Transit

October 29, 2015

Animated Video Illustrates the Dire Need for New Hudson River Tunnels

People are getting fed up with the century-old, crumbling Hudson River tunnels. One Jersey resident even went so far as to hire an architecture firm to design a sky bridge connecting Jersey City to Battery Park City. But grand visions aside, the state of the infrastructure is serious. To illustrate this point, but make it a bit more simple to digest, the Regional Plan Association has released a three-minute animated video called "Tunnel Trouble" that, as Crain's puts it, "shows a hellish commute for New Jersey Transit and Amtrak riders if new tunnels are not built." The narrator states, "they are the biggest bottleneck in the metro region's transit network, causing delays that ripple up and down the northeast corridor."
Learn more and watch the video

Transit

October 28, 2015

Tommi Moilanen’s New Subway Map Design Makes It Easier to Navigate the City

By Rebecca Paul

The subway is one of New York City's greatest assets, but this only holds true if you can actually navigate through the various tunnels and platforms. And despite the countless transportation apps out there today, the good 'ole subway map is still the best way to find your way around. There's certainly been no shortage of map redesigns, but 6sqft is particularly impressed with the stylings of this new map by Tommi Moilanen, a Finnish industrial and interactive designer. His version uses the system's existing design language, but incorporates a fresh, modern aesthetic.
More details and the full map

PHOTOS: Go Inside the NYC Subway Cars Dumped in the Atlantic Over a Decade Ago

Image via Gothamist

October 23, 2015

PHOTOS: Go Inside the NYC Subway Cars Dumped in the Atlantic Over a Decade Ago

By Diane Pham

By now, you've probably seen Stephen Mallon's insane photo series showing thousands of subway cars being tossed into the ocean. The unlikely MTA initiative was undertaken more than ten years ago with the goal of creating artificial reefs that would support sea life along the Eastern seabed. Now fast forward a decade plus, and the fruits of the agency's environmental efforts can finally be seen in these incredible underwater images from Express Water Sports.
See them all here

In 1872, Broadway Almost Became a Giant Moving Sidewalk

Image via All Ways NY

October 20, 2015

In 1872, Broadway Almost Became a Giant Moving Sidewalk

By Dana Schulz

6sqft readers may remember a 1951 proposal by Goodyear Tires for a giant conveyor belt to carry people between Times Square and Grand Central. And though this was certainly a wacky idea for the time, there was an even earlier proposal for a moving sidewalk that took the city by storm. Back in the late 1860s/early 1870s, inventor and businessman Alfred Speer was fed up with street congestion in front of his wine store on Broadway near City Hall. Though elevated trains were popping up around the time, they were mostly above 14th Street, so Speer designed an aerial, steam-powered sidewalk (much cleaner than the locomotive trains) that would make a loop up and down Broadway to alleviate traffic. It would be constantly in motion at 10 miles per hour, carrying passengers by foot or in its movable chairs for five cents a ride. Speer even went so far as to patent the idea, officially called the "Endless Traveling" or "Railway Sidewalk."
So what happened?

October 15, 2015

POLL: Taxi TVs Are Gone. Were You Part of the 29 Percent Who Turned Them Off?

By Dana Schulz

It’s official. Taxi TVs are no more. The Daily News reports that the Taxi and Limousine Commission voted unanimously to remove the screens in favor of a pilot payment system that will use tablets or smartphones. As 6sqft reported earlier this week, “officials have been ‘flooded’ for years with complaints about the TVs and they’ve also been […]

We May Soon Be Free of Those Horrid Taxi TV Screens

Image via

October 13, 2015

We May Soon Be Free of Those Horrid Taxi TV Screens

By Diane Pham

Those annoying taxi TV screens that can turn a great night into one of frustration and fury as you fumble to hit the mute button may finally be silenced once and for all. According to the Post, the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) will vote this Thursday night on whether or not the screens should be removed in favor of smartphone or tablet payment systems. As it stands, sources say that the the proposal will most likely pass. Apparently officials have been "flooded" for years with complaints about the TVs and they've also been a big reason that riders opting for Ubers as an alternative to the yellow cab, the agency admits.
Find out more here

October 13, 2015

Mayor de Blasio Supports Plan for $11B Underground Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel

