HOLIDAY HIATUS
The holidays are upon us. And while we busy ourselves this week with buying urban-themed gifts for loved ones, we are also planning to take a little extra time in the first days of the new year to do some Omnibus brainstorming, housecleaning, and party-planning. So we will be back in full force on January 9th, just in time to celebrate our third birthday, preview an exciting new line-up of features, forum posts and special projects for 2012, and invite you officially to our second annual benefit party, which will take place on February 28th. Mark your calendars! And don’t forget your pens, pencils or laptops while you’re enjoying some holiday downtime — the deadline for our Unfinished Grid essay competition is just a little over a month away!

Meanwhile, yuletide cheer is once again broadcasting itself on the built environment of New York. Beyond the many iconic Manhattan landmarks and events to choose from — the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, Big Apple Chorus performances by the South Street Seaport tree tonight and tomorrow, ice skating in Bryant Park, the New York Stock Exchange’s own tree — make some time to treat yourself to some of the most festive urban explorations the outer boroughs have to offer, starting with the famous lights of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.

YEAR IN REVIEW
Another staple of the holiday season is the reflection on the year coming to an end through best-of lists and year-in-review recaps, and the architectural and urban affairs press is no exception to this tradition. Over on The Atlantic Cities, Nate Berg lists his top ten examples of long-form urban journalism from the past year. On Grist, Greg Hanscom profiles the year’s major urban trends, from what the census tells us about younger Americans’ preference of cities over suburbs to how Occupy Wall Street might inform politicians in 2012. TIME magazine’s list of the top 10 green buildings of 2011 includes some uplifting examples such as the school in Greensburg, Kansas that was completely destroyed by a tornado in 2007 and rebuilt this year according to the highest sustainability standards. But when 2011 is remembered by future historians, it will be for the range of protest movements which ignited in cities across the world. The New Yorker‘s Elissa Curtis rounds up the year with commentary on twelve poignant images capturing “Twelve Months of Protest.”

A NEW TECH CAMPUS FOR ROOSEVELT ISLAND
On Monday, Mayor Bloomberg announced the winner of the city’s $100 million competition to build an applied sciences and technology campus on Roosevelt Island. After weeks of deliberation and negotiation, Cornell University and Technion Israel Institute of Technology were chosen to build an innovative network of research and lab facilities. The Bloomberg administration labeled this project as a “new land grant,” affirming their belief that this partnership will foster economic growth, develop the city’s research and development sector and attract high-technology entrepreneurship to the metropolitan area. Early projections argue that the Cornell campus will generate over $23 billion in economic activity in the next thirty years and will create over 20,000 jobs. The first phase of the new campus is expected to be constructed by 2017. Read more of the coverage at DNAinfo and Curbed.

STUDENTS TAKE ON PERFORMING ARTS AT GROUND ZERO
While the performing arts center at Ground Zero is seemingly indefinitely paused, students at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning took on the program as a studio problem this past semester. The challenges of the site, even if we ignore the budgetary and political constraints for a moment, are daunting. The students had to take into account the site’s emotional, as well as infrastructural, demands. And their scheme had to accommodate 100,000 square feet of program on 30,000 square feet of land. Check out The New York Times article and accompanying slideshow.

NEWSFLASH: NEW YORKERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THEIR TRANSIT
Google has released its annual year-end Zeitgeist report for 2011. While some of the results are less than surprising (Apple made it to the U.S. top ten twice with the iPhone 5 placing 6th and the iPad2 placing 10th) and some are a little unnerving (how did Ryan Dunn make it to 3rd?), they get more interesting when filtered by region. The top three searches for the New York region are (in descending rank order) MTA, NJ Transit and Hopstop. New Yorkers are seemingly obsessed with transit (as are we). Rounding out the top ten for NYC are the DMV, Con Edison, Hurricane Irene’s Path, the NYCDOE, EZ-Pass, the Brooklyn Public Library and, oddly, the Williamsburg bowling alley Brooklyn Bowl. Read more at Gothamist or explore this year’s Zeitgeist for yourself.

