Andrea Bernstein

(Photo (cc) by Flickr user KSGR)

WNYC's Economic Editor, Charlie Herman, has been examining where jobs could come from in this economy, and on the Takeaway today he quotes Klaus Kleinfeld, the head of Alcoa, as saying (about a minute and a half in):

"Suddenly the automakers are saying we have to make our cars more fuel efficient so they look for lightweighting  and they don't want to compromise safety, so then they look at what is the materials they should to choose and they chose aluminum."

Herman says Alcoa is expanding a factory, spending $300 million, and creating 300 jobs.

He says the cafe standards are a "requirement the government is putting on the auto industry that is having trickle down effect.  It will  also make US cars more competitive around the globe, where fuel efficient cars are more in demand."

Full audio here:

The pro-infrastructure spending group, Building America's Future, is running an ad in New Hampshire in advance of next month's primary arguing for more spending on "roads and bridges." BAF is calling it "a substantial television ad to run through December 21," adding that it's spending more than seven of the nine presidential candidates. The New Hampshire primary is January 8.

The ad features the familiar issue-based formula of husband and wife arguing ask they drive through potholed streets.

"We don't need to spend more money on roads and bridges," Husband argues. In about 5 seconds Wife is able to convince him of the error of his ways but assuring him "earmarks" wouldn't get the money.

The ad is acknowledgment by pro-infrastructure groups that they've done a poor job of winning the meta-discussion on infrastructure spending. Since Barack Obama was elected President, the once-sacrosanct bipartisan consensus that infrastructure spending was, in general, a good thing, has seriously frayed.

None of the Republican candidates for president has offered as-of-yet a detailed plan on paying for infrastructure, though they've all endorsed serious reductions in government spending in general.

BAF has also formed bipartisan coalitions in New Hampshire and South Carolina to campaign for infrastructure spending in advance of early primaries in those states.

Spokeswoman Laura Braden said in an email: "The goal of both coalitions is to educate policymakers and voters on the importance of infrastructure investment and reform. They're participating in a mix of grassroots and media activities including events, opinion-editorials and media interviews. It's important to note that the states were chosen because of the early presidential primaries, which is causing considerable debate on policy issues and priorities – we want infrastructure to be in that discussion."

BAF was founded by former governors Arnold Schwartzenegger and Ed Rendell, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

No Trains ran on a 14-mile segement of Port Jervis Line for three months after tropical storm Irene. (Photo: Andrea Bernstein)

A caller from Edison, NJ says she lost her job last month after service on the Port Jervis line was disrupted after Hurricane Irene. Listen to hear other effects climate change may have on the transit system and the New York region's livelihood.

Listen here.

Here's our previous story on transit and climate change, and one on how 2011's extreme weather is costing the Federal Highway Administration millions.

As the Port Jervis line reopens following significant damage by Tropical Storm Irene, Andrea Bernstein, director of the public radio Transportation Nation project and senior correspondent for WNYC, looks at how the transit system will cope with climate change.

Some 214 people have died in traffic accidents so far this year including pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and passengers, according to the NYPD.  That's compared to 256 deaths at this time last year.

In 2009, a record low 258 people died.  The total for all of 2010 was 269.

But Noah Budnick of the group Transportation Alternatives says that number is still way to high, saying it exceeds the number killed by guns.

"Like the other crime and public safety issues that the NYPD solves, traffic deaths and injuries are preventable. New Yorkers deserve more leadership than Ray Kelly’s acceptance of the status quo," Budnick said.

Transportation Alternatives held a protest Wednesday at NYC police headquarters.  The group has been particularly incensed by a recent incident in Williamsburg, where a driver left the scene after fatally colliding with Brooklyn resident Mathieu Lefevre.  Police did not bring charges, saying "that's why they call it an accident."  TA calls that "a cavalier attitude," towards enforcing traffic laws.

Budnick noted  Mayor Michael Bloomberg's private foundation has contributed some $125 million to reduce traffic deaths in third world countries.

