How to change the equation? An intriguing attempt is currently unfolding in southern Queens, where, in less than a month, voters will choose a replacement for Joseph Addabbo, who left the City Council following his election to the State Senate in November.

The New York League of Conservation Voters and the Campaign for New York's Future have launched a voter education campaign devoted to transportation issues in the 32nd council district, a car-dependent area that includes Ozone Park, Broad Channel, and part of the Rockaways. "So many folks head to the polls and they think about how their candidates stand on education, or what their stance is on guns and crime," says Dan Hendrick of the NYLCV. "The objective of this campaign is to make sure that transportation and mass transit are voting issues as well."

The campaign is not endorsing a specific candidate, but drawing attention to the need for better transit service and to the area's crippling traffic. Broad Channel and Rockaway residents have been in the news lately for griping about tolls on the Cross Bay Bridge. NYLCV intends to broaden the discussion. "One of their big needs is more express bus service," said Hendrick, who envisions the campaign as a continuation of last year's public debate about congestion pricing. "Because the area is so car-dependent, [rush hour] congestion is a real problem in that district."

A local partner, the South Ozone Park Civic Association West, is helping to organize a candidates' forum next Wednesday, where voters can get their would-be council members to go on the record with a transit platform. Six candidates are in the running [PDF] (including, still, Michael Ricatto).

"We really want to heighten the sense of accountability of our elected officials," said Hendrick. "Whoever gets elected, they'll go into office knowing, 'Transit is a big priority in my district.'"

Voters in the 32nd council district go the polls on February 24. When regular City Council elections roll around later this year, Hendrick said, NYLCV plans to build on this model and ramp up transportation campaigns in more districts. "Definitely the idea here is to replicate this on a much larger scale in the fall."

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.

The Times reports that about a dozen lawmakers, including Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, are refusing to complete the NYLCV's candidate questionnaire, and have notified the league preemptively to say they don't want its endorsement.

What has irked some lawmakers is what they saw as a threat in the cover letter accompanying the questionnaire. In the letter, the league said it would use its new political action committee, Climate Action, to support candidates who advanced the group's agenda. Some legislators said they viewed that as a veiled warning that the league would use the money it raised through its committee to defeat candidates who opposed Mayor Bloomberg, above, and his congestion pricing plan.

The league or its political action committee "has the right to contribute to any candidate it wants," wrote Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democratic assemblyman from the Bronx, "but I am deeply troubled by the very clear implication that a candidate will be rewarded or punished based upon a legislator casting a specific vote the way you would want it cast."

Yes, assemblyman, an interest group basing its support on a candidate's record is indeed troubling. Oh, wait ... 

For the league's part, NYLCV Chair Charles S. Warren says lawmaker positions on congestion pricing will not be a "litmus test," but adds, "we’re going to look for concrete accomplishments in furthering the environmental agenda.”

Mr. Warren, who said he did not know how many legislators had responded to the league’s questionnaire, added that the league was dissatisfied with the Legislature’s environmental record lately. “There’s a frustration on our part and on the part of a lot of other environmental organizations,” he said.