Okay, I know Staten Island is not an independent city, but if we were, we’d be a bit bigger than Sacramento, California (#35) and a little smaller than Fresno (#34). Hell, the entire state Wyoming has just 82,000 more people then Staten Island. We'd be the biggest city in 23 of the fifty states.
This rock in NY Harbor that I’ve called home since 1967 gets a perpetually bad rap. Some of it is deserved. We have people here, just like in other parts of the country that continually vote against their own interests. Tons of civil servants that will vote for Republicans who want to kill their pensions and privatize everything. But the island also has an incredibly varied population. The school I teach at has over two dozen student clubs representing different ethnicities, races, nationalities, and religions….and they all get along.
So what is it about this place that people here always seem to be angry about something? If I had to look at one problem that is central to everything, it is transportation.
More below the great orange squiggle.
Unlike most of the city, there is no grid system of streets here. Staten Island’s roads go back to colonial days in many cases. They were horse trails that eventually were paved into real roads. There is no rhyme or reason to their path or layout. Development here over the last century or more just happened with little or no planning. The massive increase in population- more than doubling in the past 50 years- without any similar improvement in roads or mass transit makes transportation a mess around here.
Cars
Do you absolutely have to have a car on Staten Island? No, there are 20 local bus routes on the island and 21 express bus routes to Manhattan. So there are buses but as you’ll see, it isn’t an easy system to deal with.
Staten Island roads tend to be in miserable shape. From 100 degree weather in the summer, to the snow and freezing temps in the winter, the pothole is a major plague around here. The city repairs them in a way that just brings them back with the next storm. Our Borough President has been pestering the city DOT to experiment with new methods used in other places; but it’s like getting blood from a rock. He’ll get the demonstration, but the city takes forever to do anything after that. So our roads suck, and traffic can be a nightmare. Part of the traffic problem is truly unnecessary. The afternoon rush starts here around 2:00 when our junior high schools let out for the day. It gets worse at 3:00 with the elementary schools. Lots of kids have yellow school bus service, but those who don’t (they live less than a mile from their school) often get picked up by a parent. The traffic continues until about 6:30pm. A short trip from my house to the Staten Island Mall without traffic is about ten minutes. Between 3:00pm and 7:00pm on a school day- 20 minutes.
There are dozen of local intersections that need widening, and have the room to do it. In the meantime, one car trying to make a left turn, backs traffic up relentlessly. Just getting a turning arrow installed can take years because the city DOT just adds it to a long list.
Then there are the tolls. Nothing will unite islanders more than their hatred of the bridge tolls. The three bridges to NJ are $14.00 round trip if you pay by cash; $6.00 for islanders if they have an EZ Pass and use the bridges three or more times in a month. (Once or twice a month and it is $11.75.) The Verrazano Bridge is $15.00 cash round trip, and also $6.00 with an EZ Pass if you use the bridge three times or more a month.
Now, I have zero sympathy for a Staten Island who refuses to get and use an EZ Pass. However, the hatred of the toll goes deeper than the cost. Much of the money from the tolls goes elsewhere than these four bridges- especially VZ Bridge toll. Much of it helps subsidize the fares on buses and subways and the Metro North and LIRR commuter rails.
It is only in the last couple of years that Staten Island has started to see some real investment here from our toll money. The 80+ year old Goethals Bridge is being replaced; the Bayonne Bridge is being rebuilt (mostly because of its low height for new, huge cargo ships); and the Verrazano Bridge will be having is main deck replaced and a bus lane added to it.
But just the idea that you cannot drive off this island without paying just eats at everyone who lives here. It impacts when friends or relatives come here as well. Have a family in Brooklyn? It’ll cost them $11.00 to get here.
