Sunset-Ridge Waterfront Alliance

[Source: Carter Craft, Director of Programs and Policy, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance]

The Draft Report of the Congestion Mitigation Commission is out and unfortunately it looks like they are missing the boat. Come this Wednesday to the final public hearing and tell them how you think ferries must be a bigger part of our transit mix in the future. Attached is the sign-up sheet if you plan to testify.

Hunter College Auditorium – Hunter College
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
4:00 PM

East 69th Street between Park & Lexington Avenue
New York, NY

The Commission is looking very closely at where and how to grow transit ridership: As the report currently reads, “To address this increase in ridership, the City and MTA would implement a series of short-term mass transit improvements, especially within the congestion zone and in areas of the city that lack convenient transit access to Manhattan. These improvements would include: new and expanded bus service, more frequent bus and subway service on key lines, dedicated bus lanes on bridges, bus rapid transit (BRT) and new ferry service.”

(pg. 6 and 72 of the “Interim Report to the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission”, Jan 10, 2008)

MWA supports investment in all these modes, and encourages the Commission to look more closely at the specific ways and specific places to improve Ferry Transit. For instance, when FEMA was subsidizing ferry service from Bay Ridge and Sunset Park nearly 3,000 people utilized this mode. Now that fares are over $5.50 each way, ridership has fallen off dramatically. But ferries have provided continuous and unfailing service three times in the last 6 years; during the transit strike, the blackout, and even the day and days following 9/11 only water transit continued as the only uninterrupted transportation mode in the entire region.

MWA continues to advocate for better ferry service to help relieve congestion in auto-dependent areas like Staten Island’s south shore, along the Belt Parkway of Brooklyn and northern Queens. There are also many waterfront communities that are not well-served by subway or bus transit, such as Red Hook or Hunts Point, and need more direct and faster connections to the jobs in central business districts from the Rockaways, Bay Ridge, South Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City and Astoria.

The analysis going into Congestion Pricing should also help us understand where and whether our transit dollars are best spent: whether on buses, trains, boats or other modes. If ferries are going to be truly integrated into our mass transit system they must be as affordable to people as the $2 subway or bus ride. Please take a look at our attached testimony from the previous round of hearings as well as map of existing and proposed ferry routes and feel free to incorporate any of this material into your testimony for Wednesday’s hearing….

For more detailed info, including a copy of the report please click here.

Download the sign-up sheet in order to testify at the hearing.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Stay on top of the news by subscribing to the SRWA RSS feed.