Beyond such legitimate concerns as traffic routing, sidewalk narrowing, local deliveries and frequency of service, critics remain suspicious of private sector involvement in transit and other public services. The fraud and mismanagement that accompanied the $23.7 million 14th St. rebuild and the dismaying record of New York's real estate speculators only reinforce these fears. However inaccurate with regards to the current proposal, the spectre of corruption and incompetence among private contractors still embitters some New Yorkers.

Lightning Rod On 42nd Street
Since the 42nd Street LRT plan will feature the first streetcars to run in Manhattan in 50 years, the plan is serving as the lightning rod for those New Yorkers fearful of any change or, for that matter, anything at all involving public space or large amounts of money. At the same time, however, transit advocates are gradually becoming more visible in the public debates. While they would like to see the line planned and built as part of a much larger overall system, extended to Penn Station, and all of 42nd Street made permanently auto-free, they recognize that the LRT plan is at least a substantial step in the right direction.

The City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR) should be completed by March 1994, and the Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP) should be done by April or May. These two reviews involve extensive public hearings, community board meetings, approvals from numerous city agencies and the Borough President's office, and a draft and final version of the Environmental Impact Statement, a massive 700-page tome.

Meanwhile, a Request for Qualifications was issued in May 1993 to hundreds of companies involved in the transportation business. From among these, four "teams," selected through a strict process, have been chosen to receive an RFP. When the CEQR and ULURP are finished this spring, the four teams will present their final detailed proposals. If approved, construction would begin in 1995 and streetcars would be running by the end of 1996.

"While too many questions remain open to earn my unqualified support," said Messinger in a prepared statement, "at the heart of the project lies an idea that will bring numerous environmental and economic benefits to our entire city. Real and exciting progress depends on our ability to solve the remaining problems."

The Borough President has received commitments from the 42nd St. Development Corp. not to narrow sidewalks, to increase LRT service frequency to bus levels, to examine reversing 43rd St. as an eastbound traffic reliever and to pursue options for the M104 bus, which connects upper Broadway with 42nd St. Project Director Jim Moore suggested that the M104 be combined with the M16 to offer a single-seat ride from the Upper West Side to Penn Station, Herald Square and the NYU Medical Center.

Messinger also wants a formal procedure by which her office and affected City Councilmembers, Community Boards and business groups will be able to offer their input on final design, line and station siting, and franchisee selection. The issues raised by local residents that most be resolved are traffic, curb-side deliveries, better access to the Jacob Javits Center on 11th Ave. and the line's impact on the proposed Hudson River Park. She is also insisting that the line be self-supporting.

No, the 42nd St. LRT plan is not perfect. Borough President Messinger is quite right to insist on addressing legitimate concerns before she gives her unqualified support. We would have preferred a completely auto-free 42nd St., perhaps with a taxi lane in front of Grand Central Station and with lanes for commercial vehicles available only where and when they were really needed. We would have also preferred that the MTA carry out the project under its mandate to coordinate transit in the City and its suburbs. Nevertheless, the plan as now offered is the best available and with private financing lined up, seems doable.

It seems that some of the trolley's most bitter critics know little or nothing about light rail and would like to leave it at that. We were particularly appalled by critics at a recent public forum, who assailed a Garment Industry representative for supporting the 42nd St. project. It was obvious the industry had studied the proposal and concluded the LRT would be a boon, while the critics simply had not done their homework.

Some residents of Tudor City, a quiet and well-to-do East Side enclave, have suddenly become worried about East 40th Street. But east of Third Avenue, it's little more than a car alley, with five parking garages (total capacity 1,550 cars) and two parking lots (hundreds more cars). Tudor City, with entrances on its own semi-private street, presents 40th Street with an enormous brick wall and garage entrance.

Haikalis also noted that "the city's environmental analysis is based on what is thought to be the worst case scenario: that travel patterns will remain fixed and any new trips generated by new developments will simply be added to existing travel streams. So-called 'mitigation' measures are then devised to prevent travel conditions from worsening." The city's analysis also ignores any diversion of commuters into transit when New Jersey's waterfront light rail line begins operation later this decade.