ElectriCity exhibition at the New York Transit Museum

ELECTRICITY: EMPOWERING NEW YORK’S RAILS
The New York Transit Museum has organized a fascinating exhibit that dives into an aspect of the city’s rail system that many of us take for granted: its energy supply. The third rail isn’t just a metaphor for sudden death, it’s part of a complex infrastructure that powers the subway and commuter trains. Designed by Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, the exhibition uses the powering of trains to explain the science of electricity more generally, from generation to distribution. The show is a great destination for kids, and just might inspire a new generation of young people to ask questions about where our energy comes from and to demand alternatives. ElectriCity: Powering New York’s Rails is on view at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn through December 2016. Read more of the coverage at The New York Times.

Macy's department store employee cleaning up piles of debris after the Christmas shopping rush. | via Gothamist

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING, CIRCA 1948
On a lighter note, if you think that the Christmas shopping rush is bad now, take comfort in the knowledge that it has never been good. This week, Gothamist has unearthed some 1948 photos documenting the shopping and its aftermath of the holiday rush at Macy’s.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Proposed Applied Science and Research Campus |

THE NEXT TECH CAPITAL: NYC
This past March, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) solicited a request for expressions of interest (RFEI) to global research institutions for ideas to establish a future “applied science and engineering research campus” somewhere in New York City. NYCEDC received 18 proposals from top schools that included designs on four recommended 40-acre sites, including the Navy Hospital Campus at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Goldwater Hospital Campus on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan, areas on Governors Island, Farm Colony on Staten Island and some privately owned sites. Stanford University unveiled a particularly interesting plan for an institute on Roosevelt Island, which, if constructed, could open in 2015. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser wrote on the topic for The New York Times, reflecting on whether or not an applied science center in New York City even makes sense. Read Glaeser’s piece here and see the full coverage of the Stanford proposal in The Architect’s Newspaper, here.

Proposed Fourth Avenue Zoning Area | Image via Department of City Planning

DCP PROPOSES ‘ENLIVENED’ FOURTH AVE
The New York Times’ City Room blog covered the Department of City Planning’s latest proposal to rezone the commercial strip of Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, between Atlantic Avenue and 24th Street (from Park Slope to Sunset Park), in a effort to ban new developments from constructing parking lots, apartments or any block-long stretches of unfriendly walls on the ground floor. The proposal eliminates streetside parking and residential use, requires “a minimum of 50 percent street wall transparency” on Fourth Avenue, from two feet above the sidewalk up to 12 feet, and calls for all owners to devote at least half the space for retail. After 1993, when it was partially rezoned for residential use, Fourth Avenue began a “visible and dramatic transformation from an auto-oriented, heavy commercial and industrial avenue, to one with a significant residential presence.” The proposal is currently in public review, and will be assessed by affected Community Boards for the next 60 days.

Gotham Greens Greenpoint Greenhouse | Image via Gotham Greens

GOTHAM GREENS: BK GREENHOUSE
Gotham Greens, Brooklyn’s first commercial greenhouse farm facility, will begin their first Greenpoint harvest this month! The hydroponic greenhouse will provide year-round production of vegetables and herbs soon to be sold at a select list of restaurants and retailers in NYC. This hyperlocal commercial facility is another in a string of urban farm businesses including Brooklyn Grange and Eagle Street Farm. Check out Gotham Greens’ site for updates on where you can buy their locally produced veggies in the near future.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: “THE BIKES HAVE WON!”
The Wall Street Journal published an optimistic piece on the city’s ongoing “war” over the value of bike lanes, bike culture and the future of biking in New York City. Author Jason Gay adeptly claims that biking is far from the cultural fringe of our city, asking readers: “Email your friends. Ask how many of them own bikes. Then ask how many of them own cars. If more of them say they own cars, look out the window. You live in Connecticut.” Gay believes the so-called bike war is actually an enormous mischaracterization by the media, and draws salient points about the outcome of the momentum built by bike advocates like Transportation Alternatives and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik Khan. “The bikes have won and it’s not a terrible thing.”

Amtrak Acela Train | Image via Amtrak

THE END OF AMTRAK?
Last week, Chairman of the House of Transportation and Infrastructure Committee John Mica proposed legislation to privatize Amtrak, denouncing the system’s forty-year track record as a “costly and wasteful Soviet-style operation.” The proposed Competition for Intercity Passenger Rail in America Act hopes to “end the Amtrak monopoly,” involving a competitive high-speed rail network between New York City, Washington, DC and Boston. First the act would transfer ownership of the railroad to the US Department of Transportation, after which the Transportation Secretary would seek bids from private companies “to design, build, operate and maintain intercity passenger rail service, including high-speed rail” in the Northeast Corridor. Check out Infrastructurist’s ongoing coverage of the issue, and see the Chairman’s press release on the proposed legislation here.

