TARRYTOWN — The Tappan Zee Bridge Mass Transit Task Force will hold its final meeting Friday and release the short-, mid- and long-term recommendations that its 31 members have developed over the past year.
The recommendations, contained in a 26-page executive summary, offer no surprises and no guarantees that any of them will ever be implemented. The summary will be followed next month with a report that details the actions that Rockland and Westchester counties could take to advance the short-term recommendations for new express bus routes as well as estimates of potential costs.
The task force has never identified a source of funding for transit improvements, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s staff has forcefully steered members away from any suggestions with hefty price tags on the grounds that it can’t afford a new bus rapid transit or commuter rail system and a new $3.9 billion bridge.
Recommendations
The Tappan Zee Bridge Mass Transit Task Force will formally present the recommendations that have been developed over the past year Friday. They include:
Short-term (between now and the new bridge’s completion in 2018)
• Modify existing bus service in Rockland and Westchester to create seven express routes between Suffern and Nanuet and Tarrytown, White Plains and Yonkers, and between White Plains and Tarrytown, Port Chester, Valhalla and The Bronx.
• Install technology that manages traffic flow through ramp metering, signal prioritization and queue jumping, as well as a bus-only lane on the new bridge, to improve travel times.
• Use specially designed buses to differentiate the new service from existing services, and adopt a common fare structure.
• Advance studies of a transit hub in White Plains, reconstruction of the Thruway’s Interchange 10 in South Nyack and construction of a new Thruway interchange at Route 59 in Monsey. Mid-term (up to 15 years after the new bridge’s completion)
• Create a White Plains transit hub around the train station.
• Reconstruct Interchange 11.
• Construct a bus station in the Thruway median and a pedestrian bridge from the Palisades Center.
• Make improvements to Rockland train service on the Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines. Long-term (more than 15 years after the new bridge’s completion)
• Pursue revival of passenger rail service on the now freight-only West Shore line in Rockland.
• Consider development of Rockland-to-Westchester commuter rail or light rail.
“We’re not getting a 21st century bridge if we’re not getting mass transit,” said Nancy Proyect, president of the Orange County Citizens Foundation. “We’re not really doing BRT; we’re doing express buses. It’s not a 21st century solution for a 21st century bridge or a 21st century state.”
Proyect, who has advocated for new transit services in the Tappan Zee corridor over the past decade and attended many of the task force’s meetings, predicted the state and the region will come to regret this failure to fund significant improvements in conjunction with the new bridge’s construction.
Before Gov. Cuomo took office and fast-tracked the TZB’s replacement, the state had been pursuing a true BRT system with dedicated travel lanes and stations across the two counties that buses from Orange County could have used. But Cuomo eliminated transit elements from the project, citing high costs and ample opportunity for adding services in the future to what would be a “transit-ready” bridge.
Rockland and Westchester counties then forced Cuomo to form the task force to keep the prospect of transit improvements alive in exchange for their support of the new bridge.
The meeting will be held at 9:30 a.m. Friday at the Tarrytown Senior Center at 240 W. Main St., on the village’s waterfront.
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