Streetsblog New York City

Until last fall, the state’s planning for a new Tappan Zee Bridge was a model of public outreach. It included over 280 public meetings and one outreach center open full-time on each side of the bridge.

Under Governor Andrew Cuomo, however, the project has been “fast-tracked.” Transit was axed from the bridge and the project is hurtling forward without basic information being provided to the public. Tellingly, the outreach centers have been shuttered; shown above is the Nyack site as of yesterday.

The sign in the window says “Space For Rent.” Let us know in the comments what it should really say.

“A leading voice for better urban design for the sake of good health.” “A public health/social justice hero.” Dr. Richard Jackson, chair of environmental health at UCLA, is a leading voice for transportation reform whose work has linked America’s sprawl to the nation’s high rates of obesity.

The former director of the Center for Disease Control’s Environment Health Department will take to the airwaves Tuesday in an interview with PBS’s Tavis Smiley. The interview will run in coordination with Dr. Jackson’s four-hour documentary series, Designing Healthy Communities (check local listings).

Dr. Jackson spent years researching public health epidemics and zeroed in on car dependence and sprawl as leading factors in America’s diabetes and obesity epidemics.

“We have built America in a way that is, I believe, is fundamentally unhealthy,” Dr. Jackson says. “It prevents us from walking. It inhibits us from socializing. It removes trees and the things that make our air quality better. We could not have designed an environment that is more difficult for people’s well being at this point.”

He adds: “Two percent of the United States’ gross domestic product goes to the treatment of diabetes. This is a crushing economic impact.”

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There was no grand unveiling of the House’s five-year transportation bill today, but a summary of the bill has been kicking around for a few days. While there aren’t any hard numbers available yet, the “American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act” looks like a return to 1950s-style transportation policy. It is particularly unkind to transit and bike/ped programs, and to cities in general.

The bill’s overarching themes, again in the absence of official language, seem to be:

• Funneling as much money as possible to highways
• Eliminating programs “that do not have a federal interest,” which apparently includes all dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs
• Doing away with discretionary transit programs, which would presumably spell the end for the very successful TIGER
• Giving even more power to spend that money to state DOTs, not cities and metro regions
• Shortening the environmental review process
• Augmenting gas tax revenue with a yet-unspecified revenue stream from oil and gas drilling

One example the summary gives of a project not in the federal interest is the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program, which distributed four $25 million grants “to demonstrate how improved walking and bicycling networks can increase rates of walking and bicycling.” One of those grants went to Minneapolis, which is making great strides in promoting biking and walking. If reauthorized at current levels, NTPP would account for 0.04 percent of the bill’s total appropriations.

The “flexibility” afforded states to minimize spending on bike/ped and transit, as well as the bill’s reliance on oil drilling, have advocates outraged. The Sierra Club’s Jesse Prentice-Dunn told Streetsblog that the bill represents “a significant step backwards for safe biking and walking.”

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The Weekly Carnage is a Friday round-up of motor vehicle violence across the five boroughs and beyond. For more on the origins and purpose of this column, please read About the Weekly Carnage.

Fatal Crashes (2 killed this week, 11 this year, 3 drivers charged*)

• Midwood: 58-Year-Old Pedestrian Hit by One Driver, Fatally Struck by a Second in Hit-and-Run (ABC 7, NY1)
• Staten Island: Nelson Coelho, 23, Struck Trying to Cross SI Expressway (Post)

Injuries, Arrests and Property Damage

• Greenwich Village: 63-Year-Old Pedestrian Hospitalized With Head Injuries After Driver Hits Her (DNA)
• UWS: Crash Involving Cab Driver Injures Pedestrian, Sends Vehicle Into Scaffolding (DNA)
• Bronx: Man Driving Tractor-Trailer Illegally on Hutchinson River Pkwy Crashes Into Overpass, Injures Bridge Inspectors (DNA, Post)
• Midtown: Ten Injured in Collision on Park Avenue (DNA)
• Crown Heights: Two-Car Crash on Eastern Parkway Leaves Seven Injured, Six Seriously (DNA)
• Dyker Heights: Four Pedestrians Struck in Two Separate Crashes; No Criminality Suspected (News)
• Tompkinsville: Drunk Driver Smashes Into Pole, Injuring Passenger (Post Blotter)
• Sunnyside: Driver Injured After Her SUV Flipped in Two-Car Crash (Advance)
• New Brighton: Woman Driving With Suspended License, 3-Year-Old Son in the Backseat Nearly Runs Down Cop (Advance)
• Cypress Hills: Carjacker Crashes Minivan Into Divider During Police Chase (DNA)

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How does Andrew Cuomo plan to pay for the new Tappan Zee Bridge? The state isn’t saying — and it isn’t letting the public weigh in, either.