"If a trolley route appeared from the UN to the Javits Center, that would be fine. However, the trolley route to push for first is one that would be longer and provide an alternate to cars and vans, such as the NJ Waterfront through Bayonne and a Third Avenue line through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to replace the Gowanus Expressway, which should be torn down rather than rebuilt."
Jeannette Wolfberg
Mt. Kisco, NY
(EDITOR"S REPLY: Ms. Wolfberg is correct: streetcars should be more than a tourist attraction. The St. Charles Streetcar in New Orleans, at 9.5 miles long, is the busiest transit line in the city, with a heavy local resident ridership. Like New York's subways, it runs 24 hours a day. New York's 42nd St. line will most definitely be a viable route, serving major traffic generators like the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal, the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Grand Central Terminal. The line will attract mostly commuters, shoppers and those out to sample our nightlife.

"[The vote will] mean that New York will have the tourism attraction that the cable car has in San Francisco," said Fred Papert, President of the 42nd St. Development Corporation, in the New York Times the next day. The Development Corporation is a private non-profit group which has long campaigned for the new line. "It means there will be cleaner air in midtown Manhattan. It means new life for 42nd St."

The approval of the City Council marks the final step in the approval process. Later this year four separately assembled teams of companies that would lay the track, provide the cars and operate the system on a franchise basis will be formally approached to submit bids. Assuming a bidder is selected, construction could begin in 1995, with the line to open in 1997.

The light rail project is expected to cost $75 million, funded entirely by private investment. An additional $60 million will be paid for by federal, state and city funds for street refurbishing and replacement of water and sewer lines. The Council also endorsed spending $766,000 on preliminary engineering and to survey what is under the street now, which should be completed by November. This is a very important part of the plan , according to James Moore, project director and consulting engineer at the Development Corp., because it "will let everyone know how much will it cost to make any utility relocations, and who should pay for them, the city or the private light rail franchisee."

"If the project engineers say there is no problem then why not try out the proposed traffic pattern now, using buses. If businesses can proceed without revenue loss and if traffic does not make our streets an impenetrable mess then we can go forward with the trolley."
Seymour Taylor
New York, NY
(EDITOR: The concern of traffic diversion has been hashed out in countless meetings and hearings. The 42nd St. trolley will divert thousands of car and taxi users to transit in the midtown area. The only way to "demonstrate" a trolley is to install it. A bus remains a bus. Deliveries are vital, and they can still occur on 42nd St., and on the side streets, in the trolley plan.)

Also at the Assembly was Fred Papert, President of the 42nd St. Development Corp., who predicted that contruction of the two-mile long crosstown line will begin before the end of this year. The LRT plan has been endorsed by many civic and good government groups. NYC Transportation Commissioner Elliott Sander will advance the final details of the plan to the Mayor in the very near future. Four private ventures have been pre-qualified to make proposals for a farebox-based franchise to build and operate the line.

[EDITOR"S REPLY: Civic activist and Community Board 6 member Perry Luntz is on the right track when he calls for a drastic cutback in car traffic in the core of Manhattan to make the area more livable for residents and visitors. Such a cutback must be part of a comprehensive "carrot and stick" approach to wean motorists back to transit. But restricting car traffic first, as Perry suggests, just can't be done without some prospect of better transit. And waiting for subway extensions to be built, as important as they are, is not a quick or affordable strategy. Light rail offers a whole new approach to surface mobility that will make life a lot better for Manhattan's households, 80 percent of which do not own cars in any event.

This street is a primary connecting artery used not only by tourists and residents but also by office workers. Businesses abound, from the corporate headquarters of tobacco giant Philip Morris to single-room offices in the many smaller buildings along the way. The recent upswing in the market and a generous $10.75 million municipal tax break, is bringing publisher Conde Nast into a new $500 million tower planned by the Durst Organization for 42nd St. and Broadway. And between 11th and 12th Aves., twin 40-story residential towers planned by Silverstein Properties could soon go up.

But 42nd St.'s assets are compromised by the infamous traffic problems and poor air quality that plague midtown. Perhaps because it passes through three business improvement districts and three community boards, all with their own agendas, the street lacks a central organizing feature that could make it a world class corridor. Not that anyone hasn't tried. Back in 1969, the Regional Plan Association identified the corridor as an important urban design opportunity in its Second Regional Plan. Shortly after the Ford Foundation moved into its new headquarters at 42nd St. near 2nd Ave. in 1972, it funded a planning study to create a new image for the street, focusing on the tawdry block between 7th and 8th Avenues.

