Streetsblog New York City

Joe Lhota was confirmed as MTA chairman by the New York State Senate this afternoon. Image: MTA.

This afternoon, Joe Lhota was confirmed as the new chairman of the MTA. Hearings held earlier today provided a glimpse into the kind of leadership New York transit riders can expect from Lhota. The new chairman defended the MTA from the most strident attacks of anti-transit state senators. When it came to the question of properly funding the transit system, however, Lhota chose to protect the Cuomo administration’s political interests, not transit riders.

The strongest accusations of MTA mismanagement came from Long Island Republican Lee Zeldin, who has also led the fight to repeal the payroll mobility tax. In successive questions, Zeldin raised the issues of overtime abuse, pension abuse and overspending on consultants, among others. Each time, Lhota explained that the worst excesses had already been curbed under previous MTA leadership. Finally, Zeldin closed by wishing “for there to be accountability for the taxpayer dollars so there isn’t a need to use taxpayer dollars at all.”

Lhota didn’t let that stand. “There is no way the MTA can operate without taxpayer dollars,” he interjected. “The entire operation of the MTA cannot be paid for from the riders. It was never envisioned that way.” It’s comforting, at least, to know that the head of the MTA will stand up for the concept of public support for transit.

That doesn’t mean that Lhota at any point articulated the need for additional revenues for transit, however. In an effort to make the case for more transit funding, Senator Dan Squadron, who represents parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, asked Lhota how borrowing roughly $7 billion to pay for the last three years of the MTA’s capital plan would eventually affect riders. Lhota fell back on budget-speak to deny that the borrowing would put still more pressure on the fare. “There is to my knowledge no plan to have fare-backed bonds,” he said. However, both State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and transit advocates have sounded the alarm about depending on borrowing to pay for needed repairs and construction.

Similarly, when Bronx Senator Rubén Díaz, Sr. pressed Lhota about whether he’d support tolls on the East River Bridges, Cuomo’s nominee did not mention the MTA’s struggling finances. Said Lhota, “If it’s what the city wants to do and it’s approved and it’s what the state legislature wants to do, I’m the guy who will get it done efficiently and effectively.” Opining on bridge tolls might be outside the MTA chairman’s job description, but Lhota could easily have noted that the transit system needs the money.

Besides Squadron, the other senator to make an appeal for additional transit funding was Brooklyn’s Eric Adams. “If we want to get New Yorkers out of cars, then we need a first-class transportation system,” he said. “Albany has not done enough.” Adams also urged Lhota to add better bike parking at subway stations, saying that he sometimes bikes to the train himself.

Jay Walder may have exaggerated when he claimed this week to have put the city transit system “back on firm financial footing” during his stint as MTA chairman, but he did show remarkable reserve in not letting loose on Albany for undercutting rail and bus service at every turn. Unfortunately the media failed to fill in the blanks.

Half a world away from Albany, Jay Walder has more to smile about.

Speaking at a press conference in Hong Kong, where he just started his new job as chief executive of the privately-owned Mass Transit Railway Corporation, Walder said: “New York, when I arrived there, was in a financial crisis. The system simply did not have enough money to continue to operate. The assets were not being renewed. And the infrastructure was in terrible condition.”

Walder’s understated comments were picked up by the Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others, but nowhere have we seen anyone point out how little power the head of the MTA actually wields over agency funding. Nor did any reporter or editor take Walder’s cue to highlight years of Albany malfeasance.

To read the Times piece, for example, you’d think the MTA is an autonomous operation, free to conduct business without political interference. There is a passing reference to Governor Cuomo’s gutting of $320 million in annual payroll tax revenue, but no mention of last year’s $100 million Albany raid on dedicated MTA funds. Forgotten is how state senators used congestion pricing as a litmus test for Walder’s confirmation. With Albany unwilling to enact a new revenue stream via road pricing, it fell to Walder to cut spending.

Most glaringly, absent is an accounting of the decades of lawmaker thievery and neglect that preceded Walder and Cuomo, though those misdeeds more than anything will saddle transit riders for years to come, in the form of decreased service, fare hikes, or both. Other than raising fares or selling off assets, the chair of the MTA has very little revenue-raising clout. For whatever reason this factoid never seems to make the papers.

As for Walder, you get the distinct sense that there is no looking back.

“I think we have a very different situation here,” Walder said. “We have a first-class railway. We have a sustainable financial model that is supporting that railway. And I think the people of Hong Kong are benefiting tremendously from what we have.

“I don’t think it’s the same situation as what you have in New York.”

The City Council today passed a home rule message backing Albany legislation that would allow the city to implement a residential parking permit program. The vote was 40-8. Charles Barron, Lew Fidler, Peter Vallone, and Al Vann joined four out of the five Republicans on the council in voting against the measure. (Eric Ulrich was the GOP vote in favor.)

