Get used to it.

Obama said the action was taken in the interest of “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover,” but environmental groups slammed the decision as “a huge win for corporate polluters,” in the words of League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

NRDC President Frances Beinecke said, “The Clean Air Act clearly requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set protective standards against smog — based on science and the law. The White House now has polluted that process with politics.” Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said she was “disappointed” with the decision.

The decision has a major impact on efforts to reform transportation, NRDC’s Deron Lovaas told Streetsblog.

“It frankly makes our job harder, in terms of reducing pollution from mobile sources,” Lovaas said. “If they had set the standard closer to 60 parts per billion, as opposed to 80, regions and states would have to get really serious about transit, and really serious about smart growth, and really serious about reducing vehicle miles traveled, because the gains couldn’t all be made through better technology.”

Business interests had long lobbied against the tighter standards, and they expressed their pleasure at the president’s announcement. The Chamber of Commerce cheered the move, rationalizing that by waiting for the statutorily-required rule-making in 2013, the EPA “can base its decision on the most recent science, not 2006 science.”

According to the National Review, some Republicans had called the ozone requirements “the single most harmful regulation proposed by the administration” and estimated that the total cost of implementation would have been “at least $1 trillion over a decade and millions of jobs.” House Speaker John Boehner called Obama’s concession to polluters “a good first step” and said he was glad the White House “recognized the job-killing impact of this particular regulation.”

Did we mention it would have saved 12,000 lives?

Graph: Office of the mayor

A new study commissioned by the city finds that air quality in Times Square has notably improved since the 2009 installation of pedestrian plazas on Broadway.

Street-level readings taken by the New York City Community Air Survey, a city-wide air quality monitoring program created as part of PlaNYC, show that “concentrations of traffic-related pollutants were substantially lower than measurements from the year before and were less than in other midtown locations.” From a media statement announcing the findings:

The report confirms that major sources of air pollution generated in New York City are vehicle traffic and buildings burning high-sulfur heating oils. Additionally, in Times Square, concentrations of nitrogen oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), two pollutants closely associated with traffic, were among the highest in the city. After the conversion to a pedestrian plaza, NO pollution levels in Times Square went down by 63 percent, while NO2 levels went down by 41 percent.

“The new Times Square is a showcase for New York’s vitality and energy, rather than for congestion and pollution,” said NYCDOT Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “The changes here have been big wins for safety, mobility and business. Now we can see that they have delivered great environmental gains as well.”

The city says that some 250,000 pedestrians enter Times Square every day.

Data from the survey were released ahead of the next edition of PlaNYC and will be used to “inform” unspecified new air quality initiatives. The PlaNYC reboot is set for April 21.

Among the fans of the new Times Square are former President Bill Clinton, who joined Mayor Bloomberg today in announcing a merger of their climate groups, the Clinton Global Initiative and C40. Regaling reporters with tales of the Times Square of old, writes City Room:

Mr. Clinton concluded by recalling that when he was a college student, he was agile — and reckless — enough to dodge the cars zipping through Times Square.

Today, thanks to the pedestrian mall, he said, there is no need. “Now you can be my age and walk in Times Square and not get run down. That is pretty cool, too.”

Containers at the Port of Oakland. Photo: NOAA

Nearly a quarter of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions come from freight. The movement of goods from port of entry to a store near you throws enough particulate pollution into the air to shorten the lives of 21,000 people each year, according to the Clean Air Task Force.

The freight sector is lumbering under inefficient and outdated systems that cause pollution, public health problems, safety hazards, and delivery delays. There’s never been a coordinated national approach to solving these problems. And with no deliberate strategy, the default approach is often to build more highways.

As Stephen Davis of Transportation for America writes:

If a port is congested or wants to expand, there’s little available
federal money to spend directly on rail or any other mode. Your choices
are highways or highways. When a state or port does spend to improve
operations, there is no accountability to make sure they’re actually
reducing port/freight congestion, moving freight faster, or reducing
air pollution in surrounding communities.

Enter the FREIGHT Act. (That’s the Focusing Resources, Economic Investment and Guidance to Help Transportation Act of 2010, with true Capitol Hill acronym panache.) The FREIGHT Act was introduced in the Senate toward the end of July and in the House a week later.

The bill focuses on areas known as "connectors," said Kathryn Phillips of the Environmental Defense Fund. “All the literature and studies say it’s the connector areas, the hubs, where you have the most congestion and environmental impacts.” The bill calls for troubleshooting at these bottlenecks, where products are transferred “from boat to truck to another truck to rail” and everything gets bogged down. Trucks get stuck in traffic; trains sit on the tracks; ships idle at port.

