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A Freight Plan for the NYMTC Region The Plan would be incomplete if it did not recommend next steps for studying each of these important corridors in detail. All five experience high levels of congestion throughout the day. All five are the subject of major improvement studies. Most of these improvements would facilitate the movement of all vehicular traffic – including trucks, buses, and autos. The projects identified below would have particular significance for regional freight movement. Many are being independently evaluated through their own feasibility studies, MISs, and EISs. These studies will provide detailed quantitative analyses of the projects’ impacts on traffic congestion and air pollution. This section presents the impacts on traffic operations for some of these projects, determined by using NYMTC’s Best Practices Model, the regional travel demand model. Because a selected group of highway projects, including improvements to all of the corridors, was analyzed as part of a single model run, a comparative assessment of the improvements to each corridor was not conducted for this report. Nor could all projects be evaluated as part of the model run, as the definition of some of the projects changed during the course of the study or was insufficiently advanced to support a modeled analysis. A qualitative assessment is provided in these cases. Impacts other than direct transportation impacts also are qualitatively evaluated. These findings are not intended to be definitive, but rather to provide an order of magnitude sense of the potential impacts of the projects. Action 1 – The Northern Crossing Corridor – Conduct a Regional Analysis Description The Northern Crossing corridor is one of the most important freight and passenger corridors in the New York City region. The corridor extends from the George Washington Bridge in the west to the Throgs Neck Bridge in the east. It includes I-95 to the Bronx border with Westchester County, and extends south along the Major Deegan Expressway to the Triborough Bridge. The corridor includes at least four major bridges and numerous large north-south and east-west highways. Some of the region’s busiest transportation facilities, and some of the region’s worst traffic congestion, are found in the Northern Crossing corridor. The travel markets include trips to Manhattan, the Bronx, Long Island, Westchester County, and points further north in New England. The area spans two states, includes numerous counties, and contains facilities under the jurisdiction of at least four regional transportation agencies. This corridor also includes major rail freight facilities in the western and southern Bronx. The importance of the Northern Crossing corridor to regional freight movement was illustrated previously in Figures 3.3 and 3.4. This corridor, along with the Southern Crossing corridor described below, is critical to the cross-harbor movement of goods between the region and most of North America. Due to restrictions in the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the Northern and Southern Crossing corridors are the only two routes into the region available to full sized tractor-trailers and hazardous material carriers. Only the Northern Crossing permits today’s standard 53-foot trailers. While traffic from the north and through traffic seeking to circumvent the region can use the Tappan Zee Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 5-37
A Freight Plan for the NYMTC Region Bridge, this alternative route does not provide a direct routing for trucks entering the region from the south and west. The following transportation studies already underway in this corridor evaluate specific facilities and identify strategies for addressing problems on those facilities: • The Highbridge Interchange – NYSDOT is evaluating mid- and long-term improvements to the operations of this interchange, where the Major Deegan Expressway meets the Cross Bronx Expressway (CBE). Improvements to this interchange could have impacts on the George Washington Bridge, the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, the CBE and the Major Deegan Expressway. • The Bronx Arterial Needs Study – NYSDOT is evaluating the construction of a continuous system of connector roads and other arterial improvements in the vicinity of the Cross Bronx Expressway. • The Bruckner–Sheridan Interchange Study – NYSDOT is evaluating ways to improve the operation of these facilities, and in particular, to provide better and more direct truck access to the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx to improve freight movement and reduce community impacts. Both mid- and long-term improvements have been suggested for the Highbridge Interchange. In the mid term (three to 10 years), a series of ramp improvements would improve access to the Major Deegan Expressway. These improvements would likely attract additional volume to the George Washington Bridge without increasing capacity to the bridge access routes. In other words, this option would not benefit truck traffic on the Northern Crossing corridor. No reconstruction of the interchange is planned in NYSDOT’s current 12-year program. There are infrastructure improvements planned and a widening of the Alexander Hamilton Bridge as part of a deck replacement project. In the long term (more than 10 years), reconfiguration of the Highbridge Interchange could involve the construction of new northbound and southbound ramps from the Major Deegan Expressway. One possible approach is shown in Figure 5.8. As shown in Figure 5.9, improvements to the Cross Bronx Expressway would provide continuous eastbound and westbound service roads between Washington Bridge/ University Avenue and Hugh Grant circle using new and existing streets. It is assumed that the connector roads would serve general-purpose local traffic as well as bus rapid transit, diverting truck trips with local origins and destinations from the CBE mainline and East Tremont Avenue. Some sections may be reconfigured for buses only. An EIS is currently underway for the Bruckner-Sheridan Interchange Reconstruction and Direct Access to Hunts Point Peninsula from the expressway system project. This project would alleviate congestion on the Bruckner Expressway by relieving a bottleneck near the Bronx River that restricts this highway from six to four lanes. Also, this project would provide direct access from the expressway system to the Hunts Point Peninsula commercial/ industrial area, thus removing trucks from city streets. Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 5-38
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