RPP is intended to curb traffic by designating street parking for local residents. On Wednesday the council’s State and Federal Legislation Committee passed a home rule resolution supported by council members who say their neighborhoods are being used as parking lots for out-of-area commuters and sports fans.

While support in the City Council is strong, passage of the Albany bills, introduced by Senator Daniel Squadron and Assembly Member Joan Millman, is not assured. The Bloomberg administration, which introduced its own RPP plan three years ago, has expressed limited interest in the concept. Meanwhile, legislators including Republican senators Marty Golden and Andrew Lanza have said they will work to kill the bill. Even if the legislation clears both houses in Albany, the city would still have to devise and pass a program.

The manslaughter plea of David McKie, sentenced earlier this month for running down Manhattan pedestrian Karen Schmeer as he fled police following a petty theft, points to a trend in vehicular crimes law that is resulting in lighter sentences for drivers who kill.

A Court of Appeals decision in a separate case resulted in a reduced charge for the man who killed Karen Schmeer, and will make it more difficult for other victims of traffic crime to find justice. Photo: Garret Savage

On the evening of January 29, 2010, McKie was behind the wheel of a Dodge racing north on Broadway after he and two other men, also in the car, shoplifted over-the-counter cold medication from an Upper West Side pharmacy. Schmeer was on her way home when McKie struck her as she attempted to cross Broadway at 90th Street. She was 39.

McKie was initially charged with murder, but in July prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance allowed him to plead to manslaughter. On September 7 he was sentenced to five to 15 years. Vance’s office reportedly backed off the murder charge in light of a recent decision by the Court of Appeals — the state’s highest court — that reversed a conviction in a similar case.

In October 2004, according to court documents [PDF], Michael Edward Prindle led police on a high-speed chase through Rochester after he and another man were caught trying to steal two snow plows. Prindle, who was driving, subsequently rammed another vehicle, killing a passenger. Prindle was convicted of murder, but last February the Court of Appeals overturned the verdict.

From the Prindle ruling:

[W]e conclude that the evidence adduced at trial does not support the jury’s conclusion that defendant evinced a depraved indifference to human life … Here, at most, the evidence adduced was legally sufficient to support a finding of reckless manslaughter.

“The assessment of the effect of Prindle by the Manhattan district attorney’s office is regrettably correct,” says Maureen McCormick, Nassau County ADA and traffic justice trailblazer. “The Court of Appeals decisions in recent years appear to be systematically decriminalizing vehicular cases. Oddly it comes as the legislature — ever so slowly — is attempting to better define and prioritize these cases, at least to a degree.”

The ramifications are significant, as the Prindle decision is one of several to demonstrate bias against cases in which crimes are committed with cars. Last week, the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld the murder conviction of Martin Heidgen, the drunk motorist who in 2005 killed limousine driver Stanley Rabinowitz and 7-year-old Katie Flynn as Flynn’s family returned home from a Long Island wedding. The case made national headlines due the gruesome nature of the crash, the unquestionable innocence of its young victim, and the vigor with which McCormick’s boss, Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice, pursued it. But with Heidgen’s legal team set to mount another challenge in the Court of Appeals, the ultimate outcome is in doubt.

To give prosecutors a better shot at getting justice for victims like Karen Schmeer, McCormick says it’s up to Albany to correct loopholes in state traffic law — as the Court of Appeals itself has suggested. “In a common law society it is incumbent that the legislature reacts swiftly to decisions that do not represent the intent or spirit of the legislation that the Court purports to interpret. That does not really happen here with the speed necessary to be effective.”

“Much needs to change,” adds McCormick. “We keep working toward that change.”

Could the state legislature get in on the costly, congestion-inducing parking minimum game? And could they do it at the site of Brooklyn’s biggest transit hub? Under a proposal by Assembly Member James Brennan, that’s exactly what would happen.

Assembly Member James Brennan wants the state government to force more parking into Atlantic Yards. Image: NYS Assembly.

Brennan is working on legislation that would force Forest City Ratner to build more off-street parking at the Atlantic Yards site, as was first reported in the Park Slope Patch. Currently, an 1,100 parking space surface lot is slated for the site.

Tonice Sgrignoli, a legislative aide for Brennan, said the legislation is still being researched and no details are available at this point. According to Sgrignoli, ESDC eliminated a requirement to build underground off-street parking that had been in an earlier agreement with Forest City Ratner and this legislation would likely undo that change.

When Streetsblog asked why Brennan thought that Atlantic Yards should have more parking in the first place, Sgrignoli replied that “Anyone who’s ever tried to drive a car and park it in that area will understand why it’s important to provide parking.”

