand periods on the highways. In effect, telecommuting carries the strategy of shifting trips away from congested highways to its ultimate extreme. These trips, and the air pollution they generate, are "shifted out of existence". New York Telephone Company is actively promoting telecommuting as a means of increasing the revenue generated by its telephone network (because of more telephone activity by telecommuters networking with their regular work places). It is undertaking a serious outreach effort to convince business firms to offer increasing numbers of their employees the option of working at home one day each week. If successful, New York Telephone believes that between five and ten percent of the city's employed workers may eventually work at home one or more days per week. Assuming an equal distribution of "work-at-home" days over the week, this would 99 mean a five to ten percent reduction in the daily number of commuting trips that would otherwise be made. In evaluating telecommuting Is potential as a means of reducing highway congestion, the following issues should be considered. 1. The Impact On Auto Commuting New York Telephone has no evidence as yet to indicate that telecommuting would not impact all commuting modes more or less equally. Therefore, a five to ten percent participation rate among all workers employed in the city would presumably mean a five to ten percent reduction in daily auto commuting trips (relative to the number of such trips in the absence of any telecommuting). But it is theoretically possible that the impact on auto commuting could turn out to be greater. * People who work in the Manhattan CED and other high density centers and who commute by car because the use of public transportation is not feasible (due to physical disabilities or lack of access) might have a higher telecommuting participation rate. This could be the case if they find that telecommuting offers welcome relief from the burdens and stress of driving to and f rom these congested centers. The result would be a greater reduction in auto commuting to these centers than in the city as a whole. Because of the serious impact that auto commuting has on roadway congestion and air quality in these centers, such a result would be highly desirable. * People who work in hard to reach locations outside the high density centers and who must commute by car because public transportation does not serve them might also have a higher-than-average telecommuting participation rate. The impact of this on air quality generally would be positive because it would help reduce daily motor vehicle miles of travel, which is one of the strategies for attaining Clean Air Act standards. Its impact on reducing highway congestion cannot be determined until hourly information about the origins and destinations of highway trips becomes available. 100 * People who work anywhere in the city and who live in distant suburbs where long auto commutes are unavoidable are another group whose telecommuting participation rate might be higher than average. This could become increasingly significant over time, since much of the region's new housing construction in the future is expected to occur in these relatively undeveloped fringe areas. 2. The Impact On Public Transportation At this point, there is no reason to believe that telecommuting participants will not include people who normally commute by public transportation. Fewer public transportation trips during commuting periods would reduce congestion somewhat on subway and commuter rail trains. Unfortunately, it would also reduce fare revenue. Rough estimates indicate that a five percent telecommuting participation rate among subway commuters would reduce fare revenue by three percent. Currently, this would amount to an annual dollar loss of $53 million. A six cent fare increase would be needed to offset this loss. In percentage terms, the fare revenue loss for MetroNorth and the Long Island Railroad would he somewhat greater because a higher proportion of their riders are commuters. A five percent telecommuting participation rate among these commuters would reduce fare revenue by 3.3 percent, or $17 million in 1993. A 5. 3 percent increase in commuter rail f ares would be needed to off set this loss. On the other hand, it would not be unreasonable for New York Telephone to make up the fare revenue loss out of the additional revenues it expects telecommuting to generate from greater use of the phone network. One way to accomplish this revenue transfer would be to levy a new tax on telephone revenues, with the proceeds earmarked for the MTA. A simpler alternative might be for New York Telephone to purchase subway tokens each month in amounts equivalent to the fare revenue lost from telecommuting by the subway system and commuter railroads. The company could then donate these tokens to social service agencies serving low-income New Yorkers, who would distribute them at no cost to their clients. Since these donations would be a tax deduction for New York Telephone, this would enable the federal government to share the cost burden of telecommuting, and of providing lower cost transportation to people of modest 101 incomes. 3. Demographic Considerations Demographic factors could turn out to have a major influence on telecommuting participation rates. For example: * Factory production line workers would not be able to telecommute because the nature of their jobs requires them to be in the factory while they are working. But the long term trend for such jobs is declining and is expected to continue doing so. So the number of workers who are precluded from telecommuting by the nature of their jobs may decrease over time. * By contrast, telecommuting should be highly feasible (and possibly even advantageous) for those holding "symbolic analyst" jobs. These are jobs that deal with ideas rather than things and embrace a wide range of quintessential New York occupations in law, finance, advertising, publishing, etc. The number of such jobs is likely to continue increasing over the long term, which could help swell the ranks of potential telecommuters. * Job income levels may affect the feasibility of telecommuting, especially for workers who live in multi- person households. Low