By Dana Schulz

Now that he's done battling the state for MTA funding, perhaps Mayor de Blasio can set his sights on the Port Authority and the long-proposed Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel. Representative Jerrold Nadler has been pushing for the freight rail tunnel for three decades, but the Bloomberg administration was strongly against it. Now, Nadler has a supporter in de Blasio, and the Port Authority is even studying the plan, which calls for a tunnel running from Jersey City to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and another into Queens and Long Island. Why do politicians feel a multibillion-dollar tunnel is necessary? WNYC points out that NYC is the most truck-dependent city in the nation. Ninety percent of the 400 million tons of freight that come through the city each year travel by truck. The reason is that "New York City has no direct link to the national freight rail network, so goods coming into the ports and rail yards in New Jersey mostly cross the river by truck." Nadler has claimed that the new tunnel would take 2,500 trucks off the Hudson River crossings every day, thereby reducing pollution and the price of goods.
Find out more

Transit

October 12, 2015

State and City Finally Agree on Funding Plan for the Debt-Ridden MTA

By Dana Schulz

After months of squabbling over who's responsible for funding repairs and expansions of NYC's transit system, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio reached an agreement on Saturday to keep the MTA's $26.1 billion, five-year capital plan on track. The state will put in $8.3 billion and the city $2.5 billion (much more than de Blasio's original $657 million planned contribution). However, Cuomo was clear that their commitment won't come from increasing taxes and that he's confident the money can be found in the existing state budget. The city, too, said it would not raise taxes, but rather take $1.9 billion from city funds and the rest from sources that could include development rights or rezoning. The agreement still leaves the MTA $700 million short of its total, but the agency hopes to close the gap by finding "further efficiencies."
READ MORE

Cities Would Take Up 37 Percent More Space if It Were Not for Public Transit

Image via Anorian

October 7, 2015

Cities Would Take Up 37 Percent More Space if It Were Not for Public Transit

By Diane Pham

The major benefits of public transportation are clear: riding the subway or bus is way cheaper than maintaing a car, and more often than not, it's a much faster means of getting from point A to point B. But as Streetsblog points out in this recent study by the Transportation Research Board, transit is a major of driver of density within a city, and it's something that incentivizes developers and city planners to put things closer together. While this may not be an earth-shattering revelation to you, if you quantify the effect, you just might be surprised. According to the report, U.S. cities on average would take up 37 percent more space to house current populations if it were not for public transit.
Find out more here

October 1, 2015

Here’s What the G Train Could Look Like if It Went Into Manhattan

By Dana Schulz

Considering it's taken the city nearly 100 years to get the Second Avenue Subway moving and that the MTA is over its head in debt, we're not holding our breath that any other major expansion work will take place in the system, but we can all dream, right? Take for instance these new maps created by cartographer Andrew Lynch as part of his Future NYC Subway series. He envisions the G train, which currently only connects Brooklyn and Queens, making two loops into Manhattan -- one Downtown and one in Midtown. As Curbed notes, "It's a slightly convoluted proposal," but Lynch clearly put a lot of thought into his scheme, even figuring out the tunnels and connection points the train would take.
READ MORE

Transit

New York City Now Has Over 1,000 Miles of Bike Lanes!

By Diane Pham

1,010.2 miles to be exact. Yesterday morning, NYC reached the milestone figure with the painting of its latest lane in the Lower East Side along Clinton Street. In addition to this, the Department of Transportation announced that yet another 12 miles of protected lanes would be completed by the year's end between West 14th Street and West 33rd Street. The number is above the city's five-mile annual target, and the highest amount ever installed in any year. The news, a blessing to cyclists citywide, certainly supports the fact that New York is set on strengthening the cycling culture of the city—which has already been named by Bicycling Magazine as 2015's best American city for bikes.
More here

Transit

It’s Official! JetBlue Will Turn the Iconic TWA Flight Terminal at JFK Into a Hotel

Image courtesy of Beyer Blinder Belle

September 18, 2015

It’s Official! JetBlue Will Turn the Iconic TWA Flight Terminal at JFK Into a Hotel

By Diane Pham

No longer will the fate of Eero Saarinen’s architectural masterpiece sit in limbo, Crain's reports that the iconic structure will indeed be made into a hotel, developed through a partnership between MCR Development and JetBlue. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey chose the pair amongst a "field of several competitors" bidding for the job, and the decision will be formally announced at the agency's board meeting next week. As we previously reported, the new destination will be known as the TWA Flight Center Hotel.
more details this way