Communities near international ports pay the price. In Riverside, California, traffic gets tied up at 26 at-grade rail crossings 128 times a day when trains pass. Add to that the noise and pollution nearby neighborhoods must contend with.

“We don’t just want to pay for asthma filters for schools,” said Isaac Kos-Read of the Port of Los Angeles. “We want to fix the emissions problem from the ground up.”

Meanwhile, the bridges near the Port of LA are in alarming condition. The Schuyler Heim Bridge is expected to fail in the next major earthquake. The Gerald Desmond Bridge — which carries 15-25 percent of all cargo containers coming into country, according to Kos-Read — wears a “diaper” to catch chunks of falling concrete.

The Port of Oakland is struggling with antiquated rail lines over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, said port spokesperson Matt Davis. “Some of the tunnel clearances are not high enough to accept double-stacked containers,” he said. State assistance to fix the problem didn’t come through. Davis is convinced a national approach is needed to address problems like these.

“We’ve seen previous projects of national and regional significance end up in the earmark process, and what you get is some random highway in Ohio,” said Davis. “It’s a hopscotch approach, not looking at it as one coordinated freight corridor.”

Kos-Read agrees. He added that Canada is giving the U.S. an added incentive to pull together to improve the freight sector — or else “Canada is going to eat our lunch.” Canada has articulated a national freight plan — and it’s marketing itself to Asia as the gateway to “North America’s economic heartland.”

The FREIGHT Act would mandate the creation of a National Freight Transportation Strategic Plan, as well as a permanent Office of Freight Planning and Development within the U.S. Department of Transportation. It would also start a grant program to focus funds where they’re most needed.

The legislation seeks not just to improve efficiency, but also to reduce “air, water, and noise pollution and impacts on ecosystems and communities.” It sets goals for improved outcomes, like improving travel time reliability, cutting 40 percent of carbon emissions, and reducing freight transportation-related fatalities by 10 percent.

How those outcomes are achieved will be up to the new office and the strategic planners to figure out. It stands to reason that some trucking will be replaced with rail, or short-sea shipping, but none of that is prescribed in the bill.

Don’t expect this legislation to follow the normal process of How-a-Bill-Becomes-a-Law. Its introduction in the House is, in part, a product of the slow pace of the massive transportation re-authorization bill, which seems to be proceeding on a glacial time scale. While it stalls, lawmakers are picking off pieces of it to work on.

But Transportation Committee Chair Jim Oberstar (D-MN) is “not fond of doing things piecemeal,” according to committee staffer Jim Berard. “He feels the authorization bill should be a comprehensive approach to surface transportation issues.” So the FREIGHT Act, in the House, is likely to be folded into the larger transportation legislation, and not passed as a stand-alone bill.

It works a little differently in the Senate. The Commerce Committee will take up the FREIGHT Act, while the Environment and Public Works Committee takes up the highways portion of the re-authorization, and other committees bite off their pieces of the transportation pie. Those various committee measures will then form the Senate’s transportation proposal.

However it gets done, port operators, environmental justice advocates, and supporters of transportation reform agree that it needs to get done.

The Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, covered in smog generated in large part by tailpipe emissions. Image: Wikimedia

New Yorkers shouldn't have to live in homes where garbage, mold and rats cause asthma, and they shouldn't have to play in parks where PCBs are 110 times the level considered safe. For the city to have a truly clean and healthy environment, elected leaders needs to do more about pollution from cars.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, vehicle emissions contribute more than 80 percent of the total cancer risk from air pollution. The health effects of tailpipe emissions are highest within 500 feet of congested major roadways. The homes of two million New Yorkers are inside that high-risk area, according to another EDF report. In Brooklyn, 35 percent of playgrounds are in the danger zone. EDF also estimates that Queens County has the tenth worst diesel pollution in the country.

More than a million New Yorkers have been diagnosed with asthma, and the harm from automotive pollution is felt most acutely in disadvantaged communities. "Communities living close to highways, high traffic volume and congestion tend to have higher asthma rates and hospitalizations," said Soledad Gaztambide, transportation justice coordinator for the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park. "These communities are mostly low-income communities and communities of color."

Gaztambide identified the upcoming cuts to MTA service as a major step backwards in the fight to keep New York's environment healthy. "The city and state need to prioritize the creation of new revenue sources for the MTA to divert further service cuts and fare increases," she said. "Funding support from the city and state has remained the same while MTA operating costs continue to grow."

