A potential configuration for the Nostrand Avenue SBS Route. Image: NYCDOT.

As Elana reported earlier today, the Obama Administration's 2011 budget includes $28 million for the Nostrand Avenue Select Bus Service project. The announcement should help build momentum for a high-priority transit project set to launch in 2012.

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.

A package of legislation recently introduced in the state legislature would help speed New York City buses and enable traffic agents to cite drivers for blocking the box. Members of the Campaign for New York's Future, the same coalition that fought for congestion pricing, are meeting with elected officials in Albany today. Streetsbloggers can lend support by contacting your representatives in the Senate and Assembly.

Here's what's on the table, as noted in the Campaign's press release:

• Bus camera legislation (S7229 Golden / A10233 Bing), which would allow for the installation of enforcement cameras on buses to deter cars from using bus-only lanes.
• “Block the Box” legislation (S6811 Lanza / A10071 Kavanagh), which would reclassify blocking the box infractions as parking violations, thereby allowing traffic enforcement agents (and not only police officers) to issue tickets and enhance enforcement.

Given that New York City DOT and the MTA are, for the most part, not creating physically-separated bus lanes as is done in cities like Bogota, Colombia and Paris, France, bus-mounted cameras will be essential to keep lanes clear and make BRT routes truly rapid. In a statement, Tri-State Tranportation Campaign director Kate Slevin said, "The Campaign strongly supports photo devices that capture violators in bus lanes because they will enable speedier commutes for bus riders even when police officers are not able to be present."

In addition to calling, you can urge support for these bills online through the New York League of Conservation Voters.

Some interesting nuggets are coming out of DOT bike coordinator Josh Benson's ongoing Q & A with readers of the Times' City Room blog. In yesterday's installment, Benson outlined upcoming additions to the Queens bike network: 

In Queens, specifically, we have a number of bike lane projects either under way or on the drawing board for the coming months, including:

• 35th Street, Astoria (1.7 miles)
• Linden Boulevard, St. Albans (3 miles)
• Sunnyside Connector to the Queensboro Bridge, Woodside, Sunnyside, Sunnyside Gardens (5.2 miles)
• Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City, Astoria (7 miles).

Then, responding to a question about the need for more indoor bike parking, he said a zoning amendment to mandate bike amenities in or around certain buildings is in the works (no sure thing, of course, but certainly encouraging). A City Planning spokeswoman told Streetsblog the department is aiming to introduce the amendment by the end of this year. Benson's full response comes after the jump.

Many readers have mentioned this issue and indeed a Department of City Planning study confirmed that one of the biggest obstacles to increasing bicycle commuting in NYC is not safety, but rather the lack of secure bike parking. That is why in PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg committed to pursue legislation that would require large commercial buildings to make provisions for bicycle storage either on site or reasonably nearby. The Department of City Planning has been following through on this and they are working on a Proposed Bicycle Parking Text Amendment which will need to go through public review. This amendment would require bike parking in new buildings. Amending the zoning codes can be a long process, so we are also exploring the possibility of other legislative avenues.

In the meantime we are trying to lead by example in city government. As I mentioned, department headquarters provides indoor bike parking and the Department of City-Wide Administrative Services offers bike parking for all city employees in Lower Manhattan at 100 Gold Street and 280 Broadway.

I would encourage readers to begin a frank discussion with their building managers or owners about the importance of indoor bike parking to the health of the building’s employees and for the environment of New York City. As more property managers and owners become educated on this issue it will become easier for us to enact and enforce measures to ensure that indoor bike parking becomes the norm, not the exception.

A third round of answers is due out later today. 

From an ESTA media release:

Principals underscored the vital need for the innovative measure to help fund the MTA's recently released 2008 - 2013 Capital Plan. The $29.5 billion dollar program recently submitted to the legislature as required under congestion pricing legislation relies on $4.5 billion in bonding capacity over the next five years to expand travel options in all five boroughs and the region's suburbs.

ESTA principals in Albany include: Chris Ward, Managing Director, General Contractors Association; Kate Slevin, Executive Director, Tri-State Transportation Campaign; Chris Jones, Vice President of Research, Regional Plan Association; Jim Melius, New York State Laborer's Union, Rich Kassel, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council; Bill Henderson, Executive Director, Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA; and Eric Alexander, Executive Director, Vision Long Island.

