Streetsblog New York City

At a public hearing held by the Fire Department this morning, every person who testified spoke against charging a fee for FDNY response to traffic crashes, calling it inappropriate to make drivers pay for what they said ought to be a basic government function.

The charges are part of the Bloomberg administration’s attempt to close a budget deficit. The Fire Department proposes to recover the cost of responding to a traffic crash by charging the motorists involved between $365 and $490, depending on the severity of the crash. They estimate the fees would raise $1 million a year.

The charges can also be seen as an attempt to make motorists bear some of the enormous cost of traffic crashes. According to the city Department of Transportation, traffic crashes cost $4.29 billion a year.

No one at this morning’s hearing saw it that way. Opposition focused on whether it was right to switch from using general taxation to fund fire services to a user fee model:

• The charge would “radically alter the relationship between the city’s taxpayers and the services they receive,” said City Council Member Dan Garodnick in a statement read by an aide. Continuing down this path, he argued, would create “two forms of government – one for those who can pay and one for those who cannot.”
• “Imposing crash taxes on individuals unfortunate enough to have accidents adds insult to injury,” said AAA New York’s John Corlett. “Public safety services are a core government function and therefore should be properly budgeted for.”
• The flat charges would place “a disproportionate financial burden on poor and minority citizens,” said William McDonald of the NAACP’s Jamaica Branch, speaking for the branch’s president.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn also wrote in to the Fire Department in opposition to the fee. “The Fire Department doesn’t charge for its response to structural fires, and the Police Department doesn’t charge for patrolling a block. Charging for responding to the scene of an accident is a slippery slope,” she wrote. She also worried that drivers might choose not to call 911 if faced with an additional fee, leaving people on the road who shouldn’t be, like injured or drunk drivers.

Though the Fire Department has the authority to institute this charge unilaterally, legislation has been introduced in both the City Council and state legislature to take away that power.

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Bloomberg administration officials have now twice appeared in front of the City Council to oppose legislation requiring that the city post up-to-date information about traffic crashes and summonses online. In April, the NYPD testified that such a reporting requirement would be a burden on the department and that the public couldn’t interpret that kind of information. And last week the DOT argued that it wasn’t the right agency to release such information.

But the Bloomberg administration isn’t always opposed to tracking and reporting police data. On Monday, the mayor signed into law two bills that will release information about hate crimes and domestic violence. Intros 373 and 393 require the Mayor’s Office of Operations to centralize this data on the city’s My Neighborhood Statistics website. “The two bills before me today increase transparency,” said Bloomberg at the bill signing.

“To not have this information available to the public would mean keeping our residents in the dark,” Council Speaker Christine Quinn said of the legislation, according to a DNAinfo report. “Any additional data to help understand and fight both hate crimes and domestic violence will be beneficial to individual neighborhoods and the City as a whole.”

With Bloomberg and Quinn squarely on board, both bills flew through the legislative process. They were introduced to the Council on October 13; hearings, votes, and the bill signing took less than a month.

While the specifics differ, the principle behind those bills is the same idea underpinning Intro 370, Council Member Jessica Lappin’s bill to release TrafficStat data about the location and cause of traffic crashes and data on traffic enforcement summonses. New Yorkers not only deserve to know about crime in their city, but they should be able to use that information to advocate for change. So why is the administration trying to keep traffic crime information hidden even as it celebrates the release of information about hate crime and domestic violence?

Perhaps the problem is that when it comes to traffic enforcement, the city isn’t eager to see sunlight shine on its record.

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Officials held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the suburban-style East River Plaza shopping complex today. The fleet of cars that the city's leading politicians and developers arrived in barely registered in the mall's giant parking lot.

It's safe to say that East River Plaza will go down as an urban planning disaster for the ages, but as politicians praised the project, they gave no indication that they've absorbed lessons from its big mistake. The mall's eight levels of parking, a full 1,428 spaces, take up the better part of a city block. Those spots have mostly been sitting empty, hogging space and sucking the life out of the pedestrian environment -- a testament to the city's lax urban planning oversight and the fantastically faulty assumptions of the developer, who now admits that more people than expected are walking or taking transit to East River Plaza rather than driving.

So it was particularly jarring to hear praise for all that parking from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. She thanked the city for rezoning the area "to make it not only a place where commercial development could occur, but also a place where we could have parking, so people could come here and take those 488 rolls of toilet paper home with them, out of Costco, as I myself like to do."

Never mind that parking takes the place of what could be more retail and more jobs, or that 82.3 percent of East Harlem households don't own a car [PDF]. This empty lot is failing even as a place to store private cars. 

