1. DEIS selectively complies with the City Environmental Quality Review Manual
    a. When ESDC, the sponsor of Atlantic Yards, is asked what guidelines it follows for complying with the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), it responds: 6NYCRR Part 617, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation regulations for implementing SEQRA, unless State or local agencies have adopted different regulations.
    b. Recently, however, on projects in New York City, ESDC has, with the blessing of the City of New York, increasingly taken over the sponsorship of projects from the NYC agencies, e.g., Department of City Planning and Economic Development Corporation, avoiding the City’s four public hearing Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).
    c. On these projects, ESDC purports to use the CEQR Technical Manual for implementing SEQRA on the grounds that it is more rigorous and specific.
    d. However, ESDC EISs are not subject to the staff review of a City CEQR document which accounts for much of the rigor. Indeed, ESDC has no equivalent of the NYC CEQR staff to critically review the transportation element of EISs prepared by the consultants it retains. The NYC Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) may review traffic impact and mitigation, but would not be in a position to assess the planning assumptions that are the basis estimating travel patterns.
    e. CEQR procedures are, indeed, more specific, which has the liability of being less responsive to evolving State and federal regulations and to professional best practices that better assess realistic impacts of a project. This is particularly true for analyzing and mitigating congestion, noise impacts and pedestrian hazards.
    f. As a State agency, ESDC should be turning to the NYS Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), which has specific methodologies for analyzing traffic impacts and complying with SEQRA and other State and federal regulations. There is no evidence that NYSDOT has even contacted about Atlantic Yards.
    g. Setting aside the decision to base the Atlantic Yards DEIS on the CEQR Manual, the cherry-picked application of the Manual is evident in the many steps of the CEQR process that have been ignored. These are highlighted in each point below.

2. DEIS process is premature and must be supplemented with a Supplemental DEIS
    a. The DEIS is missing data that are essential support for the analyses and without which the reader is asked to accept the DEIS conclusions on faith.
    b. One of these is the newly discovered information that a traffic simulation model of proposed mitigation was requested by NYCDOT and has been reviewed. This is exactly the tool that the community strenuously urged be used as the basic traffic analytic method in the DEIS. It was denied on the now-belied claim that the model was not permitted under CEQR.
    c. Since it is impossible to evaluate the purported effectiveness of proposed mitigation without the model and mitigation is essentially the bottom line of SEQRA, this data must be released and be subject to a full SEQRA review process.
    d. As of mid-August, when NYCDOT was “finalizing” its review, the mitigation plan in the DEIS which rests primarily on signal timing changes had not been submitted to the director of signal timing (1), who normally performs a thorough examination proposed changes and negotiates an approval before a DEIS is released.
          (1) Woo Yan, Director of Signal Timing, telecommunication with C. Konheim, August 10, 2006
    e. Under both City and State review processes, issuance of a supplemental DEIS is standard procedure if the proposed project or conditions change after the initiation of the DEIS or if there is a significant deficiency in the assumptions and analyses that must be considered by the public and the involved agencies. This was done when community leaders made the case that there were significant omissions in the Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning DEIS. The appropriateness of a supplemental DEIS is clear in the State regulations implementing SEQRA:

   6NYCRR, 617, Preparation and Content of Environmental Impact Statements
   a) Environmental Impact Statement procedures
(   7) Supplemental EISs
       (i ) The lead agency may require a supplemental EIS, limited to the specific significant adverse environmental impacts not addressed or inadequately addressed in the EIS that arise from:
           (a) changes proposed for the project; or
           (b) newly discovered information; or
           (c) a change in circumstances related to the project.
       (iii) If a supplement is required, it will be subject to the full procedures of this Part.

    f. The DEIS cites involvement of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the City of New York in the DEIS. These entities are members of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC), which has designated Atlantic Yards a “regionally significant project,” that is, one which can affect regional travel patterns. In order for the State to receive any federal transportation funds, Atlantic Yards must be shown to “conform” to the State’s air quality plan.
    g. The conformity analysis will be performed in September with a regional model that uses an updated development forecast that will include Atlantic Yards and applies land use and demographic factors to predict the number, type (mode) and routes of trips in the 6 to 10 AM peak travel period. It does not rely on 2000 Census data, as does the DEIS, because NYMTC found the Census journey to work sample too small to accurately reflect actual travel patterns. The NYMTC and Atlantic Yards DEIS should be using the same trip generation and mode split assumptions and origin and destination data, but there’s been no communication. Inconsistency between the two processes makes one or the other illegal and could jeopardize federal transport funding.

