Other Places I’ve Been and Will Be, and More Schenectady Pics

It’s been a busy few weeks. As part of my internship with the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, I’ve had the opportunity for my writing to show up in a couple of other places.

With the push on to fund the MTA capital plan, I had a piece in the Gotham Gazette about the need for political leadership to make a new plan happen. “Lead, dammit” is of course a cliched, boring thing to ask of lawmakers, but I think there’s some decent blame to be spread around here. And I make the argument that while the MTA is not sliding backwards into the 1970s, it may very well be slipping into the same kind of death spiral as WMATA is currently experiencing.

I also had a two-part series on Tri-State’s own Mobilizing the Region blog about the Capital District Transportation Authority’s BusPlus “Bus Rapid Transit” system, existing and planned. Originally written as one long post, it (correctly) got split into two to keep lengths manageable. The first post is a primer on BusPlus, including the existing line from Albany to Schenectady and the planned routes to UAlbany and Troy. The second (and for me, more interesting) post is about what various stakeholders can do to make BusPlus a truer BRT system.

I also have several posts coming up on Mobilizing the Region, including one about the economic impact of the MTA capital plan on Upstate that should be going up in the next few days. I’ll also be taking a look at the Capital Region MPO‘s long-range visioning plan and their just-getting-off-the-ground study of the future of the I-787 corridor along the Hudson waterfront.

As a total aside, I spent five hours traipsing around in the oppressive humidity at Union College in Schenectady for a site visit for a Jewish retreat I’m involved with. A few pictures:

The original site of the famed American Locomotive Company is now a carwash.

The headquarters of the Golub Corporation, a major brownfields project, has won multiple environmental awards, including LEED certification, despite being fairly anti-urban and surrounded by parking lots.

Like many colleges in urban areas, Union is busy buying up all the property adjacent to campus it can get its hands on. Our guide described this teardown and new-build dorm at the corner of Roger Hull and Park Places as a “revitalization project” for the neighborhood. I have mixed opinions on this.

The interior of the unique, sixteen-sided Nott Memorial, the centerpiece of the Union campus, is really something. My picture certainly does not do this gorgeous building justice.