The City Council has the budget powers to give more money to transit, the land use authority to stop filling new development with off-street parking, and the bully pulpit to build support for pedestrian and bike infrastructure in New York's political culture, just to name a few options at their disposal. If council members want to improve the environment and public health, cars have to be a target.

Fewer cars means more walking and healthier kids. Image: jeweledlion via Flickr.

Could reducing traffic near children's homes help America combat its obesity epidemic? A new study conducted by UC Berkeley professor Michael Jerrett strongly suggests the answer is yes.

Obesity rates are steadily increasing -- more than one-fifth of New Yorkers are now obese, and even that figure is well below the national average. With obesity strongly linked to dangerous diseases like diabetes and asthma, a great deal of research has gone into uncovering the factors at work.

The quality of the built environment matters tremendously. Everything from mixed-use development to street connectivity to park access has been shown to affect physical activity, Jerrett notes, thus affecting obesity rates.

The new research, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, makes a crucial addition to what we know already. Jerrett shows that not only does the built environment matter, but traffic volumes matter too. His team's long-term study tracked children from across Southern California, starting from ages 9-10 and continuing through high school. Controlling for a wide variety of factors, they compared the children's body mass indexes (BMI) to the density of traffic near their homes.

Children living within 150 meters of high-traffic areas were found to have, on average, BMIs five percent higher than those living near low-traffic areas. Only the immediate surroundings seem to matter: Traffic levels within 300 or 500 meters didn't affect BMI.

The researchers put forward two explanations for why high traffic contributes to obesity. The first is that real or perceived danger from cars reduces walking and biking. The other is that too much traffic contributes to high asthma rates, which make physical activity more difficult and less frequent.

James Sallis, director of the Active Living Research Program at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which commissioned the study, says Jerrett's research stands out because it tracked a large sample of kids for a long period of time, giving it strong scientific value. "This actually points to some solutions," he added, noting that not every study commissioned by the program has such clear implications for policy.

Just last week, New York City released its Active Design Guidelines, bringing together the city's transportation and city planning departments with the health department. Jerrett's report suggests that policies that help reduce traffic -- like congestion pricing, performance parking, and off-street parking reform -- should be a necessary component of the effort to fight obesity and improve New Yorkers' health.

Estimated fine particle concentrations in winter 2008-2009

In a first of its kind report for the city, the Department of Health has issued a wake-up call for New Yorkers of all stripes: Car and truck traffic is killing us, in more ways than one.

Collecting ground-level samples at 150 sites for a community air quality study conducted last winter [PDF], researchers measured for five pollutants emitted by vehicles and buildings. Among the findings: People in areas with higher traffic densities are subjected to higher levels of particulates (27 percent greater), elemental carbon (45 percent greater), and nitrogen dioxide (37 percent greater) than those in areas with less traffic. In addition to triggering allergies and other illnesses that lead to more hospitalizations and work absences, exposure to these toxins has been linked to heart diseases, lung diseases, and cancer.

While the effects on Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East Side make for compelling headlines, neighborhoods that get far less media play but are nonetheless saddled with crushing cut-through traffic, highway traffic and truck traffic, like Washington Heights and Hunts Point, are also hit hard.

"It confirms what we've known anecdotally," says Miquela Craytor of Sustainable South Bronx. In addition to regional traffic on the Bruckner Expressway, tens of thousands of trucks travel to and from Hunts Point weekly. Local residents, for the most part, are collateral damage. "The majority of folks in the Bronx aren't driving to go to work in Manhattan."

Sustainable South Bronx is a member of the COMMUTE coalition, steadfast advocates for congestion pricing and BRT. "Things such as congestion pricing are a great tool that can lead to some behavioral changes that are necessary," Craytor says. "The other thing that certainly needs to happen is that we invest in our transit system. The Bronx still is underserved in many areas."

Photo: artgyrl/Flickr

Though it isn't spelled out in the bill, Int. 836 is ostensibly intended in part to minimize bus traffic on narrow residential streets, increasing pedestrian safety and, like Int. 742, reducing the buses' negative impact on neighborhoods.

Both bills are supported by the group Our Streets Our Lives (formerly Tour Buses No -- Tourists Yes), which worked last year to prod the Department of Environmental Protection to enforce tour bus emission standards. Group member Barbara Backer says most licensed tour buses are now in compliance with those rules. Of the new proposed regs, Backer says: "With re-routing no one will lose one job, tourists will still be able to visit the same businesses, and the re-routing will mean less disruption for local residents. Buses can use their hop-on-hop-off feature on major thoroughfares and still convey the same number of people to the same areas they do now."

