Streetsblog New York City

City Council Transportation Committee chair James Vacca has made headlines for his inquisitorial hearings on DOT’s bike and plaza programs. And it looks like his office was batting around ideas with street safety opponents before the first of those hearings last December.

Email correspondence obtained by Streetsblog from Marty Markowitz’s office indicates that a Vacca staff member was in contact with the anti-bike lane group “Neighbors for Better Bike Lanes” in the lead-up to the December bike hearing.

According to the document, a staffer in Vacca’s office sent Louise Hainline, the president of NBBL, a link to this Richard Lipsky blog post in October. (Lipsky is the disgraced lobbyist caught up in the Carl Kruger corruption scandal who worked to foil congestion pricing in 2008 and became a vocal yet mostly-ignored critic of transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.) The post, a line-by-line commentary on a Steve Cuozzo column written in the wake of October’s dueling rallies over the Prospect Park West bike lane, is standard-issue bikelash fare. But toward the end Lipsky issues this plea: “Calling CM Jimmy Vacca-the council’s sagacious chair of the council’s transportation committee. Can we get some oversight Jimmy?”

After receiving the link from Vacca’s office, Hainline sent it around to a group of core NBBL members and allies, including three employees at the Brooklyn borough president’s office, Gibson Dunn attorney Jim Walden, and Jessica Schumer, the daughter of Senator Chuck Schumer and former DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall.

Vacca held the bike hearing on December 9. His office told Streetsblog ahead of time that they expected the Prospect Park West bike lane to come up in testimony, and when the hearing rolled around, PPW opponents including Marty Markowitz and NBBL member Norman Steisel did receive an inordinate amount of attention.

We don’t know who in Vacca’s office sent the Lipsky rant to Hainline, or in what context. Streetsblog has a freedom of information request pending with Vacca’s office for correspondence related to the December hearing. Vacca spokesperson Bret Collazzi sent the following statement in response to inquiries about the October email and the relationship between Vacca, Lipsky, and NBBL:

Our office is in the final stages of responding to a Freedom of Information Law request from Streetsblog that covers all communications related to the Prospect Park West bike lane. Until that process is complete, I cannot accurately answer your questions. What I can say is that the New York City Council Transportation Committee does not convene oversight hearings on the basis of blog posts or neighborhood-specific complaints. Our Committee convenes oversight hearings when Chairman Vacca feels an issue has risen to a level of citywide importance and warrants additional public discussion. I think there’s little doubt that bicycling in New York City met those criteria.

The Observer reported last week that Extell Development wants to lease an underground chunk of its huge West Side project to big box retailer Costco. Included in the plan: 2,300 parking spaces. To put that in perspective, the Red Hook Ikea, projected to yield 17,000 car trips on peak days, makes do with a 1,400-car parking lot. The building where Extell wants to put the Costco and the garage will be mostly residential. No matter how many spaces are set aside for residents or shoppers, the inclusion of so much parking flies in the face of the city's stated goal to reduce traffic.

Nevertheless, Mayor Bloomberg has come out in favor of the Costco, the Sun reports:

At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said bringing the big-box warehouse chain to the city would help New Yorkers weather a difficult economic downturn. "Costco has a reputation of selling in bulk at very low prices, and given the economy today and the public's desire to buy things in bulk and buy them cheaper, it seems to me we should welcome any store that wants to come here," he said.

In light of the Mayor's own congestion reduction efforts, the endorsement makes little sense:

A spokesman for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, Richard Lipsky, said the Costco store would run counter to another administration priority: reducing traffic.

"It is incongruous for the mayor, who supported congestion pricing, to support one of the most auto-dependent retailers in the country," Mr. Lipsky said.

Photo of Costco parking lot in Brooklyn: MaxKalehoff/Flickr

I'm not sure I'll ever understand how Richard Lipsky of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance figures he's helping "mom and pop" business by defending the increasingly miserable, congested, automobile-dominated status quo of New York City streets but I do enjoy his Mom and Pop blog. He is an entertaining writer, an experienced political player, and a skilled propagandist (in these quarters, that's a compliment). If Mayor Bloomberg's congestion relief efforts are ultimately shot down in Albany, Lipsky will deserve a fair share of the credit. Remember him, future C-Town delivery truck drivers, as you inch your way through traffic.