3. Study area is too small and excludes major other development and problem areas.
    a. The three community boards requested the study area cover the three community districts, which would have encompassed the affected and contributing areas.
   b. For Land Use issues, the Manual advises if a “boundary would cut off portions of a block that is clearly part of the neighborhood, the study area can be expanded to include those portions.” It is evident from CCS’s map of development sites that were omitted in the DEIS (Attachment 1) that the DEIS study area excludes a significant part of the functional Downtown Brooklyn and the surrounding neighborhoods and arbitrarily leaves out significant trip generators.
    c. For Transportation issues, the Manual poses questions and provides guidance:
         What are the problem locations or potential problem locations along these routes or next to these routes that could be affected by traffic generated by the proposed action? [The EIS study area] is defined by the routes along which traffic proceeds to and from the site, and typically includes major arterials and streets along the most direct routes to the project site as well as significant alternate routes. Multi-legged intersections and other problem locations along these routes should generally be incorporated into the traffic study area.
    d. The CEQR objectives could have been achieved by including the entirety of the three community districts, but the DEIS is most egregious in not including the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) and its five interchanges to which is assigned approximately 30% of project trips and is definitely a “problem area.”

4. Baseline traffic volumes and conditions give misleading picture of available capacity
    a. CEQR specifies establishing the baseline roadway capacities and traffic volumes by documenting existing conditions:
        The most important criteria to be used in considering whether available traffic volume data can be used concerns the age of the volume data and the nature of changes, if any, in the street network, adjacent land uses, or traffic patterns.
    b. Instead, the DEIS uses a patchwork of traffic counts taken in 2003 and 2004 that was partially updated in 2005, but gives no details on what was taken when. A comparison of critical intersections in volume diagrams for 2002 from the Downtown Brooklyn Rezoning FEIS and 2005 in the Atlantic Yards DEIS shows the DEIS reports up to 18% less traffic in 2006 than was reported in the FEIS for the Downtown Brooklyn Redevelopment Plan. For the five intersections considered, the total deficit was 7% for both AM and PM peak hours, rather than a 10 to 12% increase commensurate with approximately 6 million square feet of development since 2002, a total error of more than 17%. (Attachment 2)
    c. The consequence of under reporting volumes is to provide more capacity than actually exists to accommodate future trips. For example, defying all observation and experience, the reported existing travel delay in the PM peak hour at Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth Avenues is good to acceptable (Levels of Service B and D, Table C-4)

5. Future volumes are low because the DEIS leaves out 53% growth in 2016 Build year
    a. The CEQR Manual directs that:
        In addition to the background growth rate that is applied evenly throughout the study area (i.e., at all intersections for the traffic analysis), the analysis also accounts for trips to and from major development projects that are not assumed to be part of an area's general growth.
    b. Future conditions in the DEIS in 2016 without Atlantic Yards (also called the No-Build) are also underreported.
    c. Contrary to the CEQR Manual to follow the same detailed procedures for estimating No Build trip making characteristics as for Build, the DEIS provides no information at all on No-Build trip generation, mode split and distribution, so there’s no basis whatsoever about trips of the largest part of future growth. Therefore, CCS has developed them from approved EISs. They are presented in Attachment 3.
    d. Worse, the DEIS fails to account for about half the development that will occur without Atlantic Yards which includes those operating in 2006 but not accounted for in the traffic counts, others in the pipeline or approved as-of-right up to 2016 within Downtown Brooklyn (See map and lists by year in Attachment 1). These projects add up to 53% more trips than assumed in the No Build.
    e. The DEIS also fails to account for development outside the Atlantic Yards study area that will impact travel through Downtown Brooklyn and along the BQE. CCS has compared traffic volumes for 2013 presented in the Downtown Brooklyn FEIS with Atlantic Yards No-Build volumes for 2016 and finds the Atlantic Yards DEIS under estimated volumes by about 13% (see Attachment 4)
    f. In total, Atlantic Yards accounted for just 23% of total No Build development that will impact Downtown Brooklyn.
    g. Thus, the Atlantic Yards DEIS overestimates the capacity to accommodate Atlantic Yards trips (also called the Build condition), which in 2016 represent 30% of the total growth in and around Downtown Brooklyn between 2003 and 2016.
    h. Combined with under reporting of baseline conditions, the result is even more unjustified capacity for project, failing the SEQRA legal test of taking a “hard look.”

