Transportation in New York City
Transportation in New York City
The transportation system of New York City is one of the most complex of any city in the United States. It is a system of superlatives, from the largest subway network in the world by track mileage to the longest suspension bridge in North America, from its iconic yellow cabs to 112,000 daily bicyclists, from the world’s first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel to landmark train stations and new multibillion-dollar airport terminals. New York has pioneered transportation like no other city in the United States; it even has an aerial tramway used to whisk commuters from Roosevelt Island into Manhattan in less than five minutes. Along with its size and variety, the city’s transport infrastructure is also beset with ongoing congestion, reliability, and funding challenges.
New York is distinguished from all other American cities by its use of public transportation. While nearly 90% of Americans drive to their jobs, public transit is the overwhelmingly dominant form of travel for New Yorkers. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, New York City is the only locality in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (the figure is even higher in Manhattan, over 75%; nationally, the rate is 8%). About one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation’s rail riders live in New York and its suburbs.
New York’s uniquely high rate of public transit use and its pedestrian-friendly character make it one of the most energy-efficient cities in the country. Gas consumption in New York City is at the rate where the national average was in the 1920s. The transit system’s efficiency is such that despite the New York metropolitan area’s ranking as one of the most populous in the world, hours of delay per person caused by traffic congestion is less than in far smaller cities like San Francisco.
This savings translates into reduced fuel costs and consumption as well as reduced costs from wasted labor productivity. Major additions to the city’s transport infrastructure have been stalled since the 1970s, however. Deferred maintanence of existing facilities hurt the reliability of trains and subways. Recently the city has reinvested billions of dollars in its subway system and proposed several multi-billion dollar projects intended to increase capacity.
In 2006, a study of the 50 largest U.S. cities by the environmental organization SustainLane identified New York as the city most able to endure an oil crisis with an extended gasoline price shock in the $3 to $8 dollar per gallon range.
Commuter culture
While car culture dominates in most American cities, mass transit has a defining influence on New York life. City politics, art, music and commerce are all affected. One important outcome, perhaps not obvious at first, is an unusually robust local newspaper industry. The readership of many New York dailies is comprised in large part by transit riders who read during their commutes. Underscoring this relationship were the temporary circulation declines seen during the 2005 New York City transit strike.
With nearly 4.5 million people riding the transit network each weekday, the system is also the city’s mobile public square, a major venue for commerce, entertainment and political activism. Campaigning at subway stations is a signature of New York politics. Where presidential candidates appear at small town diners during campaigns in other parts of the country, in New York candidates meet and greet voters at station entrances and bus stops.
The buskers, troubadours, musicians, jongleurs, entertainers and artists who make their livelihoods in the New York City subway are legendary. They come from Asia, Africa, South America and Europe. African drummers and opera singers, Tai Chi performers and jazz trios, Chinese erhu players and Harlem break dancing troupes; the artists plying their trade in the subways are countless. So plentiful, in fact, that in an effort to bring some order to heavily used stations transit authorities established the Music Under New York program, which sponsors more than 100 musicians and ensembles giving over 150 performances at 25 locations throughout the system each week.
Yet these performances account for a fraction of the acts appearing in the subway. New Yorkers relish the performances of their street musicians; in the momentary pauses between the impatient arrival and departure of subway trains, with the warm sounds of a Cuban guitarist wafting through a station, it is not uncommon to find a polyglot crowd of listeners - secretaries, bus boys, bankers, black, white, brown - united in rapt attention.
Many subway musicians go on to successful careers. The “Cajun cellist” Sean Grissom took his performance from the subways to Carnegie Hall, filling the sold-out house with his fans, and later became an opening act for David Bowie. Folk-rock singer Susan Cagle landed a major recording deal with Columbia Records after being noticed performing in subway stations. She recorded her album live at the Times Square and Grand Central subway stops.
