A little over two weeks ago, the Regional Plan Association (RPA) put forth its much-awaited Fourth Regional Plan for New York's tri-state region. The plan was most discussed, including on Curbed, for its proposal to end 24/7 subway service in the city. But it includes far-reaching proposals in many areas, including massive infrastructure investments: three new rail tunnels under the Hudson River, two more under the East River, and many subway projects.

The RPA has been in business for nearly a century; its First Regional Plan, from the 1920s, proposed many urban highway projects, such as the George Washington Bridge. With such deep roots, it talks to political stakeholders throughout the region, and assimilates their views. The result, as seen in the Fourth Regional Plan, is a hodgepodge of different projects, supported by different political stakeholders.

But there are good reasons for skepticism—namely, because the RPA plan seems to be cramming every politically supported public transportation proposal, no matter how unpopular with transit experts, into this new plan.

Three specific items stand out: a tunnel from Penn Station under the East River, dubbed Gateway East, that would address Long Island's demands; the Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX), the waterfront streetcar favored by Mayor Bill de Blasio; and a circuitous AirTrain LaGuardia project, touted by Governor Andrew Cuomo. All three are questionable, and yet they appear on the RPA’s Fourth Plan, often for dubious reasons.

Gateway East

On Long Island, the problems have to do with turf battles. Long Island politicians oppose Metro-North's Penn Station Access project, which would send some trains from the New Haven Line to Penn Station using the same tracks currently used by Amtrak, with new stations in transit-deprived areas of the Bronx.

That plan would use the same tunnels to access Penn Station that the LIRR does today; these tunnels are not at capacity, but the LIRR is worried about future expansion of service, even though the MTA’s East Side Access plan will bring a new set of tunnels to Grand Central for dedicated LIRR use.

The RPA's plan includes Penn Station Access—but it also includes a Gateway East project adding two rail tracks between Sunnyside and Penn Station, a continuation of the planned Gateway project adding two new tunnel tracks from New Jersey to Penn Station. RPA President Tom Wright defended the decision to include the new tracks, saying that Long Island was worried about capacity. When pressed on the new capacity coming from East Side Access, Wright said that much of Long Island was committed to building transit-oriented development, which would induce more demand for Manhattan-bound travel than current capacity.

In reality, Long Island builds practically no housing: Per data from HUD, Long Island permits less than one annual housing unit per 1,000 residents, compared with 2.5 in New York City. Here, the RPA let Long Island's politicians define its priorities.

Gateway East, which Wright said would cost about $7 billion, is especially frustrating in light of the Fourth Regional Plan's rhetoric about unifying the three commuter rail systems in the region: the LIRR, Metro-North, and New Jersey Transit. Instead of proposing coordination between various suburban projects, the RPA proposes unnecessary infrastructure just because the LIRR is loathe to share its tunnels.

Brooklyn-Queens Connector

Though it’s a priority for Mayor Bill de Blasio, the proposed Brooklyn-Queens waterfront streetcar—which could connect Astoria to Sunset Park—is unpopular with some area transit advocates, including Second Avenue Sagas’s Ben Kabak, and Streetsblog's Ben Fried.

International transit consultant Jarrett Walker believes that light rail should be placed parallel to the busiest buses in the city: “The best case for a rail project is an overcrowded bus line,” he says. The buses along the waterfront are far from the busiest in the city, and the nearest subway line is the G train, infamous for its low frequency, shorter trains, and low ridership.

Still, the RPA’s fourth plan fully incorporates BQX, and also includes several streetcar routes connecting to it, in Brooklyn and Queens, all paralleling weak bus routes.

Elsewhere, the plan's proposed subway and light rail extensions for the most part track the busiest buses, especially in the Bronx and along 125th Street in Harlem. But the BQX itself does not follow this rule, nor do the proposed streetcar extensions emanating from it; there, the RPA preferred building on De Blasio's pet project to proposing a better alternative.

AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport

The most egregious example is another transit project favored by a political heavyweight: the LaGuardia AirTrain, championed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Though he touts it as a one-seat ride from Midtown to LaGuardia, the vast majority of airport travelers going to Manhattan would have to go east to Willets Point (a potential redevelopment site) before they could go west. Even airport employees would have to backtrack to get to their homes in Jackson Heights and surrounding neighborhoods. As a result, it wouldn’t save airport riders any time over the existing buses.

Once again, it’s proven unpopular with transit experts and advocates: Kabak mocked the idea as vaporware, and Yonah Freemark showed how circuitous this link would be. When Cuomo first proposed this idea, Politico cited a number of additional people who study public transportation in the region with negative reactions. Despite its unpopularity—and the lack of an official cost for the proposal—the AirTrain LaGuardia is included in the RPA’s latest plan.

But there is an alternative to Cuomo's plan: an extension of the N/W train, proposed in the 1990s, which would provide a direct route along with additional stops within Astoria, where there is demand for subway service. Community opposition killed the original proposal, but a lot can change in 15 years; Astoria’s current residents may well be more amenable to an airport connector that would put them mere minutes from LaGuardia. Cuomo never even tried, deliberately shying away from this populated area.

And the Fourth Plan does include a number of subway extensions, some of which have long been on official and unofficial wishlists. Those include extensions under Utica and Nostrand avenues (planned together with Second Avenue Subway, going back to the 1950s), which also go under two of the top bus routes in the city, per Walker's maxim.

There is also an extension of the N/W trains in Astoria—though not toward LaGuardia, but west, toward the waterfront, where it would provide a circuitous route to Manhattan. In effect, the RPA is proposing to stoke the community opposition Cuomo was afraid of, but still build the easy—and unsupported—airport connector Cuomo favors.

The result: a hodgepodge of politically-motivated proposals

In all of these areas—Long Island rail capacity, streetcars, and a rail connection to LaGuardia—the RPA could have chosen to lead. It could have stood firm against Long Island's apparent belief that the tunnels to Penn Station are its private fief; against De Blasio's BQX proposal and for streetcars following the busiest buses in the city; and against Cuomo's circuitous LaGuardia train and for a more direct route via the N/W trains.

Evidently, in places where the plan did not touch any political priority, the lines shown are well within what transit advocates would want to see, including subways and light rail lines on the streets hosting the busiest buses in the city, and investments into regional rail.

But where there was a politically-motivated proposal, the RPA put it in, no matter whether it was good or bad transit—and the result is a melange of ideas that are often bad on their own merits, and usually don't work well together.

The RPA has been around for 90 years, and will outlive Cuomo, de Blasio, and the people in charge in Long Island today. It could have chosen to lead, but instead preferred to follow politicians whose priorities are not always the best possible infrastructure investment for the region.

Alon Levy grew up in Tel Aviv and Singapore. He spent ten years in math academia and has blogged at Pedestrian Observations since 2011, covering public transit, urbanism, and development. Now based in Paris, he writes for a variety of publications, including Vox, Streetsblog, Voice of San Diego, PlanPhilly, Urbanize.LA, Railway Gazette, and the Bay City Beacon. You can find him on Twitter @alon_levy.