Streetsblog New York City

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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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