Mass Transit
I mentioned we have 20 local bus routes. Sounds great. If you look at the island bus map, it looked very well services. I suggest you try it. Most of our local buses during the day have 15 to 25 minute headways between buses. Traffic usually makes the wait even longer. The buses themselves are woefully underpowered. I’m all for saving fuel, but Staten Island is an island of hills and many of our buses just crawl up them to a point where you could probably walk faster. Outside of the 7:00am to 7:00pm weekday window, the buses are even worse- 45 minute headways. Many do not run at all overnight and some don’t run on weekends at all.
Express bus service to Manhattan- a $6.00 fare- can be okay. All but three of the 21 routes run only during rush hours. Two of the other three run just once every half hour during most the day and later in the evening. Only one route- serving just the eastern/south shore- runs 24 hours a day. Traffic of course, impacts their ability to stay on schedule, as does the absence of traffic. Many times on a Saturday or Sunday, my wife has missed her bus not because she was late, but the bus was as much as ten minutes early.
I’m sure by now; many are saying well there’s the ferry. Yes there is and it’s free. Of course you have to navigate that local bus system to get there, and then there is the wait. During rush hour, boats leave every 15 minutes, but most the day, its every 30 minutes. It is only in the last few months, that the city finally stopped the one hour headway between boats on weekend evenings. There were few things worse than getting to the ferry terminal in Manhattan to find you missed the boat by a minute and had a 60 minute wait for the next one.
We need not just more service on the ferry, but faster service. The 25 minute ride would be about seven minutes if there were a subway. But just a faster boat- get the ride to 15 to 17 minutes would be a vast improvement.
The Future
The MTA just released its next five year capital plan. Over $30 billion in spending for the subway, commuter rails, bus, bridges, and tunnels it operates. One item left out- what could be a major improvement for North Shore transport on Staten Island.
We have one train line- it goes from Tottenville to the St. George ferry terminal. The Staten Island Railway serves the south shore. In my 47 years here, I’ve been on it twice. I live mid island. The closest SIR station to my house is five miles from here. There used to be a North Shore line that went from the ferry along Arthur Kill and the Kill van Kull. Back in 1954 some asshole decided a bus would be better. The rail line closed and now the S40 bus runs pretty much the same route. A tortoise can out run that bus. Much of that old rail line still exists. There have been calls to reactivate it for years. A study was done that suggested it be turned into a “busway”- a dedicated road for the bus. It isn’t the greatest solution, but it would speed the trip up dramatically, and it's a relatively cheap option at about $350 million. Compare that to the more than a billion for a train.
That cost would be about 1.2% of that total capital plan. Guess what? It isn’t even mentioned in the plan. Maybe next time… the 2020-2025 plan. The Staten Island representative on the MTA Board screamed and yelled… our politicians of all parties did the same. The MTA shrugged its shoulders and walked away.
That sort of crap just exacerbates everything I've been writing about.
Solutions
Buses:
More service, smaller headways between buses.
Rework routes to serve more people.
More powerful vehicles for certain routes so you don’t creep at five miles an hour (I am NOT exaggerating.)
Smaller, more efficient vehicles for overnight and maybe weekend service.
Roads:
Widen and straighten major local roads and intersections where possible.
Adapt more reliable repair methods for the thousands of potholes that appear every year.
Ferry:
More frequent service and faster boats.
Rail:
Ideally, the North Shore rail line would be reactivated and go from the ferry terminal over the new Goethals Bridge (when complete in a few years) to the main Northeast Corridor tracks.
A street car system for Hylan Boulevard- the city’s longest street and by far the most trafficked on the island.
Bridge Tolls:
Adopt the Move NY proposal which would lower the VZ Bridge toll to $4.00, put tolls on the now free East River bridges to Manhattan and a congestion charge for passenger cars in Manhattan. It would raise over $1.5billion for the MTA to fund mass transit expansion.
Unfortunately, with just three city council representatives out of 51; three state assembly people and two state senators, our needs and wishes rarely get the hearing they should. Solve the transportation problems on Staten Island and not just would the quality of live here improve, but also I really think you’d see that perennial “chip on our shoulder” disappear.