Good afternoon. My name is Paul Harrison and I am here representing Transportation Alternatives. More than 800 of our members live within two miles of the Gowanus Expressway.

T.A. calls on the New York State Department of Transportation to:

• Perform a Major Investment Study
• Fund a Community Engineer
• Include all proposed alternatives, and evaluate the possibility of using combinations of non-elevated highway alternatives to maximize broad-scale benefit
• Discount costs and benefits based upon the projected life cycle of each alternative. In addition, the costs and benefits of each alternative should be presented on 30 year, 50 year and 100 year scales.
• Perform traffic and pollution models for each alternative. Compare alternative to both current standards and EPA's proposed new standards. Include induced demand estimates for alternatives that provide capacity improvements and reduced demand estimates for alternatives that reduce capacity or provide additional transit or rail freight service. Share the data that you collect with the public.

Fifty years ago, the Gowanus Expressway decimated the Third Avenue business district and the rest of Sunset Park. It quickly filled up with traffic, and remains at capacity. Yet, Brooklyn today is more of a traffic nightmare than ever. The mission statement in your scoping packet proves what Brooklynites suspect: that State DOT just wants to build a highway to move cars, no matter what the cost to our economy and neighborhoods. Post-Robert Moses transportation policy, implemented by this agency, has failed utterly and completely. The DOT needs to stop in its tracks and rethink how to move people and goods in this entire transportation corridor. A Major Investment Study (MIS) would do this, which is why federal law demands it. An MIS uses sophisticated analytical tools that seek to determine the cumulative social, economic, and environmental impact of each alternative and travel demand management measures along the entire travel corridor. An MIS would also look at the effects of other projects in the corridor, including the Staten Island Expressway Project, the Mayor's proposed Hudson River Rail Freight Tunnel, and the upcoming need to rebuild the Promenade and the BQE through Fort Greene.

DOT must do a review of existing projects and in-depth analysis on an expanded scope of alternatives. At least the following concepts should be added to the current list:

• The RPA's tunnel proposal
• The possibility of a tunnel under Downtown Brooklyn, to replace the BQE north of the Battery tunnel
• Use of expanded mass transit, combined with a cross-harbor rail-freight tunnel, to replace the highway with a restored third avenue.
• Pricing policy to reduce demand. DOT should provide a list of current taxes that could be eliminated with the revenue, including but not limited to sales tax

The system you build will directly affect how New York develops in the next century. Portland, Oregon has developed a complex model, called LUTRAQ, that shows the relationship between land use, transportation and other government policies. Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court in Will County, Illinois said that Illinois DOT would have to develop a separate set of socioeconomic and land use forcasts based upon what would likely occur with or without their preferred alternative. These forecasts alter traffic demand assumptions significantly. New York State DOT must do the same with its alternatives. State DOT would be negligent, and probably legally liable, in not pursuing this.