To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

The plan includes nearly 40 recommendations, including upgraded subway, bus, commuter rail, ferry, and light rail projects. The goal is to provide transportation to underserved areas of the city.

The recommendations include adding high-speed ferry service to parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx. The group also wants to see an express bus lane on the Staten Island Expressway and an extension of Nostrand Avenue to Kings Highway. They want to see the conversion of the Long Island Rail Road Atlantic Branch into three new stations.

In addition, they recommend a light rail loop in Manhattan, in addition to other transit upgrades in the borough. They also want to expand the Second Avenue Subway, which for now will only run from 63rd to 96th Streets.

"The Second Avenue subway, as currently planned by the MTA, is a Manhattan-only project,” said Regional Plan Association senior fellow Jeffrey Zupan. “It goes from 125th Street to the Battery. We view that as only the spine of a system that serves all of New York City."

That spine could branch off to the west along 125th Street through Harlem all the way to Broadway. Or the line could continue north into the Bronx running under Third Avenue, then west under Fordham Road swinging back into upper Manhattan. The report also suggests eliminating fares on cross-town buses at 34th, 42nd and 50th Streets.

"The fact is that most of the people that use those buses are already paying a subway fare. They're using it for connecting,” said Zupan. “And what it would do, it would speed up the buses."

Another idea is to extend the Second Avenue subway into Brooklyn and all the way to Queens along Atlantic Avenue, using converted Long Island Rail Road tracks.

The report also suggests new ferry service in Soundview, Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bay Ridge.

Some of the ideas in the report can be done quickly and relatively cheaply, like building a new station entrance here at the far east end of the First Avenue station on the L train. It would create a subway entrance near Avenue A, saving thousands of commuters the long walk to and from First Avenue.

"We estimated almost a million miles, a million miles of walking a year! A million miles of walking a year, I'll repeat that, would be saved just by building that one exit," said Zupan.

The Regional Plan Association acknowledges it will take tens of billions in public investment, without saying where the money would come from. But otherwise, they say, when it comes to global competition, New York will be left behind.