But,NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says police have  issued 770,000 summons for moving violations this year, and that traffic accidents have declined by almost half over the last ten years in New York City.

In an email, Browne said:  "The  NYPD, which  has  3,700 uniformed and civilian personnel engaged in traffic safety and enforcement, more than any Police Department in the nation, has  issued over 770,000 summonses for  moving violations so far this year, and has made over 8,000 arrests for drunken driving. The department has seized 1,363 vehicles in connection with DWI and other offenses. Over 21,000 vehicles have been seized since the program began in  1999. We regularly stop and summons drivers  for unsafe, accident-related  practices such as use of a hand-held phones while driving."

Browne has not yet responded to an email request for more details in its summons.  But as Transportation Nation's Alex Goldmark has reported from an examination of earlier data released by the NYPD, this year the department issued more tickets for tinted windows than speeding.

The city is on track to have the lowest number of traffic fatalities in a century. But cycling advocates say the NYPD can crackdown even harder.

Grand Central Terminal (NY MTA photo)

(New York, NY - WNYC) Grand Central Terminal fills up during holiday season -- but what do you really know this iconic public space?  WNYC's Stephen Nessen took a behind-the-scenes tour. Now you can find out details about the iconic opal clock in the center of the terminal, take a look FDR secret train car and peek inside the control room of the train station where a train arrives every minute.

Director of the Transportation Nation project and senior correspondent for WNYC, Andrea Bernstein talks about Harlem's bike lanes.

The Port Jervis commuter line, cleaved in two by raging floodwaters roiled by Tropical Storm Irene, reopens today.  The washout of 14 miles of track was the most severe damage sustained by a transit agency in modern history.

Scientists and government officials say climate change will bring more frequent weather events like Irene, and without preventative action, similar washouts could become more commonplace.  (Full story here.)

For the past three months, passengers traveling to Rockland and Orange counties and points north and west of New York City have endured a frustrating commute.

During Tropical Storm Irene, a raging Ramapo River, otherwise little more than a creek in areas, surged to buckle the tracks, wash out the support ballast, and undermine railroad bridges.  Fred Chidester, the manager of the line for Metro North, called it the worst damage he's "seen in 28 years of working for the MTA."

The 14 mile stretch Irene undermined runs from the southernmost tip of Rockland County to Harriman, cleaving the 90-mile line in two.  Passengers commuting to New York have had to, in some cases, take a train, then a bus, then a train, adding up to an hour to already long commutes.

About 2600 passengers ride the Port Jervis line each day.

The MTA originally projected the line would be out until the new year, but about a month ago said trains could run down the entire track beginning November 29.  Trains will be somewhat slower and run less frequently than before Irene, while track workers complete their work.

The repair work is projected to cost the cash-strapped transit authority $40 million.

The Port Jervis commuter line, cleaved in two by raging floodwaters roiled by Tropical Storm Irene, reopens Monday.  The August storm washed out 14 miles of track, and was the most severe damage sustained by a transit agency in modern history.

"If and when a strike should happen we're going to do everything possible to help parents who rely on school buses to get their children to school safely," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg said the MTA is ready to issue students round-trip MetroCards for each day of the potential strike and parents can request them to accompany young or special needs students to and from school.

It was unclear when or if the union would strike.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the Department of Education has prepared "for the worst," and alerted parents in an email Friday that they should prepare for a "strong possibility of an immediate system-wide strike."

"The union's threat to strike and leave 152,000 students and their families in the lurch is nothing short of shameful," Walcott said.

The strike threat by drivers with Local 11-81 came as a response to the Department of Education's bid for new yellow bus contracts.

The union wants the bid to include a measure that guarantees workers their seniority rights if their current employers do not win the new bid.

The DOE called the potential strike illegal. The union has not responded for comment.

As Todd reported yesterday, Congress sent $18 billion in spending for the Department of Transportation to President Obama for a signature Thursday, boosting funds overall — but zeroing out high speed rail.

