Nyack Mayor And State Senate Hopeful Joe Rand On Rockland’s Missing Transit, Sidewalks And Shuttles

Nyack Mayor Joe Rand is running to unseat state Sen. Bill Weber (R-Rockland County) in the 38th state Senate District on Nov. 3, and he is making transit in Rockland County a centerpiece of his pitch. StreetsPAC, the livable streets political action committee, recently endorsed him, citing his push for major investment in west-of-Hudson transit.

The suburbs’ place in the region’s transit system has come up often in our Hudson Valley coverage. Streetsblog has previously reported on suburban lawmakers’ push to exempt their counties from an MTA payroll tax hike, as well as advocates’ criticism of state DOT’s draft redesign of Route 9 in the Westchester river towns.

Rand has tied those grievances to his campaign. He and state Sen. James Skoufis (D-Cornwall) recently proposed ending the MTA’s clothing tax in Orange and Rockland counties. In Nyack, the village gained a stop on HudsonLink’s free seasonal path shuttle last year and is rolling out a free electric shuttle called Hoppy. Residents elsewhere in Rockland, meanwhile, have been pushing for safer crossings on roads like Old Nyack Turnpike.

We spoke with Rand about what he would push for in Albany, why sidewalks are hard to build in the suburbs and how micro transit could connect villages to the train.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you feeling about the race so far?

We feel good about where we are. We’ve hit all the numbers we expected to hit. We’ve outraised an incumbent senator pretty substantially, especially from local grassroots donors. We’ve had enormous enthusiasm on the ground, with lots of Democrats excited to vote and tons of volunteers doing get-out-the-vote operations. It bodes well for the future.

You’re pushing for more equitable transit on the western side of the Hudson. Where did that come from?

I grew up here, and I’ve experienced the difficulties of commuting from Rockland County to the city, or to Westchester, or really getting anywhere else. We don’t have great train options. We don’t have great bus options. Billions were spent on the new Mario Cuomo Bridge, and it’s a great bridge, but it hasn’t really changed the experience of commuting. It has the same traffic jams it always had.

At one point, we were promised a rail line over the bridge. That never happened. Then we were promised a dedicated high-speed bus lane, which there is, except the buses are very unreliable. The promise that those buses would take us efficiently to the train stations in Tarrytown and White Plains never really came to fruition.

Does it feel like the people making these decisions have never had to transfer at Secaucus?

I understand the challenge of getting a one-seat ride from Rockland into the city, and we have to be realistic. That may change with the new tunnel. But even understanding those limitations, the ride from Rockland to Secaucus should be more efficient. Most runs have a lot of stops, and we’re at the front of the train, so we get on early, and then there are lots of stops in Jersey. We need more express lines, and we could use better trains. We’re not getting the newest stock on those lines.

What would you push for if elected?

I’m not asking for the moon. I’m asking for the MTA to take a greater interest in efficient train operation. I would love for there to be thought about prioritizing some of these lines to go directly into the city through the new tunnel, without stopping at Secaucus.

The MTA doesn’t have responsibility for HudsonLink, the bus service to Tarrytown and White Plains. On a separate level, I would use whatever authority a state senator has to drive more accountability for that bus line. I don’t need them to run 1,000 buses, but I need the 7:30 a.m. bus to arrive at 7:30 a.m., or within a tolerable level of delay. Sometimes the buses just don’t show up. There aren’t that many stops in Rockland before they cross the bridge, so there shouldn’t be this kind of inconsistency.

Third, I would look hard at helping Rockland with its internal transportation through the Transport of Rockland buses, making routes shorter and pickups more convenient. People complain about those buses. A state senator can pick up the phone and try to garner some help and maybe some money.

Is the district safe for pedestrians and cyclists, or is there more work to be done?

There’s work to be done. We have areas where biking is pleasurable. A lot of cyclists come up 9W, which is a little bit of a scary ride, into Nyack, stop for coffee and make their way to Bear Mountain. But except for older villages and hamlets like Nyack, Haverstraw, Pearl River, Suffern or Spring Valley, most of the county doesn’t have sidewalks. Those places were built 100 years ago as walking communities. Everything built after 1950 was built for driving, with big garages and driveways and no sidewalks. That’s fine if you never want to walk anywhere, but we’ve seen over the last 20 years how much more people prize walkability, even in the suburbs.

Is the solution funding for new infrastructure, or pushing state officials toward better design?

It’s all of the above. There could be money to put sidewalks where they’re most needed, but it’s not easy. You often don’t have an unused strip of property where a sidewalk can easily go, and you might get pushback from owners who don’t want to lose five feet of their front yard to a sidewalk they won’t use. It takes money and political will, and both are often in short supply.

Younger people are facing an affordability crisis. How should government respond?

When I talk about affordable housing, I talk about it two ways: the capital A and the lowercase a. Capital A is government-subsidized, whether vouchers on the demand side or government-built housing on the supply side. Lowercase a is incentivizing builders and cutting red tape to get more entry-level housing for people starting out or downsizing after a long career.

There’s absolutely a demand for homes that are walkable to retail, but there aren’t many, so demand in Nyack, downtown Pearl River and downtown Suffern drives prices up immensely. We have train stations in downtown Pearl River, Spring Valley, Suffern and Nanuet where they could build housing where a family might get by with one car because enough is walkable. That’s the housing we need. It also keeps people in our county who otherwise might abandon New York state because they can’t afford to live here.

Is there anything else you want to add?

A challenge in a place like Rockland is that we have intra-county buses and the HudsonLink buses that get you across the river, but it’s often not easy to get to them. A lot of stops don’t have dedicated parking for commuters, so you have to get a drop-off or be walkable. I’m a big believer that small villages and hamlets should look at micro transit. We’re doing a pilot in Nyack of an electric six-person shuttle that we got a grant to purchase. It cost $50,000, so it’s very affordable. It’s an on-demand bus, point to point anywhere in Nyack, and it’s very much like an Uber experience. It’s mostly going to serve people going downtown to eat or to the waterfront at first, not commuters. We’re going to run the whole thing for less than $50,000 a year. Other villages in Rockland could use this kind of service to get a quick, easy shuttle to the train station or bus stop. We have too many traffic fatalities and too much traffic. We’ve got to get cars off the road, and this is one way to do it.