The Cuomo administration won’t release its financial plan for the bridge until April or May, according to a report in the Journal News. That’s just months before construction is scheduled to start, and months after the state starts soliciting proposals from contractors. It’s far too late for New Yorkers to debate the right way to pay for the enormously expensive bridge.

In the meantime the administration is refusing to disclose its current thinking on the bridge financing or to provide the numbers that might let New Yorkers weigh the options themselves. Repeated Streetsblog inquiries to the governor’s press office have been ignored. A Streetsblog freedom of information request for financial plans generated by state agencies or by Merrill Lynch, which the state contracted to perform financial planning for the Tappan Zee Bridge, was denied on the grounds that they were inter- or intra-agency materials. Streetsblog has appealed that decision.

The Cuomo administration isn’t even letting legislative leaders in on its thinking. In a hearing held Wednesday, Senate Finance Committee Chair John DeFrancisco noted that the legislature has to approve Cuomo’s budget, including his transportation spending, by April. “Tell me how we can do that when the answer is almost uniformly, ‘We are still studying it’?” he asked NYS DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald, according to the Times Union.

Finding the money to pay for the new Tappan Zee won’t be easy. Right now, the state’s official price tag, as stated in its draft environmental impact statement, is $4.64 billion for the bridge, though many press reports have put the cost at $5.2 billion. The high cost is due to the state’s desire to build a bridge twice as wide as the current one (but which still won’t include transit lanes).

The question of how to pay for the bridge should concern all New Yorkers. As Streetsblog reported yesterday, if the bridge were funded entirely by the drivers who cross it, a conservative financial analysis estimated that the one-way E-ZPass toll would have to rise from $4.75 to around $16 just to cover the cost of construction. In a more extreme but still plausible scenario, it would take $30 tolls to pay for the whole thing. Would Cuomo tolerate tolls that high?

If Cuomo won’t accept $16 tolls, where would the extra revenues come from? In a scenario where tolls double but don’t triple, there would still be a gap of at least $1.2 billion dollars.

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Over the last few years, greater Indianapolis has been thinking big about transit. They developed a plan to double bus service and add new rail lines. They even identified funding (a 0.3 percent income tax hike) and built a viable political coalition around the vision — which represented a dramatic shift away from the old car-centric approach that has dominated transportation planning there for decades.

All that work is now hanging in the balance of a partisan standoff unrelated to the actual transit plan. Network blog Urban Indy reported yesterday that an Indiana House committee had voted down the transit legislation 11-10 after a Republican lawmaker inserted language into the bill that would make the transit system “right-to-work.”

The folks at Urban Indy, who have been advocating hard for this bill, are beside themselves. But a shred of hope remains, explains blogger extraordinaire Curt Ailes:

To be clear, the transit portion of the bill never seemed to be at the heart of the debate over HB1073; it was always the labor. The bickering could be see as an extension of the passionate debate of the past few weeks over Right to Work legislation which passed the House yesterday with Democrats coming up on the losing end of that debate.

This officially puts HB1073 in the failed bills category but does not altogether bury it from being passed in some other form this session.

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The City Planning Commission approved a Rudin family request to build 50 percent more parking than allowed at the site of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. The commission’s unanimous approval came last Monday despite opposition to the parking garage from the local community board and evidence that Rudin hadn’t met the city’s own requirements for granting exemptions to parking maximums.

The advisory recommendations supposedly guiding the commission had been split over the garage. Community Board 2 urged that no garage be allowed at all, as the entrance would be the fourth on a single residential block of West 12th Street. Borough President Scott Stringer, however, approved of the Rudin request to build 152 parking spaces, rather than the 98 the developers would be allowed under the city’s parking maximums.