6. Dubious basis of Atlantic Yards trip characteristics may misrepresent auto trips
    a. The CEQR Manual places a great emphasis on representative trip characteristics. While it presents some default values (used in the DEIS for residential development), it notes:
        There may also be a special nuance to the specific proposed action being analyzed that makes its trip generation expectations significantly different from those listed in Table 3O-2. For example, the trip generation rate cited for Midtown office space may not be appropriate for back-office space outside of Manhattan or even within Manhattan.
    b. Trip generation factors used for Atlantic Yards are based on data collected more than three decades ago in Manhattan, with very different demographics and travel patterns. The daily trip generation using DEIS assumptions is presented in Attachment 5 because the DEIS only reports peak period trips.)
    c. The DEIS uses no local surveys; no original data for Brooklyn on which to base impacts (does not distinguish between travel behavior of various income groups—the rich own more cars and use them). NYMTC’s survey a decade ago reveals some characteristics; however, the only valid way to get this data is surveys. (See Attachment 6)
    d. For example, a large proportion of shoppers drive to Atlantic Center today. Many double park. Yet, the DEIS assumes just 5% of all shoppers at the Atlantic Yards will use a car or taxicab. What is the basis for this estimate? Did FCR survey Atlantic Center shoppers for mode choice? If not, how can such a low estimate be trusted?
    e. The only documentation for modal split of many types of non-Arena tripS in the DEIS is the Downtown Brooklyn Development FEIS (Table 12-10), but this is circular reasoning since the only reply when these assumptions were challenged in 2004 was “undisclosed surveys.” That response must be remedied to make this DEIS credible.
    f. Lack of documentation of referenced surveys contradicts the CEQR Manual directive:
        The survey methodology, hard data, and significant findings and assumptions used should all be summarized in a brief technical memorandum, so that this body of information will serve as backup documentation for the analyses and can subsequently be used by others.
    g. Mode split and trip origin and destination assumptions for characteristics of Build and No-Build travel in the DEIS were based on 2000 Census which has been discredited by NYMTC. ESDC’s consultants should have obtained and mapped trip origins and destinations from NYMTC and mapped them as CCS has done for trips originating in Brooklyn (See Attachment 7).
    h. Without this, trips are assigned based on “professional judgment” and adds new trips to already overloaded roadways, instead of the way drivers behave-- where there is available capacity. Trip assignments must be capacity constrained.
    i. The Atlantic Yards DEIS should have used the output of the NYMTC microassignment model for trip origins and destinations and, therefore, of trip assignments. Given the magnitude of the project and the underlying growth, a micro-assignment model that assigns trips based on demand and capacity should really be undertaken.

7. DEIS ignores impact on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and parallel streets
    a. The BQE is already at capacity for much of the day; most No-Build projects assign a huge number of vehicle trips to the already over-capacity BQE.
    b. NYCDOT’s Downtown Brooklyn Transportation Blueprint Technical Memorandum No. 1 established that there is no available capacity on the BQE in both the peak hours and in the “shoulders” of peak hours and that any additional vehicle trips will be forced to use local roads further adding to the huge congestion losses Brooklyn already suffers.
    c. Based on trip origins assumed in the DEIS, approximately 28% of Build trips should have been assigned to the BQE (237 vehicles to or from the south and 217 to or from the north in the PM peak hour in 2016), with commensurate increases on parallel local streets, e.g., 3rd or 5th Avenues, another non-disclosure of impacts.
    d. Note that while the text discussion of trip assignments suggests a significant number of vehicles assigned to the BQE, analysis of Figures C-38a and C-38b displaying traffic volumes show very few vehicles using the BQE.
    e. Like most EISs prepared under CEQR, the DEIS ignores the impact on the operations of the BQE, but goes even further than most others by failing to report even the LOS impacts at the intersection connecting to ramps onto and off the BQE.
    f. A further non-disclosed impact of these omissions is the huge cost burden on NYSDOT to undertake post facto construction to accommodate this traffic and the resulting diversion of statewide resources to keep viable New York City’s only major north-south truck route.