A ribbon cutting may not be the occasion to expect reflections on lessons learned, but today's event was a great opportunity to explore East River Plaza and document a colossal mistake that should never be repeated. Photos after the jump.

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While receiving an honor from AARP last night, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn reiterated their support for the Age-Friendly New York City plan to make the city work better for senior citizens. Because New York's elderly pedestrians are at the greatest risk from motor vehicles, the Age-Friendly New York program includes a number of pedestrian safety components. Though Bloomberg and Quinn reiterated their support for these programs last night, perhaps the most enthusiasm for redesigning streets to better serve older New Yorkers came from Linda Gibbs, deputy mayor for health and human services.

The Age-Friendly New York City agenda includes 59 initiatives meant to make it easier to age in the city, including building traffic calming public spaces and redesigning the city's most dangerous intersections. Bloomberg's remarks didn't specifically mention the pedestrian safety aspects of the plan, but he did reaffirm his commitment to follow through on the entire Age-Friendly program. "When we take on a project," he said, "we actually do it." 

Quinn focused more closely on street redesigns. "Through complete streets, we're making New York a place that's safe in every way for seniors," she told the audience. In April, Quinn stood with AARP in front of the Ninth Avenue protected bike lane to participate in a safety audit. Discussing that experience last night, Quinn said that the redesigns of Eighth and Ninth had helped fix "two very problematic corners" at 23rd Street.

Perhaps most striking, it seems that livable streets advocates have a potential ally in Deputy Mayor Gibbs, who oversees the Age-Friendly New York City program. Discussing NYCDOT's Safe Routes for Seniors program, Gibbs had particular praise for neckdowns at dangerous intersections. "It creates an intentional bottleneck that not only makes the distance shorter, but slows down the traffic as it approaches the intersection," she said, "so you have a double benefit."

To keep seniors safe, one area that would especially benefit from Gibbs' influence is Manhattan's East Side.

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Electeds and other officials gathered with representatives from AARP today to pledge support for street improvements and to call on Albany to pass complete streets legislation.

Kicking off a day of street surveys across the state, the group met at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street, an intersection that had been particularly hazardous for the older residents of the nearby Penn South co-op.

One Penn South resident recounted her memories of living above the intersection before a redesign of the corridor brought refuge islands along Ninth to protect both pedestrians and cyclists. "Every time I heard a siren on Ninth Avenue," she said, "I ran out to see if it was one of our seniors."

Council Speaker Christine Quinn praised "the success we've had at 23rd and Ninth," and promised that the city would "replicate" it. "I'm looking forward to more safely strolling across intersections across the city," Quinn said. Quinn also noted the development of Age-Friendly NYC, a set of 59 initiatives to help New York City become more hospitable to a growing senior population. Traffic calming and street redesigns were an important piece of that document.

AARP's top pedestrian safety priority is complete streets legislation working its way through the state legislature. That bill, which has the support of the chairs of the transportation and aging committees in both the Assembly and Senate, would ensure that all streets statewide are designed with the needs of pedestrians, cyclists, people with disabilities, and transit riders in mind.

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Now that Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio, John Liu, and the City Council have been sworn in, attention turns to speaker Christine Quinn's choices to head legislative committees. For New Yorkers who care about street safety and sustainable transportation, the big question is who will run the City Council transportation committee.

Committee chairs can set the agenda in more ways than one, acting as gatekeepers for pending bills and commanding bully pulpits that focus public attention on city agencies. The power of the transportation chair was quite apparent last year, when John Liu held up a committee vote on the Bicycle Access Bill, casting its future in doubt.

The bill's ultimate passage was a big step forward for the council on sustainable transportation. But the city's legislative agenda can still get clogged up with counterproductive items like the parking "grace period" which the council passed in December. Will the next transpo chair spend time and energy trying to score cheap points with car owners, or will New Yorkers get a leader who puts safety and livability at the top of the agenda?

"Historically, the transportation committee has been overly sensitive to New York's minority of motorists," Transportation Alternatives director Paul White told Streetsblog. "We really need someone who understands New York's supermajority of transit riders, walkers, and, increasingly, cyclists."

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This was the scene at City Hall yesterday afternoon as Mayor Bloomberg put his signature on the Bicycle Access Bill. The mayor also signed Intro 780, which will increase the amount of bike parking in commercial garages and lots. Bill sponsors David Yassky (dark tie) and Oliver Koppell (red and navy stripes) were on hand, as were buildings commissioner Robert LiMandri (far left), DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan (center) and TA director Paul White (glare in his lenses).

The new rules governing bike access to buildings won't take effect for a few more months. In the meantime, the best strategy for eventually reversing your building's bike policy is to talk amongst your co-workers (not to your employer just yet) and hash out potential bike access plans.

