In a phone interview with Streetsblog yesterday, Rachel Weinberger, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an architect of the transportation section of PlaNYC 1.0, gave us her take on the update of the city’s sustainability plan.

On setting expectations:

The first PlaNYC seemed really bold in the transportation area. Maybe it seemed much bolder than we would think if it were to come out today.

On the significance of PlaNYC 1.0:

The shift in thinking is far more important than the specific projects that were enumerated in the first go.

One of the big accomplishments of PlaNYC 1.0 was that it got City Hall thinking in a way that opened City Hall up to the idea of hiring a [transportation] commissioner like JSK.

On parking policy:

The parking stuff [in the update] is a little bit anemic. But in PlaNYC 1.0 we couldn’t even touch it, it was considered untouchable. It was our judgment that congestion pricing had more legs than taking on the parking question. That’s telling.

Since we tried to break open that barrier, there’s been maybe a gestation period for the city to start coming around to thinking, “Okay, here’s an area of public policy that we can and should address.” … Now we’re on the threshold of being able to look at it in a robust kind of way. Now let’s do it.

On paving the way for other cities:

The first one also created space in other places, like Chicago and Washington. The sustainability director of Philadelphia went all around Philadelphia waving around PlaNYC, saying, “We’re going to steal everything we can from this document.”

Other cities benefited from the hard work that we did. It might be too much to push that hard again right away.

In a phone interview yesterday afternoon, Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, shared her first impressions of the city’s revised sustainability plan…

On the diminished prominence of transportation compared to the first version of PlaNYC:

So much has been accomplished on the transportation front already, it’s not entirely surprising that transportation wouldn’t be front and center.

On what’s better in the revised plan:

We’re encouraged that they addressed freight, and the way it was addressed. That was a weak point in the original. They’ll be working with the Port Authority to shift more goods onto rail, especially by the 65th Street transfer station (in Brooklyn). Obviously bike-share is a huge project and would benefit the city in a big way if they do it properly.

On the details that are lacking:

The parking section was less specific than I’d hoped.

The shortfall in the MTA capital program is going to require contributions from the city and the state and will probably involve some sort of revenue stream.

On the big picture:

Overall, take a step back from this edition of the plan and think about how far the city has come. If you think back six years ago to where we are now, it’s just remarkable. The streets are much safer. The fact that there are now bus lanes with pre-paid fares is a major step forward. These are improvements that were delayed for years.

We’re not too far away from a discussion of the next mayoral campaign. Advocates are going to be watching closely whether the candidates commit to policies that advance sustainability. Announcing this version of PlaNYC helps move that discussion forward and serves as a guidepost for whoever’s running for mayor.

Joan Byron, director of policy at the Pratt Center for Community Development, told us the update to the city’s sustainability plan includes some promising developments on the truck traffic front. She noted that some of the biggest differences between the revised PlaNYC and the original have to do with freight transportation:

PlaNYC 2.0 re-affirms the city's commitment to stop relying on truck-based waste transfer stations located mainly in the South Bronx and Brooklyn.

PlaNYC 2.0 includes a lot more specifics about freight than 1.0 did. The big projects it references — the Port Authority’s Cross Harbor Rail Freight Study, rail and barge upgrades at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and at the 51st and 65th Street (Brooklyn) yards, and incorporation of rail improvements in the rebuild of the Hunts Point Produce Market — are already committed or underway, but it’s still significant that the plan calls them out. And it’s great that the city will be gathering more data about food-related freight movement, because the patterns of long-haul, regional, and local food movement have changed a lot in recent decades, and will continue to change, as food production continues to simultaneously globalize and to localize.

It’s great that there’s some space given to local truck congestion issues. I’d like to see more about pilot projects, and also a commitment to better data gathering and analysis by NYCDOT. There’s shockingly little information available now about types of goods being trucked within the city, their origins and destinations, specific time and other constraints affecting different subsectors, etc. Without a better understanding of the problem, it’s hard to know where the opportunities are for innovative solutions.

The Pratt Center cares about freight movement for a couple of reasons. Low-income communities and communities of color bear a disproportionate share of the impacts of both local and long-haul trucking. And truck-dependent industries — food production, construction, service and repair (of everything from TV cable boxes to big-building mechanical equipment) are important blue-collar employers that offer some of the best remaining pathways into the middle class for New York’s workforce. So there are environmental and economic justice reasons to make freight movement work better citywide.

Byron singled out the PlaNYC update’s section on transporting trash as a good sign:

It’s also a great relief to see explicit treatment of solid waste in this version of the plan, including a re-affirmation of the city’s commitment to implementing the Solid Waste Management Plan by moving ahead with planned marine transfer stations in Manhattan. Shifting away from truck-based garbage export will enable the city as a whole to reduce carbon emissions associated with solid waste disposal. And fairly sharing the burden of managing our trash gives all of us a stake in reducing our total tonnage. The status quo, relying on truck-based transfer stations located mainly in the South Bronx and Brooklyn, has kept the problem out of mind and out of sight for the wealthiest New Yorkers whose consumption contributes the most to the problem.

White told us he was encouraged to see the addition of a public health section in PlaNYC 2.0, and that the new plan will benefit from being less wonky than the original:

The continuation and expansion of Summer Streets and play streets bodes very well for public support. I think if there was a flaw in the first PlaNYC, it was too CO2- and policy-oriented. What this clearly does better than 1.0 is make the sustainability agenda more relevant and tactile for New Yorkers. I think the play streets in particular really jump out.

The inclusion of bike-share was also an encouraging sign that Bloomberg is serious about launching a public bike system, he said, but the mayor will need to do some serious follow-up:

They’re reiterating their commitment to roll out bike-share in 2012 and committing to keeping the yearly membership cheaper than a monthly Metrocard. As long as the state legislature doesn’t double the cost of a Metrocard, that’s a good thing.

The mayor needs to prove that he still cares. Will he attend summer streets and play street events? Will he back up bike-share when the going gets tough? Will he extend bike and ped improvements to East Harlem and other neighborhoods clamoring for their fair share of safety?

What’s lacking in the updated plan? White said the revision fails to reform the anti-urban tendency of the Economic Development Corporation and the Department of City Planning to push for excessive off-street parking:

There are parking garages sitting half empty that the city forced developers to build. Each of those parking structures represent millions of dollars that developers could have been required to upgrade local transit stations, or improve the streetscape. It’s not enough to study off-street parking policy. The city must overhaul its broken off-street parking policy before a tidal wave of new car ownership eclipses the plan’s other gains.

The first in what should be a series of regular four-year updates of the plan was released this morning, and it includes 132 initiatives. While those encompass significant transportation improvements like bike-sharing, faster buses, and the extremely important addition of parking reform to the city’s green agenda, top billing today went to other initiatives.

