Streetsblog New York City

The Post had a short item today, which we've linked to a couple of times, reporting that members of the City Council have sent a letter to Mayor Bloomberg asking for changes in the congestion pricing proposal that would raise fees for New Jersey car commuters or have the Port Authority commit more funds to the MTA.

The Daily Politics got hold of the letter [PDF], which appears below in full, including the names of its 20 signatories -- some of whom, like David Yassky and Melissa Mark-Viverito, are pricing supporters.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

We are writing to urge you to correct an unfairness in the "congestion pricing" policy proposed by the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, prior to the upcoming votes in the City Council and the State Legislature.

We are concerned that the burden of paying for congestion pricing will fall too heavily on New York City residents - and in particular on residents of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island - while commuters from outside the City will remain unaffected.

Under the current proposal, bridge and tunnel toll payments would be credited against the $8 congestion charge. This means that commuters who currently pay tolls to use the Port Authority and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority river crossings will pay no additional congestion fee. The bulk of these drivers live outside of New York City. At the same time, drivers who enter Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge or the Williamsburg Bridge will pay the full $8 congestion charge. Most of these drivers do live within New York City.

This is blatantly unfair.

Only three days remain until 20 percent of government parking placards must be surrendered, but as Gridlock Sam wrote here last month, that should be just the beginning of placard reform. Case in point: Uncivil Servants featured a story last week of an Upper East Side synagogue that manufactures its own bogus placards while the 19th Precinct turns a blind eye and infamous Community Board 8 lends a hand. Uncivil Servants reports that employees of the Park East Synagogue on East 68th Street have been getting away with the printing of homemade placards since the attacks of September 11, 2001:

The original baloney excuse for their parking was terrorism following 911 but the truth is they have used the tragedy of 911 as an excuse to get a free parking perk at the expense of the community. The signage by the way is either NO STANDING or NO PARKING 7AM - 7 PM. The location of this abuse is East 68th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues on both the South and North side of the street where typically you will find 8 to 10 of Park East employees' personal vehicles parked all day using bogus xeroxed placards.

Post columnist David Seifman picked up the story on Sunday, writing that the synagogue has agreed to gradually reduce -- but not eliminate -- its use of false permits, in a scheme brokered by Community Board 8:

"After a very lengthy and detailed discussion, [Park East] agreed to the recommendation that they reduce the number of placards to eight by the end of June 2008, then decrease by four by June 2009, and two the following year, until the number of placards in use is reduced to two by June 2010," said the e-mail from Assistant District Manager Latha Thompson.

City Councilman Dan Garodnick (D-Manhattan) told The Post the community board was way out of bounds. "It's unacceptable for individuals to be generating their own parking placards," he said.

Seifman also reports that Park East director Joel Baum offered an alternative explanation for the placards. Baum says they are used by teachers at the synagogue who are following the example set by the city's public school teachers. More proof that once one group claims a special privilege, the circle of entitlement tends to widen.

Photo: Dick Tracy / Uncivil Servants

The City's plan to stripe a bike lane across the Upper East Side continues to generate "controversy." I put that word in quotes because, well, check out the video above and see for yourself what all the fuss is all about. The video was filmed on a beautiful Saturday afternoon at about 2:00 pm, theoretically, prime time for a neighborhood "play street." Yet, you'll see almost no one using the street except two cyclists, one of them a 9-year-old boy, slowly making their way up the pedestrianized street. They are clearly a danger... to no one.

Conflict over the City's bike plan centers around the car-free block of 91st Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, pictured above. What is most remarkable about this conflict is the fact that the City isn't planning to make a single design change to the neighborhood's beloved pedestrian mall. DOT's plan is to end the bike lane on either side of the car-free block. Central Park-bound, uphill-traveling cyclists will be able to use the street as part of their bike route. Pedestrians will still have priority.

DOT representatives, elected officials and community members held a site visit a few weeks ago. Word has it, bike lane opponents assembled a Potemkin playground complete with about a dozen children playing in the middle of the street. According to one participant, no more than five minutes after the meeting ended, all of the children picked up their toys and returned to a small park area south of the neighborhood's "play street" where they normally play when not being used as props.

As was the case during the 9th Street bike lane controversy in Park Slope, Brooklyn, it would be hard to take these vociferous opponents of white stripes on asphalt seriously, except that local elected officials do take them seriously. The Upper East Side opposition even has a City Council member from outside the district fighting against the new bike route. After the jump you'll find a letter from Daniel Garodnick, someone you might think of as one of City Council's smart, progressive bright lights and a good potential choice as New York City's next Council Speaker.

Question for Mr. Garodnick: If a Council member can't stand the neighborhood-level political heat over a mere bike lane, what kind of leadership is he likely to show when it comes time to help New Yorkers understand and accept the array of changes that have to be made in response to climate change, fossil fuel depletion and other large scale environmental challenges now impending?

A couple of weeks ago I nearly spit out my morning coffee over the front page of Metro NY when I read that my City Council member Jessica Lappin was opposed to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. Dismissing residential parking permits as "a hunting license" Lappin said she was afraid of a "crush of cars" at the at the 86th Street boundary.