The passage of these bills elicited many pro-bike pronouncements from elected officials, some of which have been reprinted for your reading pleasure after the jump.

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The New York City Council voted 46-1 this afternoon in favor of Intro 871, the Bicycle Access Bill, opening the door to significant gains in commuter cycling. Cyclists who do not commute by bike have long cited the lack of a secure place to lock up as the most important factor holding them back. Intro 871 will give thousands of them a new legal framework to petition for bicycle access at their places of work, but stops short of guaranteeing access to all buildings. All told, its passage marks the biggest legislative victory ever achieved by bicycle advocates in New York City.

"This will open up commuting by bike for New Yorkers," said Council Speaker Christine Quinn today. "We can use bikes as a main mode of transportation." She was speaking to a packed house. The security guards at City Hall were turning people away from the council chamber because the galleries had reached capacity.

"No other city in the country has a policy like the one City Council passed today," said Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White in a statement on the significance of the bill. "When we open the doors of New York City’s workplaces to cyclists, tens of thousands of commuters are going to get on two wheels."

For many cyclists forbidden to bring their rides to work, today's vote was a long time coming. TA first called for bicycle access legislation in 1993, as a plank in its Bicycle Blueprint. Since then, multiple bills like Intro 871 have come and gone without becoming law.

"This is historic, a very, very major step," said John Kaehny, who served as director of TA from 1994 to 2004. "I can't think of something that comes close to this from the City Council. This is very important because they've done something big. More than anything else, it validates bicycles as legitimate."

Gaining passage for Intro 871 entailed a combination of confronting and cajoling one of the quintessential New York City interest groups: the real estate lobby. Organizations like REBNY -- the Real Estate Board of New York -- don't like the idea of a bicycle access mandate, and they wield a lot of influence. To overcome that inertia, everything had to line up perfectly.

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On Wednesday, the City Planning Commission approved a zoning amendment to require bicycle parking in new construction. The City Council now has a 50-day window to vote on and finalize the measure. 

Should the zoning amendment pass, it would be good news for New York City bike commuters in years to come. The lack of a secure place to put your ride is one of the main obstacles to commuting by bike, and the zoning change will gradually alter the equation as new housing, workplaces, and commercial development get built. (The amendment now includes exemptions for low-income housing, but not the bike parking-for-car parking swap proposed at a previous hearing.)

A related measure, the Bicycle Access Bill (Intro 871), could deliver immediate benefits to nearly all bike commuters in the city by improving access to existing workplaces. As things stand, most landlords and building managers simply don't permit people to bring bikes inside. Intro 871, sponsored by David Yassky, would help remedy the situation and has already progressed through one hearing in the transportation committee. A revised version of the bill is expected to be released in the next few days, and Yassky's office is "very optimistic" that a second committee hearing will take place within approximately six weeks, according to spokesman Danny Kanner.

Intro 871 is one to keep a very close eye on. While a majority of the council has signed on as co-sponsors, the Real Estate Board of New York has signaled its opposition the bill. Not that the pro-bike side is without its own heavy hitters. A group of high-powered business leaders and lawyers sent this letter [PDF, or follow the jump] to Council Speaker Christine Quinn, asking her to continue the "championing of sustainable, healthy and cost effective transportation modes" (disclosure: Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton is one of the signatories). Quinn's office has not returned inquiries about her stance on the bill.

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New bike infrastructure in New York City could be on the chopping block as the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg revise spending projections downward. On Sunday, Speaker Christine Quinn and the City Council released $495 million in proposed budget cuts over the next two years, including an item that would slash spending on bike network expansion in half. DOT's bike network funds would drop from $9.6 million to $4.8 million in 2009, and from $11 million to $5.5 million in 2010. Download this PDF and scroll down to the first item numbered 841, "Reduce Bike Network Development Funding."

A spokesman for Speaker Quinn's office did not specify why the bike network was targeted for spending cuts, saying only that painful steps were necessary to close the city's budget gap. In an interview on WNYC earlier this week, Quinn said that the council's financial staff were charged with identifying programs that are "not necessarily the core function" of city agencies.

The proposals now enter the ongoing budget negotiation process between the council and the mayor's office. In November, Bloomberg released a separate list of budget fixes, which did not include cuts to bike network funding. (Interestingly, the mayor's proposals did include a measure to raise more revenue from parking meters below 60th Street [PDF, page 24].) Yesterday Bloomberg ordered city agencies to identify additional spending reductions by December 22.

If you believe a safer bike network is a core function of DOT, contact information for Speaker Quinn's office and your council member can be found on the City Council website.