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Posts from the "Seth Pinsky" Category

Monday, February 1, 2010 12 Comments

Infrastructure Bigs: To Compete, NYC Needs Congestion Pricing, Tolls

by Noah Kazis

Holland_Tunnel_tolls.jpgTolls at the Holland Tunnel. Now the Port Authority is looking for the next financing model. Image: Library of Congress.

At a panel put on by the New School last week, some of New York's biggest players in transportation and planning came together to discuss the future of the city's infrastructure. They all seemed to agree: The city can't keep up with its global competitors without new sources of revenue.

Christopher Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, framed the stakes: "We have to ask, what builds wealth?" The other panelists concurred: New York's health and economic dominance won't continue without consistent investment in its infrastructure, particularly its transportation network.

Seth Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, put it more directly. "We have spent the last 20 years trying to get our infrastructure back to pre-1970 levels," he said. Without moving further, "We will not be able to compete with other world cities."

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Friday, January 29, 2010 27 Comments

EDC Chief Seth Pinsky: Minimizing Parking “The Worst Thing We Could Do”

by Noah Kazis

SethPinsky.pngSeth Pinsky, NYCEDC president. Image: NYCEDC.
The NYC Economic Development Corporation's predilection for suburban-style, parking-filled projects earned it last year's Streetsie for worst city agency. Well, now we've got some more insight into what makes EDC tick.

After an event at the New School last night, NYCEDC president Seth Pinsky told Streetsblog why his organization's projects include so many parking spaces. "The worst thing we could do," he said, "is create projects that create a parking need and then not provide that parking."

Predictions about "parking need," however, are consistently flawed. At one of the EDC's own projects, the Gateway Center in the Bronx, far more shoppers take transit than developers predicted, leaving the parking lot underutilized and creating a hostile environment for people who walk. In the words of parking guru Donald Shoup, "In trying to foretell the demand for parking, urban planners resemble the Wizard of Oz, deceived by his own tricks."

According to Pinsky, EDC takes its figures for parking demand straight from the legally-mandated environmental review process. So, some of the problem here is embedded in that process, which has prompted calls to revise local environmental review laws [PDF]. 

But more and more, EDC simply appears to be falling behind the times on planning policy. Just this week, the Health Department, City Planning, DDC, DOT, and the Office of Management and Budget released Active Design Guidelines advising planners to "design car parking so as to reduce unnecessary automobile travel, particularly when walking, bicycling, and public transit are convenient alternatives."

We have, supposedly, progressed beyond the era when city government equated traffic with economic activity. But while the rest of the city is trying to reduce the number of cars on the street and play to New York's inherent strengths as a walkable metropolis, EDC still seems intent on inducing more traffic and giving autos even more space than they need.

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