8. Impacts are concealed by combining street closing diversions with Atlantic Yards trips
    a. What CEQR specifies for project-generated trips first needs to be done for No Build trips:
        At the conclusion of these trip assignment steps for autos, taxis, and trucks, the analysis will have a percentage-assignment of the project's trip generation by each mode by highway and street in the study area network. At this point, these percentage assignments are reviewed to determine whether they reasonably represent expected traffic patterns to the site, and also whether there are any locations that would be likely to receive a significant amount of project-generated trips and that could be significantly impacted that were not included within the original study area.
    b. Not only are the requisite proportional distribution maps not presented for any scenario, there is no accounting for any mitigation for the No Build. Presumably, signal timing improvements will have been made for the No Build, leaving little margin for further benefit for Atlantic Yards traffic.
    c. Compounding the obfuscation, volume diagrams for the Build condition provide no differentiation of the added trips due to Atlantic Yards from the diversion of all other traffic due to street closings or changes in travel direction. Thus, the DEIS makes it impossible to understand or to check the full effects of the project alone.
    d. The Manual notes:
        Also, as part of the proposed action, changes may be proposed for specific streets that produce changes in their capacities, which would also be checked.
    e. Unless diagrams of diverted trips are produced separately from project increments, there’s no explanation for negative project impacts along major arterials
    f. The DEIS must provide volume diagrams showing the effects of street closures first of No Build trips separated from project impacts.
    g. The DEIS must also provide maps showing the assignment of project trips independent of street closure reassignments but accounting for the street closures.
    h. Without this, there’s no clear disclosure of project impacts, as required by SEQRA.

9. Calculations of congestion levels are undocumented, no way to check huge anomalies
    a. CEQR Manual directs:
        In general, the capacity of an intersection—i.e., the maximum number of vehicles that can pass through it depends on several factors and can be evaluated by one of several available methodologies. Use of one of these methodologies produces the capacity of each of the approaches to the intersection and, when compared with the volume along the various approaches, the approach's operating conditions, expressed in terms of volume-to-capacity (v/c) ratio and/or level of service.
    b. The objective of the entire traffic exercise is to determine the ratio between the volume of the vehicles and the capacity of the street. Ranges of v/c ratios represent the seconds of congestion delay, expressed as Level of Service (LOS), rated A to F like a report card, with LOS D tolerated in New York City and F being unacceptable.
    c. Equations from the section of the Highway Capacity Manual that examines each intersection in isolation are used to calculate travel delay to pass through the intersection. However, standard HCS work sheets are not included in any appendix so no one can check the assumptions made for LOS estimates and, the accuracy of the reported LOS, the bottom line of the entire traffic exercise.

10. Simplistic analysis method misrepresents severity and extent of congestion impacts
    a. The commonplace analytical method, using Highway Capacity Software, is crude for the heavily congested study area of the DEIS. HCS assesses delay at each intersection in isolation and allows adding vehicles to a road even if it is already at capacity. HCS does not account for the resulting spill back from one intersection to the next.
    b. Thus, it underreports the actual severity and extent of the congestion.
    c. This is not to say that the LOS data are not instructive. The DEIS reports a number of locations with average approach delay exceeding 400 seconds/vehicle and some exceeding 600 seconds/vehicle. (LOS F begins with 5 seconds of delay per vehicle. At about 8 seconds of delay an intersection approach is over capacity.). Not only is HCS invalid for delays of this magnitude, but delays of like these of 7 to 10 minutes quickly propagate outward to gridlock an extensive area, as local drivers know.
    d. These effects are illustrated far more accurately with simulation models that apply HCM principles to an entire road network.
    e. Contrary to assertions that use of HCS is mandatory under CEQR, other methods are allowed. The Manual says:
        Other methodologies may be employed only if they can be proved appropriate for use in their particular study area and only if they are compatible with air quality models used, as well. However, it should be emphasized that the concurrence of NYCDOT regarding the use of such models is strongly urged before they are employed.

