Plain and simple the city administration, that is Bloomberg and the agencies he controls, are not providing good leadership on transportation planning. This is most clear in Williamsburg where the transportation system is buckling under the rapid growth of the area. The fundamental problem is that transportation planning is not part of the Development Process, ostensibly lead by Dan Doctoroff and the Department of Planning, and that The City Department of Transportation, lead by Iris Weinshall, is seemingly outright hostile to alternative transportation like bikes and buses.

Last Friday New Yorkers sounded a collective guffaw, or maybe it was a belch, when the MTA released a report that said the L-line is operating way over capacity. The "News" was not news to anyone, as Curbed and its readership so perfectly summarized:



It is fun, and not at all hard to bash on management at the MTA. They certainly have had a significant roll in 'misunderestimating' L-line ridership and ordering too-few new cars. Williamsburg Community Board 1 Transportation Chairperson Teresa Toro says the MTA has been stonewalling Williamsburg for a while. The interim solution the MTA announced on Friday is to put older cars on the line, but Toro told me that before Friday the MTA claimed putting old cars on the L-line was impossible. "We've been suggesting this for a long time, since the spring-summer of 2005."

But the problem did not just start at the MTA, the problem starts with Dan Doctoroff.

When the Department of Planning puts together projects like the Williamsburg Waterfront Redevelopment, the policy is to abdicate all responsibility for transportation to the DOT and MTA. Doctoroff and the DCP do not take a proactive roll in making transportation planning a core part of putting these projects together. Additionally when it comes to alternative transportation, like bicycle use, the DOT and Michael Bloomberg have stonewalled advocates. It is this abdication, indifference, and hostility that have lead to the growing transportation crisis in Williamsburg.

When planning the waterfront redevelopment Doctoroff and the DCP ignored repeated calls from the community to address transportation issues up front.

Toro says the current situation "is a city administration planning failure". She says transit planning should have happened when they were putting together the water front deal. "There were no traffic studies; city planning relied on what the Department of Transportation provided. They seem to prefer operating in crisis mode. Why couldn't they have worked with the transportation agencies to avoid the problems? Where is the partnering with DOT and the MTA during the planning?"

Toro mentioned the Williamsburg Waterfront Environmental Impact Statement makes only a small reference about what to do about an increased burden on the subway: "it basically says something like: the MTA routinely monitors ridership and will make adjustments".

Such abdication it strikes me is a way for the administration to avoid facing the fact that these large developments can have a serious impact on the operational budgets of the transportation agencies. By removing the issue from the planning process they do not have to reconcile the resulting transportation costs created by these new buildings.

Toro predicts similar strains for the G-line when 100+ unit buildings near Nassau Avenue start going up. Not that the average New Yorker need be a sage to recognize that this will happen. Toro, like commenters on Curbed, recognizes that New Yorkers in general see these problems coming early on, "the first thing they complain about is transit." But she says that some opposition to development would melt away if transit planning were done right from the beginning. "I think the administration would be surprised, if things were done right. Most people are not against development, they are against bad development."

Meanwhile the Department of Transportation has also been reluctant to examine the issues. "Now they are starting to acknowledge the need for study; But they are doing studies after the fact." Toro says, "We need a transportation study, which Weinshall has been resistant to. The DOT has said, 'We will work with you as issues arise'. The problem is things are changing so fast. They make a correction in one place without considering the effects down the block. They have crammed a lot of changes into the community and they need to look at it."

The irony of this all is that last Thursday there was an article in the Greenpoint Star, in which Dan Doctoroff was quoted as praising community involvement in the Williamsburg Waterfront Plan. "Sometimes we learn the hard way that by listening to the community we come to the right results." he said. But Doctoroff had a completely different reaction when challenged by Phil DePaolo of People's Firehouse in Williamsburg:



I spoke with DePaolo too. He says some people mistakenly blame the builders. "When the first development company came to the community and had a public meeting, every body started yelling, 'what are you going to do about transportation?!' I had to laugh. Why are you yelling at them? You should be yelling at your elected official."

