Relief is coming to a few of New York City's notorious traffic trouble spots.

Hoping to eliminate the backups that snarl commuters at the Henry Hudson Bridge linking the Bronx to Manhattan, the MTA said this week that it would eliminate cash tolls on the span. The agency also announced steps to rectify a major gap in the transit system - reliable access to LaGuardia - with plans for new bus-rapid transit routes to the airport from three boroughs.

Both of these changes are linked to longstanding RPA initiatives.

This year, Regional Plan Association launched an unprecedented forum for leaders of the world's top transit agencies. The Transit Leadership Summit brings together public-transportation chief executives to share challenges and learn how their counterparts around the world have tackled similar problems.

The first leadership summit, held in April outside New York City, convened transit chiefs from a dozen cities including New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, São Paulo, Hong Kong and seven other world cities. RPA is now preparing to host second summit, which will be held next March in Singapore. A third meeting will take place in Europe in 2014.

You can learn more about the summit at our new Transit Leadership website: www.rpa.org/transit-leadership.

Across New York City, the availability of affordable housing is in jeopardy. Despite efforts by city government to preserve or create thousands of affordable housing units, rent protections for much of the existing stock will expire in the coming decades. Nowhere is this challenge more apparent than in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood, where most residents live in some form of rent-regulated housing.

Affordable housing has long been central to East Harlem's identity and success. But due to the expiration of government subsidies, many of East Harlem's residents are at risk of being priced out of their homes and neighborhood.

In a new report, RPA has conducted an unprecedented survey of East Harlem's more than 40,000 rent-regulated units. Based on the data collected, RPA has determined that nearly one-third of regulated housing units will lose their rent protection by 2040.

This week's court ruling overturning New York's payroll-mobility tax, if upheld, would jeopardize the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's ability to provide reliable service to urban and suburban commuters across the region and undercut the region's economic potential for years to come.

The payroll tax law, adopted by the New York State Legislature in 2009 with the support of Regional Plan Association and a broad coalition of groups, provides more than 10% of the MTA's annual operating budget. Without these funds, the agency could be forced to cut service or raise fares on riders.

Amtrak's proposal to modernize the Northeast rail corridor and bring world-class high-speed trains to the Northeast would have a transformative effect on the region's economy, RPA President Bob Yaro writes in Crain's. It would deliver workers to jobs more quickly, expand the potential skilled work force for New York and other cities, attract businesses to transit hubs, encourage business and leisure travel and remove cars from clogged highways

Conventional and high-speed rail have a unique ability significantly increase transportation capacity without straining our natural resources. That's why our peers around the globe are aggressively expanding their rail systems and attracting businesses that take advantage of enhanced infrastructure. If we don't do the same, Yaro writes, the regional economy will stagnate as productive hours are lost to transportation delays and commerce gravitates toward places where doing business is easier. Read the complete op-ed here.

Go big to get it done. That was the sentiment of more than 125 conservation leaders from across the country at New York's National Museum of American Indian last month.

The occasion was a by-invitation conference on the ways and means of accelerating large landscape conservation in the Northeast. Large landscape conservation refers to public and private collaborations that look beyond political boundaries and property lines to achieve their goals. It's a growing trend, as highlighted in RPA's recent report on the 165 landscape conservation initiatives operating in the 13-state Northeast megaregion.

From industrial shipyards to multicultural residential neighborhoods to a thriving wildlife sanctuary and national park, the Brooklyn waterfront spans a remarkably diverse landscape.

Not long ago, that waterfront seemed inaccessible to many New Yorkers. But in recent years, RPA and other civic groups have worked to create and bolster a system of waterfront greenways to give the public access to New York City's extraordinary shoreline. As part of those efforts, RPA is co-sponsoring the 4th annual Brooklyn Waterfront Epic Ride on Saturday, July 28, an organized bicycle ride along the 14-mile Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway and the 30-mile Jamaica Bay Greenway.

Big infrastructure projects take years or even decades to complete. Too often, that's because planning work gets bogged down in protracted environmental reviews. But new research by Regional Plan Association has identified ways environmental analysis could be completed more quickly, without sacrificing environmental protections.

In "Getting Infrastructure Going: Expediting the Environmental Review Process," RPA finds that the National Environmental Policy Act adopted in 1970 still provides a strong regulatory framework for protecting the environment. But misguided implementation of the law contributes to lengthy delays in delivering big infrastructure projects.

A protected pedestrian and bicycle path is coming to the shores of Brooklyn.

New York City Department of Transportation has unveiled final plans to implement the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, a 14-mile pathway connecting communities along Brooklyn's waterfront. Separate paths for bicycles and pedestrians will allow cyclists and walkers to commute, exercise, explore and relax from Newtown Creek in north Brooklyn to the beginning of the Shore Parkway Greenway in Bay Ridge.

Transportation experts and agency chiefs from New Jersey and New York told a packed audience at RPA's "Crossing the Hudson" conference that expanding rail capacity in and out of New York City is vitally important for both states.

New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson expressed support for Amtrak's Gateway project, which calls for building two new rail tunnels beneath the Hudson River. The new tracks would reduce severe congestion and service problems for NJ Transit and Amtrak riders between New Jersey and New York that ripple out along the entire the Northeast Corridor. "Gateway is the best project out there," Simpson said.

Every day, some 275,000 commuters travel into New York City from New Jersey. The two single-track Hudson Tunnels, more than 100 years old, are a major bottleneck on the Northeast Corridor, limiting commuter and intercity rail traffic in and through Penn Station, where two out of three trips on the Northeast Corridor begin or end. With the cancellation of the ARC tunnel project in 2010, the need to expand capacity for travel along the Northeast Corridor is more urgent than ever.

On June 13, RPA will host a half-day conference to discuss how to expand travel capacity between New York and New Jersey.

Bus rapid transit is coming to central Connecticut.

This week, officials broke ground on a new bus-only route, CTfastrak, that will make use of nine miles of former rail right-of-way to bypass congestion on local roads and Interstate 84. The bus line is projected to cost $572 million, with buses expected to begin running in 2014.

The express service is designed to speed service for 11,000 current bus riders, while attracting 5,000 new riders and taking thousands of cars off the area's roads.