CITIES vs. SUBURBS
This week’s issue of The New Yorker includes “Get Out of Town,” a piece by Nicholas Lemann discussing the age-old city vs. suburbs debate that draws on several books to assess the factors behind a successful city. “In the United States right now, after a long run of ‘urban crisis’ (punctuated by periodic hopeful reports of revitalization), cities are viewed positively again,” he writes. Through Richard Florida’s The Great Reset, Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City, John D. Kasarda/Greg Lindsay’s Aerotropolis, Doug Saunders’ Arrival City, James S. Russell’s The Agile City and more, Lemann looks at the prevalence of celebrations of urban dynamics in current society and touches on questions still unanswered as we move into an increasingly urban world. Read an abstract of the article here, or pick up this week’s New Yorker on newsstands to read the complete piece.

Rendering of Interboro’s “Holding Pattern” | Image via PS1

TO DO: INTERBORO’S HOLDING PATTERN
This year’s PS1 summer courtyard installation is now open! “Holding Pattern” by the Brooklyn-based Interboro Partners will be on view through September 26 in Long Island City and will act as the environment for PS1′s Warm Up music/performance/sound/dance series every Saturday from July 2nd to September 3rd. As part of the installation, Interboro conducted a survey asking local businesses and organizations what objects they would like to have or most need that they don’t already have access to. Based on the results, the team constructed a set of simple but elegant objects, including foosball tables, lifeguard chairs and a rock climbing wall, all of which will be donated to the neighborhood organizations after the installation is taken down. The hope is that this process will strengthen the connection between PS1 and its surrounding community, a goal that inspired the physical form of Holding Pattern. The undulating plains of rope, taut from wall to wall, create a dialogue between the courtyard and the surrounding environment by integrating without obstructing. Find out more about “Holding Pattern” and the MoMA Ps1 Young Architects Program at ps1.org.

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The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Now that the Times Square pedestrian plazas are a permanent fixture, the Department of Transportation has selected a temporary installation for Broadway before the site gets a major makeover in 2012. Molly Dilworth, a Brooklyn-based artist known by many for her rooftop paintings, was chosen out of 150 entries for her proposal entitled “Cool Water, Hot Island,” set to be installed in mid-July. Based off of NASA’s infrared data of Manhattan, the project brings attention to the urban heat-island effect, while hopefully lessening the impact. By using cool blues and other lighter colors for the painted river, it will absorb less heat and reflect more light than typical pavement, making the plazas a more comfortable place for tourists and workers alike this summer.

Fast Trash! captured the curiosity of many Omnibus readers, but for those of you who missed our Roosevelt Island meet-up and never made it out to see the exhibition, you can at least get a taste of the history and operation of the pneumatic trash system in the video below:

Nature Abhors a Vacuum from greg whitmore on Vimeo.

We’ve heard about SCAPE studio’s plans for oyster flupsies along the Gowanus as one of the Rising Currents proposals, but now it seems that another threatened ecosystem will experiment with the natural cleansing power of the bivalve for real: oysters just might save Jamaica Bay.

Last fall we told you about the Design Trust’s Call for Fellows for Made in Midtown, their study of the Garment District and its impact on the fashion industry. Now, to celebrate the launch of their website, there will be a series of public events in a pop-up space at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on June 3rd. And if you happen to be free and willing to help out, volunteers will get an invite to their cocktail reception.

We’ve talked about the importance of the census and the inherent difficulties of counting urban populations, but some still wonder how answering those 10 questions will really impact them and their community. Our friends at Next American City can help you out – check out this podcast interview with the Brookings Institution’s Andrew Reamer tackling those very issues.

Part of why developers refused to accede to the demands of a well-organized living wage campaign for its proposed Kingsbridge Armory Project was that retailers would simply take their business elsewhere if the living wage were only mandated in a small section of the Bronx. But now two Bronx politicians are taking the fight citywide. The proposed bill – Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act – would require all public projects that receive more than $100,000 in city funds to provide living wage jobs, or $10 an hour with benefits or $11.50 an hour without.

With the next round of subway service changes starting at the end of June, the MTA has decided to update the NYC subway map (again). Changes this time include making Manhattan taller and wider, eliminating the service schedule, and improving the visual contrast. Or, if this new map still isn’t clear enough for you, take a cue from the folks at Kick Map and take the cartographic challenge that is the NYC subway system in their own hands.

