Streetsblog New York City

I didn't get to watch last night's Democratic mayoral debate between Bill Thompson and Tony Avella, so I missed the high drama that ensued when the candidates were asked if they'll retain Janette Sadik-Khan as transportation commissioner. Good thing Brian Lehrer played excerpts on his show this morning (check the 13:40 mark). Now I know the answer from both: "No."

Thompson got started with a restrained, "I think you bring your own team to the table." Then Avella took the first rip at the city's new bike lanes and public plazas.

"There has to be community involvement," he said. "You can't just dictate from the top: 'Hey, tomorrow, here's a bike lane, here we're gonna close off the street,' without having communication with the elected officials, the community boards, and the neighborhoods, and that's why she should be fired."

This prompted an escalation from Thompson: "I favor bicycle lanes, however, you are hearing the complaint all over the city of New York, because the communities have not been consulted. They've been ignored. Bicycle lanes have been dropped upon them and there has been no discussion. That's wrong and that shouldn't continue."

Avella and Thompson don't seem to have a very good grasp of the facts on this issue. DOT's plaza program is entirely opt-in. They won't build a plaza in your community unless someone from the neighborhood asks for it. New Yorkers are basically competing with each other to get these public spaces added to their streets. Oh, and attacking the new plazas on Broadway is kind of like pledging to pave Bryant Park at this point.

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This week's Observer is running a profile of DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. It focuses on the speed with which many of DOT's Sustainable Streets projects are moving ahead and seems to suggest either:

a) Improving conditions for New York City's pedestrians, cyclists and bus riders is a Communist plot. Or,
b) The change that Sadik-Khan is bringing to New York City's streets is akin to the Russian Revolution.

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While we wait to see what happens, or doesn't happen, today in Albany, New York Magazine takes a look at four mayoral aspirants and how their positions on congestion pricing may affect their chances of succeeding Michael Bloomberg.

• City Council Member Tony Avella: "[Avella is] an obscure pol, and attacking CP allowed him to grab attention while promoting his anti-tax agenda. But he may have gone around the bend, ranting about routine horse-trading for council members’ votes."
• Comptroller Bill Thompson: "The city comptroller has been mildly supportive of congestion pricing, though he’s always been careful to attach caveats ... Why take a bold stance on something that might never happen?"
• City Council Speaker Christine Quinn: "[S]he used last week’s vote to demonstrate leadership on a contentious issue ... Plus, wrapping her arms so tightly around CP also earned Quinn a big chit with Bloomberg..."
• Congressman Anthony Weiner: "[I]n the campaign, he’ll cast congestion pricing as Manhattan-centric and elitist, like Quinn. Weiner was thrilled to see her so far out front."

And don't forget Marty Markowitz, whose most notable contribution to the congestion pricing discussion has probably been his vehement opposition to new bridge tolls. 

On a related note, the Daily Politics reports that Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey issued a not-so-subtle warning on the radio this morning that state pols will be judged on where they come down, and could be supported or opposed accordingly in future races.

Whether or not the plan passes in Albany, how will congestion pricing influence your vote for the next mayor?

Oppose congestion pricing and all this could be yours

If Tony Avella and David Weprin and other Queens City Council members succeed in killing congestion pricing, at least Queens residents who lose out on transit improvements could take comfort in knowing that their representatives will have escaped the wrath of the Queens Civic Congress. Check out this (unedited) warning from the QCC [PDF]:

Queens Civic Congress puts all elected officials and would be ones on notice that the communities are closely following what people say and how they will vote. The Civic community expect the City Council to vote a strong thums down to the congestion tax." stated Jim Trent, Transportation Chair for the Queens Civic Congress, a the borough-wide coalition of civic and condo, cooperative, tenant and other community organizations. "Anyone who supports the unfair tax and/ or votes for it stands to lose any chance of being 'awarded" the coveted five unispheres rating; it could costs them as they look ahead to the next election.

Photo: K. B./Flickr

Queens residents crash Friday's anti-pricing rally

We've received several reports that Friday's anti-pricing rally on the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge, spearheaded by City Council Member Tony Avella, was a bust.

According to our sources, of the council members slated to attend -- Avella, Leroy Comrie, Melinda Katz, David Weprin "and other possible members of the Queens Delegation" -- only Avella and Weprin showed up. Pro-pricing folks who came to either counter-protest or just express support for pricing, including those from Queens, were reportedly yelled at and accused of being "undemocratic" by Avella. Environmental Defense was on hand to measure air quality and found that "contaminants were sky high."

Notably absent from the proceedings was Councilman Eric Gioia, who represents the district where the rally took place. Here are a few possible reasons why, as enumerated in testimony to council members by DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

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Tony Avella, Leroy Comrie, Melinda Katz, David Weprin "and other possible members of the Queens Delegation" are holding an anti-congestion pricing rally tomorrow morning at 8:00 on the Queens side of the 59th Street Bridge, according to an e-mail from the Queens Civic Congress.

Notably, Eric Gioia (right), who represents the traffic-burdened district where the rally will be taking place, is not listed as a participant. Perhaps he realizes that standing in front of a backdrop of rush hour traffic, yelling, "We need to keep this as is!" isn't going to play all that well with his constituents.

But who knows. Maybe he'll show up. Despite the clear benefit to his district (only 3.2% of his constituents regularly commute by car into the pricing zone), Gioia has yet to come out in support of congestion pricing. You can be sure that the car commuting Council members to his east are happy about that. For them, Gioia's district is little more than a highway on-ramp that helps them avoid the toll at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.