Headlining the mayor’s speech today were plans to eliminate dirty home heating oil, provide financing for energy efficiency improvements, and install solar panels on top of landfills — projects that while eminently worthy, reflect a shift in the administration’s emphasis.

“Unlike every other city in the country where 80 percent of pollution comes from transportation and 20 percent from buildings, in New York City it’s exactly reversed,” explained Bloomberg. On transportation, the PlaNYC update goes for a slew of incremental changes rather than any new signature program, although it does give the city’s previously announced commitment to bike-share some more momentum.

During his speech, the mayor praised Select Bus Service, saying that “it gets some cars off the road and some pollutants out of the air,” though he didn’t mention any new plans to expand it. In discussing the steady progress on the 7 train extension, Bloomberg called MTA chief Jay Walder “a godsend to our city” for his management of the transit system. Finally, Bloomberg touted the impressive reductions in traffic deaths over the last decade. He did not mention any new transportation initiatives.

Bloomberg also had no choice but to address what he called the elephant in the room: congestion pricing. “The problems of not enough mass transit and too much congestion on our roads, too many pollutants spewed out by combustion engines still persist,” he said. “I don’t think we should look back and say why it didn’t get done,” he continued, saying he was still willing to work with the state to find answers to those problems.

The PlaNYC update discusses the need to find a stable source of revenue for the MTA and fund the agency’s capital program, but offers only a promise to work with the state toward finding a solution.

Beyond those few mentions, however, transportation didn’t really make it into Bloomberg’s speech.

In the update itself, the biggest transportation-related addition is the inclusion of parking policy, which was all but left out of the original plan. Unlike congestion pricing, major parking policy reforms can be implemented by the city without needing a vote in Albany. While the update hints at the potential reforms, the new PlaNYC still contain few firm or ambitious commitments to use parking policy to tame traffic.

In terms of on-street parking, it promises to expand the congestion-cutting Park Smart program from Greenwich Village, Park Slope and the Upper East Side to three more neighborhoods. (NYC DOT has publicly had the goal of rolling out Park Smart pilots in six neighborhood for some time now, however.)

Reforming off-street parking is mentioned twice, though in neither case with any kind of firm commitment. The city will complete two studies of parking requirements, one in the Manhattan core and one in the rest of the city, to shape future decisions on parking policy.

It is a breakthrough, albeit a limited one, that PlaNYC now states that “requiring too much parking to be built in a dense city like New York can encourage driving, contribute to congestion, and unnecessarily raise the cost of new development.” Up until now, the Department of City Planning’s position has been that parking requirements do not significantly affect car-ownership rates, much less congestion.

Parking requirements were also mentioned in the specific context of affordable housing, where forcing parking into new buildings increases housing prices and decreases supply. PlaNYC now commits to determining whether parking minimums add unnecessary costs to affordable housing development (they do), though it appears the study will be limited only to more densely populated neighborhoods with lower car-ownership rates.

Here are some more observations and details from the plan itself:

• On many transportation issues, the PlaNYC update proposes little new. In its section on cycling, for example, the plan promises to meet its 2007 goal of tripling cycling by 2017 through “continued expansion of the bike network, initiatives for bike parking, education, and implementation of a bike-sharing program.” Those are all previously announced initiatives, though it’s fantastic news to see bike-sharing included in a mayoral-level policy agenda, with a firm 2012 launch date and the promise that an annual membership will cost less than a 30-day MetroCard. In terms of the bike network, however, this is actually a less detailed commitment than what’s in the original plan, which promised to build out 200 miles of bike lanes by 2009.
• Similarly, the update mentions past programs like the car-sharing zoning amendment passed last year and the mayor’s State of the City promise to expand metered taxi service outside the Manhattan core, but no new initiatives in those areas.
• The upgrade announces plans for further improvements to the city’s slowest-in-the-country bus system. In addition to expanding Select Bus Service to Nostrand Avenue and Hylan Boulevard, as planned, the update says that the city is studying how to improve bus service to LaGuardia Airport. Transit signal priority, which holds green lights a little bit longer for buses approaching the intersection, will be rolled out on 11 bus routes in all five boroughs. Finally, buses will in some way be given priority going across the Queensboro Bridge, a project which has been underway for a while.
• In terms of rail, the PlaNYC update touts Staten Island’s North Shore as a possible location for new transit. Both the MTA and the city Economic Development Corporation are already developing plans for the corridor.
• As we’ve reported, the Department of City Planning’s over 100 rezonings have generally placed areas slated for growth near subway stations, ensuring that new residents and businesses will be able to easily access the transit system. The update promises to continue this pattern in neighborhoods like West Harlem and East Fordham Road. It doesn’t, however, mention the city’s many downzonings, which have simultaneously made it more difficult to build near transit in many parts of the city.
• The central premise of PlaNYC is that the city needs to find room for a million new residents by 2030, and an important challenge is finding room to house everyone. When discussing possible areas for new development, the update mentions the city’s ongoing study of the area around the Sheridan, suggesting that building on the footprint of a torn-down highway is on the table. And of course, anything that allows more people to live the very low-carbon lifestyle of a New Yorker is critically important.
• In terms of public space, the update commits to continuing the popular Summer Streets program on Park Avenue as well as opening 15 smaller Play Streets each year. It promises to have completed 13 of DOT’s pedestrian plazas by 2013 and mentions the current roll-out of new pop-up cafés.
• Pedestrians can expect to see 32 more Safe Routes to Schools projects and new guidelines for parking garages to minimize conflict as cars cross the sidewalk.
• On freight transportation, PlaNYC promises to work with businesses to increase off-peak deliveries, increase turnover in loading zones through parking meters, expand rail and barge transport at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, and ensure that the redesign of the Hunts Point market allows food to be brought in by rail as much as possible.

The details of the revised plan haven’t been posted online yet, but in a press release the mayor’s office gave top billing to an initiative they’re calling the “Clean Heat Campaign,” which seeks to phase out use of the dirtiest heating oils.

The city is also touting a social networking tool called “Change by Us” meant to gather ideas and feedback from local residents on planning and sustainability initiatives. According to the press release, the platform works by asking a question “that residents can respond to by text message or through the Change by Us web and mobile sites.” Questions will be put out frequently, the city says, but it’s not clear yet how the responses will be integrated into the real-world planning process.

The full plan will include revisions to PlaNYC’s transportation and public space planks, which have helped guide the addition of new pedestrian spaces, bike lanes, and rapid bus routes for the last four years.

