With the various plans for the future of the Interstate-287/Tappan Zee Bridge corridor still being studied for the foreseeable future, one regional transportation group is calling on the state to address land use issues related to the future of the corridor more thoroughly.
The Tri-State Transportation Campaign endorsed bus rapid transit for the future of the corridor. It believes the state has not sufficiently addressed issues connecting land use and transportation and has not promoted transit-oriented development.
The Transportation Campaign believes the state should do more to educate stakeholders about the repercussions of sprawling development patterns; should model various build-out scenarios as part of the draft environmental impact statement (DEIS); and should include land-use recommendations in the DEIS, said Kate Slevin, executive director of the New York City-based organization.
“Smart transit service and transit-friendly development are the Hudson Valley”™s tickets to a more livable future,” she said.
She said the state should pursue transit-oriented development, which means building mixed-use projects around transportation hubs, such as bus or rail stations.
“This is a giant transportation project we”™re spending millions of dollars on and we want them to do it right and encourage development,” said Slevin. “I don”™t think (the state) has in the past addressed land-use issues and we want to see more commitment from them to work with local towns and see what those towns want to look like in the future.”
A representative from the state Department of Transportation could not be reached by press time.
Slevin said the transportation campaign supports all forms of public transportation on the corridor, but believes that bus rapid transit is the most cost-efficient and environmentally friendly, and would have the highest ridership.
Bus rapid transit would have the highest east-west ridership on the corridor, she said, and would be the option most likely to reduce traffic on the bridge.
“The suburb-to-suburb travel market is the one congesting the bridge, not the trip to Manhattan,” she said.
Marsha Gordon, president of The Business Council of Westchester and co-chairwoman of the Westchester-Rockland Futures Task Force, said it is too early in the process to reach a final conclusion. Given the options currently available, she said the Business Council believes commuter rail is likely the best option.
“There”™s still a lot of work to do with evaluating all of the alternatives,” she said.
Gordon said the task force was informed by the state that there will be “a great deal” of further study, which may lead to redesign of some of the options.
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“It”™s hard to reach a final conclusion now when all the studies still have to be completed,” she said.
Gordon said she agrees that transit-oriented development should be a component of the future corridor, and that east-west mobility is the key to reducing congestion on the bridge.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council has projected that the Tappan Zee could reach 200,000 vehicles daily by 2025. The 1955 bridge was designed to handle 85,000 vehicles per day.
The state outlined six possible options for the future of the corridor during a media briefing last winter. They ranged from a mass transit system complete with commuter rail and new bridge, a bus rapid transit system and a new bridge, to not having a new bridge at all.
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