Monday's hearing, a joint session of the council's consumer affairs and transportation committees, gets underway at 10 a.m.

As of this writing, the Committee on Environmental Protection is considering Int. 622, which would require school buses to be fitted with filters to reduce kids' exposure to diesel exhaust, and would mandate that buses be retired after 16 years. The Natural Resources Defense Council has been tracking the measure, and has background here.

Its members are not listed on its website, but interested parties are asked a few questions: "Are you outraged by the deaths of 120 people each day on our roads? Are you pro-environment AND pro-highway?" Average commuters might be lulled into thinking they could join with the click of a mouse.

Greg Cohen, the American Highway Users Alliance president and chief lobbyist (Photo: NSTPRC website)

But the Alliance has a specific agenda -- which is on full display in the lobbying filings of Greg Cohen, its president and CEO.

During the first half of this year, Cohen reported working to "support additional supplies of domestic oil," "oppose the placement of tolls and congestion pricing on existing toll-free roads," and "support maximum funding for highways," among other goals.

That maximum cash for highways, in the Alliance's view, should continue to relegate transit to 20 percent of federal aid. If Congress' upcoming six-year transportation bill "starts looking more negative on highways," Cohen warned last month, "there is potential that the whole bill could be slowed down here."

Moreover, the Alliance mobilized to oppose the climate bill passed by the House last month and lobbied against Senate legislation that would set national transportation priorities such as emissions reduction and transit expansion.

Cohen also reported lobbying in favor of government loans for U.S. automakers -- an appropriate priority given that the Alliance's 2007 directors included senior lobbyists at Ford, GM, and Toyota, according to its tax returns.

The Alliance has been called many things, from "a leading nonprofit, nonpartisan group that advocates for improved mobility and safety" to "an advocacy group representing a wide range of motorists," but its true identity is best described as a card-carrying member of the road lobby.

Ever heard an anti-idling rap? Or Seen the "Funky Pollution Dance?" Tune in to this video to see what Livable Streets Education students are up to at MS 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Where's the Assembly's eco-warrior when you need him?

The MTA rescue package does not, in fact, fall under the purview of SEQRA, even though it's probably the most important piece of climate policy that the state legislature will consider this year. The Senate's latest stab would keep the trains and buses running for a few more months, but it's an eco-stinker compared to the Ravitch plan and any other package that includes road pricing or tolls on currently free bridges.

Let's go back to the spring of 2008. Remember all the carping from Richard Brodsky and other state legislators about congestion pricing not going through the SEQRA process? That was regarding a policy projected to take 112,000 cars off the road each day. Now we have an MTA funding plan getting serious consideration that would create worse traffic bottlenecks and more incentives to drive, but so far not even a peep about environmental consequences from Albany.

In separate letters issued this month to the Department of Environmental Protection, Thompson and Stringer present lists of unanswered questions pertaining to Local Law 41, adopted by the City Council in May 2005. The law required that all tour buses with engines that are at least three years old be retrofitted with best available technologies to reduce diesel particulate levels, and gave companies until January 2007 to either do the retrofits or apply for waivers.

Over three years later, only one company, Gray Line, has brought any of its buses into compliance. According to a DEP report, as of last August just 61 of the 204 tour buses on New York streets meet the law's requirements. The report, Thompson wrote, "shows a very disturbing lack of progress and, in fact, a widespread non-compliance with the law."

According to a 1999 study referenced in a recent New York Post article, a typical Gray Line bus "emit[s] about 25 times more diesel particles than the average bus."

Thompson takes the DEP to task for its tardiness in issuing the first of its required annual reports pertaining to Local Law 41. It was eight months late and, judging by the follow-up questions submitted by Thompson and Stringer, left many issues unaddressed, such as whether DEP is recommending license revocation for companies that aren't obeying the law.

"Tour Buses No -- Tourists Yes" is not only concerned with air pollution, but also noise pollution and physical safety. In September, sight-impaired West Village resident Lloyd Burlingame told NY1:

"I have to depend on my hearing to know when to cross the street and these tour buses, between the racket they make and these guys blathering, I put myself in danger every time they're here and I try to cross the street. So it's a particular problem for people like me."