The signature transportation initiative in the original PlaNYC, congestion pricing, fell victim to the windshield perspective of Albany lawmakers in the spring of 2008. No one expects a congestion pricing revival today, but advocates will be watching closely to see if the administration takes full advantage of traffic reduction strategies entirely within its control. Most notably, reining in the proliferation of off-street parking that has accompanied new development in the city would address one of the big missing pieces in the original PlaNYC.

Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis is at the event in Harlem and will be filing a report later today. We’ll provide more details from the updated plan as they become available.

Traffic headed from Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood where off-street parking has proliferated, toward the Lincoln Tunnel.

Three years ago, the Regional Plan Association held a panel on congestion pricing at its annual conference. The title of the discussion was “Making Cars Pay Their Way.” At the 2011 conference last Friday, a similar panel on curbing traffic took the more generic title, “Strategies to Manage Congestion.”

The difference is telling. Instead of an all-out push to put a price on Midtown’s packed streets or the East River’s traffic-clogged bridges — not that anyone has given up on that goal — the fight to reduce congestion in New York City is now a multi-front campaign.

Tops on the list for the RPA panel, after congestion pricing, was reforming New York City’s parking policy. Based on international experience and research conducted here in New York City, we know that stopping the proliferation of off-street parking would help prevent streets from getting even more clogged with cars. But parking policy was barely mentioned and off-street parking was completely ignored in the original PlaNYC four years ago. Since then, the city has aided and abetted the construction of huge amounts of off-street parking.

This week, the city will release its update of PlaNYC. Will it finally include what is perhaps the biggest missing piece of its sustainable transportation plan?

At the RPA panel, David Bragdon, the head of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, certainly seemed to agree that parking policy needs an overhaul. He repeated the story of a developer in Brooklyn who spoke to him after being forced to build more parking than he wanted because of mandatory parking minimums. The spaces now sit empty, said Bragdon. In affordable housing projects, he added, the problems with parking minimums may be even larger. “We may be adding costs unnecessarily,” he said.

Bragdon did not, however, definitively state that the new PlaNYC would put the city on a path toward eliminating parking minimums. He did say the city is currently doing some surveys about parking and will “try to draw some lessons from that to apply to the development code.”

Other panelists made the case for parking reform as a congestion tool more forcefully. That parking minimums are in place near New York City’s subway stations is “madness,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

In most European cities, he said, parking minimums have been replaced with parking maximums that keep developers “to those levels of parking which the traffic system can bear.” In many downtowns, he continued, there is a hard cap on the total amount of parking. “You can’t actually add a single unit of off-street parking unless you take out a parking space from the street,” Hook explained.

David Bragdon. Photo: Randy Rasmussen/The Oregonian.

City sustainability chief David Bragdon offered some more hints about what to expect from April’s update of PlaNYC this morning. Speaking at a livability conference hosted by NYU’s Rudin Center, Bragdon said that the update would eschew large capital projects and feature a larger role for neighborhoods and individuals. In terms of transportation, Bragdon seemed to suggest that a call for a new Hudson River crossing of some kind would be a part of PlaNYC 2.0.

Much of what Bragdon had to say about the PlaNYC update has already been revealed: That the plan will take on solid waste management, for example, or that the administration wants to allow street hails for livery vehicles.

But he did suggest one idea sure to inspire fierce controversy. “We will be proposing to charge people ten dollars,” said Bragdon, pausing for effect, “if they want to have a hard copy of PlaNYC.”

When Bragdon turned more seriously to transportation policy, he offered an intriguing discussion about New York’s connections to the west. Bragdon pointed out that the number of rail crossings underneath the Hudson River, two, hasn’t changed in a century, though in that time the population of New Jersey has tripled while that of New York City has doubled. “We’re still making do with what we have here,” he said, but “doing nothing has a high cost.”

With that kind of talk, it seems that some sort of post-ARC proposal to add rail capacity underneath the Hudson will be in PlaNYC 2.0. Perhaps the return of the Secaucus 7?

In large part, Bragdon focused on the update’s new approach rather than new policies. With the city grappling with the recession’s fiscal fallout, he said, there won’t be any major new capital commitments in the update. Outlays like the $134 million for public plazas, he said, will be maintained but not likely to be repeated. How that commitment could be squared with the goal of new capacity across the Hudson isn’t clear.

Perhaps because of those fiscal constraints, Bragdon said that the update wouldn’t exclusively be made up of city programs, but would seek to enlist both local community groups and individuals. “A greater and greener New York is made up of greater and greener neighborhoods,” he said. That shift is already underway in the Department of Environmental Protection’s announcement yesterday of a competitive grant program that would fund local businesses and non-profits trying to build their own green infrastructure projects.

Finally, Bragdon said that the new PlaNYC would expand the sustainability focus from being about “pure utility for human beings” to include “nature for the sake of nature.” In addition to asking how to fit one million new people in New York City, he said, it would also ask “how many alewife herrings do we want coming back to the Bronx River?”

During his remarks, Bragdon also warned New Yorkers not to over-learn from Portland. The city is far newer, smaller, and more homogeneous than New York. In fact, at 580,000 people, Portland is only as populated as Manhattan was in 1850.

Bragdon did think it important, however, that Portland and New York City were two of the first cities to trade in federal highway dollars for transit. In Portland, they used the money slated for the Mt. Hood freeway, which would have destroyed one percent of the city, to build the first pieces of the city’s light rail system.

New York City, argued Bragdon, saved its transit system by cashing in Westway. Every time you travel on a clean and reliable subway, said Bragdon, “You need to be able to connect the dots on that experience we have every day to the $1.5B dollars, in 1985 dollars, to Mayor Koch and Governor Cuomo coming around and cancelling Westway.”

David Bragdon. Photo: Randy Rasmussen/The Oregonian.

Last week Streetsblog sat down with David Bragdon, the new head of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, to talk about next year’s update of PlaNYC. A new version of the city’s sustainability plan is set to be released on Earth Day, 2011 (that’s April 22), revising the 2007 roadmap for a city that prioritizes transit, biking, and walking.

In the second part of our interview (read the first installment here), Bragdon talks about funding transit in a time of fiscal austerity and the future of the underused Sheridan Expressway.

Noah Kazis: When we’re talking about transit, the elephant in the room is really the MTA’s finances. It has a $10 billion hole in the capital plan over three years. What can the city, what should the city do to shore up those finances?

David Bragdon: The city is already a direct contributor. Certainly the mayor had a proposal four years ago, before I got here, that would have provided ongoing financial stability for transit. Other people may have thought that wasn’t a good idea, but we’d like to hear what their ideas are, because nothing else has filled that gap in the meantime. So it’s sort of on the to-do list.

I mean, it’s essential for the city. The city depends on functional transit and continuing to expand and improve the transit network, and certainly the resources aren’t there right now. So in terms of what the city does, I mean like I say, there was a solution that was proposed, and I think we’ll keep looking for solutions that will work. Working with the next administration in Albany is going to be important as well.