As the subjects of song and venues for beauty pageants and guerrilla theater, the subways themselves are a staple of New York City’s cultural life. The transit system’s annual Miss Subways contest ran from 1941 to 1976 and again in 2004 (under the revised name “Ms Subways”). Past Ms Subways winners were often more unusual than the winners of traditional pageants like Miss America. The Miss Subways of 1960 was Eleanor Nash, an FBI clerk described by her poster that hung in subway cars as “young, beautiful and expert with a rifle.”
The 2004 Ms Subways winner, Caroline Sanchez-Bernat, was an actress who played a role in Sunday Brunch 4. The 35-minute piece of performance art was a full enactment of a Sunday brunch - including crisp white tablecloth, spinach salad appetizer and attentive waiter in black tuxedo - performed aboard a southbound A Train in 2000. With subway riders looking on, the actors chatted amiably about Christmas, exchanged gifts and signed for a package delivered by a UPS man who entered the scene at the West 34th Street stop.
Mass transit
By far the most significant mode of transportation in New York is mass transit. Only 6% of shopping trips by New Yorkers involve the use of a car.[9] The city’s public transportation network is the most extensive and among the oldest in North America. Responsibility for managing the various components of the system falls to several government agencies and private corporations. The largest and most important is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs all of New York City’s subways, buses, and commuter rail lines.
Subways
The New York City Subway is the largest subway system in the world when measured by track mileage (656 miles of mainline track), and the fifth largest when measured by annual ridership (1.4 billion passenger trips in 2004).
In 2002, an average of 4.5 million passengers used the subways every weekday. During one day in September 2005, 7.5 million daily riders set a record for ridership. Life in the city is so dependent on the subway that New York City is home to two of only three 24 hour subway systems in the world. The subway system connects all boroughs except Staten Island, which is served by the Staten Island Railway. The New York City Subway is operated by the MTA. New York is also served by the PATH subway system, which connects the borough of Manhattan to New Jersey.
Subway riders pay with a MetroCard, which is also used on buses, PATH trains, and in Fall 2006, Bee-Line buses to and from points in Westchester County. It is a thin, plastic card on which the customer electronically loads fares. In the future all New York-area transit systems will use a new, standardized “contactless” payment system that will use smart cards with computer chips that can be read by turnstiles without requiring passengers to swipe cards.
Buses
In addition to subways, city residents rely on roughly 248 bus lines run by the MTA that serve nearly all areas of the five boroughs. Because of the extensive mass transit system, many New Yorkers do not own a car or even have a driver’s license.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal, near Times Square, is the busiest bus station in the United States and the main gateway for interstate buses into Manhattan. The terminal serves both commuter routes, mainly operated by New Jersey Transit, and national routes operated by companies such as Greyhound and Peter Pan. The terminal, with direct intermodal links to 12 subway lines, is used by 200,000 people on an average weekday. About 7,200 buses arrive and depart the terminal each day. Over 3 billion passengers have used the building since it opened in 1950.
See also: MTA Bus, MTA New York City Transit buses, Long Island Bus, and Bee-Line Bus System
Ferries
The busiest ferry in the United States is the Staten Island Ferry, which annually carries over 19 million passengers on a 5.2 mile (8.4 km) run that takes approximately 25 minutes each way. Service is provided 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Each day approximately five boats transport almost 65,000 passengers during 104 boat trips. Over 33,000 trips are made annually. The fare was eliminated in 1997 and has remained free since then. The charge for vehicles is $3, though vehicles have not been allowed on the Ferry since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Bicycles, however, are allowed on the lower level for free. The ferry ride is a favorite of tourists to New York as it provides excellent views of the Lower Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty.
New York has several privately-run ferry services. Among the major companies are NY Waterway, which provides several lines running from New Jersey across the Hudson River to Manhattan, and New York Water Taxi, which runs lines connecting Brooklyn, Manhattan, and The Bronx.
