MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-06-17 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] this man is a complete fucking idiot
|
On 06/17/2016 01:48 PM, Ruben Safir wrote:
> Mayor Bill de Blasio is complete idiot...
>
> details to follow after Shabbos!
>
> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/transport/2015/03/de_blasio_s_ferry_plan_for_new_york_it_s_a_bad_idea_ferries_almost_always.html
>
>
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/transport/2015/03/de_blasio_s_ferry_plan_for_new_york_it_s_a_bad_idea_ferries_almost_always.html
Loading...
N.Y. / Region
De Blasio’s $325 Million Ferry Push: Rides to 5 Boroughs, at Subway Price
By PATRICK McGEEHANJUNE 15, 2016
Continue reading the main story
Share This Page
Photo
A pier at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which will eventually be the home port
for the expanded ferry service that the city is starting in 2017. Credit
Eric Thayer for The New York Times
With New York City’s subway trains jammed to capacity and more people
than ever pouring into neighborhoods outside Manhattan, Mayor Bill de
Blasio is embarking on an ambitious and expensive plan to create a fleet
of city-owned ferryboats that would crisscross the surrounding waterways
and connect all five boroughs.
At a cost of more than $325 million, Mr. de Blasio’s expansion of ferry
service would be one of the biggest bets any city in the world has made
on boats as vehicles for mass transit. The mayor predicts that the
ferries would carry 4.5 million passengers a year, about twice as many
riders as San Francisco’s ferry system handles.
Mr. de Blasio has promised New Yorkers that ferries will start running
on three new routes, serving South Brooklyn, and Astoria and the
Rockaways in Queens, by the end of June 2017, four months before he
would stand for re-election. Additional routes to the Lower East Side of
Manhattan and to Soundview in the Bronx will be added in 2018.
“Our aim is to make this thing as big as possible,” said Alicia Glen,
the city’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development. “No guts,
no glory.”
Photo
Mayor Bill de Blasio in March announcing that Hornblower Cruises and
Events, a San Francisco-based company, will operate the ferry service.
Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
Simply put, city officials believe that if New York is to continue
thriving, it must have a robust transportation network and that ferries
can play a critical role, just as they do in many waterfront cities
around the globe.
“We’re still living with the footprint of an early-19th-century transit
map that didn’t contemplate the kind of job growth we’re seeing along
the waterfront,” Ms. Glen said. The administration, she said, is trying
to create a transportation network for “the new New York.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
The city has already spent $6 million on four commuter boats in 2016 and
could own more than 30 in a few years. Mr. de Blasio also plans to spend
at least $85 million to create 13 additional landings for the ferries
and a home port for them at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
But the mayor has raised the stakes in ways few other places have by
pledging that a ferry ride would cost the same as subway fare, $2.75.
That is a departure from San Francisco; Sydney, Australia; and other
cities where extensive commuter-ferry systems have long operated. They
tend to charge more to ride ferries than buses or trains, and their
ferry fares are based on the length of the trip.
5 miles
BRONX
Planned ferry terminal
MANHATTAN
Soundview
E. 90th St.
Astoria
E. 62nd St.
Long Island City
E. 34th St.
Stuyvesant Cove
Existing ferry
terminal
Grand Ave.
QUEENS
Governors I.
Atlantic Ave.
Red Hook
Brooklyn Army Terminal
Bay Ridge
BROOKLYN
Staten
Island
Rockaway
By The New York Times
The one-fare plan fits with the liberal agenda of Mr. de Blasio, who has
championed “transit equity” for all New Yorkers. To fulfill the mayor’s
promise, the city will have to contribute a substantial operating
subsidy, a commitment that several of his predecessors were unwilling to
make.
Mr. de Blasio’s former rival for the mayor’s job, Christine C. Quinn,
applauded his embrace of ferries as a form of mass transit. “There’s a
little bit of a whimsical, historic notion of ferries; they seem to be a
lot more fun than other modes of transportation,” said Ms. Quinn, the
former City Council speaker. “You don’t want ferries to just be the fun,
fancy transport of people with money.”
Of course, New York’s waters were once clogged with ferries. In the
early 1900s, when there were few bridges and no car tunnels, as many as
147 boats carried people across the Hudson and East Rivers.
The only vestige of that era is the Staten Island Ferry, nine hulking
boats that make regularly scheduled point-to-point crossings of New York
Harbor. For routes from Brooklyn and Queens, city officials have largely
relied on private companies operating their own ferries to deliver
workers to Manhattan every weekday.