From the Drawing Board
But it was Fred Papert, a former ad-man and past President of the Municipal Art Society, who championed the idea that a trolley could help revitalize 42nd St. Papert led a campaign to rescue the west end of 42nd St. from fifty years of neglect and piecemeal development through the organization he chairs, the 42nd Street Development Corporation. Papert credits the trolley idea to his wife, who recalls how much her grandmother praised the "Broadway" trolley in her younger days.

The first official trolley proposal came from the late Robert F. Wagner, Jr., then head of the NYC Planning Commission, and Ross Sandler of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in their 1978 report, the so-called "Silver Bullet," that launched the rescue of MTA's neglected transit empire. The region's transit system had been left to fall apart as the city and the state struggled to recover from the economic downturn of the early 1970s, the worst since the Depression. But with so much catching up to do on the existing system, the City was in no mood to launch a new rail line, although it did initiate a planning study for the trolley.

One of the early findings of that study was that because an electric trolley would be more efficient than a diesel bus, and because ridership would be so concentrated due to the very busy nature of the 42nd St. route, a modern light rail system on 42nd St. would make a profit, something few other transit systems were capable of. By recovering its operating cost, and producing some rate of return on its investment, the 42nd St. trolley would not cost taxpayers a penny. Scarce public funds needed to repair the existing subway and commuter rail system would not be touched.

So the 42nd St. LRT was launched as a private franchise, hosted by the NYC Dept. Of Transportation, the agency responsible for managing street use. But this process has been anything but smooth sailing.

Mired in the Smog of Clean Air Politics
The key to success of the LRT project was to carve out a separate, car-free right of way out of 42nd St., allowing the trolley to bypass traffic backups. To gain formal City approval for this, the project had to prepare an environmental analysis. But in an ironic twist, just as detailed planning for the trolley began in earnest in 1980, what should have been a positive factor in advancing the trolley became a major source of delay.

NYC was at the beginning of an economic revival, led by the service industries. The demand for office space grew rapidly, and existing empty offices were quickly grabbed up. To make way for new and bigger buildings, zoning laws had to be changed. But because NYC had a serious air pollution problem, stringent environmental procedures had to be followed. One of the key pollution problems was the presence of carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations that badly exceeded Federal standards. CO was produced mostly by cars and trucks stuck in traffic, the poison gas pooling in the canyon-like streets of midtown Manhattan.

It would seem like converting car and truck lanes to LRT tracks on 42nd St. would be an obvious gain for the environment. But clean air politics got in the way. The rules prescribe an analysis based on a "worst case" scenario. For each new office building added in midtown, a small, but quantifiable, addition of car, track and taxi traffic was projected. This traffic was added to the existing flow, resulting in new "hot spots" -- locations where CO concentrations would violate Federal standards. Offsetting measures then had to be proposed -- modest changes in signal timing, or the addition of traffic control agents to prevent spillback into problem intersections. Of course, traffic doesn't behave this way. As traffic flow worsens some motorists and cab riders will switch to transit or make entirely different trips. To this day, the city lacks a comprehensive traffic analysis system that can deal with the shift in road space from car traffic to dedicated transit lanes or more pedestrian space.

Ironically, these traffic assumptions put the LRT into direct competition with new office tower development. The rules insisted that traffic displaced from the LRT lanes be relocated onto nearby streets, not converted into LRT riders or avoiding midtown altogether. But new office construction in the vicinity of the 42nd St. LRT was predicted to generate new vehicle trips competing for street space that was to be reserved for the trolley! Against the prospect of seductive new office buildings that would generate new construction jobs and economic benefits, the LRT project, with less direct benefits, dragged along.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock was the massive Times Square urban renewal project, launched in 1980. This city-state venture called for the acquisition of all property lining 42nd St. just west of Times Square. Unsavory businesses would be closed and the great, but decaying, theaters restored. By 1984, plans, developed behind closed doors, were revealed and rushed through city approval procedures. To pay for the renewal, four giant office towers, designed for upscale businesses, were to be constructed at 42nd St. and 7th Ave. But these towers were so out of scale and so pompous that the civic community united as one against them. Twenty lawsuits were filed, many challenging the validity of the environmental analysis. But then-Mayor Koch and then-Governor Cuomo refused to back down. Meanwhile, the LRT project was put on the back burner. By the time the legal challenges were beaten back, the economy had wilted. By 1990, office building construction had come to a halt. To save the project, Cuomo and Koch gave developers more time to meet financial obligations, and had public agencies advance money to begin renovating the theaters.