Commuter rail
New York’s commuter rail system is the nation’s most extensive, with well over 250 stations and 20 rail lines serving more than 150 million commuters anually in the tri-state region. Commuter rail service from the suburbs is operated by two agencies. The MTA operates the Long Island Rail Road on Long Island and the Metro-North Railroad in New York state and Connecticut. New Jersey Transit operates the rail network on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. These rail systems converge at the two busiest rail stations in the United States, Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, both in Manhattan.
Pedestrians and bicycles
Utility cycling is an increasingly popular mode of transport in New York. Using data from the New York City Department of Transportation, Transportation Alternatives, a New York City bicycle advocacy group, estimated in 2004 that 112,000 city residents travel to work by bicycle each week day. The city Department of Transportation estimates there are an additional two in-line skaters for every cyclist in New York. The city has 119 miles of bike lanes and has in recent years expanded protected bike lanes on major thoroughfares and on bridges across the East River. More than 500 people annually work as bicycle rickshaw drivers, who in 2005 handled one million passengers.
Walk/bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city, according to the 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey; nationally the rate for metro regions is 8%. New Yorkers each walk an average of seven miles over the course of a day. The city’s “pedestrian culture” and famous street life, giving rise to art forms like break dancing and a thriving street food scene, are integral to the city’s cultural life.
Pedestrians compete with cars, taxis, trucks, bicycles and street vendors in the city’s densely trafficked streets. Jaywalking, considered by many to be a quintessential New York practice, is so common that former mayor Rudy Giuliani attempted to introduce harsh new anti-jaywalking legislation. The proposal was met with derision by many in the city, and jaywalking continues as before. Although a city law does prohibit jaywalking, it is rarely enforced and the fine is the price of a subway ride: $2.
Taxis
Over 12,000 taxis operate in New York City. Their distinctive yellow paint have made them New York icons. John D. Hertz started the Yellow Cab Company in 1915, which operated in a number of cities including New York. Hertz painted his cabs yellow after he read a University of Chicago study identifying yellow as the most visible color from long distances. In 1967 New York City passed a law requiring all “medallion taxis” to be painted yellow.
Taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). “Medallion taxis,” the familiar yellow cabs, are permitted to pick up passengers hailing them on the street. The TLC also regulates and licenses “car services” which are legally permitted to pick up only those customers who have called the car service’s dispatcher and requested a car. While medallion taxis in New York are always yellow, car service vehicles may be any color but yellow, and are usually black.
Medallion taxis are so named for the official medallion issued by the TLC and attached to a taxi’s hood. The medallion may be purchased from the City at infrequent auctions, or from another medallion owner. Because of their high prices, medallions (and most cabs) are owned by investment companies and are leased to drivers (”hacks”). Yellow cabs are often concentrated in the borough of Manhattan, but patrol throughout the five boroughs of New York City and may be hailed with a raised hand. Drivers are required to pick up the first or closest passenger they see, and may not refuse a fare anywhere within the five boroughs, Westchester and Nassau Counties, or to Newark International Airport. As of May 2005, fares begin at $2.50 ($3.00 after 8pm, and $3.50 during the peak weekday hours of 4-8pm) and increase based on the distance traveled and time spent in slow traffic.
241 million passengers rode in New York taxis in 1999. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, of the 42,000 cabbies in New York 82% are foreign born; 23% are from the Caribbean (the Dominican Republic and Haiti) and 20% from South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh).
The TLC also licenses livery cars, known locally as “car services”, which are legally permitted to pick up only those customers who have called the car service’s dispatcher and requested a car, although some do pick up hailing passengers as well. Car services that are independently owned and solicit passengers on the street are known in New York City lingo as “gypsy cabs”. They are often found in areas not routinely visited by regular cabs, such as northern Manhattan.
The average cab fare in 2000 was $6; over $1 billion in fares were paid that year in total.[16] In 2005 New York introduced incentives to replace its yellow cabs, most of which are heavy gasoline-powered American sedans, with efficient hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape Hybrid.
