lohud blasts Hudson Link bus system. Email sent to Common Council.

Riding Hudson Link, in search of Bus Rapid Transit

Peter D. Kramer, Rockland/Westchester Journal NewsPublished 6:00 a.m. ET May 2, 2019 | Updated 8:18 a.m. ET May 2, 2019

from:		Kenneth Matinale
to:		commoncouncil@whiteplainsny.gov
cc:		Tom Soyk , George Latimer
date:		May 4, 2019, 9:34 AM
subject:		Riding Hudson Link, in search of Bus Rapid Transit

White Plains Common Council,
CC: Westchester County Executive, WP Traffic Commissioner

I know you ignore the posts from my blog (https://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/) about the "Ghost Buses" (https://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/search/label/Buses) but maybe you'll read the lohud article in the link above and get your priorities straight about not only the Hudson Link buses but also all the other buses inundating downtown White Plains, you know, away from where all but one of you live:

- regional (CT Transit, Greyhound, Adirondack, etc.)
- private for corporations like Leros
- Bee-Line, which continues to claim 30 million passengers on the county website and costs $115 million a year. Has any county legislator checked on the cost effectiveness of this system in this millenium?

Imagine if even a few of the monster size buses started driving down the street where your house is. You, and especially your house neighbors, would demand an immediate end to the unnecessary traffic, noise and pollution.

Kenneth Matinale
White Plains resident

Bus mania is to get train station money as hub for east-west Lower Hudson Transit Link?

New York "state's designation of White Plains as the hub for the east-west Lower Hudson Transit Link".

The article quoted below explains some of the illogical decisions by the City of White Plains government in the last five years. The author lives in a White Plains house neighborhood without sidewalks. My comments follow.

Train station renovation key to revival of White Plains neighborhood
by Richard Liebson, Rockland/Westchester Journal News Published April 16, 2019

The tract is crisscrossed by wide, three- and four-lane streets filled with cars, trucks and buses mostly heading for somewhere else...

With about 12,000 weekday riders passing through, White Plains is the busiest station in Westchester and third most active overall, behind only Grand Central Terminal and the Stamford, Connecticut, station...

The MTA originally planned to spend only a few million dollars to spruce up the terminal. The authority decided to up the ante and go all in on the renovation after negotiations with the city, and the state's designation of White Plains as the hub for the east-west Lower Hudson Transit Link over the Hudson River.

The new station, combined with Westchester County's Bee Line bus terminal and an expected influx of Transit Link bus riders from Rockland County, solidify White Plains' importance as a regional transportation center. The combination of state highways and county parkways in and around the city underline that status...

2016 ... year-long study, funded by a $1 million state grant ... zoning that envisions pedestrian- and bike-friendly streets and crosswalks ...

The new zone will create easier circulation to and from the station for vehicles and pedestrians...

The new zoning has resulted in a number of development proposals from private property owners that have been approved or are in the approval process...

Gone at the re-built southern end of the three platforms are the cold, concrete benches, the crumbling platform ceilings, the paper schedules mounted in glass cases and the scratchy, public address system that made announcements difficult to understand.
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Mayor Thomas Roach and others have delusions of grandeur dancing in their heads. As documented here, the Hudson Link buses have had almost ZERO passengers. It's been a local, state, federal government boondoggle. The number of cars has not decreased as the number of buses continues to dangerously increase, all at the loss of quality of life for downtown residents. The mayor and almost all Common Council members for the last half century live in house neighborhoods outside downtown. They are elected at large, not by geographic district. The current bad policy is just the most recent because of that basic disconnect.

In what millenium will ANY changes happen? Not ONE street has been changed. Not one. The 4-5 lane one way monstrosities that Mayor Roach mocked many times years ago remain, with their multiple turning lanes and resulting diagonal crossing. White Plains is more pedestrian hostile than ever.

Development proposals? It takes a decade for anything to get built. Sometimes multiple decades.

Most of the train station work is neglected routine maintenance for more than three decades following bad original design. And apparently much of that is due to the city selling out and letting downtown become a giant bus terminal. Of course, none of this impacts any of the Common Council house neighborhoods.

Metro-North Railroad project manager Brad Knote should look a little less pompous and maybe fix the four sided MTA clock tower that's been broken for several years. It's a symbol of incompetence and arrogance.