The first official weekend of summer is here, and recently opened city parks — Hudson River Park, the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park, to name a few — are sure to be packed with visitors. But the Observer looks at the funding crises faced by these public spaces once  ribbons have been cut. Long-term maintenance plans are ill- or undefined, and city officials are noted as simply “betting that some unspecified solution will indeed materialize at some future date.”

If you are sticking around in the city for the holiday weekend, take your camera with you on Sunday evening for this spring’s Manhattanhenge.

Top image from the NYC Department of Transportation. The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for wandering along Roosevelt Island’s waterfront. The Omnibus team and fifty of our friends spent the afternoon learning about the history of the masterplan, seeing one of the infamous pneumatic trash chutes in action, and getting a guided tour of the Fast Trash! exhibition (open for one more week!). Thanks are in order for Juliette Spertus, Judy Berdy, Jack McGrath, Adam Michaels, and Marianne Lau for taking us around.

Scheduled tour-guide Donald Richardson, one of the masterplanners of Roosevelt Island, was unable to join us at the last minute. Luckily, Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society was part of the group and stepped in to fill his shoes. Berdy shared her extensive historical knowledge of the island, from its days as Blackwell’s Island, home to a penitentiary, smallpox hospital and asylum for the insane, to its transition to a hospital complex, renamed Welfare Island, and its subsequent redevelopment in the late 1960s/early ’70s into the Roosevelt Island we know today. The original three-phase masterplan, developed by architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, anticipated housing and services for 20,000 residents and turned the island into a car-free zone, connected to Queens by the Roosevelt Island Lift Bridge and to Manhattan by tram and subway (though F train service did not come to the island until 1989). Ultimately only phase one was implemented, and car-free didn’t take hold (though the island is essentially a one-road town — Main Street, supplemented by a few service roads), but the island flourished and is now home to approximately 12,000 people. Development continues, with a newly modernized tramway opening later this year and construction underway for the FDR Four Freedoms Park at the island’s southern tip.

One element of the masterplan that did get implemented — and the topic that piqued the interest of many of our meet-up attendees — is the island’s pneumatic trash system.  Juliette Spertus, architect, curator of Fast Trash! and subject of last week’s Omnibus feature, explained more about the history and implementation of this unusual trash collection system. Together with Jack McGrath, the exhibition’s curatorial assistant, and Marianne Lau, an architect who lives on Roosevelt Island, Juliette walked us around the island, stopping to let us see the infrastructure in action. First stop: Riverwalk, courtesy of Charlie, a maintenance supervisor, who showed us one of the residential complex’s chutes. Next stop: the waste transfer station, where we saw the remarkably unassuming entry point where the island’s two central tubes converge to deposit the trash of thousands and peered in through windows at the facility.

While walking along the waterfront, we caught sight of another project of interest to Omnibus readers: the tidal hydropower turbine project implemented by Verdant Power and Keyspan to harness the energy of the tidal estuary that is the East River.

We wrapped up the afternoon at the exhibition space itself, watching a sample Lamson airtube shoot a capsule over our heads and across the room, looking at archival documentation of New York City’s now-defunct pneumatic mail delivery system, and learning about past experiments and current advances in pneumatic waste management in cities around the world. Juliette, Adam Michaels of Project Projects, who designed and co-organized the exhibition, and other members of the exhibition team discussed the research and inspiration for the show and pondered issues surrounding waste management and consumption on a broader scale. Our nation consumes at an excessive rate, producing a similarly excessive waste stream, one that is whisked away to far-off landfills, making it easy for us to ignore or deny the larger impact our habits create. The relative invisibility of our waste management system, it was argued yesterday, might detract from our perception of individual accountability. Would a centrally-located, highly-visible waste disposal system encourage better practices? How can we learn from the infrastructure investments being made in places like Stockholm, Barcelona or Macau? Both Juliette and Judy also rallied for individual and community involvement on a local level. The existing system is reaching its limits, and those who support its modernization, potential expansion to incorporate recycling, or even exploration of the technology’s plausibility beyond the island must make their voices heard. Sound advice from a Sunday afternoon walking tour.

As always, thanks to everyone who came out to join us. Don’t miss our next event. Sign up for our weekly email, become a fan of Urban Omnibus on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest.