Also in the NY1 report, City Council Member Alan Gerson said he wants legislation that would regulate tour bus times of operation, routes and frequency. (Enforcement, apparently, is another matter.) And said Villager Milton Polsky: "We have nothing against the tourists, but we'd like to see them walk and enjoy our wonderful sights here."

Photo: Richard Hsu/Flickr

A new report from Transportation Alternatives comparing carbon emissions for NYC transportation modes finds that drivers account for 60 percent of the city's transportation-related CO₂, while accounting for just 31 percent of all commuting trips.

"Rolling Carbon: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Commuting in New York City" [PDF] reveals that the average New York City commute generates about seven pounds of carbon dioxide per round-trip, for a total of 1,750 pounds of CO₂ annually. Though this ranks us among the "greenest" US commuters in the aggregate, the report notes that individual impacts vary widely, depending on mode and distance. To that end, "Rolling Carbon" breaks down per-mile emissions for public and private conveyance, from Escalades, taxicabs and Priuses to trains, buses and, of course, bikes and feet.

Other report findings include:

• Driving alone causes the emission of about five times the amount of CO₂ (over 4,000 pounds per year) as is caused by taking the subway (about 820 pounds per year).
  
• If just 5% of all people commuting by private car or taxi switched to transit, walking or cycling, the result would be a decrease of 150 million pounds of CO2 emissions per year -- the equivalent of planting trees on an area 1.3 times the size of Manhattan.
  

Accompanying the report is a new killer app: RollingCarbon.org features a personalized Carbon Calculator for New Yorkers to determine emission levels generated by their commutes, and how many annual tree plantings would be needed to offset the trip. As illustrated by the chart above, pedestrians, cyclists and skaters are in the clear.

Planning advocates recommended doing away with parking requirements and "unbundling" the cost of parking from the price of housing. "There's no reason for parking to be paid for by people who don't own cars," said Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin, adding that the construction of parking should be "a choice rather than a necessity."

Minimum parking requirements are especially ill-suited to affordable housing developments, said Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development (pictured at the mic). "[A parking minimum] really makes no sense at all for communities where less than 20 percent of households own cars, because it drives up the cost of housing and takes up valuable space that otherwise could be used to create additional units or public space."

Representatives of Environmental Defense and the New York League of Conservation Voters rounded out the proceedings, calling on the city and state to take stock and head off the traffic-congested future that excessive off-street parking threatens to bring about. "We're building the infrastructure to encourage more people to drive with very little understanding of the environmental impacts," said Josh Nachowitz of NYLCV.

T.A.'s Paul Steely White tied the issue to preserving New York's streets for people on foot, noting that more off-street parking means less sidewalk integrity: "Curb cuts enable cars to drive across the sidewalk and block the sidewalk; it erodes the pedestrian environment."

Major planning groups, including the American Planning Association, the Regional Plan Association, and the Municipal Art Society, have also signed on to the report and urged Mayor Bloomberg to revise the city's ad-hoc policies governing off-street parking. According to one organizer behind the effort, this marks the first time all three organizations have lined up behind the same transportation reform.

Streetsblog will have more soon on the recommendations being advanced by this coalition.

"If only this street were completely jam-packed, I'd be having so much fun!!!"

It's too soon to evaluate this year's Summer Streets events, but I've noticed that the recent car-free days on Montague Street and Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn have been catching a bit of flack on Curbed and various other blogs for "not packing them in." On Saturday, the Brooklyn 11211 blog wrote that Williamsburg's main drag "lacked that manic aspect that Bedford often gets on the weekends." Curbed seemed to interpret that as failure. Last week, a Brooklyn Heights blogger snapped a photo of Montague Street around 3 pm with a light rain falling (on July 4th weekend, with the half of the neighborhood out of town) and sarcastically headlined the item, "Crowds Throng Montague." Brownstoner picked up on the photo and spread news of the "underwhelming" event.

Forgetting the fact that photos taken earlier in the day on Montague showed a pretty lovely and well-attended scene, what's with this idea that for a Summer Streets event to be considered successful, it needs to attract a "throng?" Jamming large crowds into small spaces has never been a big challenge in this town. The whole idea of Summer Streets, as I understand it, is to give New Yorkers a bit of room to breathe and space to walk, bike, play or simply sit down and relax. You want a throng? Try Midtown.

Here's a modest proposal for evaluating the success of a Summer Streets event...

Measure the amount of time kids are able to run and play without their parents having to worry about them being hit by a car, the number of friends you bump into and new people you meet, the pounds of automobile exhaust and carbon that are not spewed into the hot summer air, the volume of horn-honking, engine-revving and boom stereos you're not hearing, and whether local merchants are happy about the event and making more money than they usually do on a slow summer weekend.