There are a lot of interesting pieces to that Sheridan story that I think we’ll finally be able to move forward.

NK: If the state doesn’t step up? This is the Doomsday scenario.

DB: Well I think we’ll try to be positive about it with the new administration in Albany, and we’ll worry about Doomsday if Doomsday gets here. I can’t speculate about it.

NK: In terms of the progress on the transportation pieces of PlaNYC, a lot of the 2009 milestones haven’t been reached [PDF] because the money isn’t there. But there are some things that are in the city’s control that haven’t happened — bus lanes across the DOT bridges, for example. Is there a reason for the delay? Is there a way to expedite them, or are there some initiatives that might get taken out in the update?

DB: In a variety of areas, the city’s fiscal situation, and in terms of transportation the MTA’s fiscal situation, have prevented those from being realized. The same would be true in the parks arena. I don’t think there are a whole lot of things that haven’t been done due to lack of commitment. I think there are some that are going to take longer because of the financial resources.

I think that is a fundamental difference in the context for the update in 2011. The first plan assumed ever-expanding fiscal resources.

NK: Rereading PlaNYC, it really reflects a totally different economic situation. The assumptions just look foreign today, only a few years later.

DB: I think that is a fundamental difference in the context for the update in 2011. The first plan assumed ever-expanding fiscal resources at the disposal of the city, so that we were proposing a $400 million program to plant a million trees, or eight new regional parks, each of which is between 30 and 80 million dollars. Well we don’t have that luxury in the update. It’s really going to have to address the economic realities of the city, and actually be part of the solution for them.

NK: Does that mean there’s going to have to be a fundamental rewrite of the plan?

DB: No, I don’t think there will be a fundamental rewrite. Remember, it’s a thirty-year plan, so short term economic cycles shouldn’t restrict our visions and our ambition to build a greater, greener New York. It does force us to be more creative and innovative, and that’s a good thing.

In terms of a way to reduce the cost of waste disposal, for example, the economics of recycling become different the more the costs of disposal go up, and the cost of disposal has gone up a lot in the last three years.

NK: We’ve heard waste is going to be a new addition to the plan. At the Bronx Community Conversation I also heard food distribution. Are there any other new topics that are being discussed?

DB: I think that the area that really did not get covered last time is solid waste. I think you’ll see new initiatives in the other areas, but it’s not going to be a major change in direction.

NK: In the transportation section of the original PlaNYC, one thing that got relatively less attention was freight. You have a background in shipping. Is that something you’re paying attention to?

DB: Yes. We’re going to be looking at freight access. The key areas in terms of access to JFK would be one example, and the role of cross-harbor freight.

State DOTs, which often are not actually DOTs but are actually highway divisions, and cities don’t always have the same visions.

NK: In an interview with Oregon Public Radio, you said something that sounded like a hint about the Sheridan Expressway. You said Robert Moses put all these highways through low-income neighborhoods, and now we’re moving to restore them. And then you mentioned the Bronx River right there.

DB: Yeah.

NK: What has your office been thinking about the Sheridan?

DB: Well we have federal grants to be [thinking about it] – and that just came in recently. And so we’re looking at what’s called the social return on investment, to define return on investment to include some of the very important non-financial issues that sometimes don’t get quantified. What’s the return to community redevelopment goals, or access to the river?

That’s going to be kicking off here pretty soon. And in fact the Department of City Planning is currently looking to bolster its staff to do some outreach efforts specifically around the Sheridan Expressway.

NK: That’s good to hear, since the state DOT is moving forward on its own timeline.

DB: And maybe not on the same page from what I’ve heard. That’s an issue I’m experienced with from my previous job. State DOTs, which often are not actually DOTs but are actually highway divisions, and cities don’t always have the same visions.

NK: The last meeting I was at with them, they were arguing the correct way to analyze what to do with the Sheridan was to consider the Sheridan kept open versus the Sheridan remaining up but barricaded.

DB: <laughs> No, state highway divisions and urban areas really don’t mix very well. At least in probably 47 of the 50 states. The Sheridan, I think that will be a good project, because it brings a lot of different elements together: urban redesign, housing, social equity, environmental restoration. There are a lot of interesting pieces to that Sheridan story that I think we’ll finally be able to move forward.

NK: What should we look for from the PlaNYC update process after the community conversations are done next week?

DB: We’ll try and assimilate a lot of the things that we heard, and try to convert those into some draft proposals to take back out onto the street in February/March.

David Bragdon at the 2008 National Bike Summit. Photo: BikePortland via Flickr.

Back in August, Mayor Bloomberg appointed David Bragdon to succeed Rohit Aggarwala as head of the city’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. At the time, Bragdon was the elected leader of Portland’s regional government, Metro, and an influential decision maker in that region’s famously progressive planning. Sustainable transportation advocates on both coasts said New York was lucky to get him.

Tops on Bragdon’s agenda these days is next year’s update of PlaNYC. The first version of PlaNYC, released in 2007, included bold transportation and planning initiatives to reduce traffic, fund transit, and give priority to bikes, buses, and pedestrians on our streets. On Earth Day 2011, a new version of the city’s sustainability plan is set to be released, and Bragdon’s staff have been busy holding public meetings around the city gathering ideas for the update.

We sat down with Bragdon to learn more about what to expect from PlaNYC 2.0, what lessons New York can draw from Portland, and what still has to be done to follow through on un-finished business from the first version of PlaNYC. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Noah Kazis: The first thing that I wanted to ask was what you’ve been hearing from the community conversations. I was at the one in the Bronx, but the others?

David Bragdon: The one in the Bronx was really oriented towards younger people and that’s who showed up, that was great to see. There’s a lot on natural area restoration in the Bronx. The equity of access to nature, that was sort of the dominant theme at that particular one, which – I’ve a strong affinity for that personally.

Each of them has been a little bit different, and it partly depends on who shows up. I would say the one in lower Manhattan, we heard more there about renewable energy, and I think there was a strong theme of local food at the one in Manhattan.

NK: Any patterns emerging?

DB: I think also in the replies over the web, there have been a few that have come up strongly. More recycling opportunities has been a strong theme in all those different media, transportation choices obviously has been a big one. I think food and farmers markets have also been strong across the board.

NK: Early this year we wrote a story about how Portland Metro was working with the private sector, both developers and banks, to get them comfortable with pushing transit-oriented development a step further. Does that need to happen in New York?

I’ve personally already, just in the time I’ve been here, had developers tell me the current codes required them to build more parking than the market would require.

