This city can not figure out how to plant the trees destroyed by using Macombs Dam Park for Yankee Stadium . . . or the trees they destroyed in Van Cortlandt Park for a filter plant.

Even though the whole country, including Bush’s EPA have stated that “green infrastructure” is more advisable than other more traditional approaches. The city still says it has to model using green roofs in the urban setting. This is a joke! They have been using green roofs and trees to help protect the WAshington DC (talk about congestion), but NYC has to study it.

Frankly, it is just a simple way to turn it down. Do you know why? Because they would rather build than create.

And while congestion pricing is a way to clean the air, and help the rest of us get around easier, the choice not to use green infrastructure to abate the overflow of sewage into our waterbodies, can cause people to get sick. People swim and people fish in those waters, and sometimes when it rains hard, there is not enough room in the pipe for the sewage. The green roof can absorb some of that rain and allow the design of the treatment plant to work.

Maybe this is not wotth it anymore.

Same old tired excuses and willful ignorance.

I would also like to win Dinowitz over to the side of congestion pricing as ONE of the tools we need to improve transit and reduce congestion in this city; and I will welcome his support if and when it comes.

But let’s be honest: his NY press reply to Streetsblog was disingenuous and disgraceful rhetoric.

Perhaps the good Assemblyman can pitch in by helping to restore some of the state funding for transit that was gutted under Pataki & Giuiani’s reign of error.

Congestion pricing will benefit everyone in the area affected by reducing congestion. What outer borough politicians forget is how many of their constituents work there. They will benefit for that reason.

I spent most of my career in the public sector in Lower Manhattan, and now work in the private sector in the heart of Midtown. The traffic congestion makes Midtown miserable to walk around in. My advice is if you are visting the city stay south of 25th Street, and avoid the vicinity of the Williamsburg Bridge, Holand Tunnel and Canal Street.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/23/AR2007042301359.html

I am not an expert on transportation, but know that the info that PlaNYC uses on other topics is just not serious. Like putting a park within 10 minutes of everyone is nice, but not if you have to give up all the big parks for other favorite projects, like McCombs Dam Park and Van Cortlandt Park.

So you know, the “built environment” is what the administration calls NYC. No trees, just buildings. There is so much concrete that they can not even imagine another way to do things. And that does not save one tree, no matter how many times they are told that the tree cleans the air, lowers the temperature, captures the rain to avoid flooding .. . etc.

There is so much wrong with the PlaNYC, but this is not the place. Suffice to say, it is not a sustainable plan. If you look at it real good, you will see a buildable plan. Building houses, utilites, subways, tunnels, bridges, sewers . . . but not one tree.

It seems that many have fallen into the trap of the glamour. At this rate, there will be no fear of who is going to ride on mass transit as it will have drowned in the rain that can not be pumped into the sewer for lack of room. For you see, it is not the MTA’s fault that the trains flooded, it is the city fault. They build the catch basins to collect 90% of the storms, but that is only 10% of the rain.

The other blog is confusing, but I will go visit it.

What specific data used by PlaNYC does not impress you and why? What do you mean by “built environment”? Do you mean density? Density add to sustainability. If not, what exactly do you mean?

Also, if you want to have a dialog about what you see as a viable alternative to C.P., I am more than willing and I have tried to participate in one. If you want to have one, please continue on the other Dinowitz article.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/09/06/on-behalf-of-52-of-his-constituents-dinowitz-opposes-pricing/

Otherwise you seem disingenuous in your request.

I was a little geographically confused in stating Marble Hill would have Penn Station privileges, but the Mta’s web-page on Metro-North access to Penn shows Spuyten Duyvil station as being before the split:

http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/mta/planning/psas/overview.htm#StudyDevelopment

Really don’t know who is right here, as I’ve never been to the station before.

Dave

PlaNYC seems to be a way to increase the “built” environment in Manhattan, with little or no consideration to sustatinable issues for the city and the metropolitan area.

To me, this is the kind of thinking that has us looking at vacant stores along once busy economic hubs (and the suburban counter parts, the strip mall) with a new box store across the street.

But that is just me, maybe it is ok for others.