Semi-formal
Semi-formal transportation refers to “dollar vans” and “Chinese vans”. Semi-formal transportation can sometimes serve as a commute service and was, in fact, used extensively during 2005 New York City transit strike as a substitute for commute service.
Dollar vans (a misnomer as they charge over $1 now) serve West Indian neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens and tend to be staffed by West Indians themselves.
Chinese vans serve predominantly Chinese and other Asian populations of Brooklyn Chinatown, Manhattan Chinatown and Flushing Queens. Chinese van drivers are a mix of Cantonese and Mandarin speakers hailing originally from Hong Kong but now predominantly from the Chinese province of Fujian. With pick-up points at the eastern end of Canal Street in Manhattan, their routes terminate in door-to-door service in Brooklyn Chinatown and Flushing, Queens. Brooklyn Chinatown pick-up points for transfer to Manhattan are on 8th Avenue from 50th Street to 60th Street. Chinese vans are identifiable by small signs written in yellow ink on red signs with the number 168 written on them. The average Chinese van fare was $2 to $2.50 in 2005 with a temporary increase to $5 during the strike.
Aerial tramway
The only commuter aerial cable car in North America operates between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan. Built in 1976 to shuttle island residents to Midtown, the Roosevelt Island Tramway was originally intended to be temporary until the Roosevelt Island subway station opened. When the subway finally connected to Roosevelt Island in 1989, the tram was too popular to discontinue.
The Tramway was built by the Swiss company Vonroll and is operated by the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC). Each cable car has a capacity of 125 passengers. The tramway’s maximum height as it crosses the East River is 250 feet. Travel time from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan is just under five minutes and the fare is the same as a subway ride.
Service is currently suspended on the tramway after a service malfunction that required all passengers to be evacuated. On April 18, 2006, two trams were stuck over the East River for seven hours, trapping 69 people at about 5:22pm EDT because of mechanical problems. See Roosevelt Island Tramway for details on the incident and work required to bring the tramway back into operation.
Inter-city rail
Amtrak provides long-distance passenger rail connections from New York’s Penn Station to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; Upstate New York, New England and Montreal, Canada; and destinations in the South and Midwest. For trips of less than 500 miles, Amtrak is often cheaper and easier than air travel, and sometimes faster if travel to and from the airport and security check-in times are included. Amtrak’s high-speed Acela service from New York to Boston and Washington uses tilting technology and fast electric locomotives. This route, known as the Northeast Corridor, accounts for about half of Amtrak’s ridership and covers its operating, but not capital, costs.
Roads
Despite New York’s reliance on public transit, roads are a defining feature of the city. The street grid of Manhattan is arguably the most famous grid plan in history. Several of the city’s streets and avenues, like Broadway, Wall Street and Madison Avenue have become shorthand in the American vernacular for national industries located there (in the case of theater, finance, and advertising respectively).
Street grid
Formulated in the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, New York adopted a visionary proposal to develop Manhattan north of 14th Street with a regular street grid. The economic logic underlying the plan, which called for twelve numbered avenues running North and South, and 155 orthogonal cross streets, was that the grid’s regularity would provide an efficient means to develop new real estate property. Street Commissioner Simeon De Witt, one of the proposal’s designers, also advocated use of surveying principles and Cartesian linear perspective as a means to discipline the mind and encourage the masses to think rationally. Among the grid’s greatest critics was Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of Central Park, who argued that the grid valued economic utility above aesthetics.
Manhattan’s avenues run North and South, beginning with First Avenue on the East Side and spanning westward to Twelfth Avenue. Intersecting cross streets run East and West, starting with 1st Street downtown and spanning northward to 220th St at the northern tip of Manhattan. Rather than referring to specific areas, “Downtown” and “Uptown” are usually used as relative terms; one is heading North while going uptown, and South when going Downtown. The Upper East Side is separated from the Upper West Side by Central Park from 110th Street south to 59th Street, where Broadway becomes the divider. Manhattan’s blocks are in fact rectangles, not squares; the distance between avenues is roughly three times longer than the distance between streets.