DB: I think there’s actually a very strong constituency within the architecture and engineering industries here, there’s a very strong chapter of the US Green Building Council here. New York’s always been a center for architectural excellence, but this niche of it probably doesn’t get as much public notice as it deserves given the talent that is here, and the buildings that have been built here. You know, 1 Bryant Square, the new Times Building, there’s a wide variety of examples.

NK: One of the specific things those developers in Portland needed help with was the idea of having less parking for their project. In the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of projects go up here in New York that have significantly higher amounts of parking than the older building stock. Is that something that’s coming from the private sector?

DB: Yes, that’s something to look at in PlaNYC. I’ve personally already, just in the time I’ve been here, had developers tell me in certain parts of the city the current codes required them to build more parking than the market would require. And certainly that’s – something needs to be updated. There you have a private sector person saying that the city codes reflect a parking demand situation of the past.

NK: That’s the off-street requirements. Are you also looking at on-street?

DB: Yes. And there are three pilots going on with regard to some of the on-street as well, so we’ll be trying to learn from those.

NK: Also on the development side, in the housing section of PlaNYC, the first goal is to encourage transit-oriented development, and the second goal is to encourage waterfront development, which sometimes have been in conflict.

DB: Some parts of the waterfront, particularly the previously industrial parts, don’t have good subway service.

When I was a kid I was on supposedly the last ferry from Manhattan to Hoboken. And look at it today. Ferries are back on the Hudson River.

NK: How do you square that circle?

DB: Soon some of them will have ferry service, that will be part of the solution. I think there’ll be some announcements about that.

NK: Yeah, the East River pilot just got announced.

DB: I think part of it, and it’s been experimented with before, part of it becomes a matter of ongoing funding for the operations on the ferry service.

NK:I know that subsidies could be $20 a ride or so, which is out of line with other transit costs.

DB: Right. The per-seat cost is quite high. Part of that will vary depending on how much directionality there is, do you have long deadhead moves [empty return trips], and is it purely a peak hour service. Part of it relates to how much of it is fixed cost. But part of it is also that they’re just expensive to operate on the per-seat basis.

But it’s interesting to see the revival of ferry service on an interstate basis over the last, what, 15, 20 years? When I was a kid I was on what was supposedly the last ferry from Manhattan to Hoboken, which would have been 1965, ’66, it was the old Erie Lackawanna, and when that docked everybody said “Okay, that’s the end of ferry service on the Hudson River.” And look at it today. Ferries are back on the Hudson River.

NK: Do you know why the Hudson River ferries have been so much more successful than the East River ferries so far?

DB: That’s worth looking at.

NK: One theory I have heard is just that there are free bridges over one side, and you have to pay to get over the other.

DB: That makes sense, yeah. That makes a lot of sense

NK: Also they just build up to the river, right? You look at the Hudson and it’s a wall of buildings, that’s not true on the East River.

DB: Yeah, I think in spatial terms that’s probably a better explanation, in that there are big generators on both sides of the river. Think about the Hoboken terminal, all the Erie Lackawanna trains that run into there that are delivering thousands of people who then have to walk 50 feet to get on a ferry, and then when they get off the ferry on the Manhattan side they can walk three or four blocks to their desk. All that development on the Jersey City side is also walking distance from the water. So that’s a different spatial layout than a lot of the East River.

I think that’s part of the issue with the ferries on the East River. How does a person get from wherever he or she starts the trip, which is probably some distance from the waterfront, and then once they get to Manhattan, say they dock on the East River at 34th Street, they’re less likely to work within a few blocks of there than if you’re landing at Battery Park City.

NK: True.

DB: Okay, so we just solved the mystery of why the Hudson River has more ferries. We should charge for this.

NK: That also leads us to the question of 34th Street Transitway.

DB: Yeah. The slowest bus in the world, need to speed it up.

NK: This year I think it was 42nd Street that won.

DB: It’s an ignominious competition each year.

NK: There’s been a lot of pushback on the East Side in particular against this project, how’s the city working to build support for it?

DB: It’s a matter of trying to work with the property owners and address the concerns. There are concerns about how to get deliveries to businesses, and we’ll try to accommodate those. I think the solutions probably look different block by block. DOT has been continuing to do outreach in conjunction with the MTA on those. Because there’s an interest in expediting bus service there, which is ultimately very good for the community. But trying to mitigate some of these immediate smaller grained effects on the adjoining properties on this route is important.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the second half of our interview, where Bragdon discusses transportation funding and the future of the Sheridan Expressway.

The green jobs working group presents its recommendations for a PlaNYC update. Photo: Noah Kazis

The Bronx wants to see the next version PlaNYC go further and be more equitable than the original. At last night’s public outreach event for the upcoming revision of the city’s sustainability agenda, dubbed a “Community Conversation,” Bronx residents demanded that PlaNYC 2.0 be far bolder in its efforts to green the city — and especially their environmentally disadvantaged borough. Whether by tearing down the Sheridan Expressway, tackling truck traffic, or eliminating parking minimums, they want the city to step up its sustainable transportation efforts in particular.

The evening began with a staffer from the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability explaining the benefits that Bronx residents had already reaped from PlaNYC, like 102,000 new trees planted in the borough, the city’s first Select Bus Service route, or shifts away from the dirty heating oils that have contributed to asthma rates among Bronx residents far above those of the other boroughs.

That same presentation also tipped off the audience to a few issues that are likely to make it into the updated PlaNYC: the city’s solid waste disposal and food distribution systems. Both rely heavily on truck traffic and impose a particular burden on Bronx neighborhoods.

But the participants in last night’s forum wanted more. The climate change working group, for example, said a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gases wasn’t good enough. They called for a 50 percent drop by 2030.

The open space group praised new parks like Concrete Plant Park, built on a remediated brownfield. But those parks aren’t worth much, they argued, if the city doesn’t make it easy to reach them. “You want people to walk to a park, but you don’t want them walking under a highway,” said a member of the group presenting its findings.

Concrete Plant Park is separated from all residential neighborhoods by the Sheridan Expressway, which many last night called to tear down. “Decommissioning the Sheridan, it would allow access to the parks that have been developed,” said an environmental justice organizer with Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice.

And in the transportation group, the participants weren’t taking any excuses from the city. After high school student Govin Baichu named the MTA’s service cuts as a top priority for him, the mayor’s office employee pleaded that the city doesn’t control the MTA.

Devona Sharpe, an organizer with the Bronx River Alliance, wasn’t ready to accept that answer, however. “They still make it very easy to drive,” she noted, arguing that the city can prioritize sustainable transportation modes if it wants to. She pointed to low on-street parking costs, the city’s support for large parking garages, and city streets that are designed primarily for private vehicles as three ways the city unduly prioritizes cars.