Additionally, the commission’s report suggests that all community members who testified on the issue of the parking garage at its public hearing opposed the extra parking spaces. “A number of speakers in opposition stated a concern for the proposed garage on 12th Street,” reads the report [PDF]. “These speakers said that the requested special permit to increase the size of the garage should be denied.”

Regardless of those recommendations, it’s debatable whether Rudin was even eligible for a special permit to exceed the parking maximums. To get such a permit, developers need to show that there isn’t enough available parking in the area to meet the projected demand from project residents.

Calculations performed by both Streetsblog and the Municipal Art Society show that wasn’t the case in the Village. “When the residential units are expected to be built there will be 740 available overnight spaces and 154 available weekday midday spaces within a quarter mile radius of the site,” wrote MAS in testimony submitted to the City Planning Commission [PDF]. “This is more than enough spaces to accommodate the 137 cars that the applicant is estimating will result from the addition of 450 new housing units.”

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“Rate shock” was the name given to the electricity industry’s financial crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, when utility company finances buckled under the weight of escalating nuclear power costs. Not only were the costs of the nukes spiraling out of control, but the electricity rate hikes required to pay for them caused energy use to flatten, as customers pinched by the high rates were forced to conserve. Facing higher costs but flat sales, the utilities made up the difference with further rate hikes, until their customers rebelled, the dividends stopped flowing, and utility investors lost billions.

You have to wonder if the same fate awaits the New York State Thruway Authority with its Tappan Zee Bridge rebuild. This time, though, it won’t be investors holding the bag. It’ll be New York State drivers and taxpayers — and maybe even New York City transit riders.

These numbers are scary. They suggest that the finances of a replacement Tappan Zee Bridge could be shakier than the roadway of the existing one.

The potential catalyst is the extraordinary toll hikes that will almost certainly be needed to pay for the replacement Tappan Zee. The carrying costs on the $5.2 billion project — that’s the official figure for a span that’s twice as wide as the current bridge but without exclusive transit lanes — are so high that if they’re borne entirely by drivers using the bridge, the current $4.75 auto toll (one-way with E-ZPass) may need to triple. Call it “toll shock.”

But that’s not all. A toll increase of that magnitude — in the $10 ballpark — would almost certainly send “demand” (the number of car and truck crossings) into a tailspin. That in turn could necessitate another toll hike to ensure that bondholders stay paid and set up another round of the downward spiral — the same whirlpool that nearly swallowed dozens of utilities a few decades ago.

I’ve run some numbers, and they’re so disturbing that even I’m not sure how much credence to give them. But with the fast-tracking of the jumbo-sized, jumbo-priced rebuild, I felt it was less risky to put them out than to sit on them.

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Bravo, James Vacca.

On Wednesday Vacca joined Council Member Gale Brewer in calling attention to the needs of blind and sight-impaired pedestrians, particularly as they apply to new pedestrian plazas.

Brewer has introduced a bill requiring textured pavement around the perimeters of plazas and bike lanes, while other bills would speed up the installation of audible pedestrian signals and mandate accessible online notifications concerning changes to street design. DNAinfo reports:

“This is a serious civil rights issue,” said City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca, who said he first became aware of the challenges of new street designs from his father, who was blind.

Vacca’s assessment is spot on. Being able to navigate your way to the grocery store without fear of being run over is a civil rights issue. As is taking a bike ride through your neighborhood. As is crossing the street with your elderly mother. As is surviving the walk home from school. Especially so when the risk of being hurt or killed in traffic is higher for some New Yorkers than others.

Vacca has spent a lot of time on camera since taking the helm of the transportation committee, and he has yet to call attention to the hundreds of road deaths and thousands of injuries that occur annually. He has yet to credit the new pedestrian spaces, bike lanes, and street redesigns for making New York a safer city.

After a year devoted to nitpicking street safety improvements and targeting those who need them while pandering to parking scofflaws, maybe he and the council will at last turn to the business of safeguarding the rights of everyone who deserves to move about the city safely.