BY ALBERT AMATEAU | George Haikalis wants to go back to the future to improve pedestrian and public transportation in Greenwich Village.
For the past 18 years, Haikalis has been president of the Village Crosstown Trolley Coalition, which advocates a streetcar line on the Eighth St. corridor from river to river along Christopher and W. Eighth Sts., St. Mark’s Place and E. 10th St.
The plan would make the corridor auto-free or partially auto-free and would replace the existing crosstown bus.
“A half century after the demise of streetcars in Manhattan, now is the time to replace crowded, dangerous and unpleasant streets by combining light-rail transit with auto-free pedestrian space,” Haikalis recently told The Villager.
The history of the Village transit corridor dates back to 1873 to the Christopher and 10th St. Railroad, a horse-car line that ran from the East River terminal of the Greenpoint ferry to the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Hoboken ferry pier on Christopher St. It was electrified before the end of the century and had branches north to Central Park, south to Delancey St. and, for a few years, over the bridge to Brooklyn before the line was dismantled on March 3, 1936.
Haikalis, 78, a civil engineer and transportation planner, came to New York from Chicago in 1959 on the 20th Century Limited, a fabled New York Central Railroad line.
“I’ve always loved railroads,” he said.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Haikalis came to work for the Tri-State Transportation Commission, a planning agency sponsored by then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller with representatives from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
“Douglas Carroll, a great planner who had earned the first PhD in urban planning from Harvard, was on the staff,” Haikalis recalled. “I worked for him in Chicago. Our goal was to create a comprehensive, integrated transportation system. But it failed. The Port Authority didn’t want to be a part of it and New Jersey pulled out. The M.T.A. was created instead.”
Nevertheless, Haikalis worked for the agency from 1963 to1982. As a director of research for the tri-state agency, Haikalis wrote a paper that was “leaked” to the press: “Is Westway the Best Way?” The paper questioned the benefit of the proposed $2 billion Hudson River landfill and underground highway project. Haikalis was among an increasing number of opponents to the federally funded project, which finally fell apart and was abandoned in 1985.
Since then, Haikalis has been a persistent critic of what he calls the “plutocracy’s policy that gives little or no thought to the relationship of people and public space.” He cites as a fact that 30 percent of all the land in Manhattan is dedicated to streets, almost all of it to automobiles.
Haikalis organized Auto-Free New York, a nonprofit civic group advocating just what the name says, which celebrated its 25th anniversary on Feb. 18. Realizing that “auto-free” is a hard sell, Haikalis in 1997 joined with others to organize the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility (IRUM), which in 2008 completed a study suggesting that congestion pricing in Manhattan’s central business district could pay for free public transit.
Despite the Village Crosstown Trolley Coalition’s 17-year tradition of holding an October street fair on Astor Place between Broadway and Lafayette St., Community Board 2 was reluctant last month to approve the event for next fall.
“We keep denying it, but the city Street Activities Unit keeps granting it,” remarked David Gruber, C.B. 2 chairperson. “We don’t understand why the group needs a street fair. I don’t think they reach many possible supporters at their booth. We’re inundated with street fairs; residents and merchants don’t want any more.”
In recent years, C.B. 2 has been trying to cut down the burdensome number of street fairs in its district, by recommending permits be denied to those sponsoring organizations that appear to lack a strong neighborhood connection. But, after the city’s repeated failure to support the board’s recommendations, C.B. 2 is essentially throwing its hands up in the air and just approving all the applications for now, while waiting to see if there will be any change under the de Blasio administration.
As a result, the Village Crosstown Trolley Coalition got approval from C.B. 2 and the street fair will be on Sat., Oct. 11, this year.
Haikalis’s preference for trolleys over cars is not limited to Greenwich Village. In 1997, he helped organize Vision 42, which calls for a river-to-river, light-rail line along 42nd St., entirely or mostly auto-free, in a landscaped pedestrian mall.
According to a Vision 42 brochure, given the massive increase in commercial and residential floor space in West Midtown and Hudson Yards, which has been approved by the city, light rail is critically needed to supplement the No. 7 subway line extension.
Haikalis said that Vision 42 is now conducting a design competition for the project.
Sam Schwartz, the city’s former Traffic commissioner and former first deputy commissioner of the Department of Transportation, is a member of the Vision 42 board of directors.
Schwartz supports urban streetcar development but cautions that there is a big difference between light rail — like the one in Jersey City and Bayonne, N.J. — and trolleys or streetcars.
“Light rail is pretty heavy and expensive,” Schwartz told The Villager. “Self-powered streetcars, with no overhead wires or underground power source, can use tracks on streets that also accommodate motor vehicles and pedestrians.”
Schwartz, who designed the trolley line along the island of Aruba’s Mainstreet, which began running last year, said trolleys would be ideal for 42nd and 34th Sts., and might well work on a Village crosstown line.
“Streetcar development has come a long way,” Schwartz said. “A modern trolley can run all day on a single charge of the battery. They can recharge themselves on deceleration as well as breaking.”
Haikalis told The Villager that his long antipathy to cars goes back to his childhood in Decatur, Illinois, where he got his driver’s license after high school but concedes he was a terrible driver.
The trouble started even earlier.
“My mother used to walk me to Sunday school at the little Greek Orthodox church in Decatur,” he said. “And one day there was a terrific car crash just as we were about to cross the street to the church. We weren’t hurt but it sure scared me.”
