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When Mayor Mike Bloomberg put out his 33-point transportation plan he admitted that his office did not have the power to implement it. While the plan has been well received by transportation experts and advocates, they acknowledged that it was not the comprehensive reform they believed would truly modernize and secure the city commuters' future.

"I'm cursed with being a comprehensive planner," said George Haikalis, who is the president of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility; Auto-Free New York, Vision 42, and the chairman of the Regional Rail Working Group.

"We would like to go further," he said.

While the mayor characterized his proposals as a list of common sense suggestions that he could use the bully pulpit of his office to implement, there are other more radical ideas out there that do not try to tack their efforts to the political winds of the day.

Haikalis worked for 19 years as a civil engineer with the now-defunct Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, which was disbanded in 1982 when Connecticut pulled out. His organization IRUM.org is a portal into the world of grandiose - and some would say quixotic - visions for a more effective and robust regional transit network.

Among the ideas is a restoration of the Long Island Rail Road's "Rockaway Cut-off" line, whose four miles of track lay in varying degrees of decay between JFK airport and the Howard Beach A train station. The RRWG holds ongoing discussion of its campaign to restore the "priceless rail right-of-way."

Haikalis hopes this route can be revived to provide a north-south line through Queens. In his vision, the line could be built to be compatible with LIRR and AirTrain vehicles, so it could provide a one seat ride from the airport to the city.

"This should be part of the State's negotiations with developer at Aqueduct," said Haikalis, "Our argument is that the state would get a lot more for that franchise if the Rockaway line were restored and you had a high quality rail line."

"You'd save 20 minutes to half an hour getting to Midtown and there's no reasons you couldn't have an accommodation for trains and bikers and green space along the route," he added.

Here's another IRUM idea: lets say you've arrived in Manhattan by LIRR - according to the RRWG, you would have probably preferred to get in at Grand Central than at Penn Station, and there's a 1.6 mile tunnel sitting under the East River ready to complete that link to the East Side.

There are dozens more ideas like this one, but none as grandiose as Haikalis' vision for a unified regional transportation.

"There are now 10 metropolitan planning agencies doing the work of that one," said Haikalis. "Combining them does not require a major capital plan, but it does involve the bumping of heads of institutions."

He described his frustration at looking on the back of a Subway map and seeing only a piece of the commuter rail lines available in the area. "Only a little more ink," he jokes, but his point is at the heart of what he sees could substantially improve the quality and finances of our mass transit system - if only there weren't politics involved.

The concept of having all the rail lines in the region, including the MTA's LIRR and MetroNorth, the Dept. of Transportation, NJ Transit, and Connecticut's rail agencies under one umbrella and fare structure has its allure.

"We'd see significant savings by doing this, and I think you'd want to reinvest this in increasing services and unifying fares," said Haikalis.

Other transportation advocates agree in principle, even as they focus their efforts on what they consider more politically plausible goals. Wiley Norwell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, said he agreed the biggest challenge with that plan is the "bureaucratic hurdle."

He pointed to distinct pension plans, even among bus drivers in different boroughs, as well as inconsistencies in regional tolling, union rules and most important, the fact that "nobody within a position of power in any of these agencies is enamored with the idea of sharing their own authority with sister agencies."

Norwell praised the mayor's plan as "common sense" and the product of a "relatively high decree of consensus." He also returned to the idea of congestion pricing as the item at the top of TA's wish list because it would reduce cars and create room for the rapid transit bus routes that he believes are the most effective way to produce immediate and inexpensive results in the city.

Haikalis, who was called back to work for the city in the mid 1980s as a revenue and fare analyst, said he realized his organization is "uninfluential in terms of public officials."

"Still, there's growing support," he said. In regards to the transportation plan released by Bloomberg's campaign, he said his questions were "how do we get the city and the mayor to be more of a visionary source. What kind of city do we want?"

The mayor's campaign made its position clear in a statement: "The Mayor's job is to set realistic priorities that his appointees will work to implement. Our hope is that the MTA adopts our priorities as their priorities."

Reach Reporter Vladic Ravich at vravich@queenstribune.com or call (718) 357-7400, Ext. 121.