Strategic Arms Limitation Talks: the Transit District model.

Say what?

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War superpowers, on the issue of arms control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II...

The talks led to the STARTs, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties ... which proposed limits on multiple-warhead capacities and other restrictions on each side's number of nuclear weapons.
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Instead of reducing the number of nuclear weapons, a new higher limit was agreed to. That's what the City of White Plains is doing with its expansion and especially with the planning being done in the new Transit District near the train station and bus terminal.

The final report of the Transit District emphasizes lots of environmental stuff along with lots of growth, much of which is the addition of thousands of new high rent apartments. What's lost in all this is that the number of new parking spaces will exceed the number of new apartments.

DOWNTOWN WHITE PLAINS TRANSIT DISTRICT FINAL REPORT Sunday, March 18, 2018

Fewer parking spaces will reduce the number of cars downtown. So why add thousands?
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So rather than reigning in traffic and pollution, the City of White Plains is establishing big increases. No there's no other interpretation. But it's being presented as responsible planned growth. And it continues to ignore:

1. Decades of the City of White Plains allowing rush hour traffic to go through downtown streets, especially Hamilton Avenue. Those cars don't stop to pay sales tax, they just drive through.

2. Regional buses driving on downtown streets to/from the train station without any real explanation of how that is good for White Plains generally and downtown specifically. Most passengers are probably simply getting on a Metro North train into Manhattan. Are most of the rest getting on private buses taking them to jobs in the corporate parks along 287? That would be ironic, since the buses just got off 287, many having crossed the new bridge over the Hudson River.

Part of the problem is that proposals to have light rail along 287 went nowhere, in part, because White Plains did little or nothing to promote it. Now under the guise of public transportation, White Plains is mindlessly allowing HUGE regional buses to come all the way to the train station. It sounds like a nice regional plan but what's in it for downtown White Plains other than for politicians who live in houses in the suburbs of White Plains to feel like big shots?