New Yorkers commonly give addresses by the street and avenue number, as in “34th and 5th” for the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building’s nearest cross street is 34th St and 5th Ave. This is the customary way New Yorkers tell taxi drivers where they want want to go.
One of the city’s most famous thoroughfares, Broadway, is one of the longest urban streets in the world. It begins at the southern tip of Manhattan at the Battery and continues north approximately 150 miles (241 km) to Albany, New York. Other famous streets include Park Avenue, one of the city’s most prestigious and elegant residential boulevards, and Fifth Avenue, among the most famous high-end shopping districts in the world. 42nd Street, a major crosstown artery intersecting with Broadway at Times Square, is synonymous with New York’s cultural district and capital of American theater. The Grand Concourse, modeled on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, is one of the most notable streets in the Bronx.
Bridges and tunnels
Some of the most iconic bridges in the world are in New York City. Arguably the most influential bridge in American history, the gothic, steel-wire Brooklyn Bridge is one of the city’s most celebrated architectural wonders. It is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States and the largest in the world when it was completed. The Williamsburg Bridge and Manhattan Bridge are the two others in the triumverate of architecturally-significant East River crossings.
The Queensboro Bridge, which links Manhattan and Queens, is among the great cantilever bridges in the history of American bridge design and was immortalized by Simon and Garfunkel in their hit song, The 59th Street Bridge Song/Feelin’ Groovy. The borough of Staten Island was connected to Brooklyn in 1964 with the completion of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the nation’s longest suspension bridge. Its towers, which rise 650 feet above the water, are 4,260 feet apart. The bridge is so vast that the towers are 1 5/8 inches farther apart at their tops due to the curvature of the earth.
New York has historically been a pioneer in tunnel construction. The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles per day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Manhattan, is the world’s busiest vehicular tunnel. The Holland Tunnel, also under the Hudson River, was the first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel in the world and is considered a National Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The Lincoln and Holland tunnels were built instead of bridges to allow for the free passage of the large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson to Manhattan’s piers. Soon after the Holland Tunnel was opened in 1927, support grew for a tunnel under the East River to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn. When it was completed in 1940, the Queens Midtown Tunnel was the largest non-Federal project of its time. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it. In 1950, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel was opened to traffic. At 9,117 feet (2,779 meters), it is the longest underwater tunnel in North America.
Expressways and Parkways
A less favored alternative to commuting by rail and boat is the New York region’s outdated and congested expressway network, designed by Robert Moses. The city’s extensive network of parkways and expressways includes four primary Interstate Highways: I-78, I-80, I-87 (also known as the Major Deegan Expressway in the city and the New York State Thruway for points north) and I-95 (which is also the New Jersey Turnpike in that state until it crosses the Hudson River at the George Washington Bridge, where it becomes the Cross Bronx Expressway, then the Bruckner Expressway, and finally the New England Thruway before crossing into Connecticut and becoming the Connecticut Turnpike). I-287 serves as a partial beltway around the city, and there are numerous three-digit Interstates of I-78 and I-95.
Also designed by Robert Moses are a series of limited-access parkways. Originally designed to connect New York City to its more-rural suburbs, they have become heavily-used thoroughfares in their own right, despite the fact that they were designed from the outset to only carry cars. The FDR Drive and Harlem River Drive are two routes through Manhattan, the Bronx River Parkway and Hutchinson River Parkway link the Bronx to nearby Westchester County and its parkways, and the Grand Central Parkway and Belt Parkway provide similar functions for Long Island’s parkway system. A number of expressways got their start as parkways (including the Whitestone Expressway, the Prospect Expressway which links to Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, and the Gowanus Expressway).
