TSTC Writes to NYS DOT on Failure of Cross-Westchester Collaboration

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is preparing a letter to NY State Transportation Commissioner John Egan to express its disappointment and disturbance over a recent letter Egan wrote to the Environmental Defense Fund and with statements made by Assistant Commissioner

Norman Schneider at an Oct 27th Westchester Mobility Advisory Committee (MAC) meeting on the NY DOT's failure to generate the collaborative planning process for the Cross-Westchester corridor requested by the Campaign last May. The Campaign letter recounts the history of

discussions held between Campaign representatives and top DOT officials in May and June: Tri-State notes clearly indicate that extensive preliminary discussions over collaborative ground rules, access to data and so forth were held. Recent communications from the DOT, on the other hand,

consist of assertions that its impression of the collaborative was to grant the Campaign enough time to come up with its own alternative plan, which presumably the DOT would have stapled on to the highway widening project's draft environmental impact statement (DEIS). Schneider

disingenuously invited the Campaign to comment on the DEIS, which the Campaign obviously would do in any case.

The letter also says the DOT's about-face on collaboration is troubling because of Egan's assertion last spring that Assembly Member Nolan's NYSTEA bill was unnecessary, since the DOT could carry out the bill's objectives administratively. NYSTEA would have mandated the type of least-cost

transportation corridor planning the Campaign was seeking to establish for the Cross-Westchester, yet the actions of Egan's DOT clearly demonstrate the level of interest it has in such an approach. The NY DOT's stance in this regard lags far behind that of the Port Authority and New Jersey DOT,

which are both engaged in good-faith collaborative corridor planning efforts with the Tri-State Campaign. The Cross-Westchester DEIS is due for release sometime after next week's election. Separately, Thruway Authority and Westchester DOT officials are said to be examining road pricing

measures as part of their contingency planning for the congestion that will be caused by upcoming Tappan Zee Bridge reconstruction work.