New York City’s Traffic Talk

May 21st, 2008 Posted in traffic | No Comments »

[Click on Image to get more information on NYC traffic]

I have spent the last few weeks since Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing bill died in Albany, reporting on just what New Yorkers think about the traffic in their city. As you can imagine, opinions vary, but overall the people I talked to all want the same thing: less congestion and a plan that will be better for the environment. There are interesting studies on other cities’ solutions, and a lot of similar needs exist here for physical changes to the urban landscape. Simple things like the difficulty of crossing 8 lanes of traffic UNDER the elevated highway in the South Bronx is one issue residents there are petitioning politicians over. In Brooklyn I met bicycle enthusiasts that want to take back the presence of people on streets, rather than allow trucks & fast moving cars to dominate access to inter-borough travel. A Queens politician talked to me about how fast his borough is growing and how little public transportation is available to his constituents.

In short, everyone has an opinion, thanks in part to the Mayor’s bill starting up the conversation again. Now we’ll see if the dream of greenways, bike lanes and ten-minute walks to a park from any residence in NYC can become a reality.

Bill’s Dead. Now What?

May 12th, 2008 Posted in traffic | No Comments »

Life after the congestion pricing bill is defeated

Nearly a year after Earth Day 2007, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced his ideas for a congestion pricing bill, it was voted down during a closed-door meeting in Albany that saved lawmakers from going public with a vote for or against the plan.

Advocates of the defeated bill are still glad for the debate revived around the controversial issue.
(Click on the image to see video.)

The bill was part of the larger scheme put forward by the Bloomberg Administration as PlaNYC 2030, intended to make New York City a greener, more modern and efficient place.But the traffic control scheme wasn’t meant to be. Democratic Majority leader Sheldon Silver announced on April 7, 2008 that, despite the bill passing New York City Council and receiving a stamp of approval from a special commission formed to study the plan, the congestion pricing bill was dead. Naturally, this did not please the Mayor.“It takes a special type of cowardice for elected officials to refuse to stand up and vote their conscience on an issue that has been debated… for more than a year,” Mr. Bloomberg responded. “Every New Yorker has a right to know if the person they send to Albany was for or against better transit and cleaner air.”

Rather than let this issue stay under the rug, advocacy groups are pushing hard to make their voices heard on the issue of traffic. Some, like Transportation Alternatives, are setting high goals to get more people on bicycles this summer.

At the top of the advocates’ lists are ways to address parking, improve bus service, add train service and convince more drivers to leave their cars at home. The New York League of Conservation Voters has issued a report, “Building a Greener Future,” that offers numerous ways for citizens and government to work together to improve the city’s condition.

“Despite the Legislature’s rejection of congestion pricing,” the report said, “the city can still take steps to reduce vehicle-related carbon emissions by creating a variable-price parking program to increase the rate for street parking in the Manhattan Central Business District during working hours.”

On the pages of the Environmental Defense Fund’s website, viewers can compare other world cities’ results from congestion pricing. London reports a 12 percent drop in particulate matter, Singapore has 25 percent fewer accidents and Stockholm expects fewer premature deaths thanks to a significant reduction in NO2.

The latest PlaNYC progress report issued by Bloomberg’s administration, said projects in danger of not being completed, like the 2nd Avenue Subway and the Fulton Transit Center still need funding. By turning down congestion pricing, the Mayor claims we lose, “A $4.5 billion source of capital for transit and the $354 million that the federal government had offered for short-term transit improvements.”

In a letter to the City Council expressing his disappointment when they passed the bill, Leroy Comrie Jr., representative from Queens, said, “Our federal government has seen fit to bail out billion dollar Wall Street firms, while real families in this City are losing homes and jobs. And the message from this Council, in the midst of this crisis, is to impose another tax. I will not in good conscience vote in favor of this plan.”

Whether or not money is bundled with legislation, advocates still want to see the City Council do more to curb weekday traffic.

“It may seem revolutionary, but in the third world they’ve been doing things like this for ten years,” said Wiley Norvell, Communications Director for Transportation Alternatives.

Change is a comin’, baby

April 28th, 2008 Posted in Zoning Story | No Comments »

Walking the length of 125th street can teach you a lot about the impact of urban development, especially if you talk to the locals. I spoke with a taxi driver from Brooklyn via Senegal, stopping at a bakery on Frederick Douglas Blvd. he used to frequent when he could afford to live in Harlem. The bakery serves more French pastries now instead of African food, and is packed with white customers for Sunday brunch. He says that most of the Senagalese community has moved north as apartment buildings are sold and rents rise skyhigh.

Several street vendors from Queens & the Bronx have watched the population change and sales decline as shoppers buy more goods from chain stores and restaurants. All of them commute to work on 125th Street, saying the $100 to 200 dollars they make in a day won’t pay the rent for an apartment closer to work.

Rather than signs of economic slow-down, 125th Street, and the region now called SoHa that extends to 116th is booming. Shiny new condos and apartments with cheap rent (read: around $1,500/mo.) are drawing mid-towners like flies to honey. One new resident I met said he was excited to find an affordable, spacious apartment that was half the price of his Hell’s Kitchen apartment.