Judy Berdy of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society

Charlie, maintenance supervisor, Riverwalk.

Architect and Roosevelt Island resident Marianne Lau.

Project Projects' Adam Michaels and Fast Trash! curator Juliette Spertus.

Photos by Varick Shute or Cassim Shepard.

On Sunday, May 16th, do not miss a rare opportunity to explore Roosevelt Island with one of its masterplanners and then enjoy a guided tour of an exhibition that unveils the Island’s best kept secret: it’s trash collection system is straight out of the Jetsons… But what’s cool about Fast Trash, an exhibit that we’ll explore in greater depth in this week’s feature, is that it is about more than an idiosyncratic technology of waste removal. It’s about how sometimes the infrastructural systems we take from granted warrant a closer look, sometimes we can find radically different ways of doing things around the corner, sometimes we need to look to the past to find future-facing innovation.

We’ll be discussing all that and more with Juliette Spertus, an architect and the curator of the exhibit Fast Trash, and with Donald Richardson, a landscape architect with Zion, Breen and Richardson who worked with John Burgee and Philip Johnson on Roosevelt Island’s masterplan. We’ll be meeting at 2pm just outside the F train Roosevelt Island stop. We’ll take a walk with Mr Richardson and then check out Fast Trash. If your interest is not already piqued by the exhibition, read this:

Part infrastructure portrait, part urban history, the exhibition argues that service infrastructure plays a crucial role in cities and is even capable of inspiring the collective imagination. Roosevelt Island was designed in the late 1960s as a brand-new community where technology and urban design would allow New Yorkers of all incomes to enjoy the best of Manhattan without the nuisance of cars—or trash. Often perceived as Manhattan’s quirky doppelganger, the exhibition reveals Roosevelt Island to also be a groundbreaking case study for the future, offering valuable insights into a community built around progressive policies and technologies.

The exhibition explores the history of Roosevelt Island’s pneumatic garbage system by tracing key events in the Island’s development alongside milestones in New York City garbage collection and alternative transport technologies. Brochures, advertisements, and other ephemera from Roosevelt Island’s archives illustrate the themes and the urban preoccupations of the 1970s. Photographs of the engineers and technicians at work at Roosevelt Island’s facility and video interviews create a portrait of one of the world’s early pneumatic garbage systems, as it operates today.

What: Urban Omnibus Meet-up

Where: Roosevelt Island, meet outside the F train stop

Who: Juliette Spertus and Donald Richardson, FASLA

When: Sunday, May 16th, 2010, 2pm

Contact: Email info (at) urbanomnibus (dot) net if you have any questions.

What is the role of garbage collection in planning for dense urban environments?

What lessons can be learned from cities’ experiences with pneumatic collection?

Should installation of pneumatic systems be a priority for new development and retrofitting existing neighborhoods in New York?

FAST TRASH is an exhibition about the underground pneumatic garbage collection system in use on Roosevelt Island in New York City since 1975. We are so into this topic — exposing an innovative infrastructural system, exploring a fascinating New York city neighborhood, and speculating on what it might mean for the future of cities — that we are inviting all of you to come check it out in person at the first omnibus meet-up of 2010: save the date May 16th, 2pm on Roosevelt Island. [UPDATE: Complete info about the meet-up now posted here.] But first, this Thursday some of the issues that the exhibition brings to light will be discussed by a panel of international and local waste management experts and urban planners and designers.

FAST TRASH SYMPOSIUM: Garbage Collection and the Future of Cities

May 6, 2010 6 – 9pm

NYU Wagner School of Public Service

The Puck Building, The Rudin Family Forum for Civic Dialogue, 2nd Fl.

295 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012

Click here to RSVP.

The purpose of the panel is to open a dialogue around the role of garbage collection in the future of dense urban environments. Independent experts, planners and officials from cities in Europe and Canada experienced with underground waste transportation systems will describe the process and the context in which the decision was made.

The symposium is organized by Juliette Spertus, independent curator, and co-sponsored by the Urban Planning Department of NYU Wagner, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) and Envac, manufacturer of the Roosevelt Island system, as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the 1969 master plan for the Island.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE:

6:00pm Session 1. City Presentations: Stockholm, London, Barcelona, Montreal

Introduced by Richard Anderson, President, NY Building Congress

Presentations by

Mike Youkee, Housing Expert and Development Consultant, London

Lovisa Wassbäck, Head of Waste Planning, Traffic Administration, Stockholm

Carlos Vazquez, Technical Director, Sanitation Department, Barcelona

Martin Maillet, Senior Project Manager for the City of Montreal

Put into perspective by Ken Greenberg, Architect and Urban Designer, Toronto

…
7:30pm Session 2. Panel Discussion

Introduced and moderated by Rosina Abramson, Vice President of Planning and Intergovernmental Affairs, Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.

