Transit lines are life blood

Greening the Empire State: Exploring New York's Energy Options

Transit Lines are Life Blood
Baruch School of Public Affairs
Gotham Gazette
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The Topic
NYC's waterfront is roughly 600 miles long. Include metropolitan New Jersey and Westchester, and the total increases to over 1000 miles. This metropolitan waterfront is as diverse as it is long. Its uses range from oil depots, cruise ship terminals and modern container ports to marinas, recreational esplanades, and bathing beaches. Contrary to reputation and expectation, the harbor, its shores and its waterways are integral to the region's economy and quality of life.
The Context
The harbor is one of the few places in the metropolitan area where large spaces still exist and where usage patterns are dynamic. Unlike most urban land areas, the regions' waterways belong to everyone. Consequently, many uses compete for the same space. Diverse concurrent uses and a clash of competing interests shape the character of today's metropolitan maritime crossroads. In the shared world of the waterfront, issues are complex, and political values intermingle. Within each issue is a frothy mixture of economics and ecology, community and bureaucracy, freedom of action and the desire to be protected from the actions of others. Improving water quality makes the competition among users more robust. Fish, waterfowl, birds of prey, and marshlands are returning. Recreational uses proliferate, competing with other uses. In commerce, long-term harbor users are expanding operations. Growth in trade requires smarter port operations and more acreage for containers. Deeper dredging of ship channels and expanded municipal facilities are planned. Privately owned ferries crisscross the waters carrying commuters by the tens of thousands. Despite all this, the waterfront is still part of larger natural processes. Twice a day, vast seas flood into and ebb from the harbor, which determine the pace of maritime commerce. Daily, the waters change the harbor's geography, creating and denying access to mudflats, shellfish, docks and harbors. Flux at the water's edge holds peril and promise.
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City Scraps Private Marina
The city's plan to build a fancy marina for private yachts, with a hotel and entertainment complex, next to its Brooklyn cruise-ship terminal, is officially dead in the water. More than two years after the city's Economic Development Corp. announced plans to redevelop Pier 11 near the cruise terminal in Red Hook, the EDC has tossed out all proposals solicited from developers vying for the project.
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by John Waldman

Manhattan Water-Bound
by Anne Buttenwieser

The Meadowlands
by Robert Sullivan

The Riverkeepers
by John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

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Ferries

by Peter Fleischer
March 2001

Fifteen years ago, the Koch Administration, with a push from a private ferry operator, helped launch the modern era of private ferry services in New York harbor. Five years ago, the Giuliani Administration pushed hard to spur new private ferry services to Yankee Stadium. The city has substantially completed a multi-million dollar reconstruction of Pier 11. Pier 11 is the Wall Street hub for the harbor's private ferry operators. At present, there are four private operators and over 30,000 passenger trips a day.

Support, whether legal, administrative or infrastructural, for the activities of the private ferry companies has been a hallmark of the "private" ferry revival of recent years. In addition to New York City, the State of New York, the Port Authority and the State of New Jersey have partnered with these and other private ferry companies.

Into this public/private froth comes the Harbor Ferry Loop proposal. This idea, a vision from the non-profit Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, calls for a fleet of eight vessels, each with a capacity for 99 passengers, circling the upper harbor as a commuter service on weekdays and as a recreational/cultural loop on weekends. The loops would connect sixteen waterfront "commuter" stops and over twenty harborside cultural landmarks. Key transfer stops would include lower Manhattan, Exchange Place in New Jersey and St. George in Staten Island. These stops connect to mass transit hubs. The proposed one-way fare would be $1.50.

These loops highlight a truism held by waterfront advocates that at its heart the city is a maritime metropolis. The loops would allow New Yorkers, people from New Jersey and millions of visitors to discover hidden wonders of the region's shores beyond the crowded straight line that links the Battery to the Statue of Liberty. Many of the proposed stops should be major destination sites and would be if they were easier to get to. Such sites include Governor's Island, Fort Wadsworth, Liberty State Park and Fulton Landing. National Park Service sites outside these loops including Riis Park, Fort Tilden and Sandy Hook in New Jersey might one day also be connected by ferry.

These waterborne connections open the promise of linking local residents to a city much larger than they now know. In the same way that the subway, a century ago, linked a newly consolidated city to its distant parts, ferries at the millennium can unite the metropolis with its far-flung maritime extensions.

Of course, these visions require money. The proposal of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance assumes outside assistance of about $20 million to finance the vessels and build the landings. It also assumes an operating subsidy to augment the proposed fare. Unlike most other ferry proposals where private companies sought limited public assistance, the Alliance's plan has no private capital at this stage.

Sounding Off

At present, the city and the region subsidize many transportation services. From the heavily subsidized PATH trip to the barely subsidized subway trip to the lavishly subsidized commuter express bus trip and the free Staten Island ferry trip, New York, New Jersey and the Port Authority frequently contribute both operating and capital funds.

While subsidies sometimes do go toward bottomless pits, they can also be used to stimulate market creation or serve as catalysts for development. Successful efforts may depend on the exact mix of public assistance and private interest. In the Yankee Stadium service, the private operator provided the boats and took the economic risk. The city and state provided access and paid for many physical improvements.

If the Harbor Loop is built will they come? A market study is needed. Who would use such a service? How often? At what price? Will they use it in the winter? Will they overuse it in the summer? Are loops the way to go?

Private investment will likely follow a firm belief in a significant market of future users. The Visitor's Bureau, the Port Authority or the ferry industry should fund the study. If the right questions are asked, the harbor's potential for recreation, culture, transport and commerce will match a considerable untapped market demand.

Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.

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