
Brooklyn Queens Connector streetcar could be a transit equalizer - jger15
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/02/13/opinion-bqx-streetcar-could-be-the-citys-great-transit-equalizer/
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bobthepanda
The BQX is a bad idea. It is parallel to a subway line that could be upgraded
with much higher frequencies and trains double the length. The bus routes it
would replace are also nowhere near overcrowded or at their frequency limit.

Mostly it serves as an exercise at diverting money from public transit serving
working class commuters being pushed farther and farther out from Manhattan,
to the property developers gentrifying the New York waterfront, and who were
allowed to do so without any sort of meaningful infrastructure investment
there.

~~~
1986
The ferry is just as, if not more, egregious in this regard - it's the most
heavily subsidized form of public transit in the city, at over $10 per ride
actual cost, and based on my experience on the East River route, seems to
largely serve tourists and people who live in Williamsburg and work on Wall
Street.

~~~
vanusa
My take -- as someone who fits neither category, and who uses the ferry quite
frequently -- is that it helps to make the overall system more usable, by
making certain areas more accessible. For certain trips (East Midtown to
Greenpoint; Lower Manhattan to the western edge of Red Hook, for example) it
quite definitely is the shortest hop.

It's also much more pleasant (and healthier) ride than the subway. One of the
negatives of life in NYC is the significant amount of time spent underground
(or on buses, swimming in the exhaust and street noise). Ferry trips provide a
significant respite from all of that.

So it's a "sunk cost" but adds value overall. Though I realize this is a
nuanced value proposition. And that valid questions can be raised about which
communities are getting the most benefit from the service.

~~~
m_ke
Yeah I use it all the time to get to midtown, dubmo and wall street from
greenpoint. It's really convenient and much more pleasant than the train.

It's also great for tourists. I take everyone who visits me from out of new
york on it and it's always a hit.

~~~
1986
Don't get me wrong - I live in Greenpoint too (and work in Dumbo), so I
totally love it from a personal perspective - but at the same time the level
of subsidy strikes me as outrageous given that it largely connects wealthy
waterfront neighborhoods. I don't think they really needed to equalize the
fare with subway/bus fare to encourage ridership - as you've pointed out, it's
by far the most convenient and pleasant way to make those journeys, which
feels like enough incentive to equalize it against something like an Express
Bus instead.

(A downside from a personal perspective - the Greenpoint-Dumbo trip is fine,
but the reverse trip can be pretty brutal, especially in the peak of summer,
when the boats often reach capacity before they even make it from Wall St.)

~~~
m_ke
Yeah I got stuck on the crazy lines back from Dumbo a few times before and
will never do that again, taking a citi bike is a great alternative.

The subsidies are bad but it's a net positive for the city and I'm sure a fare
hike wouldn't hurt it too much.

I used to take an empty bus (in heavy traffic) down Metropolitan ave from Kew
Gardens to Bushwick before and it really convinced me that the city should
consider getting rid of the fares, at least on busses in the outer boroughs.
The amount they spent to install the new select bus service ticket machines
must have been insane, and now they're spending $250 million to clamp down on
fare evasion.

[https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/11/14/mta-will-
spend-249m-o...](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/11/14/mta-will-
spend-249m-on-new-cops-to-save-200m-on-fare-evasion/)

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thesausageking
I was curious why not a BRT. It seems like it would accomplish the same goal
but be cheaper and more flexible. On the BQX website, their answer for "Why
not a bus?" is mainly not technical but about working around bureaucracy:

"Bus lines can’t attract value based financing or more employers and jobs to
the corridor. An urban light rail requires tracks and more permanent
infrastructure, and will generate more investment and value since unlike a bus
line, it can’t be easily rerouted or canceled."

"Buses are run by the MTA. Even if a bus line made sense for this corridor,
the city would not be able to add one without funding and approval from the
MTA. The BQX can be done by New York City alone, without the complications and
political issues that comes from projects requiring coordination among city,
state, or federal agencies."

~~~
redis_mlc
> An urban light rail requires tracks and more permanent infrastructure, and
> will generate more investment and value

FTFY:

An urban light rail requires tracks and more permanent infrastructure, and
will generate more investment and value for real estate insiders and friends
of the admininistration.

See the movie "Chinatown".

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allovernow
Nonsense. What they should really be doing is cutting the fat and corruption
from the inept MTA...but that's never going to happen.

Compared to any other developed nation, subways in NYC are an embarrassing
joke.

~~~
cryptonector
How about allowing private bus operations and privatize the MTA's?

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redis_mlc
In most US cities, privatizing public transit wouldn't work financially.

The Bay Area Caltrain was actually private until fairly recently (1985), when
the operator gave up and the state took it over.

However, even the state doesn't want to operate it, and there was a review
around 2010. But Stanford University weighed in (over 10,000 riders/day) and
the review stopped.

You would have to look at the numbers for NY.

Note that the "MTA" was originally two private entities that ran out of money
building the system.

~~~
cryptonector
I don't see why. It works in Buenos Aires, for example. Any American city
should be jealous of Buenos Aires' bus system.

And the bulk of the NYC subways were built and operated by competing private
companies for decades. That stopped when first the city regulated them to the
point that they could not make improvements, and then the city nationalized
them.

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ng12
> In the Downtown Brooklyn area, the argument for the BQX is a strong one.

Downtown Brooklyn ("DoBro" if you're a millennial real estate agent) is
already the most well-connected neighborhood in Brooklyn by a huge margin.

Also how can you write an article like this and not include a map?

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prostheticvamp
“Residents are left with no choice but to take the subway to Manhattan and
back ... or take the bus, where ridership has continued to decline.”

So, there is an existing alternative that doesn’t involve absolutely fucking
up traffic, and...? People aren’t using it.

So, this sounds like bullshit.

~~~
jrockway
I don't think the BQX will fuck up traffic. Most of the streets on the
alignment are not particularly busy; all of the through traffic takes the
nearly-parallel BQE.

The reality is that if this route is such a good idea, it could be a bus route
today. I have never been on a tram like this and thought "wow, we're making
really good time along these city streets". It's just an overpriced bus.

