MTA weighs Staten Island rail, bus options
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-ChiefMTA New York City Transit has unveiled a short list of three public transit alternatives for the North Shore rail line right-of-way, roughly paralleling the Kill Van Kull waterway. One of the three options is light rail transit, vocally supported by numerous political officials within New York’s “forgotten borough.”
Staten Island is not served by the city’s subway network, though MTA NYCT does provide Staten Island Railway service along the borough’s eastern shore, which links with Staten Island ferry service to and from Manhattan.
MTA NYCT culled from longer list of seven options and now is considering a $589 million light rail transit line between St. George and Arlington, with trains continuing to West Shore Plaza along South Avenue, in mixed traffic with road vehicles.
Two other options involve buses: a $357 million dedicated bus transit way, with eight stops between St. George and Arlington; and a #37 million package to improve existing North Shore bus service, including a new transit center.
Project planners submit that LRT operations on South Avenue presents problems, but note both a busway and LRT would offer considerable travel time savings over current bus service in the borough.
Among the public comments received to date was one criticism noting no connection to New Jersey Transit’s Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit (HBLRT) line. Borough officials routinely cite HBLRT as a desirable model with some, at times, calling for any Staten Island LRT line to be a physical bistate extension of HBLRT.
MTA NYCT said it expects to issue a recommendation of the locally preferred alternative by the end of the year. The North Shore Alternatives Analysis Study (NSAA) is a project sponsored by the MTA NYCT and funded by the Staten Island Borough President’s office.