And if there's a "throng" or the event is "packing them in" -- that's probably a sign of over-success. It means that it's time to expand your Summer Street by a few blocks, a few hours or another day.

Photo: Bedford Avenue last Saturday by Brooklyn 11211

The garage, situated near the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, will add more traffic to the already-congested streets of Hell's Kitchen, but its approval has strengthened calls to review similar permits more carefully in the future. "There are some positives," said Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS) in an email message. "The Borough President's office, the City Planning Commission, and the council all have special permits on their radar, and the commission indicated they are ready to do 'something about parking.' The Speaker is also interested in a long term action."

As a 2005 re-zoning leads to a surge in development around the West Side railyards, adopting stricter standards for the approval of special permits could prevent a concurrent boom in parking. The leniency of the current approval process, said Berthet, flies in the face of the city's goals for air quality and traffic reduction, and approving a flurry of permits now would saddle the neighborhood with parking facilities for years. "The special permit is like radioactive material," she said. "It remains toxic for a very long time."

Photo of traffic on 10th Avenue: SarahNYC/Flickr

State lawmakers reached an agreement yesterday allowing the city to move forward with plans for a recycling transfer station on Manhattan's Gansevoort peninsula near 14th Street. The step may do more to reduce traffic than any other measure passed during the latest legislative session, which wrapped up this morning.

The Gansevoort station is part of the city's Solid Waste Management Plan. By requiring each borough to handle its own trash, the plan is projected to reduce truck traffic within the city by about 3.5 million miles per year, in total. Areas that handle a disproportionate amount of the city's waste and the attendant truck traffic -- and suffer higher asthma rates as a result -- stand to see the greatest relief. As Mobilizing the Region noted last month, the opening of a Manhattan recycling station will mean fewer trucks fanning out to the Bronx, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.

Because the Gansevoort station is slated for a site on the Hudson River Park, state approval was required. Speaker Sheldon Silver had blocked the station last October at the behest of three Manhattan Assembly members. This time around, provisions were included to set aside future park funding and assure public access to the Hudson River Greenway during construction.

Photo: anazzarophotography/Flickr

Two weeks ago Streetsblog reported on the glut of public parking garages being built in Hell's Kitchen, which threatens to worsen traffic conditions in one of New York's most congested neighborhoods. The City Planning Commission could have set a precedent last Friday by denying a developer's request to build a 400-car public garage as part of a mixed-use project at 310-328 West 38th Street. Only 232 parking spaces would have been allowed without the special permit.

Instead, the commission approved the request. Despite the objections of community representatives, the only restriction imposed was to reserve most of the spaces for monthly parking. In its report [PDF], the commission asserts that streets near the new building "will be adequate to handle the traffic" generated by the garage. The analysis fails to consider the aggregate amount of parking in Hell's Kitchen, and flies in the face of DOT's efforts to improve the neighborhood's streets for pedestrians, says Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS).

"It's particularly egregious considering what we know about 37th Street," which carries cars heading toward the outbound Lincoln Tunnel, she adds. "The mitigation proposed as monthly parking demonstrates they have no clue on the science of parking, as monthly parking attracts commuters and discourages shoppers -- the worst case scenario."

The 38th Street garage, and others like it planned for Hell's Kitchen, are "a terrific example of the 'nibbling effect' that Jane Jacobs wrote about," whereby concessions to cars gradually multiply to erode the pedestrian environment, says Nick Peterson of the planning firm Alex Garvin & Associates.

The developer, Glenwood Management, will undergo one more stage of public review, needing approval at a June 18th session of the City Council to get the green light for the garage. Since the current review process appears to conflict with the sustainability goals of PlaNYC, Berthet believes it would make more sense for developers to appeal to DOT, not City Planning, for special parking permits. For now, this looks like another case of parking politics winning out over sensible policy.

Photo of a garage in the upper 50s between First Ave and Second Ave: lewisarothkopf/Flickr

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.

Case in point: In January, the developer Glenwood Management requested permission to build a 400-car parking garage attached to a new residential property in Hell's Kitchen. The application -- for 310-328 West 38th Street -- is the latest in a string of special permit requests to build parking in the area. It is currently pending before the City Planning Commission, which is scheduled to render a decision on June 6th. If the commission turns down the application, it could signal an important shift in the ongoing redevelopment of Hell’s Kitchen, which has seen a wave of new construction since a 2005 rezoning took effect.

