Rhetorical question. Obviously, not, either because it's incapable or oblivious.
A couple of days ago at about 5:30 PM I observed a "Not in Service" Bee-Line bus speeding down residential Barker Avenue heading towards the Transmania bus depot at the train station. Nice. That bus could, of course, have been driven down non-residential Hamilton Avenue just as easily but given the binary decision the greater evil was chosen.
There appears to be complete and perfect apathy by White Plains policy makers. Residents of downtown apartments are necessary extras in their unimaginative script. We are not real. And the script calls for thousands more, ever younger and far more affluent. The well educated affluent young would never accept the old apartment buildings that are substandard in both their electrical and plumbing systems. All the new apartment buildings planned will have both electric stoves and washing machines in each overpriced apartment.
But will such millennials accept the treatment of current residents?
This is an absolute for whatever changes are made in the train station area. Instead of having all those cars speeding out of the garage onto Water Street, which becomes residential Barker Avenue, have them exit onto multi lane Hamilton Avenue.
In recent decades Hamilton Avenue has been one way from Martin Luther King Blvd. towards the train station. Obviously, this is to move cars through downtown White Plains as quickly as possible during the evening rush hour. Keeping it that way is assumed by almost all WP office holders and those seeking to become. That uniform thinking must end.
Yesterday about 6 PM: four empty Bee-Line buses, one after the other, moving away from Transmania on Water Street. One continued up residential Barker Ave. towards residential North Broadway. The other three made a right onto Cottage Place.
This is pretty much my final analysis. Everything is pointing to total failure. Trying to protect the current city center is part of the problem. Another is the willingness of decision makers to let the train station area become even more a downtown armpit than it has been for decades with the delusion that millennials will save the day and live in the armpit with all the charm of the mid town Port Authority Bus Terminal.
I learned today that the County Center East parking lot will be closed at least to daily parkers for three days because of graduation events.
If you want to see what I described in my post, just check out the total mess that will happen June 22, 23, 24.
Why will it be a mess? The primary reason is that the Bee-Line county bus system is a total joke and no one wants to address that for multiple reasons, including some that are not discussed in polite circles.
Plenty of near empty Bee-Line buses will drive past and near the County Center during those three days with few, if any, passengers using them to arrive at the graduation events. Too bad local media is too lazy to investigate and hold county officials accountable for Bee-Line buses running constantly with so few passengers.
As documented here in many posts downtown White Plains is already overrun by big buses that have few, if any, passengers. Buses coming over the new bridge will head to White Plains only because the new bridge is not designed to let them easily go to an MTA Hudson line train station. So the next best thing is to have the buses drive on Interstate Highway 287 towards White Plains.
My issue is why have those buses go all the way into residential downtown? Why not have them terminate in one of those supposedly obsolete corporate parks, then disperse passengers using the county bus system, the Bee-Line.
My guess is that a very high percentage of rush hour passengers from across the river will go from the bus directly onto the MTA train at the White Plains train station and into Manhattan. White Plains will get more congestion and pollution but no benefit.
It's like permitting passersby to use your bathroom. Maybe nice for them but not nice for you.
It's the underlying problem that's being ignored in the redesign of the train station area: buses. It's a big bus depot now and it will only get worse. That area will be the arm pit of downtown. The City is trying to put lipstick on a pig.
I live in Westchester County in New York. I see more and more buses driving through downtown White Plains with almost no passengers. These are county buses but also all types of private buses. Does the federal government subsidize buses in a way that promotes their driving regardless of ridership?
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Or it could just be waste, fraud and abuse. Maybe federal legislators know. County officials could care less.
There's another public meeting of the Transcenter task force this week. My understanding is that it will be another consultant defined audience participation in which regular civic minded people form small groups and come up with a bunch of mini consensus ideas that show zero imagination, ignoring obvious issues like downtown White Plains being turned into a gathering place for all manner of buses that carry few if any passengers.
So, on we go.
Where do we put the train station?
Where to we put all those new parking spaces?
Where to construct those high priced luxury rental apartment buildings that will be occupied by those highly paid millennials who will walk everywhere and add tons of money to the city school system but without burdening it with children of their own in their small apartments?
Plop the millennial worker office buildings on top of all that and, oh, make plenty of room for the bus depots, especially the ones for regional buses that will cross the new Hudson River bridge and enter White Plains for the sole purpose of connecting the passengers with Metro North into Manhattan.