In a tersely worded statement, the White House said today:

"On Friday, November 18, 2011, the President signed into law_:

H.R. 2112, the "Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012," provides FY 2012 full-year appropriations through September 30, 2012, for the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services', Food and Drug Administration, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Transportation; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and other small agencies.  In addition, it provides for continuing FY 2012 appropriations through December 16, 2011, for the remaining projects and activities of the Federal Government."

From Todd's post yesterday:

"But the big loser was high-speed rail. Republicans succeeded in their mission to zero out funding for the Obama Administration favorite. Senate Democrats had tried to include a $100 million “placeholder” to keep at least a bit of cash flowing, but it was removed during House-Senate negotiations."

Was it just ten months ago that the President was promising to connect 80 percent of Americans to High Speed Rail by 2036?

When Tropical Storm Irene struck New York City, many residents were relieved that the damage from the storm that threatened to deluge low-lying areas wasn’t far worse.

With Sea Level Rise, Subways Flood in 40 Minutes During Intense Storms (Map Courtesy LDEO & Civil Engineering, Columbia University)

On the Sunday after Tropical Storm Irene blasted through the five boroughs of New York City, the city exhaled. Huge swaths of Manhattan hadn’t flooded, high winds hadn’t caused widespread damage. Perhaps no one was as relieved as then-MTA CEO Jay Walder, who had just taken the unprecedented step of shutting down the entire transit system.

“The worst fear that we had, which was that the under-river tunnels on the East River would flood with salt water, were not realized. We certainly dodged something there,” Walder said at a post-Irene briefing with city officials.

Listen to the audio:

If this sounds like dystopian fantasy, consider this: the Federal Transit Administration is now advising transit agencies to start adapting to climate change. “Climate change impacts are occurring now and will increase in the future,” reads the first line of an FTA report, Flooded Lines and Buckled Rails: Public Transportation and Climate Change Adaptation, released in August. “Aggressive action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will lower the severity of climate change impacts. Yet the amount of long-lived emissions already in the atmosphere means that a significant level of climate change is inevitable.”

“We have seen significant extreme weather conditions,” says Deputy FTA Administrator Therese MacMillan in an interview in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Washington, DC headquarters. “The patterns are pretty indisputable. The hundred-year floods are occurring every 20 to ten years. The hurricane intensities are repeating themselves and being very common. The extreme winter effects that we’re seeing in the Northeast are clearly in evidence. We need to deal with the fact that these extreme weather conditions are impacting our already stressed transit infrastructure.”

She continues: "To not address it would be a relatively naïve response to the fact that there are millions of dollars on the ground that, as responsible stewards of the taxpayers money, we need to do the best job we can to deal with them. Whatever arguments folks want to have about the sources of the impacts, we’re seeing impacts.”

And with Irene, according to Columbia University professor Klaus Jacob, one of the nation’s foremost experts on transit and climate change, the city came perilously close to seeing just the kind of flooding that the FTA wants transit systems to protect against.

The price tag for that protection, Jacob says, could be as much as $15 billion -- at a time when the MTA is already $10 billion short in funding its current capital plan.

Klaus Jacob With His Model of Subway Flooding (Photo: Andrea Bernstein)

As it happens, one part of the system saw exactly what the FTA report warned of during Irene. About 35 miles  north of the city, on the Port Jervis line, the MTA saw what the line manager, Fred Chidester, describes this way: “In over 28 and a half years I have not ever seen anything to this magnitude on any of our lines.  And the type of damage that was done is just unthinkable.”

Fourteen miles of the Port Jervis line were washed away during Irene. The Ramapo River, which is usually little more than a creek in some areas, was already swollen by a month of unusually heavy rains even before Irene hit, causing it to transform itself like some water-infused Incredible Hulk.