Another important development occurred in the early 1990s. Perhaps because of increased use of oxygenated gasoline and newer, less polluting cars, the city's carbon monoxide levels fell below federal standards defining them as a "problem," thereby lifting development restrictions. While the standards for ground-level ozone remain in federal violation, ozone is a widespread regional problem, not just a Manhattan problem.

Now that the air was "clean", the 42nd St. LRT could again be considered. A new City DOT environmental analysis unfortunately trotted out the same old worst-case scenario predicting traffic chaos on adjacent streets. Frightened, the community boards objected, but the plan was accepted by both the City Planning Commission and the City Council. Local residents' attempts to derail the trolley with a lawsuit were dismissed. The Mayor was now free to begin the procurement process.

But doubts remained at the City DOT. Badly tarred by recent mismanaged street rebuilding projects, cautious DOT engineers challenged the credibility of utility relocation costs of the LRT project. Because 42nd St. was in need of repair anyway, the city was expected to pay for fixing up half of the street, while the winning LRT company would do the other half. Wanting another opinion, the City hired the engineering giant Raytheon, the same company chosen to build NJ Transit's 20.5 mile Hudson-Bergen LRT project, just across the river. Early reports indicate that Raytheon has found the cost to be greater than expected. And so the Mayor continues to brood.

Learning Never Ends
The 42nd St. trolley is an important transportation investment that will produce significant benefits to travelers in midtown Manhattan. But it is also an important civic investment that will bring new vitality to Manhattan's Central Business district, helping all New Yorkers by preserving and attracting jobs and encouraging tourists to spend their dollars here, rather than in competing cities. Unfortunately, the project continues to be seen by some neighborhood groups as an eccentric business venture that will inconvenience motorists. Until the Committee for Better Transit began publishing the New York Streetcar News in 1994, there was no formal mechanism to represent the public interest in advocating for the trolley. Some traditional transit supporters have been hesitant, fearing that the project will divert funds from the basic transit system.

But perhaps the biggest problem stems from a lack of vision by our city leaders. Major improvements to our public transit system, even in difficult fiscal times, should be seen as a key to the City's progress. That was the working strategy employed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, one of Mayor Giuliani's heroes, back in the throes of the Depression. And the resources are there to pay for them. The revenue stream can come, for instance, from NYC motorists, whose driving is now heavily subsidized, directly and indirectly, by transit-riding residents.

Delayed by lawsuits and other obstacles raised by transit foes, the 42nd St. project has been on hold since June 1994. Fortunately, the consortia -- groups of companies -- seeking to design, build, operate and maintain the system all remain eager to bid on the contract once the FTA study is concluded. Several major midtown development plans, particularly on the far west side, are contingent upon better transit. The Mayor sees the 42nd St. trolley as the key to any development in the area, according to informed sources.

Opponents had argued that the trolley should not be built while other major midtown projects were under construction. Transit advocates maintain that the trolley is needed to provide access to exactly such projects without clogging 42nd St. and other midtown arteries for decades to come.

In a report prepared for the Times Sq. Business Improvement District (BID), John Shapiro, a principal in the Manhattan-based planning firm of Abeles Phillips Preiss & Shapiro, recommended that the BID support the 42nd St. Light Rail Transit Line. The report concluded that the trolley would improve the ambiance of the Times Sq. area, attract many new visitors, have little negative impact on service delivery, security or sanitation and would inconvenience few businesses.

Jim Zebarth, working for Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a well-regarded consulting firm, just did the engineering work for a new LRT line now being built for Sydney, Australia. This is the same company which carefully shepherded the Hudson-Bergen LRT in New Jersey through the difficult EIS process. Bill Allen is head of the Eastern Region of the U.S. for Sverdrup Corporation, which built St. Louis' highly successful Metrolink light rail system. Zebarth commented:
"We've learned quite a few things in Sydney and many other places which really impact the 42nd Street scenario." As City Hall reportedly remains interested in alternative forms of transportation, it seems something may develop in the fall. Stay tuned!
-- Carter Craft

The Mayor has transferred project management from the City Dept. of Transportation, which critics have faulted for its emphasis on automobiles over transit, to the Dept. of City Planning. The planning agency is seen as better equipped to deal with the conflicting development plans for West Midtown, which the trolley project would play a substantial role in.