The last time Streetsblog looked at the parking situation in Hell's Kitchen, local activists were fighting a provision in the new zoning that enabled substantially greater quantities of accessory parking -- spaces intended for building residents or commercial tenants. That battle is still playing out in court. The recent rash of permit requests represents another front in the effort to keep cars from overwhelming the neighborhood's streets.

A number of new buildings include plans for parking that exceed the amount allowed for residents. Glenwood Management, for instance, is only permitted to build 232 spaces for residents -- 114 under the pre-2005 zoning, according to local activists. The additional spaces will then be used by the developer as a public garage. At issue throughout Hell's Kitchen, in essence, is whether the city will allow developers to include public parking garages in new buildings without restriction.

"These regulations were put in place in 1973, more than a generation ago, and I don't think City Planning has ever denied any of those [requests]," says Christine Berthet of the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition (CHEKPEDS). "As long as each public garage meets the guidelines, they approve it." What gets left out of the discussion is the total effect of those garages on traffic and air quality, she notes. "They never look at it as an aggregate."

In the case of Hell's Kitchen, that aggregate is poised to grow at a rapid clip. Already this year, developers have proposed building garages in the neighborhood totaling more than 500 parking spaces, Berthet estimates. With hundreds of new buildings planned on the West Side, she believes the trend will spiral out of control if left unchecked.

The effect on local streets could be considerable, in terms of both traffic generation and the pedestrian environment. "The Department of City Planning doesn't seem to take seriously the fact that parking generates traffic," says Nick Peterson, a vice president at planning firm Alex Garvin & Associates, "but if a new garage opens on a block that provides a net increase of 200 parking spaces, that's 200 cars that weren't there before. It's pretty obvious that new cars are on the road as a result." As for the pedestrian environment, he adds, "A parking garage is a dead space along the sidewalk -- there is no reason to go in and out of a parking garage except to park or pick up your car."

Traffic heads west on 37th Street towards the Lincoln Tunnel.

The garages in Hell’s Kitchen will be especially tempting to commuters exiting the Lincoln Tunnel. The neighborhood is already one of the most congested in the city and suffers the third highest asthma hospitalization rate among Manhattan's twelve community board districts. New parking facilities will only compound the problem by inducing more commuter traffic.

That is not the intent of the planning commission, which considers traffic volumes as well as demand for parking when it grants developers' requests, but observers say induced commuter driving will undoubtedly result. "There is often this disconnect between the planned condition and reality," says Peterson. "When you walk down a street and see a parking garage in a residential building, does the sign say, ‘Parking for Residents Only’? No. It says, simply, ‘Parking’ or ‘Public Parking.’"

When reached for comment, a Department of City Planning spokesperson referred to a commission report (PDF) on a recent parking application, which states that new garages are needed to offset the loss of parking incurred by new development, and to accommodate the influx of new residents.

Berthet takes issue with this stance because it assumes that existing parking lots were intended to serve as parking in perpetuity. In fact, she notes, the lots that are about to get displaced were supposed to serve as placeholders until developers could assemble parcels to build on. "They were not intended to be permanent fixtures," she says.

Meanwhile, DOT has committed to the Clinton/Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Traffic Study, evaluating measures to, among other things, improve pedestrian safety in the neighborhood. The hesitation on the part of the planning commission to deny developers' parking requests seems at odds with DOT's efforts to tame traffic as well as Mayor Bloomberg's long-term sustainability agenda, but there are signs the commission may adopt a position more consistent with the goals of other agencies.

"In the last two hearings that we went to, we could see that the City Planning Commission is moving in its position," says Berthet. The commission has been more willing to place restrictions on new parking facilities, she notes. The report mentioned above, for example, required a development on 11th Avenue to provide monthly parking instead of the usual hourly parking -- a small step, but one that may signal more significant changes to come.

Before rendering its decision on the 11th Avenue garage, "the commission took into account the concerns about traffic, the decreasing supply of parking and the proposed use of the parking," said a department spokesperson in an email message. "The traffic analysis was based on a large share of the proposed parking spaces to be used by local residents. Accordingly, the commission required the garage to provide for monthly rather than largely hourly parking. This will serve local residents and businesses but reduce transient traffic."

In addition to weighing its priorities differently, the planning department should work more closely with other city agencies, Berthet says. Specifically, she’d like to see tighter coordination between the officials making transportation decisions and the ones making land use decisions. "Where you need parking is really a transportation issue," she says, especially when that parking will be used by commuters and other non-residents.