Efforts will continue next Tuesday, when busloads of pricing advocates will head to the capital. Buses will depart at 6:15 a.m. from the Central Labor Council at 31 W. 15th St. More info here and here. RSVP ASAP.

The Daily News, which has pounded the transit agency with its "Halt the Hike" series ("Even as the MTA is poised to stick straphangers with a fat fare hike, Chief Executive Lee Sander went shopping for a new necktie yesterday"), called the fare increase "the great train robbery of 2007," and characterized Sander and new Chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger as puppets of Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Spitzer.

There was a time when MTA bosses were independent, standup people who represented the riders, even if only in losing battles with governors, Legislatures and mayors. Men like Dick Ravitch and Peter Kalikow come to mind.

At this point in their relatively young tenures, Hemmerdinger and Sander pale in comparison.

They are order takers, dictated to by Spitzer and Bloomberg, who have assumed full personal ownership of this fare hike.

New MetroCards should come bearing photographs of the governor and the mayor, like on wanted posters, including their records.

Also in the News, Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, while critical of the hikes, says transit customers have reason for hope in the promises made by Spitzer and other pols, including Assembly Member Richard Brodsky, that more state aid is forthcoming. Russianoff also thinks further hikes will be politically infeasible for the next several years.

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, for one, believes the hike will be used against the MTA come budget time, and sees it as a broader failure of the MTA and elected officials to advance a pro-transit agenda. Calling yesterday a "Sad Day for Transit Riders," TSTC's Kate Slevin writes:

Overall, by approving the hike and the proposed fare and toll plan today, Governor Spitzer and the MTA missed out on a number of key opportunities. First, they missed an opportunity to win support from transit riders who feel the pressure of crowded trains, slow buses, and an increasingly expensive region. Second, they missed out on a chance to let vocal state legislators put their money where their mouth is and produce more state transit aid. Third, they missed an opportunity to connect the transit funding debate with the Traffic Mitigation Commission's recommendations to be released in January. Fourth, the MTA failed, as it has in the past (see MTR #s 425, 401, 237, and others), to use the toll hike as an opportunity to bring its tolling structure and facilities into the 21st century with things like variable tolling and non-stop tolls.

Finally, the MTA and Governor Spitzer failed to connect the fare and toll proposal with their own efforts to promote sustainability. The MTA established a top-notch Sustainability Commission in September to help create an agency "master plan" to reduce the agency's ecological footprint. But the agency's toll proposal punishes most transit riders more than most drivers - under the plan EZ Pass users (which account for 75% of all crossings) will pay only 3.8% more while transit fares for most riders will increase more than that. Last time we checked, promoting transit use over driving is an vital part of "sustainability."

This entire line of discussion, Brodsky says in this letter to Tri-State Transportation Campaign executive director Kate Slevin, represents the deterioration of of public and political discourse and "the politics of personal destruction." Brodsky believes that despite their numerous, detailed studies over the last few years, congestion pricing advocates have failed to address the substance of his objections. It's not exactly clear what Slevin wrote that so offended Brodsky. Tri-State addresses Assembly Members' congestion pricing falsehoods in this article.

Here is his letter to Slevin:

July 13, 2007

Ms. Kate Slevin
350 W. 31st Street, Suite 802
New York, NY 10001

Dear Ms. Slevin:

I've read your Statement entitled Asemblymember Brodsky and Councilmember Weprin: Fighting for the People, or for Parkings Special Interests? and after much reflection, I'm writing to you about it.

The substance of my concerns about the Mayor's various congestion pricing proposals are set forth in the Interim Report: An Inquiry into Congestion Pricing as Proposed in PlaNYC 2030 and S.6068. The Report was the result of six weeks of analysis and careful consideration. It sets forth my deeply held concerns about the use of pricing mechanisms to distribute public goods, invasion of privacy, regressiveness, and the elimination of SEQR and public health protections, practical concerns about air quality in neighborhoods surrounding the Zone, toll offsets, and exemptions for taxicabs, and pointed out that the legislation doesn't require the revenues to be used for capital mass transit, does not put into place mass transit improvements prior to implementation, does not contain any privacy protections, and is not a pilot program. I trust you read the Interim Report before you issued your Statement. I assume that you will offer criticism of the substance of the Report at some point, and as always, I welcome any thoughtful critique of my work and views.