But whatever you do, do NOT make the train station area either the new center of the municipality as it is on pretty much all the other train stops on that line nor functionally independent. Twenty years ago Common Council members forced the City Center developer to include that now ridiculed entrance/exit on Mamaroneck Avenue so that people would be inclined to also frequent existing retail businesses outside. That entrance/exit is now undergoing a restructuring and valet parking is being added, which will all but eliminate any exposure to businesses outside the City Center. All the better to insulate the decision makers from the impact of their policies on downtown generally and on downtown residents specifically.
Will White Plains ever actually change those pseudo interstate highways (Hamilton Avenue, Main Street, Martine Avenue) between the City Center and train station into anything that's really different? Make any of them look like Park Avenue in Manhattan as has been suggested here?
Remember that cars are the only things that really matter in White Plains. So make more lanes and more parking. Move 'em. Park 'em. Head 'em up. Move 'em out. Rawhide! (Western TV Series (1959–1965))
From an email message: from: WPCNArsvp@wpcna.org reply-to: WPCNA rsvp@wpcna.org date: Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 8:09 PM Talk Parking, Traffic & Transportation with Commissioners Larson & Soyk The June Meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 14, 2016 at 7:30 pm at Education House, 5 Homeside Lane, White Plains, NY. Our guests will be Parking & Traffic Commissioner John Larson and Thomas Soyk, the Deputy Commissioner and City Transportation Engineer.
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Irony abounds. Maybe the commissioners and attendees will arrive via Bee-Line county buses, which have very few passengers, if any, when traveling through downtown White Plains. Of course, the CNA (Council of Neighborhood Associations) wouldn't be caught dead conducting a meeting downtown. People who, you know, live downtown might show up.
Those downtown people might even express views that differ from the "We came over on the Mayflower" bunch who have run White Plains for at least half of its 100 official years.
Those of us who live in downtown apartments are too dumb and lazy to exert any influence over commissioner types so we get what we deserve: quality of life policies such as MEGA buses roaring along residential streets downtown, which provide service to very few White Plains residents. The buses also park pretty much wherever they want ... downtown. There probably will not be any buses anywhere near that upcoming CNA meeting.
Attendees will undoubtedly lobby for more high speed road access to newer parking garages at the Transmania center, aka, train station with its adjacent bus depots, 8th Avenue Port Authority style.
The Westchester County executive and legislators don't care. The county District Attorney does not use electronic digital communication. The DA must not really want to receive messages from residents.
Bee-Line (and all sorts of other buses) continue to rumble through downtown White Plains. A good guess is the the percentage of seats occupied is below 10.
Are these bus companies simply running empty to collect federal money? Could some paid media type put a little effort into checking? It's easy enough to make the same observations that I do. Just walk around White Plains some time. Any time. Unless you don't care.
Since pretty much everone seems OK with buses reducing the quality of life in downtown White Plains, here's a suggestion about how to deal with it: move them back where they were decades ago.
There's a small one block area between Hamilton Avenue and Main Street on the west side of the train tracks that is now all but abandoned by the buses it once served. How and why those regional buses were allowed to intrude into urban life on the east side of the tracks is lost to history.
That area is not large enough for the ever increasing number of regional and private chartered buses that speed along residential streets including Barker Avenue, North Broadway, Park Avenue. There are two areas along route 119 that could be used.
There is still a lot of vacant land on the west side of 119 between Hamilton and the County Center. Some housing was recently and mindlessly built there. It's unimaginable who would want to live adjacent to about ten lanes of traffic.
The other area is what is euphemistically called the west parking lot for the County Center. You know, that ridiculous metered area that everyone wants to avoid. Of course, Westchester County would have to provide that land for the greater good of the train station redevelopment, something that seems anathema to the County Executive and his band of bureaucrats.
This wouldn't really impact the Battle Hill area but that CNA group would doubtless oppose.
The Westchester County executive does not want to address the suggestion in this blog that the county's Bee-Line bus system is very inefficient and/or corrupt. Neither do two county legislators who represent White Plains.
The White Plains mayor and planning commissioner are in their own little world, ignoring the ever increasing buses, including the Bee-Line, which have established squatting rights in downtown in areas that are off limits to most other vehicles. The noise and general assault on the quality of life downtown by all these buses is also ignored by the residents, so it's little wonder that elected officials and their bureaucrats feel immune.
The bottom line: what percent of White Plains residents take any of these buses relative to the total miles the buses travel within White Plains? All these buses seem to add little if anything to White Plains and they obviously have a very negative impact on the urban residents who live downtown and are governed by people who live in houses safely away from the results of their policies.