Affordable housing hypocrisy expands.

Common Council members should send us a Candygram when they implement affordable housing policy which actually puts their skin in the game: "affordable people" live near them and CC members actually subsidize affordable housing policy themselves.

Affordable Housing: the hypocrisy Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Common Council members all live in houses in the suburbs of White Plains and so are not directly affected. The last thing they want is an affordable person moving into the house next to theirs...

CC members pretend to represent all WP residents but they represent only the interests of those who live in houses in the suburbs of WP. This is another example of why WP needs CC members elected by district, not at large.
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Affordable Housing Tour Sunday, December 21, 2008

Who pays for affordable housing? Wednesday, February 3, 2016

First of all, it's affordable apartments. There may be a few condos, probably adjacent to the interstate highway, but no houses. White Plains decision makers live in houses and are immune to any impact of "affordable housing"...

House owners do not have 10% of the houses on their block occupied by "affordable housing" people. Nor are they paying more in property taxes to make up for "affordable housing" people paying less...

The "market rate" renters in the other 90% of apartments are making up the difference. Do White Plains decision makers know? Do they ask?
______________________________

Common Council continues hypocrisy of affordable housing (apartments). Tuesday, March 8, 2016
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https://www.cityofwhiteplains.com/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=783

City of White Plains News
Posted on: February 27, 2019
Expansion of Affordable Rental Housing Program Proposed

... since 2003 ... expand the City’s Affordable Rental Housing Program (ARHP) in several ways ...

The proposal is currently being discussed by the Common Council and will ultimately require the passage of a local ordinance and amendments to the City’s Zoning Ordinance
______________________________

More pedestrian hostile than ever.

More cars than ever.

More buses than ever. Isn't that good? It might be if they didn't have a greater percentage of empty seats than ever. Oh, and if the buses weren't driving more and more on congested streets in downtown White Plains.

2-3 lanes of traffic turning simultaneously on five lane roads AND immediately crossing  diagonally parallel to the crosswalk unable to see pedestrians.

About three years ago the mayor repeatedly criticised the urban planning of half a century ago, which included creating the many 4-5 lane one way streets in downtown White Plains. But not a single change has been made.

Now 5,000 new apartments are being added in downtown White Plains with more parking spaces than the number of apartments. What the heck?

Opinion nytimes.com
The Pedestrian Strikes Back Dec. 15, 2018
Officials in several countries are getting the message: Cities are about people, not cars.

By Richard Conniff
Contributing Opinion Writer

Many American cities still rely on “level of service” (LOS) design models developed in the 1960s that focus single-mindedly on keeping vehicle traffic moving, according to Elizabeth Macdonald, an urban design specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Hence improvements for other modes (walking, cycling, transit) that might increase vehicle delay are characterized as LOS. impediments,” she and her co-authors write in The Journal of Urban Design. The idea of pedestrians as “impediments” is of course perverse, especially given the word’s original meaning: An impediment was something that functioned as a shackle for the feet — unlimited vehicle traffic, say.
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Congestion Pricing in Manhattan, First Such Plan in U.S., Is Close to Approval nytimes.com  March 25, 2019

By Jesse McKinley and Winnie Hu

ALBANY — After years of hesitation, New York is poised to become the first city in the United States to introduce congestion pricing, which would put new electronic tolls in place for drivers entering the busiest stretches of Manhattan...

Other American cities are exploring variations of congestion pricing, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
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White Plains needs a Pedestrian Commissioner. Sunday, June 13, 2010

It's obvious that neither the Traffic nor Public Safety Commissioners give a damn how pedestrian hostile White Plains becomes, so how about a Pedestrian Commissioner, someone who represents the interests of pedestrians? ...

The Traffic Commissioner has established non-intuitive rules such as cars being allowed to turn from other than the immediate lane ...

... the Public Safety Commissioner does not enforce the laws and ... neither the mayor nor the common council members do anything to make WP less pedestrian hostile.
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White Plains Common Council members for the last half century live in houses outside downtown White Plains almost exclusively. They are elected at large, not by geographic district. They represent the people who live on their street. Those people are interested in one thing: being able to drive from their house into downtown White Plains in ten minutes. That's it. Anything else is superfluous.