Along with many other thoughtful Americans, I have watched with dismay, distress, and ultimately disgust as public and political discourse has deteriorated. What Senator Clinton has rightly called the politics of personal destruction has become commonplace. Attack on motive and character are substituted for argument about ideas and values. It's wrong, we should not participate in it, and when we see it we should call it by its name.

In your statement, referring to me, you say, "While these legislators paint themselves as populists representing middle and low-income New Yorkers, the money trail clearly leads back to the parking lobby."

You may actually believe that the Report and my concerns are motivated by my desire to please the parking lobby, that I'm Fighting... for Parking's Special Interests and Pandering To The Priviliged, that its arguments are intended to satisfy campaign contributors, and that my stated concerns are hypocrisy or at least not genuinely reflective of my views. I almost would prefer that you did so believe. Whatever revulsion I feel about such false and malicious personal attacks, it would be truly intolerable if you didn't believe it, and were saying so for some other reason.

I think it would be helpful to remind you that when I was leading the efforts to stop the Mayor's proposal for the West Side Stadium, or when I authored and led the successful fight for the Transportation Bond Act, or when I authored the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Fund, investigated wrongdoing at the MTA and the Hudson River Park Trust, protected private bus operations when the Mayor and the MTA were seeking to reduce them, led the successful fight for clean buses for the MTA... well, I could go on. When I was doing these things, when I introduced legislation against congestion pricing in 1995, there was a sense that I was committed to a vision of the public interest, and said what I believed to be in the public interest even when it was not popular or well received by the powerful and influential. I suppose it is possible that all of that has changed. But, although it is somewhat awkward and a bit self-serving, I can assure you that it hasn't changed, that I remain consistent in my concerns and my willingness to serve the public interest as I understand it, that I believe the Report reaches intelligent and valuable conclusions, and that I haven't yet heard otherwise from Transportation Alternatives.

If we are to consider sources of financial support as relevant to why we take the positions we take, perhaps all of us would benefit from a review of our funding sources. I raised over $2 million during recent years, largely from progressive sources, but including friends who had a variety of business interests. During the same time, the Mayor, to his enormous credit, has given huge sums of money to organizations, some of which support his congestion pricing plan. Although I am not familiar with how Transportation Alternatives funds its activities on behalf of legislation it is supporting, I would be surprised if you were not supported by folks who have business interests in the City, or with respect to the use of bicycles, or other kinds of alternative transportation. And I believe that the Mayor, and your supporters are sincere and honest in their advocacy, business activities, and support, and should continue that support. Unlike Transportation Alternatives, I would not dream of suggesting that the Mayor, you or they were anything but sincere in the positions you take.

I have written to you partially to correct the public record about your attack on me. But I mourn for a climate of public discourse which fosters attack on motives, and trashes opponents no matter what their record or the seriousness of their policy concerns. And I truly feel it will be helpful if such attacks are challenged not just because they are inaccurate, but because they disserve all of us who participate in public life. Perhaps your statement illuminates more about Transportation Alternatives than it does about me.

At any rate, I will persist in my concerns that we reject pricing mechanisms for the purpose of social control, that we do not put loopholes in SEQR, that we protect air quality and public health, that we fund mass transit capital projects, that we deal with congestion effectively, and that we be able to take public positions without vilification.

Best Wishes,

Richard Brodsky

What could be worse than replacing neighborhood parks with private parking decks, built with the specific intent of increasing car trips by the tens of thousands through a community already suffering from so much disease-causing pollution that its nickname is "Asthma Alley"?

How about forcing afflicted residents to help foot the bill?

That's what could happen in the South Bronx, courtesy of the New York City Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and the New York Yankees.

Though the sweetheart deal orchestrated to fund a new stadium for the richest team in baseball went off with barely a hitch -- including the seizure of public park land, accomplished in just eight days -- construction of the planned parking decks for the new facility has been another matter.

Apparently recognizing the decks as a losing proposition, no private developer wants to build them. So to get things rolling, the IDA -- the financing arm of the NYC Economic Development Corporation -- is now set to award some $186 million in triple tax-exempt bonds for deck construction to a group called the Community Initiatives Development Corporation (CIDC), a non-profit that sets up tax-free loan packages.