Foes of congestion pricing marshalled by the Queens Chamber of Commerce held a press conference yesterday at which several politicians from the borough took a stand against the mayor's plan. According to a press release provided by the chamber, City Council Finance Chair David Weprin called the proposal unnecessary: "I don't think City Hall understands that another unfair tax which would hurt working class people is not only uncalled for, but also unnecessary to reduce traffic. Before we tax people more we should first consider trying some simple traffic mitigation alternatives to reduce congestion."

The release also quoted Councilmember Tony Avella: "Until the City provides adequate mass transportation services, congestion pricing is just another tax on working and middle class families and small business. Everyone agrees that we need to address traffic congestion problems throughout the city, but the first step has to be improving mass transit."

Of course, Bloomberg himself, in the Sunday speech the Queens Chamber was protesting, said that mass transit in the outer boroughs would have to be improved before congestion pricing went into effect. In that speech, he clearly stated: "We know that service to many areas is not what it should be. That's why, before implementing congestion pricing we'll implement a range of mass transit improvements to our least-served neighborhoods."

The Queens Chamber has been in the forefront of the anti-congestion-pricing battle for some time now, releasing a study in March 2006 called "A Cure Worse than the Disease? How London's 'Congestion Pricing' System Could Hurt New York City's Economy." A group called the Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief, including the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign, Transportation Alternatives and the Citizens Committee for New York City, has released "Debunking the Attack on Congestion Pricing," an analysis of the Queens Chamber's report that refutes its major points (download it here):

The attempt to disregard congestion pricing as a potentially viable traffic mitigation measure is based on a study commissioned last year by the Queens Chamber of Commerce, performed by Appleseed Consulting. Even a cursory examination of this study finds it to be biased and deeply flawed.

The Queens Chamber of Commerce study erects a draconian "straw man" congestion charging scenario that is neither based on London's system nor on any scenario that has been proposed for New York City.... In supporting its spurious claim that congestion pricing will result in a net negative impact on the City's economy, the study relies, among other things, on assumptions about how this policy will impact vehicle and person trips into the relevant parts of Manhattan.

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Add the Queens Chamber of Commerce to the list of pre-emptive congestion pricing foes.

The chamber's Legislative Advocacy Committee has prepped a report on the "harmful effects" of congestion pricing on businesses, and chamber members are also reportedly spreading the word.

Writing in the chamber newsletter, Queensborough, QCC President Raymond J. Irrera espouses the usual rhetoric regarding "punishing" motorists with a "tax." Irrera fans the flames by citing the "dire negative impact" congestion charging supposedly had on downtown London.

Also in Queensborough, City Council Member Tony Avella refers to vague "serious financial consequences" of New York's non-existent congestion pricing plan, and takes the opportunity to plug his legislative proposal to ban the city from "imposing tolls or other charges on any and all bridges controlled by the New York City Department of Transportation." Avella finds himself in good company on the council, which appears on the verge of enacting its own anti-business initiative.

Thing is, the London experience shows that overall business does not suffer from congestion charging. According to Malcolm Murray-Clark, who runs the London program and who visited New York a few weeks ago, a very small number of auto-dependent businesses were negatively affected there. This could be because, among other reasons, while the number of car trips into London's central business district was reduced by 31 percent, the number of people entering the CBD dropped by just two percent.

Murray-Clark was careful to point out that congestion pricing is no "panacea," and that implementing the plan successfully required a lot of give-and-take between government and the private sector. Seeing as how other New York business leaders have pegged the cost of gridlock at $13 billion a year -- not to mention all those inconvenient side effects -- maybe honest dialogue would be a better course than unsubstantiated hysteria.

Photo: latca/Flickr

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is reportedly pressuring -- some might say coercing -- council members into backing her effort to override of Mayor Bloomberg's veto of stringent pedicab restrictions. Tony Avella of Queens talked to the Sun about Quinn's anti-pedicab campaign among council members.

Mr. Avella said his colleagues are following Ms. Quinn's wishes because her support is essential when trying to introduce legislation or secure funding for projects in a member's district. "The power of the speaker is incredible when used in this type of situation," he said. "And that's a situation that really has to change. We talk about three men in a room in Albany. Well, the City Council is getting just as bad."

Of course political blackmail among elected officials is nothing new. What's noteworthy here is that, according to the Sun:

A lobbyist at Bolton-St. Johns, Inc, a group hired by the Committee for Taxi Safety to lobby the council, Emily Giske, is considered by many to be close to the speaker. She and Ms. Quinn lived, and may still live, in the same apartment building on West 24th Street, according to a recent address listing.

After Ms. Quinn, who is a lesbian, gave her first speech as speaker last year, Ms. Giske told a weekly newspaper of Lower Manhattan, Downtown Express: "As a lesbian and as a Democrat, I've never been more proud of anything in my life."

Regardless of any possible personal link between Quinn and Giske, pedicab industry founder and spokesman George Bliss suspects the speaker's motives are patently political.

"She wants to be mayor, she needs their money," Mr. Bliss said, referring to Ms. Quinn. "It is clear there is a quid pro quo between the speaker and the taxi lobby."

Could Quinn, a Democrat, be short-sighted enough to lobby against clean transportation for New York City at a time when the Republican she hopes to succeed is speaking -- if not always acting -- on reducing emissions? Not according to a Quinn spokeswoman, who claims that no one on the council "was urged or pressured to vote one way or another on the pedicab bill."

For his part, David Pollack, executive director of the Committee for Taxi Safety ("Helping NYC's Safest Drivers"), says pedicab regulations would "keep the bicycle taxis from clogging midtown Manhattan." Pollack receives "daily complaints about reckless pedicab drivers," the article says.

A vote on the pedicab regs is set for April 23.

Photo: nycbone via Flickr