Morning Commute from Roosevelt Island
Commuting from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan in the rush hour is a challenge. The F train and the Roosevelt Island Tram are the main direct options for public transportation into the city.
Yet, Mayor Bloombergâs plan to broker a multibillion-dollar research facility for the city may have a huge impact on the south end of the island, where Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital is located. First opened in 1952, the hospital is scheduled to close operations in December 2013. And Bloomberg, who is seeking proposals for a high-tech campus somewhere in the city, will make a decision on which university will get rights to build, and where.
Though the initiative is welcomed by some Roosevelt Island residents, particularly for the economic benefits, commuting may become dreadful.
Maria Casotti, a photojournalist and a long-time resident of the island, believes there should be a commitment to upgrade public transportation.
âThey recently built a condominium project, and the infrastructure didnât change,â she said. âWe still have the same bridge, the same subway station and the same tram to the island. With a new campus it will be a nightmare.
âThey should really think on this. From 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., everything is jammed.â
Mayor Bloomberg has offered a $100 million grant and land to partner with a school that would build an applied science campus. Seven of the countryâs leading research universities met the Oct. 27 deadline to submit a proposal. The city is trying to replicate the long-term partnerships Stanford University has with Silicon Valley or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Boston. Stanford and Cornell University are the only two competitors that offered to build the multibillion-dollar campus at the hospital site on Roosevelt Island.
The New York Cityâs Economic Development Corporation estimates that, over the next 35 years, the initiative would lead to $6 billion in economic activity across the five boroughs, while generating close to 30,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in direct and indirect taxes for the city.
Roosevelt Islanders hope that some of the taxes will be allocated to speed up an upgrade for the commuting infrastructure to and from Roosevelt Island. After 34 years in service, the tram was recently reopened as part of a $25 million project to modernize the system, after numerous incidents in which the tram lost power and commuters got stranded for hours.
Erica Spencer-EL community relations manager at the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp. (RIOC), which manages the island, said the tram was recently upgraded as part of a process to improve transportation.
âThe new one is more reliable and has the capacity to transport two million passengers a year,â she said. Still, the tram can be overwhelmed with morning commuters.
Mathew Hernandez, who works for the RIOC at one of the tramâs platforms, says commuting in the morning is difficult enough already.
âBetween the people that commute every day and tourists, the thing gets jam-packed. And if the F train is down, this thing just gets crazy and gets overcrowded,â he says.
The tram takes up to 110 commuters on each trip from the island to 60th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. It runs every 7½ minutes during the morning and evening rush hours and every 15 minutes during other hours. According to the MTAâs web site, the F train stops every 5 minutes on the islandâs station on its way to Manhattan, but it has problems of its own.
 Doug Cloyde, a 28-year resident of the island, says the subway infrastructure is unreliable.
âThe station is about 10 floors underground and you have to take three long escalators down, and sometimes one, two or even all three are broken,â he says.
Once in the station, it doesnât get any easier. The F stop on the island is the last before crossing the East River into Manhattan. The run starts at 179th Street in Queens and makes 10 stops before Roosevelt Island.
âSometimes you have to wait for up to three trains to finally board,â he says. âThey are coming so packed that you canât get on.â
The station, which opened in 1989, served 2.58 million riders in 2010, according to the MTAâs web site, or 37 percent higher than the previous year. In 2009, the number of riders decreased by 2.81 percent. Nobody was available at MTA to comment on the rise, and Spencer-EL at RIOC was not aware of it.
Potential problems with the new campus donât stop there. Building such a massive project on an island with limited infrastructure may prove difficult. Main Street is the only main road on the island. It is a two-lane street that stretches for a mile from the Roosevelt Island Bridge in the north to the hospital site in the south. It crosses the island center, which is packed with condominiums and businesses. Street parking is allowed in some areas. Buses sometimes have a difficult time getting through as it is; it would likely be worse if the same road were to be used to transport construction equipment and material to a new campus.
Gina Enock, a teacher assistant at Legacy High School, said that during the development phase of a recently finished condominium project, traffic became a serious problem.
âMaterials had to be transported to the site all day through Main Street,â she says. âThis project seems to be much bigger and will take longer to develop so it will be a hassle. They should think of shipping the material in somehow and avoid using Main Street.â
Spencer-EL says that the possibility of having a campus this size on the island will eventually require negotiations. The construction phase will be a critical touch point.
âWe want to avoid at all cost 18-wheelers on Main Street, as this island was first envisioned to be car-free. The most probable solution is to ferry in the materials for construction,â she said.
For now the stakes are running high. Residents know that Roosevelt Island is competing with other destinations in the city, such as West Harlem, the Brooklyn Navy Yard or Governors Island, to host the project. But with a slow economy, the campus would be an economic boost.
âIt is a multimillion dollar project that will create a lot of job opportunities for our residents,â says Matthew Katz, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association.
Kats added that those working on the campus would be reverse-commuting. âPeople would come to the island in the morning and commute back to Manhattan in the evening, opposite to traffic,â he said.
âLetâs hope that the Roosevelt Island site is selected first and we will deal with the building and commuting problems later. It will be a nice problem to have.âÂ