During the planning of the Williamsburg Waterfront, the community not only urged the city to take a leadership roll, it also advocated solutions. Solutions the community is still advocating. One is keeping older cars on the L-line as mentioned above. Another is adding Bus Rapid Transit service between Williamsburg and Manhattan. DePaolo says, "We would like more express bus service. When they were re-doing the bridge they should have designed a bus lane, like the ones they have in the Lincoln Tunnel. The city is taking over private bus companies out here, it would be nice if the city would use some of that to create express service and allow people to use their metro card."

Bus Rapid Transit is cheap and easy to implement, even if for just testing it as a solution. In general however the DOT has been dragging it's feet on BRT for a while now.

The only solution the city has put on the table is Ferries and Water Taxis from Williamsburg to Manhattan, but water transport has a huge flaw: what to do when you get to the other side? Toro, DePaolo, commenters on Curbed all have said the same things about water taxis: they are expensive since they are not part of the regular bus/subway fare, and once you get to the other side you then need to take a bus, and then maybe take that to a subway, and ultimately your commute ends up being more than an hour. In our conversation DePaolo observed the irony that the city wants to move all these people closer to the city center, putting them on the water front, but the commute time is not being reduced.

With the lone exception of congestion pricing, which Bloomberg seems to have backed off of, over the past five years Doctoroff and Bloomberg rarely have been interested in hearing from the community on transportation issues or ideas. Ms.Toro put it best, "Perhaps they are interested in learning the really really hard way."

The city chose The Hard Way with the bike path on the Williamsburg Bridge.

As many in Williamsburg know, the bridge had a problem with metal bumps spanning expansion joints on the bike path. The bumps were in place when the bike path opened in 2002, and the problem was serious. "People have broken ribs, collarbones, arms. One person had to have facial surgery. There have been internal injuries" reported Transportation Alternatives in 2005. They made traversing the path dangerous for bikes and impossible for wheelchairs. Despite the seriousness of the problem and outcries from the community, DOT and the Bloomberg administration refused to address the problem for years. David Snetman at Transportation Alternatives told me, "We were pushing the city on Williamsburg Bridge since 2001, and it was constant advocacy." It took the city 4 years to finally remove the bumps! Now the Williamsburg Bridge is one of the finest bike paths to the city, and is used daily by many riders. But even in the end the city was never really agreeable to making this improvement. David says, "it really wasn't until there was the threat of lawsuits to the DOT that the city removed the bumps".

This is not to say all things are bad. There are good examples where agencies are listening to the community, and they should be modeled by the Bloomberg administration.

Toro says, "The Brooklyn Department of Transportation has been good. They have done a lot more with bike lanes and bike parking. They are building out the sidewalk at Bedford and 7th to create room for more bike racks there. And we are putting a list together of other needs so that the Brooklyn DOT can fast track them."

"NYState Assembly Person Joe Lentol has been a champion on bike racks! He asked the 94th Precinct to do an abandon bike tagging program, because they don't want to. I would really like to see the police come around on that, not just go on a bike clipping blitz." Having Bike racks is great, but people abandon bikes for weeks or who knows how long, and it ties up the racks, so people end up chaining their bikes all over the place in Williamsburg, such as to the entrances of the subway. That's when the NYPD comes around with the chainsaws to remove these bikes, which Toro says, just throws everyone into a panic. Toro says a bike tagging program would be more productive at addressing the problem. "And jointly I want to get more bike racks!" she eagerly says.

But make no mistake, Toro here is talking about the regional Brooklyn Department of Transportation. The city DOT has a record of hostility to bikes. Last Friday, the same day as the MTA L-line report, New York City DOT Bicycle Program Director Andrew Vesselenovitch resigned from his position, and on the way out expressed significant frustration with Commissioner Weinshall and her top deputy for traffic operations, Michael Primeggia.



The City Administration, the DOT and MTA all clearly have some things to learn from the Brooklyn DOT and Assemblyman Lentol. And these problems are not exclusive to Williamsburg, these transportation issues are happening throughout the city. While it would be nice to end this article with a quip that maybe Doctoroff and Bloomberg will eventually learn, even if it is the hard way, the reality is that it is residents who are ultimately experiencing things the hard way. Not that that is news to you.