September 16, 2015

Liven Up Your Walls With Bike Art Inspired by the New York City Streets

By Rebecca Paul

Original art is a great way to adorn the walls in your home, but for some of us, it can also be outside of our budget. One excellent solution to this conundrum is to purchase original prints from local artists like Massimo Mongiardo. Mongiardo recieved his BFA in Illustration from the Massachusetts College of Art, and he now lives and works in New York City. His playful collection of bike prints were inspired by the bike culture he observed around his studio.
READ MORE

$20M Allocated to New Technology That Will Let NYC Vehicles ‘Talk’ to Each Other

Traffic jam photo via joiseyshowaa/flickr

September 15, 2015

$20M Allocated to New Technology That Will Let NYC Vehicles ‘Talk’ to Each Other

By Dana Schulz

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that $42 million will be allocated to new technology in New York City, Tampa, and the state of Wyoming that allows vehicles to "talk" to one another and their surroundings "in order to reduce congestion, prevent accidents, and cut emissions," according to Daily Intelligencer. The city is receiving $20 million of the funds, with which it will create "connected vehicles" that can hopefully reduce traffic accidents by up to 80 percent. By gaining access to real-time traffic data, both drivers and pedestrians will be alerted (or do the alerting) of potential hazards.
Learn about the specifics of what this technology entails

September 10, 2015

Mapping the Never-Built Highways of NYC from Robert Moses and Others

By Dana Schulz

If there's one thing most people attribute to Robert Moses it's highways. The master planner built 13 expressways throughout New York, including the Cross Bronx Expressway, Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the FDR Drive, and the West Side Highway. Love him or hate him, this was a pretty profound feat of urban planning. But had he been granted free rein, Moses would've constructed even more highways. The two failed attempts that remain most notorious are the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would've cut east-west along the residential areas of Broome Street, as well as a Mid-Manhattan Expressway, a proposed six-lane elevated highway along 30th Street. After mapping these aforementioned Moses proposals, cartographer Andrew Lynch decided to take his project one step further and create a map series of all the never-built highways in NYC, both from Moses and others.
Check out the full-size maps here

Transit

September 3, 2015

Here’s How Many Calories You’ll Burn if You Walk, Jog, or Cycle Instead of Taking the Subway

By Dana Schulz

Looking to shed a few pounds after all the summer cookouts and outdoor happy hours? Perhaps you should consider ditching the old Metrocard and traveling by foot or bicycle instead. To put into perspective just how fit this will get you, the folks over at Treated have calculated how many calories you'll burn by walking, jogging, and cycling between subway stops. As Curbed notes, the analysis provides calorie info for every single subway stop and also charts the longest stops, which unsurprisingly are mostly over bridges, and the shortest stops, mostly located in lower Manhattan.
See the full map and calorie charts here

September 2, 2015

VIDEO: Riding the Subway in the 1940s Wasn’t Much Different From Today

By Dana Schulz

Here's a picture of the New York City subway–mobs of commuters crowding the platforms; train cars filled to the brim; passengers blocking the train doors; people walking while reading the paper, oblivious to their surroundings. Sounds like your commute this morning, right? But believe it or not, we're describing the subway from the 1940s. Unearthed today by Gothamist, this video from the New York Transit Museum archives shows just how little things have changed in the past 75 years.
Watch the video here

September 1, 2015

Infographic: The Correlation Between Income and Access to NYC Public Transit

By Dana Schulz

We already know that there are plenty of areas within the five boroughs that are underserved by public transportation, but a new visualization provides an interesting perspective on how this lack of service is related to income. The simple infographic by FiveThirtyEight shows how New Yorkers commute based on income and access to public transportation, revealing five broad categories that range from those with no good options at all to those who have their choice of Uber or public transportation.
READ MORE

Hudson Yards 7 Train Station Will Officially Open on September 13th

An aerial rendering of the new station

August 28, 2015

Hudson Yards 7 Train Station Will Officially Open on September 13th

By Dana Schulz

We once had a friend who lived in midtown all the way over on 12th Avenue...and let's just say we rarely visited. But what was once a subway wasteland is finally getting its very own subway station. After years of delays, the new 7 train stop at 34th Street-Hudson Yards will officially open on September 13th, at 1:00pm to be exact. The extension from its current endpoint at Times Square has cost the city $2.4 billion since construction commenced in 2007.
More details

