Yesterday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver held a multi-agency meeting to discuss the potential tour bus "problem" lower Manhattan will face when the 9/11 Memorial opens in September. However, don't think that this will turn downtown into some no-tourists-allowed haven. One proposal suggests having drop-off points in New Jersey and Brooklyn, so tourists can take the PATH or ferries to Ground Zero. As state Senator Daniel Squadron said, "The more you bring in visitors by means other than tour buses, the more time—and money—they spend downtown."
The DOT has already settled on a plan that would enforce strict parking rules for tour buses, giving them a three-hour time limit. Locals also want bus owners to pay for parking privileges and permits, and use the revenue to step up parking enforcement in the area. The DOT also scrapped a plan for a bus layover zone in TriBeCa; Community Board 1 chair Julie Menin said, “How could we have put all those buses on Warren Street? It would have been disastrous. We did object to that strenuously…so we actually are making progress."
The city expects five million people to visit the memorial in the first year, up to 20 percent of which would come on tour buses. Silver said, "The idea is to reduce idling, cruising, illegal parking, excess traffic, congestion and other quality-of-life problems when five million annual visitors to the memorial begin to arrive."