Chidester took me on a tour of the line, where workers are now furiously trying to get the tracks up and running by the end of the month. He showed me where the river had carried boulders, larger in diameter than a full-grown man, from under the tracks to a location 50 feet away. “Both tracks were hanging in the air,” Chidester recounts, “and the whole area underneath them for about 15 feet in depth was totally washed out.”

An MTA video taken just days after the flooding show tracks twisted as easily as pieces of chewing gum, mangled into undulating waves. “That water could do this,” Chidester tells me, his voice trailing off into silence as he shakes his head.

The tracks of the Port Jervis line, following Tropical Storm Irene (image courtesy of NY MTA)

The Port Jervis line serves about 2,600 people a day. That’s tiny compared to the 5.2 million who ride the subway, but for those 2,600, the commute has been maddening. Those who ride the line are already super-commuters, with commutes easily two or even two-and-a-half hours. Even when it’s running properly, to get to or from Manhattan, riders have to switch in Secaucus or Hoboken. The line then travels through northern New Jersey to Port Jervis on the Delaware River, about 90 miles upstate, making a hook at the end.

After Irene, the line was cleaved in two.  Right where it crosses into New York and up to Harriman, the tracks have been unusable..The MTA provides buses, but the switch from the train to the bus causes both delays and anxiety. Jen Weisenberg’s commute now takes almost three hours. “I was hysterical crying. I was cursing my boyfriend out. I was asking why did I move here.”

Another view of the tracks of the Port Jervis line (image courtesy of NY MTA)

But the outage isn’t just inconvenient. The MTA invoked emergency powers to repair the Port Jervis line, at a cost of $50 million -- money it surely doesn’t have. A year and a half ago, to save money, the MTA cut some far-cheaper bus lines because its budget has been so stressed. But not fixing the line, for the MTA, is unthinkable.

Adding to the costs are a set of preparations to mitigate or prevent future flood damage. Chidester shows me where special culverts have been built under the tracks to absorb the force of the water. The ballasts are being shored up.

Metro North's Fred Chidester Shows New Drainage Pipes Under the Port Jervis Line (photo: Andrea Bernstein)

It’s hard to figure out how much extra that’s costing, because neither the MTA nor any railroad operator has experience this kind of washout in modern history. But, as Chidester says, “there’s no choice. I work for a railroad. I want to see trains running. I want to make sure they’re running right in the way they are advertised.”

Chidester says he’s no climate scientist. After trying to keep the line running through the worst snow season on record last year, and this October’s early storm, Chidester says he’s not sure about global warming. But the MTA is.

Projjal Dutta was hired by the MTA about five years ago to “green” its operations. But Dutta started just after a “freak” storm shut down the subway during rush hour in August, 2007, and his job morphed into something else: developing the MTA’s “climate adaptation” response. Making sure that the authority’s commuter rails can better withstand intense storms is part of that effort.

The MTA's Climate Adaptation Specialist, Projjal Dutta

But a lot of what Dutta does is focused on keeping water out of the subways. He takes me down to a subway vent in lower Manhattan. Most subway vents are flush with the sidewalk, like those “made most famous by Marilyn Monroe,” Dutta says.

When storm run-off rushes down city streets, it can run right down those storm drains into the subways. “With climate change and frequent flooding events and ever-higher water marks, their old levels were just not enough.” So the MTA has raised them about six inches, so floodwater will flow around them and into the storm drains -- not the subways.

Raising Subway Vents Prevent Subway Flooding During Storms (Photo: Andrea Bernstein)

There are other things the MTA is doing: platforms on the brand-new Second Avenue Subway and Number 7 lines will be “air tempered.” This century, stations will be hotter.

“We have to get that heat out,” Dutta says. “This is not for something as superficial as personal comfort, there’s lots of electronics that a train carries. We had a lot of heat related problems, so we’ve had to introduce cooling into areas that did not hitherto require heating.”

Dutta speaks matter-of-factly, but his words carry a punch. “Our core mission is to provide trains, buses, and subways.” Climate change adaptation, he says “takes something away from that core mission. If you did not need the air tempering, you could have built another station.”

