New York on the Move

Last year the state secured a $5.4 billion windfall from settlements with big financial institutions (a figure that continues to grow) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo intends to spend a significant chunk on one-shot transportation projects. Among the initiatives are a $250 million plan that will directly connect Bronx and Connecticut residents with Penn Station via the Metro-North commuter railroad for the first time, and a Thruway Authority stabilization program aimed at offsetting “the impacts of major Thruway investments on toll payers.”

This is in addition to the proposed $4.5 billion in the governor’s executive budget for statewide capital spending on transportation (up just slightly from last year), which includes $750 million for a state and local bridge rehab initiative and another $750 million for investment in the MTA. (Cuomo’s capital budget would take $121.5 million from day-to-day transit operations to pay for capital projects.)

City & State highlights a few additional transit projects in the works or under-way around the state.

Airport Overhaul

Significant attention has been paid to New York City’s airports of late: Frequent and lengthy delays, inadequate connection to mass transit and a notoriously dingy ambience that prompted Vice President Joe Biden to make his infamous comment last year likening La Guardia Airport to a “third world country.” Then, in the fall, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his $500,000 design competition aimed at revamping not just La Guardia but John F. Kennedy International Airport as well. Final submissions were due Feb. 2, and while Cuomo’s office has said six and four proposals have been submitted for La Guardia and JFK respectively, it isn’t clear when the winners will be announced.

Ironically, the governor’s design competition has become the latest roadblock to a repeatedly delayed restoration of La Guardia’s decrepit Central Terminal Building: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has been seeking a team equal to the task since 2012, but Chairman John Degnan recently announced that the authority would await the outcome of the governor’s competition before proceeding.

Amtrak Gets a Boost in Northeast

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a $7.1 billion spending bill that would reauthorize Amtrak funding for the next four years, and while the sum is around the same as current spending levels—a disappointment to some transportation advocates—the measure would for the first time allow all profits from Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor to be reinvested there. Passenger rail service between Boston and Washington is by far the most profitable, but under the current arrangement these surplus revenues are reinvested in Amtrak’s money-losing cross-country routes. Under the new bill, the Northeast Corridor would be formally distinguished from Amtrak’s so-called National Network, meaning that its famously run-down rail infrastructure would stand to benefit from all operating surplus generated in the region—calculated to be $205 million in 2011 by the Brookings Institution. (The money from the spending bill would be split as well: $1.9 billion for the Northeast and $3.9 billion for the National Network.)

Thanks to a rare show of bipartisanship in the House, the bill is now awaiting a vote in the U.S. Senate. But while President Barack Obama has voiced his support, at least one Senate Democrat, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has raised concerns about a provision that would require Amtrak to study instituting express service between Boston and Washington, which Blumenthal says would be unacceptable for his constituents.

East Side Access

The construction of the Harold Interlocking rail junction at Sunnyside Yard in Queens, one of the busiest rail interconnections in the United States, is a key component of the MTA’s East Side Access project, which is slated to connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal by 2023.

“Workers on the East Side Access project are essentially doubling the complexity of what is already one of the most complex and busiest railroad ‘interlockings’ in the country,” MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said in an email. “Performing any work at Harold requires close coordination between the East Side Access project managers and the four railroads that use the tracks 24/7: Amtrak, NJ Transit, the LIRR and New York & Atlantic freight. And it requires tracks to be taken out of service. That, at times, has caused pre-planned weekend service diversions for the LIRR. … MTA Capital Construction President Dr. Michael Horodniceanu has said: ‘It is like you’re trying to fix your bicycle while you’re riding it.’ ”

Upgrades to the Harold Interlocking, where 190 new switches will help grant the LIRR access to Grand Central for the first time, are scheduled to be complete by 2022.

Taking Back Downtown

Since the middle of the last century, cities around New York have been suffering from a proliferation of elevated highways that were jammed through urban centers with little thought for the neighborhoods in which they were built. Now, with the reversal of a suburban boom that hastened such construction, upstate cities like Rochester and Syracuse are considering plans to redevelop these elevated freeways, which physically divide parts of their downtowns, with an eye to more pedestrian-friendly land use.

In Rochester, plans to revitalize the so-called Inner Loop—a now-sunken highway that will be turned into a grade-level boulevard—are expected to become clearer this month. In Syracuse, the useful life of the Interstate 81 overpass that slices through downtown is set to expire in 2017, and city and county lawmakers are pitching a number of replacement options to state and federal lawmakers, including a combined tunnel and street-level boulevard, a depressed highway and boulevard, or some combination of a viaduct (as exists now) and a boulevard. State transportation officials are expected to narrow down the viable choices sometime this spring, but Onondaga County officials are already concerned that an actual tunnel could be off the table.