The transportation group also pushed hard for the PlaNYC update to include a strategy for greening freight transport, not just passenger travel, and for ensuring that environmental burdens are shared more equally across the city. “We get a lot of the trucks transporting things for all the other parts of the city,” said Juan Carlos Ruiz, deputy director of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. “There is this mentality that we are the dumpster of the city, and that needs to be addressed.”

Because the goals of PlaNYC are interconnected, transportation issues came up in other groups’ presentations as well. The open space group called for more waterfront greenways, for example. The air quality group advocated not only for cleaner vehicles, whether powered by natural gas or electricity, but also for reducing the speed limit in the city to 20 miles per hour.

There is one more Community Conversation scheduled, for next week, in Queens. After that, community boards will have a chance to comment on the PlaNYC update this winter.

Since the sustainability plan debuted on Earth Day 2007, major transportation initiatives like the launch of Select Bus Service, the expansion of the bike network, and the creation of pedestrians plazas have been pursued under the PlaNYC rubric. The 2011 reboot could reinforce those initiatives and add new ones, like carrying out off-street parking reform or implementing a world-class bike-share system.

The new site, launched by the Mayor’s Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability and powered by the “All Our Ideas” voting software, works by pitting two different ideas against each other — say, “Increase access to EBT at farmers markets” and “Make delayed green lights for motorists so pedestrians can cross safely.” Click on one or the other, and your vote is logged. If you like both, or neither, there’s also an “I can’t decide” button. You’ll then get two new options. Continue until you get tired; there’s no limit to the number of votes you can cast.

Among transportation-related initiatives, four were tied for first place as of this afternoon. Those were: implementing congestion pricing (got that, state legislators?), building more safe bike lanes, shipping farm goods on commuter rail tracks during off-peak hours, and the vague-but-admirable “Invest in multiple modes of transportation and provide both improved infrastructure and improved safety.”

Overall, the most popular idea is currently to enforce recycling rules in large buildings.

The transportation suggestion with the fewest votes was countdown clocks on crosswalks. That idea, which is already being rolled out at 1,500 locations, had a score only half as high as the earth-friendly but constitutionally dubious “Mandatory Meat-free Monday.”

Important suggestions that could be incorporated into public policies, like “reduce the amount of parking built into new developments,” “develop more bus-only lanes for new Select Bus Service lines,” and “provide better transit service outside Manhattan” ranked somewhere in between.

If you want to make your voice heard in more traditional ways, the Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability is accepting ideas for the update through an online form available here. Or show up in person to one of the community conversations, which will be held in Lower Manhattan, the Bronx, and West Queens over the next three weeks.

PlaNYC set the target of reducing annual transportation emissions 6.1 million tons by 2030. So far, the city is not on pace to reach that goal. Image: PlaNYC

The Bloomberg administration released its annual greenhouse gas inventory last week [PDF], presenting some great environmental news: The city’s annual greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12.9 percent between 2005 and 2009. But inside the report is a worrisome statistic for sustainable transportation advocates. Barely any of that decrease is attributable to a greener transportation system. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions from private cars actually increased by 1.86 percent over those four years.

The persistence of NYC transportation emissions again calls to mind the state legislature’s failure to pass the centerpiece of PlaNYC’s transportation component — congestion pricing. It’s also a reminder of the major citywide reforms that the administration could still enact, like putting a stop to the proliferation of off-street parking.

In total, the inventory shows New York City reducing its carbon emissions from 56.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to 49.3 million. Only a small fraction of that reduction came from transportation, however: 359,000 metric tons. The bulk of that change came from improvements in the transit system: huge reductions were posted in emissions from diesel buses and in the amount of electricity used by the subways and commuter rail. There have also been large reductions in the emissions generated by transporting solid waste, due to a shift from trucking to rail.

In fact, the amount of carbon emissions from passenger cars, which account for around two-thirds of total transportation emissions in the city, actually increased between 2005 and 2009. Car emissions declined slightly from 2005 to 2007, but then rose from 2007 to 2009. Mayoral spokesman Jason Post explained that car emissions have risen because of an increase in total driving.

For PlaNYC’s emissions goals to be a success, Post said, transportation emissions are going to have to decline. PlaNYC called for reducing transportation emissions by 6.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent a year. Post argued, however, that the city is on track to meet all its PlaNYC goals, though he didn’t specify how policies would push those transportation emissions down. PlaNYC has no intermediate benchmarks for transportation emissions between 2005 and 2030.

Congestion pricing was always meant to be PlaNYC’s big-ticket transportation program. In London, congestion charging has reduced CO2 emissions inside the charge zone by about 20 percent [PDF]. For PlaNYC to get back on track in terms of reducing transportation’s climate impact, we’re going to need a policy of similar, or larger, scale.

New PlaNYC chief David Bragdon started work last month. Based on this inventory, looks like greening our transportation system and reducing driving has to be near the top of his agenda. Is it still a priority for the top-level Bloomberg officials above him?

NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Lieber. Photo: New York Daily News

Lieber has been a central figure in the administration's planning and development policy since taking the helm of EDC in 2006. In December 2007, he assumed his current post, succeeding PlaNYC architect Dan Doctoroff. From mega-developments like Hunter's Point and Willets Point to smaller rezonings around the city, Lieber's had a hand in guiding what gets built in New York City, and where.

Lieber's replacement will inherit responsibility for two of the city agencies doing the most to add more traffic to New York City's streets. DCP has shown no inclination to reform parking policies that devour real estate, inflate housing prices and increase car ownership rates across much of the city. EDC continues to subsidize projects that add massive amounts of parking for no justifiable reason. All this new off-street parking creates incentives to drive, generating traffic that impedes bus service and degrades the appeal of streets for walking and bicycling. These policies stands in clear opposition to PlaNYC's goal of reducing automobile use and prioritizing sustainable transportation.

The next deputy mayor for economic development can complete some of the biggest missing pieces in PlaNYC. Here's what two of New York's leading transportation advocates say Lieber's replacement can do for sustainability.

Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White highlighted the Economic Development Corporation as particularly in need of a sustainability shakeup. "The EDC's inexorable march towards more parking and car-oriented development is tarring the mayor's otherwise green record," said White. "This is the mayor's last, best chance to reverse course and bring land use policy into alignment with PlaNYC."

Lieber's successor could do more to make New York City's growth both environmentally sustainable and socially equitable, said Tri-State Transportation Campaign director Kate Slevin.

"In stark contrast to his environmental and transportation policies, Mayor Bloomberg’s development policy has largely favored the elite," she said. "Loosening parking policies for the richer half of New Yorkers who own cars, pushing forward large, controversial development projects, and allowing suburban-style development to occur in transit-dependent neighborhoods all point to the need for a different approach from the new deputy mayor."