Aviation
New York is served by three major airports, JFK International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and La Guardia Airport. 100 million travelers used New York’s airports in 2005 as the city surpassed Chicago to become the busiest air gateway in the nation.[17] JFK and Newark’s outbound international travel accounted for nearly a quarter of all U.S. travelers who went overseas in 2004.
With nearly 100 airlines operating regularly scheduled flights, JFK is the major entry point for international arrivals in the United States and is the largest international air freight gateway in the nation by value of shipments. It is located in Jamaica, Queens. La Guardia, also in Queens, handles domestic flights, while Newark, located in Newark, New Jersey, handles both international and domestic flights and rivals JFK in prominence. JFK and Newark are connected to Manhattan and the metropolitan region by AirTrain rail service. The three airports may not have enough capacity to meet future demand; in a March 2006 interview with New York Magazine, head of the Port Authority Anthony Coscia said the next project the Port Authority should work on is to consider a fourth major airport for the region.
New York is also served by two smaller airports in its suburban areas. MacArthur Airport on Long Island is about forty-five minutes east of New York, and is the New York airport of choice for Southwest Airlines. Westchester County Airport, located about thirty minutes north of New York in White Plains, is sometimes favored by New York travellers because it is significantly smaller and thus less busy than the three major airports.
Teterboro is New York’s primary general aviation airport. The first airport in the city was Floyd Bennett Field, now closed and part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.
Manhattan has three public heliports. The Downtown Manhattan Heliport, located at the eastern end of Wall Street on Pier 6, on the East River, was the first heliport in the United States to be certified for scheduled passenger helicopter service by the Federal Aviation Administration. The heliport is the normal landing spot for President George W. Bush on visits to New York. The soundproof terminal contains gift shops, administrative offices, a VIP lounge and general passenger waiting area, as well as X-ray and bomb-detection machines at a security checkpoint. U.S. Helicopter operates regularly scheduled flights to JFK Airport. The flights last less than 10 minutes and cost $139 each way. Two other terminals are the East 34th Street Heliport, which consists of a terminal building and fuel filling station and averages 20,000 take-offs and landings each year, and the West 30th Street Heliport. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the West 30th Street Heliport can see as much as three times the traffic of the Downtown Manhattan Heliport during peak travel periods. There is also seaplane service at the 23rd Street Skyport located on the East River
Seaports
The New York Harbor, with its natural advantages of deep water channels and protection from the Atlantic Ocean, has historically been one of the most important ports in the United States. Built in 1648 by Governor Peter Stuyvesant, the port gew rapidly with the introduction of steamships and especially with the completion in 1825 of the Erie Canal, which made New York the most important connection between Europe and the American heartland. By the mid 19th century, more passengers and products came through the Port of New York than all other harbors in the country combined. In 1944, at the height of World War II, the New York port was the busiest in world history.
The Port of New Jersey and New York is now the third busiest in the United States, behind Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. Each year, more than 25 million tons of oceanborne general cargo moves through New York, including 4.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containerized cargo. In 2005 more than 5,300 ships delivered goods to the port that went to 35% of the U.S. population. The port is experiencing rapid growth. Shipments increased nearly 12% in 2005. There are three cargo terminals and a passenger terminal on the New York City side of the harbor, including the Howland Hook Marine Terminal, Red Hook Container Terminal, Brooklyn Marine Terminal, and New York Cruise Terminal; three additional cargo terminals are on the New Jersey side.
The port of New York is also a major hub for passenger ships. More than half a million people depart annually from Manhattan’s cruise ship terminal on the Hudson River, accounting for five percent of the worldwide cruise industry and employing 21,000 residents in the city. The Queen Mary 2, the world’s largest passenger ship and one of the few traditional ocean liners still in service, was designed specifically to fit under the Verrazano Bridge, itself the longest suspension bridge in the United States. The Queen Mary 2 makes regular ports of call on her transatlantic runs from Southampton, England. The city is building a new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Originally focused on Brooklyn’s waterfront, especially at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, most container ship cargo operations have shifted to the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal on the other side of the bay. The terminal, operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the largest port complex on the East Coast. $114.54 billion of cargo passed through the Port of New York and New Jersey in 2004. The top five trading partners at the port are China, Italy, Germany, Brazil and India.