Oh, and having their taxes subsidized by people living in apartments who send proportionately few children to the public schools. And being subsidized by businesses whose employees drive through downtown White Plains by the thousands, not to shop, but simply to escape and go home.

Downtown White Plains is pedestrian hostile in the extreme and getting worse by the day. If White Plains Common Council members ever walked around, they might know that.

http://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/search/label/Pedestrians

Same as last year: Galleria parking garage sidewalk not cleared of snow.

The same violators year after year. See the businesses on Martine Avenue adjacent to the recently defunct Tighe's Tavern, established 1935.

Galleria parking garage sidewalk not cleared of snow. Wednesday, February 7, 2018

And it's right across the street from the Public Safety building. Some workers in that building park in the Galleria parking garage and then jaywalk across Martine Avenue into their office. They must see that snow was ignored on the Galleria parking garage sidewalk well after the snow had been cleared from the sidewalks of the municipal buildings along Martine across the street. And the Public Safety building has windows.

Photos taken at 11:40 AM, Wednesday, February 7, 2018:

(Click link above to view photos taken last year.)

Notice in the second photo that the snow was cleared half way down the block on South Lexington but snow was left on the sidewalk adjacent to the Galleria parking garage. It couldn't be more obvious that whatever entity is responsible for snow removal of the Galleria parking garage sidewalk is negligent. But enforcement people directly across the street are oblivious.

You would think that whoever cleared the snow from the Galleria retail sidewalk along Main Street might be responsible enough to continue and do it along Martine Avenue. But no common sense there either.

Saturday, December 16, 2017
Snow removal: does the city ever enforce sidewalk clearing without complaints?

Apparently not. White Plains is a one horse town. Always was. Always will be.
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Hudson Link buses now drive on Main, Hamilton and Martine, almost always empty.

White Plains decision makers must be beyond shame and embarrassment. What the heck can they even pretend is the benefit to White Plains?

The county executive and county legislators have been doing this for years about their ridiculous Bee-Line bus system that pretty much all of them and their primary constituents avoid like the plague. The county website claims 30 million passengers per year for its $115 million spent per year. Name them. Has any county legislator ever looked into the efficiency of this bus system? Any county executive? Any local media? Ever?

Then there's the regional buses, also with almost no passengers.

One thing these huge buses and private cars have in common: hardly any passengers. What an incredible waste of resources.

How many people pay $30,000 for a personal car only to leave it parked at the train station for ten hours a day, five days a week. And that's probably less wasteful that the various buses. And supporting this are government funds for road maintenance and the ugly and ubiquitous parking garages, which can never have enough spaces.

Three posts on pedestrian safety resent to Common Council because they never acted.

White Plains needs a Pedestrian Commissioner. Sunday, June 13, 2010

White Plains needs a Pedestrian Commissioner, part II Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Pedestrians endangered by cars diagonally crossing multiple lanes at intersections. Saturday, January 12, 2019

Link to all posts about pedestrians.

Bee-Line county bus system: can it be cost justified?

from:		Ken
to:		beeline@westchestergov.com
cc:		George Latimer , Alfreda Williams , Benjamin Boykin
date:		Feb 6, 2019, 7:23 PM
subject:		White Plains, NY: $115 million for the Bee-Line county bus system in 2018.

https://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/2018/05/115-million-for-bee-line-county-bus.html

There's no way this system is cost justified, especially with the county $22 million over budget.

You simply keep "30 million passengers" on your website. Name them.

https://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/2018/03/i-was-only-passenger-on-bee-line-63-on.html

https://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/2016/07/ralph-kramden-for-county-executive.html

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Spanish city banned cars.

Common Council members represent the people who live in the houses on their street, who only want it to be convenient to drive into and park in downtown White Plains.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life-spanish-city-banned-cars-pontevedra?CMP=fb_gu&fbclid=IwAR1rQloddBekeNeWrYKyMma9RIB4tWvUEdB_PZDgd0viofaKxdaB9ErdUqs

Hudson Link bus has a passenger!

Spotted a couple of weeks ago. That's one passenger observed after months of "service" in downtown White Plains on a Hudson Link bus, you know, that boondoggle that all elected and appointed officials are ignoring. They've been notified but are unresponsive.