He continues: “If there were more public transportation there would be less of this problem. It is ironic (that) in order to fight this greenhouse gas problem, resources have to be diverted from the regular running of a system. That’s a real tragedy.”

But perhaps not as tragic as having the entire system flooded, an eventuality that Columbia’s Klaus Jacob says is real. Jacob has worked with the MTA to model what would happen if you couple sea level rises – the FTA says to expect four feet by the end of this century – with intense storms like Irene. In forty minutes, Jacob says, all the East River Tunnels would be underwater. Jacob says he took those results to the MTA, and asked, if that happened, how long would it take to restore the flooded subway to a degree of functionality?

“And there was a big silence in the room because the system is so old. Many of the items that would be damaged by the intrusion of the saltwater into the system could not recover quickly.  You have to take them apart. You have to clean them from salt, dry them, reassemble them, test them and cross your fingers that they work."

In a best-case scenario, Jacob calculated that it would take 29 days to get the subway working again. But in the meantime, a halted subway would almost halt the city’s economy, which, he says produces $4 billion a day in economic activity.

The thing is, Jacob says, the city came within a foot of that happening during Irene. Because the astronomical tides were so high, and the storm so intense, the storm surge mimicked a future where the sea is much higher than it is now. During Irene, Jacob says, the storm surge was 3.6 feet. “Had it been not 3.6 feet but 4.6, we would have been in deep trouble.”

Manhattan Flood Zones Under 4-Foot Sea Level Rise (Map Courtesy LDEO & Civil Engineering, Columbia University)

Remember what Jay Walder said at that Sunday afternoon briefing?

“The worst fear that we had, which was that the under river tunnels on the East River would flood with salt water, were not realized. We certainly dodged something there,” Walder said.

This time.

As for the Port Jervis line, after $50 million in emergency repairs, repaired tracks are expected to be open by months’ end.

This in from the US DOT on its "TIGGER" grants (not to be confused with Tiger.)  We'll have more after the DOT's media call, but for now, here's the US DOT release:
WASHINGTON – U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced that 46 innovative transit projects chosen for their capacity to help cut the nation’s dependence on oil and create a marketplace for 21st century ‘green’ jobs will share $112 million in funding from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).

“These grants will put thousands of Americans back to work building sustainable, energy-efficient transit vehicles and facilities across the country,” said Secretary LaHood. “The Obama Administration is committed to investing in the cutting-edge transportation projects that will keep our economy moving forward.”

Projects were selected through the FTA’s competitive Fiscal Year 2011 Sustainability Initiative, which includes funding from two FTA programs: the Clean Fuels Grant Program and the TIGGER III (Transit Investment in Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction) Grant Program.

Examples of key projects receiving federal funds include:

•    South Florida Regional Transportation Authority’s Tri-Rail project will receive approximately $5.7 million from the TIGGER III Program to showcase Tri-Rail’s first green, LEED certified, sustainable stations, which will generate more than 100 percent of the station’s energy demand through solar panels.  The project will send excess energy back to the power grid and store daytime energy for nighttime lighting of the station, parking area, and other parts of the facility.

•    The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) will receive two  grants, one for $5 million to replace diesel buses with hybrid buses that will reduce fuel costs and save money, and another for $1.4 million to install a “wayside energy storage system” on the Market-Frankford rail line, consisting of a battery that stores energy generated by braking trains. The stored electrical power can then be used later whenever energy is needed.

•    The Connecticut Department of Transportation will receive $5 million to purchase a stationary fuel cell for CTTransit’s New Haven Division Bus maintenance facility. The fuel cell will provide up to 3.3 million kilowatt-hours per year, or aproximately 59 percent of the facility's annual electric use.

Clean Fuels Grant recipients were awarded competitively based on the project’s ability to help communities achieve or maintain the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone and carbon monoxide while supporting emerging clean fuel and advanced propulsion technologies for transit buses.