Sure economic growth is great, but when it’s unchecked, there are bound to be losses. In this case, it’s the working class residents who already live in Harlem and the culture developed by the African American people who have lived there for decades. Olivia Harris, a t-shirt designer who has lived most of her life in Harlem, save for a brief time in the South, joined protesters who are opposed to Mayor Bloomberg’s rezoning of 125th Street to accomodate more high rise developments. She summed it up best as we chatted over her designs of Obama, the Cotton Club and Malcom X. “I don’t care what color you are,” she stated boldly, “you can be red, green or blue. Just don’t come up here and change the character of this historic neighborhood.”

A click on the photo below will take you on a quick East to West trip of 125 Street. Music by Otis Redding.

Gold Chain Fences in Mt. Vernon ‘hood

March 23rd, 2008 Posted in Outta Town streets | No Comments »

One thing I notice almost immediately when I travel to another city is a growing presence of public art. Perhaps it’s so noticeable right away because it is in such direct contrast to the views I have moving through New York City everyday.

Utrecht has bright, colorful grafitti, the Netherlands roadways are spotted with great sculpture, Philadelphia has its epic murals…. all of them strike me in a way Times Square just never will.

Driving through Baltimore this weekend with my daughter, a unique piece of public art caught our eyes: guilded (ok, spray painted gold) chain link fences surrounding the four green squares of Mt. Vernon place, the park in the heart of historic Baltimore.

Artist Lee Freeman, a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), made waves in the community when he got city permission to erect 3000 feet of golden fencing around the squares, just beginning to sprout green with new grass. Freeman explained to the Baltimore Sun that, as part of the larger public art project, Baltimore Festival of Maps, he wanted residents to notice the park in a new way, to appreciate it more by not being able to get at it so easily.

As visitors, the gold fences caught our eyes, and did make us puzzle at first as to why Baltimore would invest in such snazzy construction barricades. But as we saw other elements, such as a display of white flowers spelling out the word LIES, we realized it was public art, and it had worked–it made us pay attention to the park as space, rather than just as space between historic buildings. Very cool idea.

Visit Freeman’s page:

O’Neills

March 20th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Frank James and his friends discuss the closing of OTB.

O’NEILLS (3:02)

The Bronx is Building

March 5th, 2008 Posted in CB7 | No Comments »

click image for slideshow

New townhouses on 201st Street in the Bronx are posted for sale in Craig’s List at $685,000, but there seem to be few potential buyers. One visitor at a recent open house described the size of the apartments as “like a dollhouse,” calling the quarters small and cramped.

The new project replaces the Fire Marshall’s house, as neighbors called it even long after he had died and his widow rented the back as parking. It was a single family house, and now 15 units occupy that corner.

The new building’s owner hung the first For Sale sign last June, but has yet to sell one unit. By the fall, a For Rent sign appeared. Now two tenants occupy apartments in the middle section of the five, 3-family units.

This kind of new housing is appearing all over the Bronx. Fourteen lots in Community Board 7 are currently listed with the New York City Department of Buildings as places where developers have applied build. Another 23 lots are on the application list for demolition.

Whether or not these new homes will sell, in light of the current mortgage crisis, is another story.

Canal Street After Counterfeit Raid

March 3rd, 2008 Posted in Canal Street | No Comments »

I joined my classmates Roisin O’Connor, Rosaleen Ortiz and Mathew Warren for a walk around the “counterfeit triangle,” as Mayor Bloomberg calls it, near Centre and Canal streets to see the effects of Tuesday’s police raid of the fake bag & watch vendors.

photo by Roisin O’Connor

Just a day after the shutdown, it was easy to talk with shoppers who purchased knock-offs, and I even spoke with a vendor long enough that he expressed his great dissatisfaction with the whole system he is caught up in–from the exploitative boss who expects him to take the risks and the heat, to the label executives that demand a city crack down.

The question everyone on Canal Street was left with is: Was this the best use of the city’s resources? Is it a big deal to protect labels from imitation? Is it worthwhile to put people out of work? Certainly the shoppers and the street peddlers don’t pose a threat to anyone, so is it worth the hassle? Why or why not?You can decide after reading and listening to more of their stories whether or not you would close shops and confiscate the illegal goods.

New Hotel on Webster Ave.

February 12th, 2008 Posted in CB7, Webster Ave., Zoning Story | No Comments »

I continue to learn about NYC zoning and land use while reporting for the Norwood News. In this issue is a story about a new, small McSam Group hotel landing in the middle of Webster Avenue–a street with a strange collection of structures, from old homes that must have once been beautiful when the street was residential, to gas stations, baseball fields, auto repair shops, a carpet warehouse, a new public school, the beautiful structure housing NYPD 52 and an ambulette dispatch office/parking lot. CB7 has its work cut out to turn this into a pleasant, resident-friendly street. I hope they start with some trees!