This week the Wal-Mart killer joins the Jeffrey Dinowitz fray, and takes a poke at "The Streetsblog," a web site that "is apparently dedicated it appears to returning New York back to the 19th century" (a time when mom and pop business thrived, by the way).

In his first piece Lipsky refers to all you Streetsbloggers as -- and I'll just mash up all of the descriptors into one set of quote marks -- "phony, invidious, self-righteous street corner ideologues and useful idiots." After that, Lipsky accuses congestion pricing advocates of "a level of vitriol" that is "so counterproductive" he'd almost believe it if he and Walter McCaffrey were running the traffic relief campaign themselves.

If anyone can find the vitriol in the original Streetsblog post that started all of this, let me know. 

In his second piece on the subject, Lipsky fleshes out the "useful idiots" concept and provides some pro bono strategic advice for congestion pricing advocates, otherwise known as Mayor Bloomberg's "dimwitted amen choir."

As we have said, the critics are not doing their cause much good. Over the top statements and personal invective, so characteristic of some denizens of the netroots, will only make the legislature that much more skeptical of a plan that they think needs a great deal more thought. This biting the hand that feeds you approach, which we can only hope will continue into total self-immolation, is not a very smart lobbying strategy.

People pay good money for Lipsky's advice, so it's worth noting. But Albany is the-hand-that-feeds New York City? That's a bit hard to swallow. Maybe it's because Albany's other hand is so firmly wrapped around our necks.

Contrary to some of the more pessimistic analyses that appeared after last week's congestion pricing deal (like ours, theirs and this one too), Crain's Erik Engquist writes that "details of the deal make approval of Manhattan driving fees a near certainty next year." The article is for subscribers only on the Crain's web site:

7.23.07 Crain's NY Business page 3

Agreement gives supporters clout to undercut foes and win over public. Foes' main gripe has been lack of time to digest the plan

BY ERIK ENGQUIST

The agreement reached in Albany last week appears to set up a legislative gantlet through which Mayor Michael Bloomberg must run his congestion pricing plan. But details of the deal make approval of Manhattan driving fees a near certainty next year.

The reasons are both technical and political. The commission to consider the proposal and alternatives must approve a plan by Jan. 31, 2008, that reduces traffic by 6.3%, as the mayor's plan would. Analysts say only fees can accomplish that.

"We've looked around the world," says Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City. "Congestion pricing was the only thing that made a significant impact on traffic."

The political deck is likewise stacked in favor of congestion fees. The 17-member commission will recommend a plan by majority vote. Fourteen members will be appointed by pricing supporters: three each by Mr. Bloomberg, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and one each by Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith and Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco.

The three named by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who remains dubious about fees, will be vastly outnumbered. Mr. Silver himself will have reasons to join the bandwagon, even though many Assembly Democrats have criticized the proposal to charge cars $8 and trucks $21 for entering Manhattan south of 86th Street. The fees will help fund the Second Avenue subway, which will serve the speaker's district.

Read more...

It turns out that pollution-related heart and lung problems aren't just for poor kids in the Bronx anymore. From yesterday's New York Times:

A study that used the mass of data included in the Women's Health Initiative found that women who lived in communities with relatively high levels of air pollution in the forms of tiny particles -- aka soot -- were far more likely to die because of heart attacks than women who lived in cleaner air. Results were published in February in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Cars, trucks, and diesel buses - the main culprits in the creation of particle pollution - spew untold millions of the microscopic pollutants into the air daily. Exercisers should take precautions against particles, experts said, by not exerting themselves near traffic, or, if they must use a path next to a highway, staying a few hundred yards away from vehicles.

Meanwhile, in related news, Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr. and Richard Lipsky's Neighborhood Retail Alliance are holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall this Sunday, 11:30 am to protest "the failure" of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion picing plan "to address the air quality in those neighborhoods that are experiencing a severe asthma problem." Diaz, Sr. says:

With all due respect to environmentalists, I cannot understand how these plans can be made without an environmental impact study being conducted first. There are many questions that have been left unanswered, and we need to have a thorough review of the matter before implementing any plan of action.

Photo: Richard Perry/The New York Times