TIGGER III grants were competitively awarded based on the ability of projects to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions while providing a return on the investment.  Since 2009, the TIGGER program has invested in numerous innovative transit projects that have brought to market advanced fuel-cell and hydrogen-powered buses and allow for the development of sustainable transportation stations.

“The Federal Transit Administration is tapping into American innovation and ingenuity to develop and build leading edge energy efficient transportation technologies,” said FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff.  “These continued investments help combat the pain commuters feel at the gas pump and curb the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that pollute the air we breathe.”

The Federal Transit Administration reviewed 266 project applications for both grant programs representing more than $1 billion in funding requests from transit providers across the country. A full list of successful proposals can be found here.

Cyclists at Occupy Wall Street protest on Canal Street (photo by Andrea Bernstein)

A little after one in the morning in the morning, musician Roger Manning got a text message: police were removing protesters from Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street had been going on 24/7 for the last two months. With a friend, Rachel Schneider, Manning grabbed his bike and rode from his lower Manhattan apartment to Zuccotti Park.

“There were a lot of bikes,” Manning said later that morning, after protesters had migrated over to a park at Canal Street and 6^th Avenue, about a mile from Zuccotti Park. “They were swarming and circling around because it’s mobile you can get in and out and around.”

Kayla Paulino also rode her bike down -- but from the South Bronx, a considerably longer distance. She said her bike enabled her to zip around police barricades, and get into the encampment before she and the rest of the protesters were cleared out.

Manning said he ran into people from Bushwick and other parts of Brooklyn who’d also cycled over.  “What else would you do in the middle of the night,” he said, “wait on a subway platform?” Besides, he says “there were rumors the subway system was skipping stops.” (The MTA says service was not impacted.)

“I didn’t know how to get a cab in Bushwick in the middle of the night,” protester Ben T. told The Takeaway’s Ben Johnson early this morning.  He also rode his bike in.

Bikes also became a way for scattered protesters to communicate with each other, said TN's own Alex Goldmark, who was reporting on the protest most of the night. “The most consistent and reliable news service were protesters on bikes who would ride around spreading word of which gathering spots had the most people and what the consensus plan was at each one,” Goldmark sent us in an early morning dispatch.

A common scene in lower Manhattan Tuesday morning, as Occupy Wall Street protesters were removed from Zuccotti Park (photo by Alex Goldmark)

“New arrivals by bike would call for a ‘mic check,’” he continued, “the method protesters use to speak to large groups without a microphone where other members of the crowd repeat the speaker's words to amplify it. The bike news messengers were always quick to speak and share what they knew, and usually got instant precedence to talk. They always started by saying their name, and where they came from.”

As New Yorkers began to wake up, others joined protesters as they made their way through Manhattan. “I typically commute by subway but the bike was a more flexible option today,” said Bushwick-based web developer Dan Phiffer, who rode in this morning with his wife, Ellie Irons, an artist. “When I heard they had evacuated the park by the time I came down to where I thought they’d be, they’d be somewhere else. I used Twitter to map out where to go and I watched the helicopters, the bike was a way better option than anything else.”

In fact, many cyclists could be seen this morning weaving their way through truck traffic on Canal Street, periodically pulling over to consult their smartphones.

The  NY MTA will be temporarily closing some subway lines from 10 p.m. to 5  a.m. on consecutive weekday nights beginning in January.  The move represents a break for the transit agency, which has otherwise tried to do work while trains are running, or on weekends. The transit agency is billing the closures as "a faster, less disruptive way to do subway work."

The MTA also plans to shut some track segments 24/7  for up to 16 days.

First up for closure is the Lexington Avenue line. The 4, 5, and 6 trains won't run overnight between Grand Central Station and Atlantic Avenue the week of January 9th, 2012. Other lines slated for weeknight closures include the Eighth Avenue Line (A, C, and E), the Seventh Avenue line (1, 2 and 3) and the Sixth Avenue Lines (B, D, F and M).