Hopefully, Brennan himself has a more sophisticated understanding of parking policy. As former Boerum Hill Association president Jo Ann Simon said, no conceivable amount of off-street parking is going to free up on-street spaces so long as they are cheaper than going to a garage and available to anybody. “If people drive there, they will always try and find something free on the street,” she said. What happens on-street — many in the area, including Simon, have long pushed for residential parking permits — Simon said, “is entirely irrelevant to whether there should be more off-street parking to serve the arena.”

Simon’s argument is borne out by the reality at Yankee Stadium. There, despite a whopping 9,000 off-street spaces, area residents still complain that on-street parking is impossible on game day, according to a Crain’s report.

Moreover, building extra parking will simply mean that more people are able to drive to the area instead. “Brennan’s proposal to compel more off-street parking in one of New York City’s most transit-accessible locations betrays a terrible lack of understanding regarding transportation and mobility,” said University of Pennsylvania parking expert Rachel Weinberger. “His idea will invite more traffic through his district, more traffic in adjoining districts, and by requiring all of that parking, other development is preempted.”

Agreed Simon, “You induce drivers if there is parking there.”

Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which has analyzed the plans for Atlantic Yards and is a member of the Brooklyn Speaks coalition, said that underground parking had been a part of the Atlantic Yards plans, but was removed when the amount of development planned was scaled back.

“The only way Atlantic Yards can become part of a vibrant urban fabric is if the city and developer work to reduce driving to the site,” said Higashide. “Providing hundreds or thousands of extra parking spaces won’t do that.”

Under a bill passed by the state legislature, law enforcement can now pull you over for distracted driving. The penalties will be weaker than under a proposal by Gov. Cuomo. Image: OregonDOT via Flickr.

Legislation beefing up the state’s distracted driving laws passed the state legislature at the end of what was a fairly productive session on transportation issues last month. If signed into law, the bill should help prevent some of the 10,000 crashes caused by distracted driving each year in New York state. What passed the legislature is slightly weaker, however, than the distracted driving bill put forward by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Right now, the state’s distracted driving laws are weakened by the fact that texting or using other handheld electronic devices while driving is only a secondary offense. Law enforcement can only issue a ticket for it if they’ve pulled over the driver for another offense. Under both the legislative version of the bill, sponsored by Senator Carl Marcellino and Assembly Member Harvey Weisenberg, and Cuomo’s version, distracted driving would be made a primary offense.

New York is one of only four states that ban distracted driving but do not make it a primary offense.

Also under both pieces of legislation, lessons on the dangers of distraction would be added to driver’s education courses.

The fundamental similarities of the two bills suggest that Cuomo might sign the legislation. “We know that he wants texting laws to be stronger,” said Kathy Wilson, a spokesperson for Marcellino.

Cuomo’s legislation, however, was slightly tougher than what passed the legislature. “It’s not as stringent,” admitted Wilson. The biggest difference between the two, she said, was that Cuomo’s bill would increase the number of points added to a distracted driver’s license from two to three, while the legislature’s version would not.

“The Governor and the Legislature’s versions of the distracted driving law make the current law enforceable,” said Transportation Alternatives’ Lindsey Lusher Shute. “Governor Cuomo’s version of the distracted driving bill is undoubtably stronger and is likely to be more effective at getting bad drivers off the road over the long term. Points, being a highly effective deterrent, are appropriate and necessary tool to solving the growing problem of distracted driving in New York State.”

The state legislature earned a solid B on sustainable transportation issues this term, according to a report card issued Wednesday by the New York League of Conservation Voters. Legislators earned top marks for passing complete streets legislation and a transit funding lockbox, but were penalized for their continued attacks on the MTA’s budget.

Transportation was one of four issue areas covered by the NYLCV scorecard, which can be read in full above. Since the group can endorse candidates for elected office, while no New York group focused solely on transportation can, their prioritization of these issues adds political heft to transportation advocacy efforts.

The NYLCV grade is based on four goals. The group wanted the legislature to stop stealing dedicated funds from transit riders, pass lockbox legislation to make future raids more difficult, protect the payroll mobility tax, and pass complete streets legislation.

For passing the lockbox and the complete streets bills, legislators earned an A. The State Senate brought down the legislature’s score by voting to phase out the payroll tax; because that proposal went nowhere in the Assembly, overall the legislature earned a C on that issue. For taking another $100 million from the MTA for use elsewhere in the budget, Albany earned a D.

Read more…

The East River Greenway currently ends a few blocks south of the United Nations. Under a complicated land swap that is moving closer to completion, the city would be able to eventually connect the greenway through Midtown. Photo: Amy Zimmer/DNAinfo

The State Legislature took another step forward in the long and arduous process of filling the Midtown gap in the East River Greenway two weeks ago. By passing a law that would allow a swap of land between the city and the United Nations to move forward, DNAinfo reported yesterday, Albany cleared the way for a deal to be negotiated.

