After a great deal of community input, study, and cooperation from the developers and residents of Southtown, the new bus route and schedule were implemented on Monday.  I appreciate everybody’s input, and am pleased with the support for the new changes.  I also want to assure everyone that during the whole process we listened to your input and made every effort to implement the best route for everyone on the Island.

I wish that the news was as good for the Tram elevator.  As most of you are aware, the elevator was working again last week. Our celebration of this event was, unfortunately, a bit premature.  Since that time there have been several short outages.  We are working with an elevator company to prevent this from continually happening.  Please know that I am fully frustrated by this and am pushing for answers as to why this occurred.  I will continue to keep you updated and will push for a real resolution to this ongoing issue.

Still on the subject of Island transportation, we are happy to announce that we are working to replace the current bus fleet with hybrid electric buses.  We are partnering with the New York Power Authority and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to replace our buses within the next two years.  The order should be placed within the next several months, and then it takes 18 months to two years to produce the buses to our specifications.  Please be assured that, except for the hybrid availability, any new buses will be substantially similar to the current buses and will be fully accessible.

Motorgate is also receiving our attention.  We had several discussions with the current operators of Motorgate about the elevators, general upkeep, and security.  We anticipate having an elevator consultant evaluate the situation to ensure that we have a permanent fix to those elevators as well.  We are also looking at other maintenance work to make the facility a more user-friendly place.  Finally, we are also taking concrete steps to make sure that all vandalism is halted.  Please work with us on that by reporting anything suspicious to Public Safety as soon as you see it.

I am pleased to say that I do have some purely good news to report.  On Wednesday, April 21, the City and State offices of emergency management will be holding a public meeting on Roosevelt Island from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at PS 217.  We thank these agencies for honoring our request for these meetings, and also thank PS 217 for allowing us to use their facilities.  We just received confirmation that this meeting will take place, and I will post more details as soon as they become available.  I look forward to seeing all of you there.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of the Island residents for their good nature during the filming of Dark Water.  So far it has been a very exciting process, and I look forward to seeing another movie where Roosevelt Island is featured so prominently.  I anticipate that we can all see it in the Historical Society’s next Roosevelt Island Film Festival!  
Finally, I want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a wonderful Passover and a happy Easter.  Enjoy this spring season!