Rail safety, transportation funding and water resource development are three issues key to the lower Hudson Valley”™s infrastructure. However, arriving at an equitable means of distributing funding to maintain them remains elusive.
The complexity of these issues begs more transparency to ensure fairness, according to Hudson Valley Patten for Progress.
In its latest report, “Hudson Valley Infrastructure: Is it Safe? Is it Fair? Is it Informed?”, the nonprofit research organization took exception with the means by which the state Department of Transportation allocates its funds among the 11 regions statewide.
Pattern analyzed the funding from the last two fiscal years of these 11 areas and scrutinized the DOT”™s allocation of funds based on each region”™s combined assets. The combined assets in the report are made up of the mileage of DOT-maintained highways or roadways and the number of bridges per region.
The Pattern authors said the combined asset numbers do not take into account traffic volume or age of infrastructure. The report noted the inequity of maintaining a mile of the Hutchinson River Parkway versus a mile on Route 20 in Albany County.
“Allocations of state funding should start with a baseline of this type of fair share analysis, adjusted for issues such as volume, density, age of infrastructure and regional variation in wage and material costs,” the report stated. A better funding-allocation model at DOT would create equity and fairness, the authors wrote.
Region 8, which is made up of seven counties directly north of New York City including Westchester and Rockland counties, makes up the largest percentage of combined assets, or 14 percent, of all the regions in the state. But Region 8 received 8 percent of the funding distributed by DOT from fiscal years 2013 and 2014. New York City, Long Island and the Albany regions received a combined 60 percent of the funding even though these three regions only make up 24 percent together in combined assets.
At a recent conference hosted by Pattern in New Windsor, DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald said there is a need “to be much more aggressive about identifying what projects can be funded and how we”™re going to fund them so that we can move those projects much more quickly. And I don”™t have the answers, there is no easy answer, but it is something that I think we all have to collectively do.”
The short-term extensions of the federal Highway Trust Fund, considered the primary funding source for state and local transit projects, is an unreliable resource for growth at the state and local level, McDonald and fellow conference participant U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney agreed.
While Maloney assured the audience that he and others in Congress are committed to voting for only a “real plan” with a “reasonable funding stream,” McDonald said her office will not be waiting around for that.
“Uncertainty over funding will not slow us down and has not slowed us down in the past,” she said. McDonald said her department is working to update the ways in which transportation needs are met by being more involved in communities for projects big and small, a goal being met in part by having sustainability and management teams in each of DOT”™s 11 regions.
Maloney, who represents parts of Westchester and Rockland counties and is a member of a Congressional committee for transportation and infrastructure, addressed the recent Amtrak accident in Philadelphia in which a train crashed and killed eight people after speeding at 106 mph around a curve that was supposed to be approached at 50 mph.
“What is extraordinary about that tragedy is that it”™s no longer extraordinary,” he told the audience at Anthony”™s Pier 9.
Over the last two years in the Hudson Valley region alone there have been 14 deaths associated with rail accidents, according to Pattern”™s report.
Both Maloney and the report highlighted steps taken in New York to increase rail safety, including a nearly $1 billion loan approved by the Federal Railroad Administration in April to invest in positive train control technology on the Metro-North and Long Island railroads. Maloney said the National Transportation Safety Board cited positive train control, a system that uses GPS and Wi-Fi technology to stop or slow trains remotely, as a safety mechanism that could have prevented the Philadelphia crash.
In light of recent local accidents and the increase of crude oil transport via train, the report suggests increasing safety standards for rail crossings and tank cars, and improving regulatory and inspection expectations.
The report also discussed New York”™s water needs that exceeded $22 billion, the second highest in the country, according to 2011 research cited from the federal Environmental Protection Agency”™s Clean Water and Drinking Water Needs Surveys. “The majority of that need,” the report stated in regards to New York, is “in repair of transmission and distribution lines.”
One of the ways to better address water capital needs, according to the report, is by requiring municipalities throughout the state to have capital plans in order to acquire grants and loans. Capital plans and regional assessments, the report said, will help with the management of water and sewer assets.