International experts of Session 1 are joined by NY officials

Suzanne Mattei, Director, NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation, NYC Office

Steven Brautigam, Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Affairs, NYC Dept. of Sanitation

9pm Reception

…

FAST TRASH EXHIBITION ON ROOSEVELT ISLAND:

April 22 – May 23, 2010

Gallery RIVAA, 527 Main Street on Roosevelt Island

Hours: Wednesday and Friday 2pm-9pm and Saturday and Sunday 11am-5pm.

Web: www.fasttrash.org

Roosevelt Island Tram, photo by Steven Dale.

In 2007, famed architect/engineer Santiago Calatrava publicly proposed a Cable-Propelled Transit connection between Governors Island, Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. It did not go over well.

For a designer as accomplished as Calatrava is, the packaging of the idea was shockingly amateurish. The renderings were poor, the concept was confusingly explained and because no one actually lived on Governors Island the entire idea was easily positioned by opponents as a trivial frill catering to tourists.

Some might have been tempted to describe Calatrava’s idea as “before its time,” but it was not. It was a half-baked idea and, predictably, reaction ranged from mild bemusement to outright hostility.

And yet, here’s the funny thing: the idea was not without substantial merit. However, given the Big Apple’s previous experience with Cable Propelled Transit (CPT) in the form of the Roosevelt Island Tram (RIT), no one could blame New Yorkers for their outrage.

Rendering by Santiago Calatrava of his proposed aerial gondola system, via The New York Times.

Built in 1976 by the Von Roll company of Switzerland, the RIT was a temporary measure designed to connect Manhattan to the then-nascent community of 10,000 people on Roosevelt Island. It was a revolutionary concept for the time, more common to ski resorts than concrete jungles. A subway connection was supposed to replace the RIT but didn’t materialize until 1989 and by then, the Tram was a permanent fixture of New York’s skyline. It remains there to this day.

Built today, the Tram would cost around $25 million USD for roughly 1 kilometer. Compare that to the $125 million per kilometer price tag attached to the Vision42 Light Rail scheme for Midtown’s 42^nd Street and you begin to understand why it was an attractive option for the economically-challenged NYC of the 1970’s.

Transit doesn’t have to exist purely in the roads we know and love. It can fill other arteries, causeways and environments.The problem was not the cost to build the RIT. Rather it was the cost to operate it. More specifically, the cost of insurance needed to operate it. The cost of insurance on the RIT rose dramatically year after year. From 1976 to 1986, premiums rose from $800,000 to $9 million, a staggering 1,025%. This despite having an excellent safety record. Insurance costs almost exclusively made the Tram a perpetual money loser. In 1986, the insurance company added further insult to injury when they refused to renew the policy, threatening the only existing transit connection to the island. New York State stepped in and adopted a “self-insurance” policy to address the situation.

Problems, however, persisted. On April 18^th, 2006, 69 people were stranded above the East River for seven hours when the Tram lost power due to human (not technological) error. There were no injuries but, in combination with another power outage the previous September, authorities concluded that the system needed a major overhaul. It was closed for the better part of a year.

Ironically, after re-opening, the tram experienced ridership levels higher than before the closure. Higher ridership did not, however, make the RIT a money-maker. Unlike the subway that now travels to Roosevelt Island, the Tram is not fully integrated into the New York City transit system. Riders only recently have been given free transfer onto the Tram from the subway and bus system rather than paying an additional fare, the result of a deal struck between the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation and the MTA, brokered by the City Council, that allows RIOC to receive all fare revenue, first-swipe or transfer. (According to RIOC, the terms of this arrangement are currently under discussion, as the original deal is up for renewal. -Ed.)

It’s no wonder then that New Yorkers balked when they heard about Calatrava’s vision. It should be noted, however, that the technology envisioned by Calatrava could not be more different than the RIT. In the cable industry, the RIT is what is known as an “aerial tram.”  The technology features two large cabins shuttling back-and-forth between two terminals. Wait times between vehicles are long and the size of the cabins require costly infrastructure.  It is a high cost, low efficiency technology that is entirely antiquated. Current CPT systems are capable of much more.

