Results tagged “analysis”

Just when you thought developer Bruce Ratner was about to turn the corner in the P.R. war over his proposed $800 million arena for the Nets in Brooklyn, along comes the city’s Independent Budget Office with a big bucket of ice water. A new analysis concludes that "over a 30-year period, the arena would cost the city nearly $40 million more in spending under current budget plans than it will generate in tax revenues (present value, 2009 dollars)." It also estimates that "for the developer, Forest City Ratner Companies, the mix of special government benefits result in total savings of $726 million."

Opinions remain bitterly divided on the merits of the new Broadway pedestrian plazas that opened on Memorial Day, and an official analysis of the pilot program's traffic impact won't be available any time soon. The Times has found that the DOT's previous timeline for studying the changes has been pushed back because the department still isn't finished hanging traffic signals, painting roads, building out the plazas and adding concrete barriers. Officials won't start measuring the program's effects until the middle of August and won't submit a final report until December, when Bloomberg will decide whether to make the changes permanent. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says, "When we have finished the project, we will begin collecting the data. You wouldn’t want to look at a Picasso that’s halfway done." But some critics are already trashing Sadik-Khan's masterpiece; cab driver Fhahidul Hossain tells the Times, "If you have one fare to go to the theater district, your day or night is finished. A 10-minute fare is going to take you an hour or so. It's a nightmare. In Manhattan, you have to move, man. You cannot do it like this. This is not Europe. This is New York City, for God's sake!" And don't even get Hossain started on those lawn chairs.

Third Avenue and Broadway in Manhattan are the deadliest streets for pedestrians in NYC, according to an analysis released today by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a policy watchdog group. The study found that between 2005 and 2007, ten pedestrians were killed by cars on Third Avenue and another ten died on Broadway. There were 128 pedestrians killed in all of Manhattan between 2005 and 2007, 147 killed on Brooklyn streets during the same time period, 53 in the Bronx and 26 on Staten Island.

“Crushed by crowds? Have to wait for more than one bus to go by? It’s not your imagination. Transit officials have never caught up to the waves of new bus riders,” says Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. His group is reporting that despite an increase in average weekday bus ridership of 22 percent over the past ten years (to 2.45 million), weekday service on city buses increased less than 15 percent.