Photo
A design for a proposed Hornblower ferry. Credit Incat Crowther
City officials have been leaning on Hornblower Cruises and Events, the
San Francisco-based company they chose in March to operate the service,
to order the boats it will need. Hornblower, which runs cruises to the
Statue of Liberty, has settled on a design for 149-passenger boats and
is negotiating with a few boatyards around the country to build 18 of
them, at a cost of nearly $4 million each.
“One of the challenges is to stand up a new fleet,” said Terry MacRae,
Hornblower’s chief executive. “But it’s better than bringing a bunch of
widows and orphans together,” he said, alluding to the alternative of
rounding up a group of used boats.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Cameron Clark, who is overseeing the start of the ferry service for
Hornblower, said the 85-foot boats were designed by Incat Crowther, an
Australian company, to be fuel-efficient and spacious. The first of them
are scheduled to be completed early next year, he said.
“They will have all the 21st-century stuff,” Mr. Clark said, including
Wi-Fi and power outlets for laptop computers.
New York Today
Sign up to receive the latest on New York events, arts, sports, dining,
style and more, delivered to your inbox every morning.
Maria Torres-Springer, the president of the city’s Economic Development
Corporation, said Hornblower was chosen primarily for its experience in
starting ferry services around the country, as well as on the Canadian
side of Niagara Falls. The company, however, has limited experience with
helping commuters get to and from work every day, though city officials
said that did not weigh heavily against it.
The city’s choice of Hornblower stirred some controversy, including
warnings from another ferry operator, New York Water Taxi, that it would
go out of business after losing its bid for the city’s contract.
Billybey Ferry, a part of the New Jersey-based New York Waterway, has
been operating the subsidized East River Ferry service for the city
since 2011. That service will be integrated into the citywide system
after this year and will be operated by Hornblower at a reduced fare
equal to a MetroCard swipe, city officials said.
Paul Goodman, the chief executive of Billybey, said his company was
“disappointed to lose the bid.” But, he added, “We’re still big
believers in the expansion of ferry service and we hope that it’s a
success.”
Photo
Passengers packed into the L train station at Union Square in April.
City officials hope that expanded ferry service will relieve the
overburdened subway system. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Mr. de Blasio announced that the home port for the expanded service
would be a pier in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But that pier is so
dilapidated that it may not be rebuilt before 2018, Ms. Glen said. If
the city-owned service starts next summer, as scheduled, the home port
is likely to be in New Jersey at first, Ms. Glen said. The city’s ferry
system, however, will not serve New Jersey.
“Homeporting is a terrific benefit of the system,” Ms. Glen said, adding
that it would create jobs in Brooklyn and save on fuel costs. “If that
takes another nine months, that’s not the priority.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Hornblower will need nine boats to cover the three new routes, none of
which it has now.
Mike Anderson, former chief executive of Washington State Ferries, which
runs a large fleet of ferries in the Seattle area, said that to have
that many boats built would normally take a few years. But Hornblower
hopes to cut that schedule to one year by using three or more shipyards,
including two on the Gulf Coast, Mr. Clark said.
“That’s a bit of a heavy lift,” said Mr. Anderson, an executive with
KPFF Consulting Engineers who consulted with New York City on its
plan.“Everything has to go right and they need to get started pretty soon.”
City officials have made provisions for delays in the production of new
boats, allowing Hornblower to charter additional boats to get the
service started.
The city estimates that it will cost about $70 million to have 18
ferries built. Once they are done, the city plans to buy them from
Hornblower, which will operate them for six years, with a possibility of
renewing the contract for an additional five years.
Ms. Glen said the city was employing “good, smart economics” in deciding
to own the boats. “If, for some reason, Hornblower doesn’t perform,” she
said, the city would either find another operator or run the system
itself, as it does for the Staten Island Ferry. And, she added, “even if
the service weren’t to be that successful, the city will have hard
assets” that it could sell to recoup some of its investment.
Before the service begins, Ms. Torres-Springer hopes to find one or more
sponsors for it similar to the Citi Bike bike-sharing program. But, she
added, it would be premature to call the ferries Citi Boats.
Correction: June 16, 2016
An earlier version of a map with this article omitted a planned ferry
terminal on Roosevelt Island. The map also misidentified three terminals
in Manhattan: The third stop from the bottom, a planned stop, is Grand
Avenue, not Stuyvesant Cove; the planned stop above that is Stuyvesant
Cove, not East 34th Street; and the existing stop above that is East
34th Street.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
_______________________________________________
hangout mailing list
hangout-at-nylxs.com
http://www.nylxs.com/
|
|