Transit

August 27, 2015

Before LaGuardia, There Was Glenn H. Curtiss Airport

By Dana Schulz

Last month, Governor Cuomo revealed his $4 billion plan to overhaul LaGuardia Airport, the third-worst airport in the country that Vice President Biden recently likened to a third-world country. While today it's hard to imagine New York City without its sub-par airports (JFK is THE worst airport in the nation), they weren't always a fixture in the city. In fact, LaGuardia was preceded by a much more modest facility with links to world aviation history -- Glenn H. Curtiss Airport. It opened in 1929 as a private airfield off Flushing Bay; became a commercial airport called North Beach in 1935; and a decade later was changed to what we know today when then Mayor La Guardia wanted the city to have its own airport and not have to rely on Newark.
Get the full history right here

August 26, 2015

See NYC’s Subway Lines Superimposed Over an Aerial Photo of the City

By Diane Pham

When we head underground and board the subway, most of us don't give much thought to all the streets and landmarks we'll be zipping past as we move along to our destination. But here’s an incredible mash-up from map enthusiast Anorian that offers a much different perspective on exactly where the subway travels. An amalgamation of digital photos taken from a commercial plane and the expert mapping of each line, this beautiful image is far more captivating and insightful than any printed or online map out there.
See more views here

Transit

August 25, 2015

This $9 Device Can Save Drivers from the Much-Loathed Parking Ticket

By Dana Schulz

After driving around for what seems like an eternity, you finally find a parking spot. You read all the signs, double check that there's no yellow curbs or fire hydrants nearby, feed the meter, and go on your merry way. A few hours later, you walk back up to your car and see that tiny orange rectangle (the infamous NYC parking ticket) taunting you from the windshield. If this sounds familiar, here's your chance to stop shelling out $65 for being one minute over your last quarter. AwareCar, a smartphone app and Bluetooth device, keeps drivers in check by reminding them where they parked, when the meter is expiring, and at what time they need to leave to head back to their vehicle (h/t CityLab). And all this will only set you back $9.
Find out how this genius technology works

August 24, 2015

MTA Rolls Out Startling New Campaign to Reduce Railroad Crossing Accidents

By Diane Pham

In response to the tragic Metro-North Railroad crash back in February which killed six and injured over a dozen, this summer the MTA released a new campaign hoping to get pedestrians and motorists to be more aware of their surroundings when around train tracks. The campaign—made up of five posters and three videos—is illustrated in the same vein as the also recently rolled out "Courtesy Counts" posters found throughout the city's subways. But what's most surprising about the agency's railroad crossing adverts is that like those in the subway (e.g. man-spreading and poll hogging), they're all inspired by real life events.
see more of the posters and the videos here

Transit

August 18, 2015

Vote to Bring the East River Skyway to SXSW 2016!

By Alyssa Alimurung

These are the facts: NYC subways still run on 1930s technology, the delays are getting longer, and there’s no stopping the residential development boom happening not only in Manhattan, but also in Brooklyn. If you’ve commuted from Brooklyn to Manhattan (and vice-versa) during rush hour you know that the subway ride is a nightmare. That's why we need the East River Skyway, an aerial gondola system that would run along the Brooklyn waterfront and into Manhattan, bringing commuters over the river in just 3.5 minutes. The project is being led by Dan Levy, the president and CEO of CityRealty* and a Williamsburg resident, who noticed while skiing how quickly gondolas moved and how comfortable they were. He has spent several years investigating the technology and completed preliminary studies to see what it would take to adapt a similar system to meet the needs of New York City. What he found was that implementation would be relatively inexpensive and quickly deployable.
Learn how you can help

August 17, 2015

Quirky Taxi Poster Illustrates the Designs of NYC’s Iconic Cabs

By Diane Pham

Although in daily life you're more likely to curse cabs than celebrate them, this cool print by illustrator James Gulliver Hancock highlights the charms of the city's yellow icon. Featuring the cab designs of today and yesteryear, this wonderful print is a work of art and a pretty accurate representation of just how nutty NYC traffic can get.
Where to buy one here

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