Water quality in the New York Harbor has improved dramatically since passage of the Clean Water Act and extensive harbor cleanup projects. A common misconception is that the Upper Bay is devoid of marine life. It actually supports a diverse population of marine species, including striped bass. New Yorkers regularly kayak and sail in the harbor, which has become a major recreational site for the city. Water quality problems persist in Long Island Sound, however.
Other infrastructure
There are several other major infrastructure systems that are critical to New York. One is the network of water tunnels that transfer drinking water from the vast protected watershed in the Adirondack Mountains to the city. Currently two water tunnels supply water. A third, officially named City Tunnel No. 3, has been under construction for several decades. The largest capital construction project in the United States, it will eventually span more than 60 miles and is expected to be complete in 2020. Operation of the new tunnel will allow repair and inspection of Tunnels No. 1 and 2 for the first time since their completion. The activated portion of Tunnel No. 3, constructed in bedrock 250 to 800 feet below the surface, runs 13 miles and begins at Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, New York. It extends across Central Park and eastward under the East River and Roosevelt Island into Astoria, Queens.
Future transportation projects
There are several proposals for expanding the New York City transit system that are in various stages of discussion, planning, or initial funding. Some of them would compete with others for available funding.
PATH World Trade Center station, whose construction began in late 2005, will replace the PATH terminal destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks with a new central terminal designed by Santiago Calatrava that will allow easy transfer between the PATH system, several subway lines and proposed new projects. It is expected to serve 250,000 travelers daily.
Fulton Street Transit Center, a $750 million project in Lower Manhattan that will improve access to and connections between 12 subway lines, PATH service and the World Trade Center site. Construction began in 2005 and will be finished in 2008.
Moynihan Station would expand Penn Station into the James Farley Post Office building across the street.
Second Avenue Subway, a new north-south line, first proposed in 1929, would run from 125th Street in Harlem to Hanover Square in lower Manhattan.
IRT Flushing Line Extension would extend the 7 service (Flushing line) west from its current terminus at Times Square, then south to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
East Side Access project would route some Long Island Railroad Trains to Grand Central Terminal instead of Penn Station. Since many, if not most, LIRR commuters work on the east side of Manhattan, many in walking distance of Grand Central, this proposal would save considerable travel time and reduce congestion at Penn Station and on subway lines connecting it with the east side. It would also greatly expand the hourly capacity of the LIRR system.
The Lower Manhattan-Jamaica/JFK Transportation Project would extend an existing Long Island Railroad line from Jamaica Station to downtown Brooklyn via a new 3-mile tunnel under the East River. AirTrain JFK-compatible cars would run along the new route, connecting John F. Kennedy International Airport and Jamaica with lower Manhattan.
Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel would add a second pair of railroad tracks under the Hudson River, connecting to an expanded Penn Station.
Although New York City does not have light rail as of 2005, there are plans to convert 42nd Street into a light rail transit mall which would be closed to all vehicles except emergency vehicles. The idea was previously planned in the early 1990s, and was approved by the City Council in 1994, but stalled due to lack of funds.
JFK Airport is undergoing a US$10.3 billion redevelopment, one of the largest airport reconstruction projects in the world. The airport recently opened a new Terminal One, Terminal Four and Terminal Eight. Construction has begun on a new Terminal Five. The remaining five terminals are slated for demolition or reconstruction.
Santiago Calatrava has also proposed an aerial gondola system linking Manhattan, Governors Island and Brooklyn as part of the city’s plans to develop the island.