Updated Thurs., Feb. 14, 4 p.m.: State Senator Brad Hoylman last week stated that he was concerned about ensuring that there is better bus service for 14th St. during what he dubbed the upcoming “L-train slowdown.”
Speaking to The Villager this week, Hoylman said he also wants a review on whether to keep the new crosstown bike lanes that have been installed on 12th and 13th Sts., which was also part of the plan to address the L stoppage.
HOV lanes that were slated for traffic across the Williamsburg Bridge have been dropped. It wasn’t immediately clear where things stand on the plan to extend the pedestrian area along 14th St.
The repairs of the L-train tubes under the East River will now be done only on weeknights and weekends, and one of the tubes will remain open at all time. At least this is according to the plan Governor Andrew Cuomo announced earlier this year, and as far as we know, this is what is going to happen.
We support Cuomo’s plan — but, above all, it must be safe, in terms of the tunnel structure’s integrity and also in not exposing commuters to toxic silica dust from the jackhammering of some of the concrete “bench walls” in the tunnel during the repairs.
The L plan as previously presented always did seem like overkill. It felt like a huge experiment being foisted on residents, commuters, drivers, cyclists, businesses…everyone. It was essentially a Transportation Alternatives plan plopped on the L-tunnel repairs.
There was no convincing reason why all the tunnel-repair work had to be done in one 15-month fell swoop. And the notion of an “L-pocalpyse” — though a catchy sound bite — always seemed wildly exaggerated. Let’s face it, straphangers would have just taken other trains. It’s New York. People adapt, deal with it and get on with their lives.
Plus, this part of Manhattan — the Village and Chelsea — has some of the densest transit infrastructure around. Fourteenth St. has a central transit hub right smack in its middle, at Union Square. The distance between the subway lines is walkable, generally speaking, for most.
That said, better bus service is always needed. Should that be Select Bus Service? SBS hasn’t exactly been a success on 23rd St. It’s a question that should be put up for discussion, just like all the rest.
Advocates for the full-shutdown plan always said how exemplary the “outreach” process was. But, seriously, the Metropolitan Transportation and Department of Transportation were just going to do what they wanted to do anyway.
All that said, the unprotected bike lanes that were already out there on Ninth and 10th Sts. aren’t the safest. But the opposition to the new 12th and 13th St. lanes in the Village is intense.
In short, we need to ensure there is a real discussion about the entire alternative-service plan, as it was previously known — and we mean a REAL discussion this time around. Clearly, a no-cars busway from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. if there is full L-train service on weekdays is no longer justified, so it’s not surprising that we now hear the M.T.A. has dropped that idea.
More to the point, cars displaced by the 14th St. busway would just have wound up going down nearby narrow side streets, creating congestion there.
And while wider sidewalks are great, we have to say that 14th St.’s sidewalks already are pretty wide. And again, if the street is to be narrowed and the pedestrian space increased, where would the displaced traffic go? We’re not sure we buy transit advocates’ claims that those cars would all just “disappear.” Even with the city’s horrific congestion, people still insist on taking app-hail for-hire cars. It’s counterintuitive, of course, and they should take the subway or a bike if they want to move — but, well, they just seem to prefer sitting in traffic.
The goal of reducing vehicle traffic is laudable. And the more ferries — another part of the alternative-service plan — the better. But the M.T.A.’s plan was too draconian and too much of an imposition. It would be too much all at once. The plan came from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.
Now, we have an opportunity to restart this whole process — and do it right this time, in a way that really includes the community.
Clarification: This editorial initially stated that state Senator Hoylman supports the idea of keeping the busway plan for 14th St. But that information was based on an apparent miscommunication. Hoylman subsequently clarified that is actually not his position. He told The Villager that he feels 14th St. needs improved bus service, and that he likes the idea of SBS buses. “I want to make sure that the busway is replaced with more buses,” he said. “We don’t need a busway — we need more buses. SBS would be the way to go, in my opinion.”