Making these long-term changes will not be easy. Peterson notes that the planning department is subject to pressures from community boards, which tend to favor more off-street parking. And some of the most effective ways to better manage parking supply, like raising the tax on spaces, lie outside the department’s control.

But for now, the planning commission has the authority to curb the quantity of parking being added to Hell’s Kitchen, if it so chooses. Without a swift change to current practice, developments winning permits today are likely to generate traffic far into the future. Even if the city zoning text is eventually amended to put a stop to the proliferation of public parking, dozens of garages in the neighborhood will get approved in the meantime. "We may have a nice law at the end, but what are we going to do with all this parking that gets built between now and then?" Berthet asks. "We will be stuck with it for the rest of our lives."

Photos: CHEKPEDS

Thank you for contacting me in support of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal. As you probably are aware, on March 31, the City Council approved a home rule message authorizing the state to approve Mayor Bloomberg's plan. The vote was 30 members in support and 20 against. I voted in support of the proposal. However, neither the State Assembly nor the State Senate acted in time to move this plan forward.

Anyone who drives in New York understands that congestion is a major problem, particularly in the Central Business District (CBD). Heavy traffic doesn't just anger and inconvenience drivers. It impacts our economy and environment as well. It is estimated that congestion costs the city $11.6 billion worth of lost business revenue, productivity, operating costs, and fuel and vehicle costs. In addition, because of our poor air quality, New York City asthma hospitalization rates are more than twice the national average.

Congestion pricing was one significant way to address these issues. It would have reduced traffic, improved air quality and public health, and provided critically needed funding for mass transit. Currently, our public transportation system is stretched to the limit. Nowhere is this more evident than the East Side. The Lexington Avenue subway line is operating at 110% capacity and, with 65,000 riders daily, the M15 is the most heavily utilized bus line in the Western Hemisphere.

Congestion pricing would have allowed the city to receive a one-time federal grant of $354 million for short-term mass transit improvements and allowed the city to use the congestion pricing fees to bond out an estimated $4.5 billion for major transit projects. These funds would have gone towards critical capital projects like the Second Avenue Subway, Bus Rapid Transit on First and Second Avenues, and East River ferry service. In addition to these large scale projects, if congestion pricing has been implemented, my Council District will have benefitted immediately from these short term transportation improvements:

• 46 new subway cars, primarily for the E & F lines
• 5 additional buses on the M101/M102/M103 lines
• 4 additional buses on the M86 line
• 2 additional buses on M66 line
• 3 additional buses on M31 line
• 6 additional buses on M15 line
• 10 additional buses on X90 line

Unfortunately, we won't be seeing these short term transportation improvements any time soon. However, I remain committed to the long term goal of reducing traffic and improving air quality in our city and will continue to work with our city's elected leadership to advance those goals.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me on this issue. I heavily weighed your views, and those of my other constituents, in formulating my position. As always, please feel free to contact me with any specific questions about this or any other issue facing our city.

Sincerely,
JESSICA LAPPIN
Council Member
5th District - Manhattan

Yesterday we heard that Assembly Member Deborah Glick's office told a constituent the congestion pricing bill could lead to worsening air quality. (Because, you know, building mass transit infrastructure will cancel out all the particulate pollution that pricing will keep out of the air.)

If Glick ends up basing her decision on that tortured logic, here's a look at what she would deny her district [PDF], according to the Campaign for New York's Future:

• 46 new subway cars, primarily for the E and F lines
• 3 additional buses for the M20/M104 Routes
• 5 additional buses for the M101/102/103 Routes
• 6 additional buses for the M15 Route
• 9 additional buses for the M1/M2/M3/M4 Routes

Those are just the short-term enhancements that will be implemented before congestion pricing goes into effect. (And it's worth repeating that the data comes from CFNY's district fact sheets, an excellent tool to help bolster your argument when you call your reps.)

Glick's district, which falls entirely within the congestion zone, also stands to benefit enormously from the most obvious result of congestion pricing: less traffic. Lower Manhattan will see a 33.2 percent reduction in extreme traffic jams and a 6.4 percent reduction in overall traffic, according to DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

And it goes without saying that a very small minority of Glick's constituents would actually pay the fee. Only 3.2 percent drive alone outside the zone as part of their commute, according to 2000 Census data.

Brodskyite populist posturing would seem especially out of place in these parts. Only 22.4 percent of households own a car, a low figure even in New York City, and the average income of those households is more than $180,000.