Slevin put forward one development project she'd like to see Lieber's replacement put his muscle behind -- tearing down the Sheridan Expressway. "The replacement of the underutilized Sheridan Expressway with affordable housing and parks," she said, "is one of the city’s best opportunities to promote economic development and smart growth in a manner that benefits the working and middle classes."

The mayor's office says that no decision has been made yet about who will replace Lieber, but the speculation has begun. Crain's reports that current EDC head Seth Pinsky could be a top internal candidate, but that Bloomberg may follow his recent hiring pattern and choose another outsider like Howard Wolfson or Stephen Goldsmith.

A front yard parking pad, which the residential streetscape amendment is intended to prevent. Photo: DCP

The RSPTA was intended to cut down on the curb cuts and front-yard parking pads proliferating in the city. It's a laudable goal. As we reported last November, curb cuts put pedestrians at risk from cars crossing the sidewalk.

But that's not all the amendment does. Though PlaNYC calls for creating homes for a million more New Yorkers that are more affordable and sustainable than the buildings of today, the amendment erects new barriers to the construction of housing in a market where the scarcity of residences drives rents and prices higher. 

When you have to put parking in a side yard, you can't build new rowhouses or add to existing attached housing. Image: DCP

Under the amendment, adding a new unit to residential buildings in many places across the city now requires adding an off-street parking space as well, which will ultimately prevent many units from ever being built, housing advocates say. 

In some mid-density neighborhoods, like parts of Dyker Heights in Brooklyn and Forest Hills in Queens, the RSPTA forbids putting parking in the front or rear yard of a building, but off-street parking is still allowed in driveways along the side of a building, or in a household garage. Many of these zones, though, are typified by one- or two-story attached housing. "A lot of those properties are not going to be able, physically, to add a side-yard parking spot," said Jerilyn Perine, the executive director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and a former housing commissioner under Giuliani and Bloomberg. "You can't do it if you're attached on both sides."

The RSPTA therefore makes it impossible to create new units, through construction or bringing previously informal units up to code, in those areas. "That's a very strong statement to come in an amendment that's ostensibly about parking and front yard plantings," said Perine.

Elena Conte of the Pratt Center for Community Development agreed with Perine's analysis. "By requiring a new parking space," she said, the amendment "erects a significant barrier to the creation of new units in these zones."

In areas where new development is underway, the result is similar, though less drastic. "By restricting parking to a side-yard ribbon only," said Perine, "in a new development environment you essentially can't do a row of little two-story buildings and meet the parking requirement." The result, she said, will be less-dense and less-energy efficient detached houses. 

Conte agreed that the RSPTA will lead to more detached units being built than if the amendment had never passed. "This runs counter to the widely accepted principles of smart growth," she said. 

In addition, the RSPTA's parking requirements will force builders to spend more money on housing construction. The cost of a parking space in a low-density neighborhood isn't make-or-break for most developments, said Perine, but it's no coincidence that "obligations keep getting added to new housing development and then people are dismayed when the cost of housing continues to increase."

The RSPTA's effect on housing prices will add to the more significant burden imposed by parking minimums for larger residential developments, said Perine. "On the multi-family side," she said, "there's no question there's a clear cost hit there."

The Department of City Planning contests the claim that the changes will affect the housing market. DCP sees the changes as simply clarifying existing regulations, according to a spokesperson, who emphasized that the amendment will "enhance the walkability of neighborhoods by regulating where curb cuts may be placed."

Despite her belief that the city's parking regulations will impede efforts to build more housing and drive up housing costs in many parts of the city, Perine isn't calling for scrapping the city's off-street parking minimums. "We just wish there would be a bigger picture discussion of land use and parking and housing development," she said, "instead of these piecemeal text changes." The Department of City Planning's ongoing citywide analysis of parking demand provides a perfect opportunity to take a step back and assess the whole situation, she added. 

Until that's complete, Perine argued, the department should stop sneaking new parking requirements into unrelated amendments, like one theoretically targeted only at preventing curb-cuts. "What's that got to do with streetscapes?" she asked.

Aggarwala will leave a lasting legacy in New York, Transportation Alternatives deputy director Noah Budnick told Streetsblog. "The city doesn't improve because someone writes a policy," Budnick said in an email. "It improves because people work hard to turn words into reality. Rit is someone whose own intellect and ideals challenged New York to wholly embrace sustainability. He attracted smart ideas and committed people and engaged them in the struggle to green our metropolis. Thanks to Rit’s work, I think, as a city, we have permanently changed our perspective."

Today's announcement marks the second departure this week of a high-level administration official closely connected to sustainable transportation initiatives, following news that deputy mayor Ed Skyler is also leaving. In a press release, the mayor's office announced that a search is underway for the next planning and sustainability chief, who'll be charged with updating PlaNYC in 2011.

For a taste of the broad knowledge and exceptional patience that Aggarwala brought to the campaign for sustainable transportation policy, here's Aaron Naparstek's four-part interview with him about congestion pricing: 1, 2, 3, 4.

New York City is not looking to create infrastructure for charging cars on city streets. Image: theqsqueaks via Flickr.

"Electric vehicles are here. They're coming, and they won't stop." Last night, DOT Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller opened a panel discussion on electric car adoption in New York City with an implicit message: We should be prepared.

At a meeting that brought together representatives from the mayor's office, two electric utilities, and General Motors, there were two big takeaways for livable streets: The city is working to keep electric vehicle adoption compatible with the goal of reducing personal vehicle use, and on-street space isn't going to be given over to charging stations.

A variety of plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars are expected to hit the market in the next two years, presenting both challenges and opportunities for sustainability-minded cities. Schaller began the evening by noting that, nationally, widespread adoption of plug-in hybrids could take the greenhouse gas equivalent of 82.5 million cars off the road. With numbers like that, New York can't help but take notice.

"In 2007, electric vehicles were just a glimmer in our eye," said Neal Parikh, who leads transportation initiatives at the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. "Now we think it's a real opportunity." He believes that if New York is to meet its PlaNYC goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation 44 percent by 2030, electric cars have to be part of the solution. Parikh was the lead author of the city's recent report on electric vehicle adoption.

While moving toward EVs will require action from the city and other players, including car companies and utilities, Parikh forcefully rejected any measure that would take away from PlaNYC's other transportation goals. While Britta Gross, a GM manager in charge of electric and hydrogen vehicle development, repeatedly claimed that allowing EVs into carpool lanes and offering them free or dedicated parking have proven effective at speeding EV adoption, Parikh said not to expect those offers in New York City. One of his slides put parking incentives directly under the heading "Won't Work."