11. Models that more accurately simulate traffic are critical part of DEIS, but not released
    a. Traffic operations models that visually simulate the interaction of traffic within and between intersections are routinely prescribed by NYCDOT and NYSDOT. From the model output, one can extract the volume to capacity ratio and delay that is the bottom line of the CEQR traffic analysis process, but also obtain travel speeds and an understanding of mid-block effects.
    b. CCS has developed a traffic simulation model for the PM peak hour in 2012 without the Atlantic Yards; it shows the area gridlocked with service levels at critical intersections at a severe LOS F (see Attachment 8).
    c. And, as CCS predicted, NYCDOT has required a traffic simulation model of proposed street closures and changing traffic direction,
    d. Consequently, the DEIS reports having produced a Synchro/SimTraffic model of the type CCS and the community boards have long sought. According to the DEIS, the model is not limited to the 4th, Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues intersection, but includes the “local street network” and “major corridors.” The BQE should also be included.
    e. Synchro can also be used to optimize signal timing far more efficiently than making hundreds of HCS trial and error calculations intersection by intersection.
    f. A network model is the only way to see that mitigation of one intersection does not unacceptably worsen another. Conversely, it can also demonstrate the relative improvement due to mitigation at those intersections that remain an LOS F. It is necessary to substantiate the claimed elimination of queues in all corridors approaching the site.
    g. Since this model was precisely requested by CCS and the community boards, the omission of the model as part of the DEIS is an extreme example of non-disclosure. ESDC has an opportunity to remedy this omission by responding promptly to the request for the models e-mailed to ESDC on August 10, 2006 and to extend the review and, ultimately, prepare a Supplemental DEIS responsive to public comments.

12. Proposed mitigation still leaves Downtown Brooklyn road network in gridlock
    a. To define a “significant impact” of a project that requires mitigation, CEQR applies a sliding scale of the added seconds of delay (from 1 to 5) that can be tolerated, based on the severity of the LOS under No Build conditions.
        CEQR Criteria of Significant Impacts and Acceptable Mitigation
        Scale of Significant Impacts No Build Build Mitigation
        No-Build LOS D E F F- 120 seconds A, B, C, D
        Build Conditions Mid-D D, E, F
        Added Seconds 5 or more 4 3 1
        D or same as No-Build
    b. While NYSDOT requires returning Build conditions to an LOS D, CEQR permits only returning them to No-Build conditions. And when that cannot be achieved, even though a substantial reduction of delay may actually occur, the intersection is reported as unmitigatable. This is the case for about 20% of the mitigated intersections depending on the time of day.
    c. In the Build condition, with Atlantic Yards, in the AM and PM peak hours (worse than the pre-game conditions), there are more that a dozen intersections that exceed the one second threshold and none of them are brought to an LOS D. Most remain high-level Fs. For example:
        In the 8-9 AM peak hour, westbound through lanes on Atlantic Avenue at Bond go from 94 seconds under No Build to 220 seconds with the Build. Mitigation shaves off 20 seconds, but that remains 100 seconds worse than the No Build and Bond Street shaves one second off 660 seconds Build impact to return to 659 seconds No Build delay (still 11 minutes). As noted above, delays of this magnitude lead to area-wide gridlock.
In a curious contrast that raises questions about the credibility of the entire analysis, the DEIS reports that one block from Bond Street, the eastbound through lanes on Atlantic Avenue at Hoyt, in the predominant direction of traffic 5-6 PM, now operates at LOS B. with just 10 seconds of delay, and that this would go to only 11 in 2016 with No Build, and to just 12 seconds delay with the Build. (Tables C-6 and C-10). Closer to observation, the CCS model for 2016 No Build shows 330 seconds of delay.
    d. Again, without the HCS worksheets, these anomalies can not be checked.
    e. The DEIS provides no information on the extent of mitigation that is expected to be achieved by what measure. Why, for example, the benefit of game-night transit incentives be credited to reducing volumes at just a few isolated intersections: Clinton/Atlantic in 2016 and Henry/Atlantic in 2010, and just 3 other places?
    f. Without convincing evidence otherwise, we can only conclude that the most impacted intersections cannot be mitigated and that many mile-long queues will stretch across Brooklyn and the BQE