In the end, it is sad that we can not get on with the issue of increasing mass transit to the outer boroughs and not just have everything go to Manhattan.

The 5.2% number is the estimate given for Dinowitz’s district based on Census and DMV data via Transportation Alternatives. Coincidentally, it matches the rate of car commuting for the Bronx as a whole. 5.2% is also the car-commuter rate given for Koppell’s City Council district which, I believe, matches Dinowitz’s pretty closely. Koppell, btw, told Gotham Gazette that he is “leaning for” pricing.

http://maps.google.com/maps?geocode=0,40.893123,-73.911457&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.15347,82.265625&ll=40.891456,-73.915586&spn=0.045224,0.10849&z=14&om=1

(Yes, I know there used to be a wye allowing trains from Marble Hill and Spuyten Duyvil to go west and south to Penn Station, and that could be restored, but if we’re heading into that realm I want service on the Putnam Line restored, all the way up to Richard Brodsky’s house.)

Since, according to Mr. Naparstek, only 5.2% of my constituents actually drive into Manhattan, it must mean that most people who take mass transit in the Bronx also oppose congestion pricing.

That discrepancy should give Assembleyman Dinowitz pause.

I suggest you propose a Bronx-focused symposium on congestion pricing, to be jointly sponsored by Streetsblog and Assembleyman Dinowitz’s office. Three people per “side.” Exchange points beforehand to limit later charges of blindsiding.

Next, stick to constructive dialogue. Dinowitz claims he wants to see mass transit improvements and some kind of congestion management solution, just not perhaps Bloomberg’s plan, and not in a way that is rammed down the Legislature’s throat.

So show Dinowitz the various possibilities for reducing congestion, such as putting a price on free parking, revoking municipal employee permits, traffic calming, etc, etc. If he’s seriously interested in solving these problems, perhaps he might start agreeing with some of the ideas or propose his own.

Dinowitz is an intelligent guy, albeit a bit thin-skinned at times in public dialogs. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up the phone and call his office to say hello.

The commentary to the post does get a bit more personal, but that is in the nature of the blog format. I think S’blog goes as far as it should in editing out harsh commentary directed at public officials, although it seems to have loosened up a bit in the last few months. If Dinowitz doesn’t like it, he should retire from public life.

As for the substance of the NY Press response:

“Well, we didn’t pass congestion pricing, but we will get the money, so the threat was simply a lie to force us to pass it.”
-Disingenuous. If we don’t pass congestion pricing, we don’t get the money.
“The writer’s response to my concern that New Jerseyites would pay only $2 to $4 for the congestion pricing tax while most Bronxites would pay $8 is that most Bronxites use mass transit. That’s no response. Bronxites who drive would pay more than those from New Jersey for the congestion pricing fee.”
-Bronxites who use the Triborough and the HH bridges would receive a discount from the $8 also, would they not?
“Oppressed minority” is overblown. Dinowitz’s auto-commuting constituents have higher incomes than his mass-transit commuting ones, no?
“If traffic should increase on the Henry Hudson Parkway in the Bronx then our air would be dirtier. Yes, maybe air would be cleaner in midtown and no, cleaner air doesn’t stop at 86th Street, but if our traffic in Riverdale does increase that does mean dirtier air here.”
-None of his theories of how congestion pricing will increase traffic in the Bronx hold water. Given the credit for the HH Bridge, it would probably route some traffic on local streets onto the Henry Hudson, resulting in less idling and less pollution in the Bronx.
“Please don’t tell me that mass transit will improve if this passes. The MTA has totally omitted the western Bronx from their proposed list of bus improvements. [Perhaps my constituents who oppose congestion pricing] don’t have faith that the MTA will actually deliver on mass transit improvements.”
-Dinowitz is in state government, it’s his job to ensure there is follow through. For him to stand there with his arms crossed saying we shouldn’t trust that the executive branch of state government (run by a member of his party) to keep its commitments to congestion pricing, is for him to dodge his own responsibility. Same thing goes for the shortcomings he perceives in the mass transit in the western Bronx–what has he been doing to try to change things while he’s been in office?