Parikh's reasoning was simple. He neither wants to give superfluous perks to those who will buy EVs anyway, nor offer incentives that will put more cars on city streets. The city will help educate drivers about EV opportunities and expedite the permitting process for installing a high-voltage charging station, for example, but not offer financial incentives to buy EVs.

"We need to balance moving people into more efficient vehicles, and into walking, transit, or bikes," said Parikh. He also reaffirmed that PlaNYC was "very clear that we wanted to reduce the single-occupancy vehicles on the street." Parikh even cited Copenhagen's outsized EV incentives as a model for what not to do, echoing a theme Charles Komanoff recently explored on Streetsblog.

The panel also answered a common question about electric cars. Where would New Yorkers charge them? The answer: at home or at work, not on city streets. "We're not going to adopt an extensive public charging infrastructure," said Parikh. If someone really wants to drive an EV, he added, and "they're parking on the streets, where they won't have access to charging, they'll change where they park."

An electric car in London. Image: exfordy via Flickr.

As a sustainability initiative, the merit of the proposal depends on whether trips in these new electric cars will replace trips powered by internal combustion or trips by foot, bicycle, and transit. According to the report, electric vehicles charged on New York's grid would emit as little as a quarter as much carbon per mile as conventional automobiles. "Electric cars are cleaner than conventional vehicles," said Natural Resources Defense Council vehicles analyst Luke Tonachel, "but walking, biking, and transit are all cleaner still." 

Switching to electric cars also does little or nothing to improve street safety, decrease congestion, or promote good urban design -- impacts that also benefit more sustainable modes of transport. Which seems to have been overlooked elsewhere, even in countries with enlightened transportation policies. As Charles Komanoff wrote on Streetsblog in November, Denmark's roughly $40,000 tax on conventional automobiles doesn't apply to electric vehicles, and EVs get free parking in downtown Copenhagen -- big perks that will lead more people to drive and fewer to bike or use transit. So is New York City planning to subsidize electric cars the same way they're doing in Denmark?

Thankfully, the PlaNYC report doesn't recommend using financial incentives to push people toward electric vehicles. "The absence of endorsements for such subsidies is a strong signal that the Bloomberg administration does not intend to follow Denmark’s mistake of subsidizing EVs in ways that would encourage more driving," said Komanoff. "This is very good news."

Instead, the report offers policies that mainly remove barriers for people already willing to pay a premium to own an electric car. The recommendations are pretty mild, like educating potential buyers about electric vehicles and then assisting them in finding or installing charging equipment. (The report also includes some fascinating insights into the psychology of early EV adopters. Because "not only do early adopters want to be the first on their block to own the latest vehicle technology, they would like everyone else on their block to be aware of this fact as well," it suggests recognizing early adopters, perhaps by planting trees in front of their homes.)

The big policy choices will come when or if the city decides to promote electric vehicle usage beyond the small set of early adopters. If electric vehicle production scales up in the next few years, the report suggests that the city should expand its focus to a new set of consumers. The city's response targeted at those consumers is the one to watch out for.

Photo: Getty via Daily Intel

Among the outcomes so far: The conversion of 15 percent of the taxi fleet to clean-fuel vehicles, the construction of 79 new playgrounds, $100 million a year to increase the energy efficiency of government buildings, 20 pilot projects to clean up city waterways, hundreds of miles of new bike lanes. Ninety-three percent of the 127 initiatives are under way, Mr. Doctoroff said.

"The biggest achievement of them all," he said, is a greenhouse-gas inventory showing a 2.5 percent reduction in citywide carbon emissions, "at a time when greenhouse gases in cities around the nation continue to increase."

There is little doubt that PlaNYC is an ambitious and noble undertaking, despite the failure of congestion pricing -- which Doctoroff rightly cites as a direct cause of the current MTA funding crisis. But it seems a little specious to brag about reductions in greenhouse gas emissions when the Bloomberg administration has continued to vigorously promote VMT-inducing suburban-style parking, a contradiction not lost on City Room commenters like Chris, who writes:

What’s most frustrating is how Bloomberg and his advisors fail to make some very basic connections between their policies, for example working for modest transit improvements while promoting development that is very parking-intensive. Bronx Terminal Market is a prime example of this. Big box development with considerable parking availability which will do exactly what it is designed for- bring more cars, congestion, and pollution into the city.

So give credit where credit is due, but so many people wish Bloomberg would connect the dots.

Indeed. Even as he lobbied for PlaNYC and congestion pricing, Doctoroff himself was a prime mover behind the Yankee Stadium parking deal and greenhouse gas catastrophes like the Gateway Center. There's the legal battle waged by the administration to bring some 20,000 parking spots to Hell's Kitchen. And just last week Bloomberg celebrated the opening of driving-intensive commercial development at the Gateway project -- one day after announcing a new "green" buildings initiative. In fact, when asked point blank by Streetsblog about the connection between more parking and more driving, the mayor either didn't understand the question or chose not to address it.

Chris believes there's something "far more complex than just ignorance" at work here. We agree. The question is, will the Bloomberg administration safeguard the progress of PlaNYC by reversing its disastrous parking policies?

Mayor Bloomberg at today's Gateway Center grand opening. Photo: WNYC.

Yesterday the mayor unveiled a package of legislation designed to cut carbon emissions produced by buildings, to much Earth Day fanfare. Conspicuously absent from the proposals, however, was any mention of the driving that certain buildings induce and all the emissions that could be cut by reforming the city's off-street parking policy.

At the presser, Streetsblog correspondent Gideon Shapiro asked the mayor how parking and induced demand for driving fit into his ambitious green building plan. "If you want to make an impact in New York City," Bloomberg responded, "you deal with the buildings first," since buildings are the source of most of the city's carbon emissions. He acknowledged that "traffic strangles our city and pollutes our air," but tabled the topic of auto emissions as if it were a totally separate issue.

Sure enough, today we got another reminder that the Bloomberg administration is greening the city with one hand and fouling it with the other. The mayor presided over the grand opening of a Home Depot at the Gateway Center, a project of the city's Economic Development Corporation, touted as "a multi-level regional shopping center" that "will feature an innovative concept that creates dedicated parking fields for each level." It's basically a big chunk of auto-oriented suburbia plunked down by the South Bronx waterfront.

In a statement, the mayor mentioned Gateway Center -- with its 2,800 parking spaces -- in tandem with the new Yankee Stadium, which arrived recently with its own fields of parking. The connection is only fitting: If you build the garages, the traffic will come.

City Hall estimates that its green building plan will cut citywide carbon emissions by five percent. But a building plan without a parking strategy leaves out a big part of the equation. If the city fails to curb the boom in off-street parking, much of the energy savings from more efficient buildings will be wiped out as New Yorkers drive more than a billion extra miles each year.