income workers are likely to be unable to afford residences with sufficient dedicatable space for a home work environment. Higher incomes generally mean more residential space, which alleviates this problem. Therefore, a rising proportion of higher income jobs in the city's employment base would tend to increase the telecommuting participation rate. * A rising incidence of working mothers in the city would have a similar impact, especially among higher income occupations. This may not be limited just to the months immediately before and after childbirth, but could extend throughout childhood and school-age years. * All else being equal, workers who live in single person households may be more likely to participate in telecommuting. Such workers tend to face fewer problems in setting aside dedicated space for a work environment at home. The rising incidence of single-person households in New York City could 102 mean a higher telecommuting participation rate. * There has been a growing trend for business firms to replace large portions of their work force with contract workers, in an effort to reduce labor costs by avoiding the need for Social Security payments, medical benefits, and pensions. If this trend continues, an increasing proportion of the city's labor force could consist of "independent contractors" who, as a matter of course (especially in professional. occupations), expect to do a significant portion of their work at home. This would increase the telecommuting participation rate. * New York City has the nation's highest proportion of working age adults with physical disabilities. Many of them currently work and could be expected to welcome opportunities to telecommute. Those who have difficulty working because regular commuting is not feasible could find that telecommuting enables them to participate more fully in the city's work force. This could expand the base of productive workers and make the city a more attractive location for many firms. 4. Income Tax Considerations Telecommuting is likely to impose some costs on workers who participate. In most cases, this may include the costs of setting up and maintaining a "home office". Some of these costs may be offset by the savings from commuting fewer days each week. The extent to which employers would reimburse their telecommuting workers for the remaining costs is not clear at this point. Reimbursement practices might vary from firm to firm. Within firms, it might vary among job categories. There might be greater reimbursement to high salaried professionals and managers who are regarded as being difficult to replace, and little or no reimbursement to easily- replaceable low wage workers (similar to the way medical benefits and other fringe benefits are often allocated). Until recently, the costs of a home office were deductible for federal income tax purposes if appropriate records were kept. But a recent federal court decision supported the Internal Revenue Service's contention that home office deductions should only be available to workers who perform the bulk of their work at home. This 103 would require a telecommuter to work at home a minimum of three days per week, which is scarcely what its advocates have in mind. This court decision can be overturned by new federal legislation. Passage of such legislation, possibly in the guise of helping urban areas to attain Clean Air Act standards,should be pursued so that the federal government can share the costs of telecommuting. FINANCING TRANSPORTATION 1. The Issues As discussed earlier, transportation supports economic activity. The level of economic activity determines our annual income as a society. Therefore, the annual costs of transportation (as defined in Section III) should be paid out of our annual income. If we want our income to increase, economic activity must grow. This creates more transportation demand, so our annual transportation costs will rise. But the multiplier effect of efficient transportation is such that each extra dollar we allocate to more transportation generates considerably more than an extra dollar of income. Conversely, if we try to get away with spending less on transportation (because we would rather use our income for other things) , we are going to end up constraining economic activity and therefore slow down income growth. This can occur overtly if we reduce spending on transportation operations, which means that we consciously decide to produce less transportation. Or it can occur covertly (but still unavoidably) if we reduce spending for maintenance and capital depreciation, which ultimately reduces the functional capacity of transportation facilities so that less transportation is produced even if spending for operations remains the same or rises. These simple truisms involve transportation's importance in supporting economic growth, which relates to Goal Two of the Plan. But over-riding this issue are the federal mandates to attain Clean Air Act standards, which are reflected in Goal One. As the previous sections have indicated, we face the need to spend more for transportation in order to achieve this goal. 104 * We must complete the restoration of our transportation facilities in order to maximize their functional capacity. As noted in Section II, this will require capital s pending of at least another $24 billion and should be completed within a ten year time frame. * We must spend more on on-going maintenance of our transportation facilities in order to maximize their useful life once they are restored, and to avoid the kind of incremental losses of functional capacity that occurred in the past. * We must spend more operating our transportation facilities in order to fully realize their latent functional capacity. This includes implementing such new operating programs as full-scale Incident Management on all New York City highways. * Unless we embrace the strategy of shifting significant amounts of economic activity to the nighttime hours, we will have to make substantial investments to create new public transportation capacity so that many trips now made on highways in motor vehicles can be shifted to less-polluting public transportation modes. 