Under the terms of the arrangement reported by DNAinfo’s Amy Zimmer, the city would give part of the Robert Moses Playground, located just south of the UN headquarters, to the UN, which would build a new office tower there. In return, replacement park space would be added elsewhere and a segment of the greenway could be built between the UN and the water.

The deal would also allow the city to sell two buildings it currently leases to UN-related tenants and use that money to pay for the greenway connector. Though the Parks Department says the greenway will have a functional, no-frills design, the cost is still estimated to reach $150 million.

If it comes together, the deal would lead to the creation of a north-south trunk on the East Side that would provide a continuous, safe route for biking and walking. On the West Side, the Hudson River Greenway is now the busiest bike path in the country and the cycling backbone for all of Manhattan. It currently attracts cyclists from the East Side who go out of their way for the safety of biking apart from city traffic.

The general outline of the deal has the support of the Bloomberg Administration, as well as State Senator Liz Krueger, Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh, City Council Member Daniel Garodnick, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. The empowering bill still needs to be signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to become law.

The Albany legislation includes a sunset provision. If the UN and the city don’t ink a memorandum of understanding by mid-October, the legislation will expire.

Assuming that a deal is worked out — the momentum seems to be building in that direction, but there are a lot of moving parts — a completed East River Greenway would still be many years away. A feasibility study requested by the city in April, for example, would take two years alone.

Under a plan passed by the State Legislature last Friday, it would become legal to hail certain livery vehicles from the street outside the Manhattan core. Image: James Adams for the Daily News.

Legislation passed by the State Senate last Friday night could clear the way for Mayor Michael Bloomberg to completely revamp taxi service in large swaths of the city through the introduction of a new class of vehicle authorized to pick up street hails only outside the Manhattan core. The improved service should make it easier to live car-free in the majority of New York City. It also would provide a small source of revenue to the MTA.

Under the plan, the city can issue 30,000 new permits to livery cabs, each of which will allow the holder to pick up street hails. In exchange, the permit holders will pay a $1,500 fee and submit to a slew of regulations intended to make the new class of livery vehicles more like yellow cabs.

Those regulations should be a boon to many riders: a uniform paint scheme and taxi lights so that the taxis can be identified without honking, a meter and rate card to eliminate the need to haggle over the price of a trip, credit card machines to enable more payment methods, and GPS tracking.

As taxis often serve as complements to public transit — especially true in outer-borough neighborhoods where many people live outside of walking distance to a subway station — improving their utility can advance progressive transportation policy. Taxis are already a major component of the city’s transportation system, with yellow cabs alone moving over 600,000 people a day.

So that the new borough taxis don’t simply join yellow cabs in the profitable center of Manhattan — 97 percent of yellow cab trips start there or at an airport, according to GPS data — their permits would only be valid for the other four boroughs and above E. 96th Street and W. 110th Street.

The plan was passed through the state legislature in an end-run around the yellow taxi industry’s decades-long sway over the City Council. In the Assembly, it passed by a wide margin of 110-28; the idea to take the vote to Albany instead of the council came from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in addition to Bloomberg, according to the New York Times. In the Senate, the plan passed by 40-21, with a strange coalition of support that divided Democrats, Republicans, the New York City delegation, and the upstate delegation.

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Though the state legislature was expected to work well into the morning last night, dealing with major priorities like rent regulation and gay marriage in addition to lower-profile but still-important bills like the transit funding lockbox, the negotiated deals fell apart and the legislature put off all its business until this morning. The path to passage for any of those bills is a little less obvious than it was a day ago, but the lockbox still has a good chance of making it through the State Assembly.

The lockbox already passed the State Senate, where it was sponsored by Brooklyn Republican Marty Golden, and the powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced his support for the bill last night.

The bill should be on the Ways and Means Committee agenda this morning, said Lorrie Smith, the legislative director for lockbox sponsor James Brennan. “If Silver’s supporting it, then it should be on that agenda,” said Smith. The Ways and Means agenda has not been released yet, however. “We’re in kind of a holding pattern since late last evening,” Smith said.

There is still room on the calendar to pass the lockbox, said Smith, even as the time remaining in the session continues to tick away. If Assembly Republicans do decide to delay the bill with a fight over the payroll tax, as Silver’s office was worried about last night, however, that could complicate matters. “If that were to come about, it would be a problem,” admitted Smith.

“We have to hope that Senator Golden will ask them to let this go through,” said Smith. Streetsblog has a call in with Golden’s office to see if he’s communicated the importance of the lockbox legislation to his Republican colleagues in the Assembly.