In testimony from last week regarding the deck plan, Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York (GJNY) offered an analysis of how the project made its way to the CIDC, which has set up a 'local' Bronx division (BCIDC) for the stadium deal:

Despite the fact that these garages went through an official Request For Proposal the financing structure and selection process has the appearance of yet another backroom subsidy deal. BCIDC president William Loewenstein is a strategic partner of lobbying powerhouse Stadtmauer Bailkin, LLP, which specializes in securing public subsidies for its clients. The firm's promotional materials identified him as such until last fall. Stadtmauer Bailkin is listed on the IDA's core application as the attorney of CIDC.

This is a very tidy loop. Stadtmauer lobbies City Hall on behalf of Central Parking Systems, the business claiming it will operate the parking lots. Stadtmauer needs no introduction here. One of its managing directors has promoted herself as having written incentive guidelines as an employee of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. And the firm's incentive procurement practice was recently renamed Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co. Jay Biggins is a former executive director of NYCEDC. CIDC's senior vice president Joseph Seymour is the former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The proposed deck plan would push total subsidies for the new Yankee Stadium to somewhere north of $400 million, according to GJNY. It would also increase the current parking stock by 55 percent, even as plans for a new Metro-North station to serve the park languish for lack of funding.

All of which smacks of hypocrisy to Kate Slevin, associate director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, who also submitted testimony to the IDA:

In January, Mayor Bloomberg announced his PlanYC initiative, which envisions a city in 2030 with faster travel times, more green space, and with the cleanest air of any big city in the USA. Providing more public subsidies for parking garages -- especially when funds for a transit station are precarious at best -- flies in the face of these goals. It's hard to take an initiative like PlanYC seriously when the city is throwing money at parking for a transit-oriented site like Yankee Stadium. 

In the interest of equal time, the Mets are encouraging fans to use transit for today's home opener -- at least while construction of their new stadium continues to take away parking. To avoid the 'shortage' during last year's playoffs, nearly half of Mets fans attended the games without their cars -- proving that even if you don't build it, they will come.

Note: Prior to publication, Streetsblog contacted Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff's office for comment on this story. Mr. Doctoroff could not immediately be reached.

 Image: duluoz cats via Flickr

The so-called "greatest city in the world" doesn't even have decently-paved streets, let alone cutting edge transportation features like bus rapid transit, neighborhood traffic calming plans or bicycle-friendly avenues. It may be time to consider planning and transportation policy as Board of Education-type problems, where a top-to-bottom overhaul of city agencies is needed.

-- Jon Orcutt, executive director, Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

An important new survey says that New Yorkers believe that traffic congestion is a major problem plaguing New York City and that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is dong an inadequate job in addressing it.

According to the Tri-State Transportation Campaign's telephone survey of 800 New Yorkers:

59% of New Yorkers say the mayor is doing only a "fair" to "poor" job of reducing traffic jams and delays on city streets, highways and bridges. On only one other issue, increasing the stock of affordable housing, does the Mayor receive a higher net negative rating (60%). Mayor Bloomberg receives the highest net positive marks for keeping parks clean and safe (63%) and reducing crime (57%).

These findings come from a random telephone survey of 800 New York City residents in the five boroughs conducted May 19 through June 4, 2006, by Michaels Opinion Research. "The daily grind of gridlock and its impact rarely makes headlines, but the survey results show that New Yorkers have strong opinions about the problem and expect more action from Mayor Bloomberg to solve it," said Maureen Michaels, president of Michaels Opinion Research.

Discontent with the Mayor's performance on traffic congestion cuts across most segments of the city's population, but residents of Staten Island appear especially angry about traffic jams and delays 82% give an overall negative rating to the mayor, despite his announcement of a new transportation plan for the borough this spring.

• While 62% of motor vehicle owners give the Mayor a negative rating on reducing traffic jams and delays throughout the city, non-vehicle owners are not satisfied with his performance either (56% negative), nor are those who drive to work (70% negative).
• Dissatisfaction with the Mayor's performance on traffic issues also cuts across age and income groups, though a solid third of middle and upper income residents give intensely negative ratings (33%-36% rate the job he is doing on traffic issues as "poor").
• And among the working population, 59% of those who work below 60th Street in Manhattan and 67% of those working outside Manhattan say the Mayor has done, at best, a fair-to-poor job reducing traffic on city streets, highways and bridges.

"Let's face it, the Bloomberg administration has accomplished next to nothing on traffic problems since taking office. A few potentially promising initiatives, like speeding buses through traffic and enforcing truck routes, seem stuck as endless studies," said Kate Slevin, associate director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, sponsor of the survey project.

Download the full report, here.

Video still by Clarence Eckerson