No other transit system in the nation, and few in the world, keep hours like New York's.  Most close overnight, when the majority of track work is done.

"Finding adequate time to perform track and signal work remains a daunting challenge while running a system that operates 24/7," the MTA said in a press release. "Inspecting, repairing and replacing tracks, signals, power supply and infrastructure is necessary work vital to the safety our customers and employees, often requiring a series of service suspensions or slowdowns in order to be performed."

Subway maintenance work, particularly on weekends, has driven riders to distraction of late, and caused some local politicians to get restive.

The MTA promises: "Performing work in this manner is expected to shorten the overall duration of projects, minimizing customer inconvenience, and maximizing worker safety."

In the city that never sleeps, the subways soon will.

NYC Transportation Commissioner Sadik-Khan, MTA Employee Demonstrate Off-Board Bus Payment (photo: Brian Zumhagen/WNYC)

(With Brian Zumhagen, WNYC) New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his transportation chief, Janette Sadik-Khan,  were on hand this morning on 34th Street to hail the launch another "Select Bus Service" route in New York City on what has notoriously been one of the slowest bus routes in the city -- the 34th Street crosstown.  "You can walk faster," Sadik-Khan was once fond of pointing out of the route which passes Macy's flagship store, Penn Station, and the Empire State Building.

The planned improvements, including off-board payment, and allowing boarding at the back door will no doubt improve bus speeds, as they've done on Select Bus Service routes in the Bronx and along First and Second Avenues.

But the changes a far cry from what Sadik-Khan once described as the city's first "true Bus Rapid Transit." As originally envisioned, the 34th street bus lines were supposed to be physically segregated from the car lanes, preventing delivery trucks, cabbies, and disoriented tourists from driving in the bus lanes, as they are known to do on select bus service lines along First and Second Avenues, despite warnings of $115 fines.

The earlier plans would have made the 34th St line  more like the bus lines that glide by rows of traffic in cities like Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, and Istanbul.

Bogota's Bus Rapid Transit Lanes, Right, Are Segregated from Car Lanes (photo: Andrea Bernstein)

But after an outcry from, among others, some large 34th St businesses, New York City's plans were scaled back.  "There were three different plans we submitted to community boards, and this is the one we selected," Sadik-Khan said today.

Sadik-Khan focused on  focused on the changes that will make the buses faster, including off-board payment.

Commuters now have to put their Metrocards in a machine at the bus stop and get a proof-of-payment receipt before they board, and they can enter the bus through the front or the back door.

Sadik-Khan says the new system will reduce delays, just as it has on the other two corridors where it's been introduced. "It's been a great success on First and Second Avenue, same thing on Fordham Road. So every time we've unveiled this, we've seen travel times get cut and ridership go up, so it's a great new model for bus service in New York City," she says.

Long Island commuter Amanda Kelaher takes the 34th Street crosstown bus from Penn Station to First Avenue every day. "It is really crowded, so it probably will help," she says. "You can get on in the back, they said, as opposed to going to the front, which is much easier, I guess. We'll see how it goes."

But some riders say they're not so happy about the changes. Beatrice Lebreton has taken the Select Bus Service line that's been running on First and Second Avenues since 2010, so she's familiar with the proof-of-payment system. "And every time I go get my ticket, I miss the bus," she says, erupting in laughter. "Just that extra step in the morning is not very convenient."

Once riders have their receipts, they need to hold on to them, because so-called "eagle teams" of transit police roam the SBS lines checking for proof-of-payment. Passengers who can't produce a receipt face a fine of $100.

Transportation Commissioner Sadik-Khan says more enforcement is on the way for 34th Street, with cameras coming to the corridor next year to make sure cars stay out of the bus lanes.

"We're very excited about the package of improvements, and we think it's going to be a much safer, smoother, faster ride for people on 34th Street," she says.

A $1.5 million overhaul of Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza has been completed. The Department of Transportation added more walkways, bike lanes, and street dividers in order to make what was once the most dangerous intersection of the city safer.