2. The Constraints The NYSDOT Guidelines define a "Financially-Constrained" transportation plan as one whose programs can be fully funded by a continuation of currently authorized local, State, and federal funding sources. Such a plan cannot assume higher funding levels from these sources or the development of new financial mechanisms. It is not yet clear that a financially-constrained plan would be sufficiently robust to accommodate the four categories of higher spending outlined above. In its analysis of transportation funding needs for the New York State portion of the metropolitan region, NYMTC appears to find that such a plan would not be sufficiently robust. In which case, a financially-constrained plan may not enable New York City to comply with federal Clean Air Act mandates unless further actions were taken. Such actions could involve: * Obtaining legislative or administrative wavers of Clean Air Act requirements from the federal government. 105 * Reducing economic activity to a level where the financially-constrained plan's programs accommodate trip demand in a manner that is consistent with Clean Air Act requirements. * Shifting enough economic activity from the daytime hours to the nighttime hours so that roadway congestion throughout the day would fall to levels that are compatible with attaining Clean Air Act standards. * Expanding transportation funding capacity soon enough to allow a Plan that is sufficiently robust to provide the new transportation capacity needed to reduce congestion. At this point, the fourth action seems like the most practical one to follow. 3. Expanding Transportation Funding Capacity It is theoretically possible that more federal transportation funding could become available in the future. But given the Clinton administration's emphasis on deficit reduction, any significant increases would require shifting funds from other federal programs. Because of the political problems this poses, it does not seem realistic to rely on the federal government to play much of a role in expanding transportation funding capacity. Which probably means that the City and State will have to carry most of the responsibility. This may not be as burdensome as it sounds. The recent recession and slow pace of recovery tend to make us forget how immensely rich New York City is as a society. Its current aggregate income (technically known as Gross City Product, or GCP) is about $270 billion per year. This is expected to reach $480 billion by 2003 and $920 billion by 2015. To put this in some perspective, assume that we were to allocate only one percent of each year Is GCP to expanding transportation funding capacity. In such a case, new funds for transportation would total about $40 billion between by 2003, and $125 billion by 2015. Now suppose that we were to assign just ten percent of this additional funding stream to supporting new long term bonds issued to raise capital funds for additional transportation facilities. At today's interest rates, this would enable us to "buy" more than $50 billion worth 106 of new facilities within the next ten years. In other words, the real issue is not whether we can "afford" to spend more on transportation. Rather, it is a question of what mechanisms can most effectively and equitably secure for transportation a reasonable (and, in percentage terms, quite modest) portion of New York's gigantic income stream, so that we can comply with federal Clean Air Act mandates on schedule and enable economic activity to grow more vigorously. Therefore, a major element in developing a suitable Long Range Transportation Plan for New York City should be the analysis needed to identify and evaluate such mechanisms. 4. Defining a "Transportation Budget" for New York City The best way to undertake this analysis may be in a context that considers the percentage of GCP spent each year for all transportation activity within the city public and private, commercial and personal. In effect, we would begin by defining what amounts to a transportation budget for New York City as a society. This would show (both in dollars and in percent of GCP) how much is currently being spent by individuals, business firms, and public agencies to operate our transportation systems, replace facilities that wear out, and expand capacity by acquiring more facilities. once these baseline numbers have been identified, they can be used to generate scenarios for future spending. One group of scenarios could assume that total transportation spending each year will remain fixed at its current percentage of GCP. These scenarios would enable us to estimate transportation dollars expected to be available in future years if society does not change the proportion of GCP that it allocates to transportation. Each scenario would then evaluate the impact of assigning different shares of available transportation dollars to the public and private sectors, to various transportation modes, and to operations vs. maintenance vs. capital replacement VS. capacity expansion. other scenario groups can evaluate these impacts based on allocating higher or lower percentages of GCP to transportation. This kind of analysis applies standard budgeting methodology to the process of identifying and evaluating how available transportation dollars might be used in the future. Among other things, the results would show whether continuing to allocate the current percentage of 107 GCP to transportation can generate sufficient funding for the programs needed to meet Clean Air Act standards (without short-changing other areas of transportation spending) , or whether a higher percentage may be needed. Once a set of reasonable transportation budget scenarios has been developed, we will have a good handle on the annual funding levels needed for programs to meet Clean Air Act standards. These levels can be compared with the capacity of existing funding sources to identify any shortfalls that would have to be covered by new funding mechanisms. This approach provides meaningful benchmarks for the process of identifying and evaluating new funding mechanisms. It shows how much of GCP such mechanisms need to tap for transportation each year. Once these targets have been established, we can then proceed to determine which mechanisms make the most sense in political, efficiency and equity terms. 108
