Much-needed repairs will be made to the aging roadway over Mott Haven, but the plan to extend the highway’s exit ramps in order to calm the traffic that backs up as cars merge onto Exterior Street is on hold indefinitely, said DOT spokesman Adam Levine.

Opponents were particularly incensed that the Deegan plan ignored the city’s desire to transform the Harlem River waterfront with a zoning plan passed last spring designed to attract developers to build high-rise apartments, new commercial buildings and a hotel.

Every speaker at a public hearing at Hostos Community College on Nov. 9 denounced the state proposal. Some speakers also expressed concern that efforts to ease congestion would simply attract more cars, and more pollution. Others criticized plans to use eminent domain to seize existing businesses in order to make room for the new ramps.

“We need more jobs, more affordable housing, more clean air, not more highway,” said Mychal Johnson, a member of Community Board 1 who initiated a petition campaign against the state plan. “The Deegan should be repaired, but not expanded,” he said in an interview.

Caro Samol, who heads the Department of City Planning’s Bronx office, said that the highway project would “cause a domino effect. It would severely hamper, if not outright preclude” healthy growth of the waterfront properties. She insisted that there were other alternatives that could both improve the highway and leave access to the waterfront open.

At the Nov. 9 hearing, Deputy Borough President Aurelia Greene insisted that while the highway needs work, “it cannot be at the expense of the surrounding community.” George Rodriguez, chairman of Community Board 1 and Arline Parks, who chairs the board’s land use committee, echoed the same cry.

The DOT capitulated at a meeting on Nov. 20 requested by the Bronx Borough President’s office, which brought together representatives of the state agency with staff of the city Department of City Planning department, members of Community Board 1 and local elected officials.

“We don’t want to be a bad neighbor in that area,” said Levine, the DOT’s director of public affairs. “What we heard from the community was that the widening would impede” waterfront development.

“They were very clear that at some point they will revisit the issue,” said Sam Goodman, a planner in the Borough President’s office, but not until the rezoning plan has a chance to spur development. Once the area has been built out, the state will consider its options again. In the meantime, said Goodman, other traffic-calming measures will be looked at.

Johnson, a long-time property owner in the neighborhood as well as a community board member, feels that all the work to inform his neighbors about the project and its implications paid off. “They actually listened to the community and public officials,” he said. “I feel wonderful.”

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.

Community voices rang out in opposition to the plan to lengthen exit ramps, saying the new ramps would torpedo the city’s ambitious plan to build housing, parks, office buildings and a hotel on the waterfront, completed last summer when the City Council and the Mayor signed off on rezoning the Lower Grand Concourse.

In an hour of spirited discussion after state officials presented the proposal, every speaker denounced the plan.

“Blocking waterfront access would create a domino effect” that would “severely hamper, if not outright preclude” development on the affected plots of waterfront property, said Carol Samol, head of the Bronx office of the Department of City Planning.

She said the DOT had rejected alternative plans and charged that they had focused so narrowly on traffic issues that they had failed to consider the “public good.”

According to Syed Rahman, an engineer who presented the DOT plan, the short exit ramps cause extensive back-ups on the elevated highway. He said revamping the ramps from 138th Street to 149th Street northbound and from the Macombs Dam Bridge to 138th Street southbound would relieve traffic jams.

In addition, he said, a longer exit ramp would keep cars exiting onto Exterior Street from backing up traffic on the Deegan.

Arline Parks, chair of the land use committee of Community Board 1, noted that the planning department had worked diligently with her committee to come to an agreed-upon rezoning plan through “countless meetings.” In contrast, the DOT had emerged only recently, presenting a completed plan to the board.

“All our work will be lost if the DOT moves forward with the plan,” said Alice Simmons, a member of Community Board 1.

Speakers after speaker evoked the neighborhood’s history, recalling how Robert Moses slashed through whole sections of the Bronx to make room for expressways like the Deegan, which Moses began building in 1950 and completed in 1956.

Members of the audience were also incensed to learn that the state planned to use its power of eminent domain to buy out and eliminate businesses in the path of the new ramps.

Other speakers cited Mott Haven’s high asthma rates, and expressed concern that a rehabilitated highway would attract still more traffic, increasing air pollution.

In an interview, the DOT’s director of public affairs, Adam Levine, insisted that the community’s concerns were being taken seriously. While repairs to crumbling cement and support beams are essential, he said, the department wouldn’t go ahead with its plan to lengthen the exit ramps if it faced strong opposition.

“We won’t do it if we hear from the community and elected officials” that the expansion isn’t wanted, he said. “We’ll take the money elsewhere.”

Every Sunday morning for more than 10 years Zena Charin has taken the Bx 4 along Westchester Avenue to attend religious services at the Vishnu Mandir Temple; one of only four Hindu temples in the Bronx.

But she may not have that option any more – the Bx 4 is on the chopping block in the latest round of MTA budget cuts.

Charin, 68, is one of thousands of Bx 4 passengers who would have to climb about 40 steps to the elevated subway platform or find an alternative route if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority follows through with its doomsday plan of service cuts and fare increases to close a $1.2 billion deficit.

With access to only three elevators along the bus and subway routes Charin travels, she worries how she will get to her place of worship, fill her prescriptions at the drug store, and shop at Westchester Square.

“My knees are bothering me and I don’t like to climb up the steps,” said Charin.

The Bx 4 bus is just one of 14 bus lines in the Bronx that will either be completely eliminated or face severe service reductions to help fill the deficit accumulated by the MTA.

The MTA warns that riders will pay more for worse service. Fares will raise an average of 23 percent.

A single ride on the subway or bus would cost $2.50 rather than the current price of $2. A passenger who buys a 30-Day Unlimited Metro Card would pay $103 per month instead of $81.

Melrose resident Aida Mendes, 39, said she already has trouble paying for her reduced-rate Metro Card and her son’s weekly unlimited card.

“I live on a fixed income and have a disability,” she said at a recent community meeting on the fare hikes. “No, this is too much.”

Bx 4 bus driver Eduardo Roman worries about what alternative options his passengers will have if service cuts go into effect.

“The seniors are the ones who will really get hit. They all depend on this bus,” said Roman, who sees a lot of passengers in wheel chairs. “They struggle to get up the two steps on the bus. Imagine them climbing up the stairs for the train,” he said.

“If they are thinking of eliminating a line, the MTA is not going to spend money on elevators.”

To avoid large fare increases and cuts to services, the Commission on Metropolitan Transportation Authority Financing, headed by former MTA Chairman Richard Ravitch devised an alternative plan that would ease the pockets of straphangers.

Instead of a 23 percent fare hike, riders would pay an 8 percent increase. Regional employers would face a new payroll tax. And the MTA would collect tolls on East River and Harlem River bridges. The Ravitch plan must be approved in Albany.

According to the Tri State Transportation Campaign, a coalition of advocates backing the Ravitch plan, only 5.7 percent of Bronx workers would be affected by the new tolls on bridges.

The service cuts are scheduled to take affect next month, and the fare hikes to take hold in June, according the MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan.

“The ball is now in Albany’s court,” Donovan said. “We are strongly lobbying for Albany to act,” he said.

As for the Bx 4 riders, Donovan said the bus route was being eliminated because ridership is low. He said commutes may be longer and riders may have to transfer more frequently but other routes are available.