Grayline Hop-On at 34th St, No Standing Zone
With an anticipated 60-100 charter and tour buses per day headed for the World Trade Center site, and unknown hundreds of additional interstate and intra-state buses picking up and dropping off tourists in the 34th St. and 42nd St. areas, the issues of lay-over locations, drop-off and boarding stops, permits and routing will affect Manhattan drastically, from 42nd St. south, river to river beginning in September. Without a hoped for long-term plan living with sightseeing, tour and charter buses is going to be everybody’s problem. See Regulating Buses post for a fuller discussion.
Since February of this year City officials have been trying to wrap their minds around a 9/11 Memorial plan, which now looks pretty temporary, awfully haphazard and not too pleasing for anyone.
The first actual meeting of downtown stakeholders was on April 15th in a closed door session convened by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. It included Assemblymember Deborah Glick, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, City Councilmember Margaret Chin, New York Police Department representatives, Community Board 1 (CB1) chair Julie Menin, and Downtown Alliance President Liz Berger, in addition to Speaker Silver and Senator Squadron. At that time DNA Info reported the testimonies.
This meeting was followed by a Public Hearing June 28th, convened by the Department of Transportation and Manhattan Borough Commissioner Luis Sanchez to review parking rules changes targeting needs for the 9/11 Memorial bus management. This revised plan utilizes a combination of authorizations to park at Munimeters or other designated locations and introduces a kind of placard parking system from Houston St. south. DNAInfo covered this meeting, as well, as did Our Chinatown with some interesting additional controversy regarding Chinatown Rest Stops for Tour Buses ! The Broadsheet Daily has just published the most comprehensive report to date on DOT and NYC & Co’s plans: Tourbus traffic downtown will increase dramatically with the opening of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum .
State Senator Daniel Squadron submitted written testimony expressing deep concern, “that the city is not moving forward with ideas including steeper penalties for bus operators that break the rules and a ban on buses circling Downtown’s streets.”
State Assemblymember Deborah Glick’s testimony called attention to the related issue of buses north of Houston St: “The current proposal indicates that bus muni-meters are at designated points south of Houston Street. The current proposal would allow those buses that choose to avoid the designated muni-meters to travel North of Houston which will create congestion in an area that is already far to congested with bus traffic. It is critical that CB2 be given an opportunity to be a part of this dialogue as they are the community most affected by congestion North of Houston.”
Assemblymember Glick also urged more thought on the bus pricing plan: “I am concerned with the proposed pricing of the commercial muni-meters in and around the WTC Memorial Area. Specifically, the $20 dollar per hour per three hour parking blocks seems counter-intuitive to the desired effect of discouraging extended layovers by buses and discouraging avoidance.”
What concerns us most is the concentration on tour bus parking below Houston St. without regard to the many other attendant factors. At present bus parking will be limited to three hours, to many an unrealistic time frame for tourists to disembark from a remote location, have their designated tour – which may include more than the World Trade Center site itself - and then return. See Downtown Tour Guides Worry About 9/11 Memorial Bus Plan – DNAinfo.com
But, in order for the buses to reach Lower Manhattan and the 9/11 Memorial, they must also travel through numerous communities where they will certainly increase traffic congestion, parking in unauthorized places, and circle endlessly through narrow residential streets trying to find authorized spaces, or waiting to get into authorized spaces downtown while trying to manage frustrated tour guides and confused patrons as they pick up and drop off passengers.
Citizens in communities such as Greenwich Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen have been trying for years to work with DOT to channel tour and charter buses to routes that are less disruptive to communities and businesses…and which can better fit the requirements of the vehicles and charters, themselves. DOT’s response is that the agency does not have authority to regulate bus routes because buses are under the jurisdiction of Interstate Commerce Federal Laws. But there are contradictions to this answer: since July 1998 DOT has prohibited tour and charter buses from traveling or laying over on Brooklyn Heights’ small streets. Again, Assemblymember Glick challenged DOT’s inconsistent response to this crucial factor: “it is my understanding that DOT, under the Administration Code and Rules of the City of New York, in fact does have the authority to regulate New York City bus parking within city limits as well as to approve or disapprove proposed routes by tour bus operators.”
The State Assembly and Senate bills introduced by Speaker Silver and Senator Squadron were designed to eliminate this shadow-dance between NYC DOT and the Interstate Commerce Commission, by giving NYC “home rule.”
Judith Chazen Walsh (Member, Our Streets Our Lives) who also spoke at June 28th’s hearing pointed out that DOT’s “rules change” for 9/11 Memorial bus management not only limits coverage to Lower Manhattan, but it ignores provisions for enforcement, fines, penalties, trip permits and other mechanisms that could mitigate the chaos of the September 11 launch of Memorial tourism.
Even bus lobbyists question the feasibility of managing buses below Houston St., only. Clive Burrow, chairman of the New York TAB (Travel Advisory Bureau), a membership organization that has marketed New York City tourism since 1996, was quoted in the Broadsheet Daily as saying: “we are also planning to brief our local politicians in July on readily available [bus] parking in Midtown. There are literally thousands of spaces that could be used, but it will take some political will and some horse trading to make them available.” A recent Mayor’s Midtown Citizens Committee (MMCC) report offers a third perspective.
Ms. Walsh offers some additional guidelines referenced in several major cities like Boston, Washington, New Orleans, San Francisco as well as Ottawa and Vancouver that have motorcoach regulations which should be considered. One of the most comprehensive ordinances has existed in Philadelphia since 2006 where tour buses are licensed by Philadelphia’s Department of Streets which charges a $100 application fee and approves the applicant’s proposed tour route if the Department finds ‘that the route is safe and that it does not unreasonably hinder traffic flow”. An approved license costs $5,000. The applicant must also “demonstrate the ability to load or unload passengers without using the public right-of-way for periods in excess of 15 minutes.”
Even a bus management system as straight-forward as Philadelphia’s would likely take longer than our remaining two months to initiate for the 9/11 Memorial…and would probably have to by-pass any Community Board routing and location approvals in the near-term.
At this juncture we ask that DOT’s proposal include:
1.) Parking/layover locations and route regulations for tour and charter buses for the area south of the Port Authority Building, river to river.
2.) That all locations south of Houston St are drop-off only and that pick-up locations are added north to 42nd St. and designated on Avenues as close as possible to Subway Stations, with the exception of specially designated handicapped transportation layover locations which should be as close to the World Trade Center Memorial as possible.
3.) That all other non-public bus traffic be limited to streets of two or more vehicle travel lanes – in any direction.
Ellen Peterson Lewis, Chair, Transportation
Barbara Backer, Chair, Pro Tempore
