I believe it was the FiDI BID that suggested something like this actually. There is rising belief that the bridge is itself a true pedestrian destination, and prioritizing foot and bike traffic would make the most sense in connecting these parts of Manhattan and BK.

I think cause it was the city council that is forcing the MTA (finally) to study bikes on the bridges. I'd only say the ban on Triboro might actually have made sense cause it's a literal death trap with no suicide fencing on the midspan lol, but it was stupid you could be ticketed for this shit. The stairs on there are ridiculous too. The MTA has at least slowly been more bike friendly, for example they got rid of the equally ridiculous bike tickets for the LIRR in the past 1-2 years if I recall

For MTA operated bridges and tunnels it funds their operational budget. The Operating budget is what keeps the lights on, the trains and buses running, the bridges in stable condition, and the staff employed. 12% of the MTA is funded by tolls. You can read more about it here: https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics

12% is significant considering just twice that amount is what they get from fare revenue. To not toll the crossings would be a disaster.

Red light cams reduce speeding, a good thing, and I figure if I gotta pay my taxes for roads I don't even drive on then folks gotta pay the tolls. Just one of those things a functioning adult should do I figure as a responsible citizen.

These things add up on the macro scale. Just one person at LIRR accrued nearly $500 thousand of fraudulent overtime pay in one year. That is one person. The MTA estimated last year it loses almost $50 million a year on toll fraud. That's money that has to come from somewhere. It all adds up.

Indeed. The generally accepted standards would be to go with the transit. I think it's usually 0.5-0.75 mile sweet spot around subway stations are the primary targets for upzoning. Queens still has a lot of untapped potential in that respect along the E for example, I mean there's detached 1-2 story housing one block away from some some stations on Queens Blvd. Hell even Astoria has much, much more potential. But, no I wouldn't support say a 25 story building in Whitestone that would be marketed solely on the basis of having a 5 story underground garage. We saw an issue like this were I think developers were expecting the ill-fated Queens Brooklyn LRT along Vernon Blvd, it did not materialize yet we have a bunch of new towers in that area.

Caveat is where is the capacity limitation? For example if your 4 lanes need to go down to 2 lanes (like our tunnels) you are in fact not moving anymore people per hour cause you still are trying to shove more people in a finite space that already has reached capacity. A lot of out bottlenecks are bridges and tunnels, or more specifically the merge downs. Adding more lanes upstream allows more drivers to wait, BUT they will be waiting longer as now you have more cars attempting to merge or go through the bottleneck.

Yes, the subway and buses are only as good as the service reliability, but I think we got a better shot at improving those then say "fixing" congestion on the BQE or at the tunnels. If we are gonna spend billions I rather we make new subways in Queens then add a lane to the Belt Parkway that won't make a noticeable impact for example

Removal was good. Walkway was not a good spot for these carts and vendors, it was a shitshow. Ped flow should be prioritized on the actual bridge. There's a park right across the street that could serve as a better spot for permitted vendors.

Widening streets and highways can cost billions and it is not a good goal to get more people in cars. Bike and bus lanes are cheap and more efficient, less pollution. Inducing demand into superior modal splits of walking, biking, and transit is great. Inducing demand into cars is a fool's errand.

Frankly give me more service over stupid wifi. Idc if the bus has wifi if it only runs once per hour by me in Queens outside of rush hour lol

> The excuse can’t ways be NIMBYism, when eminent domain exist.

We can also look to how eminent domain worked for the Texas HSR project, eminent domain isn't quite the magic wand like it used to be. UK has had the same issues with HSR2. Costs and lawsuits balloon the project budget massively for land acquisition. Funnily enough for the Texas HSR, did you know that the project was sued to stop eminent domain cause they argued it wasn't "actually" a rail road? No project is safe lmao

> He argued that the company did not meet the statutory definition of a “railroad company” or an “interurban electric railway.”

https://www.corsicanadailysun.com/news/texas-supreme-court-affirms-eminent-domain-for-high-speed-rail/article_dc584ae2-0a13-11ed-8a19-378eb275e30c.html

The case STARTED in 2015 and was JUST finally settled after a state SC ruling. folks come up with all sorts of impediments to transit progress

Pretty interesting and sounds like a big oversight of the law. Tires are kind of irrelevant I mean if your whole ass trunk is blocking part of the crosswalk, that seems like an obstruction to me lol, thanks for the insight.

City council should step in and amend regulations such that something as ridiculous as a parking lot cannot be considered historical and is exempt from decision making or input from the LPC.

> Is that what 50% means, that many trains to GCM?

My understanding is originally they assumed 50% of current Penn-bound commuters would want to go to GCM so they could basically divert half the trains. I don't know what the final schedules are, I think they are being posted this week. I believe they do not have the crew and equipment to add a net 50% increase in service, i.e. 50% + existing to Penn, instead they will split service between the two.

I still can't believe it is actually open and even has trains lol. This is 10+ years in the making right? I toured it today, clean and spacious, the depth is annoying of course, think the escalator up without walking is almost a minute long. Platforms are nice design as well, they have no columns on the platform so you have plenty of space to wait unlike at Penn

The super long escalators connect the platform mezzanines to the new concourse, it is in essence between/under Madison Ave and Vanderbilt Ave. You can access the concourse from the dining level in the terminal and at a few entrances from along Madisom between I believe 48th and 42nd

It's a separate stop for LIRR trains, accessed through new entrances from the dining concourse in Grand Central Terminal as well as from a few places along Madison Ave.

311 has its issues. There is currently a man sueing the 84th precinct of the NYPD for harrasement over his reporting to 311 illegal parking in his neighborhood. Cops got his # from 311 and used it to send anonymous and threatening texts, to "silence" him over reporting. Pretty spooky. Anything involving parking or road behavior basically goes unfixed by 311/NYPD, so to another poster's point, even if 311 responds it's up to the coordinating agencies to fix it and that's where the system fails

On topic, an interesting question for eastern Queens is whether people there such as yourself want transit expansion (I assume in your case yes). Half the boro is basically a suburb, especially the northeast around Whitestone and Bayside, it's all detached housing pretty much. I used to have a lot of friends over there, and the feelings seemed like they want it to stay more suburb-like, similar to many other areas that have opposed transit expansion (similar to north Astoria blocking previous N expansion attempts, and Staten Island as a whole). TOD by design would expand density wherever transit expands to, which seems very anathema to many suburban dwellers. This feeds into the concept of should these areas even exist as they do now, is logical to have such low density housing within city limits? Some would argue building an expensive subway for detached houses is a waste of money unless you upzoned, so it's an interested proposition.

They had an argument in another thread that's now here too. I'm not sure what the article here has to do with the other, besides it being well documented that Queens lacks subway transit in many areas, which better TOD would fix either by expanding transit or giving people more opportunities to move closer to transit.

Certain union employees in the city could eat babies live on television and still keep their job and pension tbh

Summer ain't stoppin the Kraken 🦑

I get they want to push people to go annual but IMO the single use rides should be as cheap as the subway for the folks who maybe only need to ride every now and again. Someone taking a bike over say calling a FHV is a good thing. Also nice if your subway commute on one day goes to shit due to an incident, you can simply take a bike instead for the same price. More options are better! CitiBike has so much more potential but it's being gimped by many factors such as Lyft's greed, the city choosing not to subsidize it, and ConEd not working with Lyft to have docks that charge ebikes. Expansion also needs to speed up, and we need way more ebikes.

It should be on google but I believe car registrations were up citywide during pandemic, check state dmv.