For instance: Maximum capacity offered by the Tram is about 900 PPHPD (persons per hour per direction), whereas more advanced CPT systems today offer up to 6,000. Newer CPT systems allow for intermediary stations, dense urban alignments, corner-turning, full-integration with transit systems and less-than-one-minute (LT1M) wait times at a price cheaper than most aerial trams (not to mention light rail). It’s also the safest transit technology around save for elevators, which, if you think about it, operate in a very similar manner.

The Sentosa Island Gondola, photo by Flickr user ericlbc.

These systems, however, did not exist when the Tram was first built. Had the RIT been designed and built today, it would likely be a continuously-circulating gondola system with LT1M wait times. It would likely terminate in a tall building (such as on Sentosa Island, Singapore), thereby allowing users to transfer directly (via elevator) to a nearby subway station. That’s what was built in Medellin, Colombia in 2004 where the system has been a tremendous success and has spawned two other multi-station cable lines. Systems in Constantine, Algeria and Caracas, Venezuela have met with equal acclaim.

Portland, Oregon also got into the action a few years back but made the mistake of choosing an aerial tram. And yet, despite this oversight, the Portland Aerial Tram experiences ridership nearly double what was originally forecasted, a rarity in transit planning.

Calatrava’s Governors Island cable system most closely resembled those of Colombia and Algeria, but it was never packaged, presented and explained that way. He also imagined the system arcing upwards instead of downwards adding unnecessary complexity and cost to what is a very straightforward and simple technology. But since few people know anything about cable transit, confusion was almost a certainty and one has to forgive New Yorkers’ skepticism towards his proposal.

Technology concerns aside, Calatrava’s vision was also suspect because it attempted to solve a problem that no one had. Development of Governors Island was and is likely a decade away, making any current transit link premature. There is, however, a way to re-mix the Calatrava concept into a worthwhile addition to the Manhattan transportation network that solves a problem millions of people have each year:

What if we extended the link all the way to Newark Liberty International Airport?

A possible Brooklyn-Governors Island-Manhattan-Newark Liberty Airport route (in blue) as compared to the current commuter rail route (in red). Image by Steven Dale.

The current experience of getting from Newark Liberty to Lower Manhattan is an infuriating and expensive odyssey of subways, transfers, commuter rails and people movers. Delays and missed transfers are constant. An urban gondola cable trip from Brooklyn to Newark would take around 45 minutes and would certainly be a more pleasant ride. Constructing and implementing such a link would be challenging, but it is technologically and economically feasible.

Or how about connecting Queens to the Bronx via Rikers Island? Or Harlem to LaGuardia via Randalls Island? A Staten Island connection across the Verrazano Narrows? They’re all doable. Once you wrap your mind around the implications of cable, you can quickly imagine the possibilities.

Cities need effective transit more than ever, but the state of government finances makes system expansion difficult. Cities are determined to get people out of their cars, yet traditional road-based technologies present serious difficulties. If we are to solve our cities’ transit problems, we need to think “off-grid.” Transit doesn’t have to exist purely in the roads we know and love. Transit can fill other arteries, causeways and environments. And due to the lack of “competition” in these arteries, transit can be built more sustainably from both an economic and ecological view. We need transit solutions that provide high levels of service but don’t burden future generations with exorbitant bills to repay.

We need transit that treats riders with respect and addresses their actual needs. Transit should not be the inconvenient hassle that it is now. Transit planners too often work under the assumption that our current regime is what transit is. Don’t like it? Tough. We need to take the time to think about what transit should be. Cheap, with LT1M wait times, high speeds, quick transfers, no schedules and – heaven forbid – an elegant, fun-to-ride system. These are all things that riders hope for and deserve. Cable can offer that.

Santiago Calatrava’s design may have been flawed, yes. But at least it was pointing in the right direction. We should recognize that and then re-interpret it, dream it and run with it.

Steven Dale is the founder of Creative Urban Projects (CUP Projects), a boutique planning shop in Toronto, Canada. He is an expert on Cable-Propelled Transit with several years experience researching and consulting on the matter. Steven recently launched The Gondola Project, an information campaign in support of CPT. For more information, visit www.gondolaproject.com or www.creativeurbanprojects.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.