BQE as worst of worst

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
City's highways flunk road test
BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, February 18th, 2005

The highways to hell are narrow, crooked and slow - at least in New York City.
That's according to the Automobile Club of New York, which yesterday named the city's four worst roads - busy, congested, poorly designed stretches that give motorists miles of misery.

The very worst is the ramp from the northbound Major Deegan Expressway to the George Washington Bridge. At the end of a steep spiral ramp where two lanes merge, trucks must cross two busy lanes in a quarter mile to reach the bridge.

It's guaranteed gridlock, said trucker Sherwood Wilson, 35, who crawls along that ramp in his rig every afternoon.

"There's always a wreck up there," he said yesterday as he braced himself for the drive. "Trucks try to leave a lot of room so they can stop - but [cars] take it up."

The other treacherous three are the Gowanus Expressway from the Belt Parkway to the Prospect Expressway, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from Hamilton Ave. to Tillary St., and the Goethals Bridge, connecting Staten Island and New Jersey.

Trucker Duffy Schultz, 66, drives to New York every week from Reedsburg, Wis., and says the Goethals is the narrowest bridge in the entire 1,000-mile journey.

"What hurts us guys is that we're wider than the cars, and the road is so narrow that you have to run right up against the drains in the side of the road," he said. "With a car you can kind of shoot around a bit."

With merging traffic, narrow lanes and no shoulders, the overwhelmed roadways invite drivers to crash - and ensure that even a tiny fender-bender will lead to massive delays, said Auto Club spokesman Robert Sinclair.

"If you look at this list, the roadways in most urgent need of repair are ones that mix a lot of cars and trucks," he said. "It's going to take some serious planning and some substantial money, and we need to start doing that now."

Trucker Manny Vitale, 58, of Brooklyn, sees it four times a day as he drives the BQE and the Gowanus.

"If there's an accident, there's really no way to clear it out," he said. "You just have to wait it out, and there's no way getting around it."

But Vitale said he has learned to be patient and look on the bright side.

"I'm a union driver, and I'm on the clock," he said. "So when I get stuck, I'm making money."

Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel: Real Solutions Vs. Doomsday Scenarios
Posted 2/10/2005
By Rep. JERROLD NADLER
A recent Jewish Press column by Councilman Simcha Felder offered a bunch of doomsday predictions about the impact on Brooklyn and Queens of the proposed Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel. In conjuring up an imaginary crisis, the councilman opposes a necessary solution to real problems.

Thirty thousand 18-wheel tractor-trailers drive through New York City every day, delivering freight to the city and Long Island. Incoming freight — and the trucks delivering it — are expected to increase by 80 percent in the next 20 years. That's an 80 percent increase in air pollution, congestion, noise, and damage to our streets.

We've been warned. Now it's time for a solution.

Because shipping by rail is cheaper, less polluting, and more reliable than trucking, almost all major American cities receive 40 percent of their goods by rail. But in New York, only 2.8 percent comes in by rail. Why? Because the only place freight trains can cross the Hudson is at a bridge 140 miles north of the city.

To avoid this 280-mile detour, freight trains are unloaded in northern New Jersey, and their contents are trucked into New York. The Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel will enable goods to move by rail directly into New York City. By shifting cargo from truck to rail, the tunnel will remove a staggering one million tractor-trailers annually from city streets.

An additional problem is that, because of height restrictions at various access points, 93 percent of the freight trucks that enter the city use the George Washington Bridge. The diesel engine exhaust from these trucks causes the communities near the bridge to suffer from the highest asthma and infant mortality rates in the country.

And if, because of a structural problem, a terrorist attack, or even the threat of a terrorist attack, the bridge were closed even temporarily, shipping into a region of 12 million people would be crippled. It would be a challenge to prevent starvation. When we face the real possibility of terrorist attacks, we cannot allow ourselves to remain so vulnerable.

The tunnel will introduce a secure redundancy into our freight system, so that we do not remain dependent on one bridge. We need to ensure redundancy like this all across the country in order to reduce our vulnerability to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Because of the Cross Harbor Tunnel's importance to national security and its environmental and economic benefits, it is important to dispel Councilman Felder's myths about the project.

Councilman Felder wrote that he can ''close my eyes and imagine'' the trains causing a disturbance as they move through Brooklyn. This is not a matter of closing our eyes and guessing. This is a carefully planned, carefully engineered project designed with our neighborhoods in mind.

Trains routed through the Cross Harbor Tunnel will move through Brooklyn on the Bay Ridge Rail Line, an existing four-track right-of-way that was built almost 100 years ago. No homes or businesses will be displaced.

Councilman Felder also imagines that taking one million tractor-trailers off our streets won't improve air quality. He suggests that idling trains might equal the trucks' exhaust output. That is, quite simply, laughable.

Freight trains are far cleaner than trucks; according to the EPA for every mile, a typical truck emits roughly three times more nitrogen oxides and particulates than a locomotive, and one freight train can typically remove 280 trucks worth of goods from our highways. That arithmetic adds up to much cleaner air, and healthier, more liveable neighborhoods.

What's more, Councilman Felder ignores the context of this project. A much greater number of trains are going to be using the Bay Ridge Line and coming through Boro Park whether or not the Cross Harbor tunnel is built. The number of trains will increase as ''float'' activity (barge-transport of rail cars across the Hudson) sharply increases in the near future. It will soon be cheaper for carriers to float portions of the burgeoning freight traffic across the harbor than to compete for dwindling space on increasingly congested regional highways.

The tunnel project is the only realistic way to bring funds into Boro Park for mitigating the environmental impact of the inevitably greater number of trains that are coming. With mitigation funds from the tunnel project, we can clean up the right-of-way, insist on installation of quiet welded track, install sound-baffling walls, and, perhaps, even cover completely some segments of the line — eliminating the noise entirely.

I have firsthand experience living near rail lines. That is why I have spent decades studying ways to build transportation projects that improve the quality of life for all those who stand to benefit. Many other rail lines in the United States have been upgraded so as not to disturb the surrounding community. With modern technology, there is no reason any community should be left out. Brooklyn shouldn't be left out either.

We have a choice. Without the tunnel project, we can watch commercial interests use existing rail floats to increase substantially the number of daily freight trains — without any requirement for environmental impact statements or approvals and without any noise mitigation. Or, we can insist on real protection for the community as part of the rail freight tunnel project.

Elected and community leaders who oppose the tunnel project are supporting a major increase in train traffic through Boro Park without any resources to ameliorate the impact on the community. It is never a good idea for elected officials to think they're protecting their community by burying their heads in the sand and ignoring or refusing to recognize what's happening around them.

The bottom line is that, if we work together, the Cross Harbor Tunnel's impact on Brooklyn will be only positive. We have a tremendous amount to gain by undertaking this project, and very little to lose. My constituents' quality of life is of crucial importance to me. That's why I have supported the Cross Harbor Tunnel — to alleviate the increasing truck traffic that is making life worse. And it is why every environmental group in the City supports the tunnel.

We have a responsibility to do what we can to improve our communities and our city. We must act to stop the growing influx of big trucks from tearing apart New York, and to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism. It's been a long journey, and we've made a lot of headway. Now that we're poised to enter the next phase of development of this essential project, it's incumbent on all of us to work constructively to see that its final design incorporates all the protections our communities need.

Hysterical opposition could result either in a tunnel project without the community protections we should cooperatively insist upon, or in increased rail float traffic with no community protections at all. We know what Councilman Felder is against — but what is he for? ◙ Congressman Jerrold Nadler represents the 8th C.D., which includes areas of Brooklyn and Manhattan.