In the past, my group, the Upper Greenside, has worked with Lappin to bring new greenmarkets to our neighborhood as well as other environmental issues. Based on our conversations about traffic, she seemed very positive about the idea of congestion pricing. She once wrote a letter to former DOT commissioner Iris Weinshall at our request about the dangerous traffic congestion around the Queensboro Bridge.

Last Friday, while Mayor Bloomberg was testifying in front of the State Assembly about congestion pricing, I accompanied Ann Seligman from Environmental Defense on a visit to Lappin's legislative office to advocate for the mayor's plan. Lappin jumped in immediately, saying, "I support congestion pricing, I just have some tough questions about the details." She described her position as close to Governor Spitzer's. She wants to see something happen but has some concerns over the plan's details.

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Anticipating a vote in the City Council this afternoon to override the mayor's veto of Intro 331-A, a bill to regulate pedicabs, a group of pedicab operators was demonstrating outside the American Museum of Natural History after Bloomberg's big Earth Day speech.

Handing out leaflets with the numbers of swing councilmembers like Daniel Garodnick, the pedicabbers came up to members of the press leaving the museum and asked for help with media coverage of their issue. Periodically the demonstrators chanted: "We're not in the way, we are the way!"

Members of the group said they fit perfectly with the sustainability plan the mayor had just outlined inside.

"I am zero emissions, that's what I do," said Jesse White, a pedicabber who was leading chants. "Intro 331-A will shut us down."

Photo: Sarah Goodyear 

Left to right: New York City Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner/Senior Policy Advisor David Woloch, Commissioner Iris Weinshall, a procurement and technical servicea aide and City Councilmembers John Liu and Gale Brewer.

As I saw it, the three big bullet points to come out of yesterday's City Council Transportation Committee hearing on Intro. 199, the Traffic Information & Relief Bill were as follows:

• DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall expressed unequivocal opposition to Intro. 199. See below for her reasons. She also told a Newsday reporter that New York City's traffic congestion is more an issue of public perception than a transportation policy and management problem. New York City traffic congestion, the Commissioner says, only seems worse than it ever has been. 
• Councilmember Daniel Garodnick announced mid-hearing that he would sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill. Garodnick's support tips the balance of the Transportation Committee in favor of Intro. 199 and ensures that the bill can move to a full Council vote. With 24 co-sponsors, the bill is two votes shy of passage and 11 votes short of a veto-proof majority. Still, it is hard to imagine that Mayor Bloomberg will allow City Council to pass this kind of legislation. Expect some sort of pre-emptive action from the other side of City Hall. 
• DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia provided the day's highlight when he used the traffic engineering term "pedestrian interference" in describing how a street's "Level of Service" is calculated. What a priceless glimpse in to the profession of traffic engineering and the mind of the man who, essentially, owns and operates New York City's streets. The next time you're almost hit by an aggressive SUV driver while crossing the street, think of yourself not as a victim but as "pedestrian interference" impeding that motorist's Level of Service. As for all of the activities that Danish urban designer Jan Gehl refers to as "public life?" Turns out it's actually "pedestrian interference." 

Yesterday's hearing kicked off with Committee Chair John Liu's assertion that New York City is experiencing "unprecedented traffic congestion of epic proportions." Intro. 199, he said, is aimed at helping the city manage its traffic congestion by collecting data in a new way. "We need to pro-actively manage traffic. In order to manage it we have to be able to measure it."

Intro. 199, in short, compels the City to "develop and monitor performance targets with the aim of assessing and reducing the amount of traffic citywide and within each borough." Rather than focusing on "output measures" like the number of traffic lights repaired and potholes filled as DOT currently does in the annual Mayor's Management Report, the new legislation would mandate that DOT evaluate itself based on "targets" built around specific transportation policy objectives such as reducing congestion and pollution and increasing the percentage of trips taken on buses, bike and by foot. This is similar to the kind of data collection now being done in London (see the bottom of this Transport for London press release to access TfL's massive, detailed, annual traffic congestion monitoring report).

Flanked by two aides, Commissioner Weinshall was first to testify. "Under the Bloomberg Administration, DOT has made reducing vehicular congestion and bolstering alternative modes one of our primary goals," she said. She cited the ongoing Bus Rapid Transit study, the Thru Streets program, Muni Meters and the recent bike lane expansion as examples.

Weinshall then cited five reasons for her opposition to Intro. 199 (her full testimony can be found here). First, the City Charter already requires that DOT submit data to the annual Mayor's Management Report so "any legislation to require additional reporting seems redundant." Second, DOT "is already, in fact, collecting and making available much of the data the bill contemplates." Third, DOT is about two years away from having "new advancing technology as a means to collect data" so it would be premature to make the agency set policy targets now. Fourth, collecting all of this data would be burdensome and expensive. Finally, transportation issues are regional. "Intro. 199 seems to ignore the multi agency nature of our transportation systems," she said. Weinshall also reported that DOT is planning to increase its data collection contract from $600,000 over two years to $3 million.

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