One of the central elements of Mayor Bloomberg's plan for a sustainable New York City is to improve mass transit and get people out of their cars and into busses and subways. In addition to better and more frequent transit service, the city also needs to ensure that the price of mass transit is kept under control. In the aftermath of the defeat of congestion pricing, we see that mass transit in this region is under greater financial stress than at any time since the fiscal crisis of the mid 1970's.

State and local tax collections are in decline, and the MTA bears the burden of the Pataki philosophy of borrowing to fund transit infrastructure.  read more »

The city is creating a new office to clean up brownfields for development, an issue outlined last year in its PlaNYC sustainability plan. Officials have said the existing incentives for landowners to clean up the sites do not provide sufficient push to remediate. With the reformed program, the city hopes, will come quicker remediation and new uses for the land.  read more »

Earlier this week, New York Times reporter Felicity Barringer filed an excellent story on San Francisco’s successful waste management strategy.

The story discussed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s zeal for keeping garbage out of landfills. Currently, his city keeps 70 percent of its disposable garbage out of landfills.

You might think that would be enough, but it’s not. He is about to propose legislation to mandate recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps. If you don’t recycle, the city won’t pick up the rest of your garbage.

How much of New York City’s waste is kept out of landfills? About 30 percent. Of course, that puts us ahead of Boston at 16 percent and Houston at less than 3 percent.  read more »

Expanding parks is not supposed to be this difficult.

“This is the worst situation I’ve ever encountered in terms of [dealings with] the community,” said Carol Greitzer, a former councilwoman from the West Village who helped start a group called 250+ Friends of New York Parks. It opposes many of the Bloomberg administration’s park plans. “They come up with a plan. Maybe—maybe—if you’re lucky, you can tweak it slightly, but that’s about all you can do.”  read more »

When we walk down Broadway in Manhattan, we sometimes forget that New York is virtually surrounded by water. In fact, the five boroughs have 578 miles of shoreline. If global warming ends up melting enough sea ice at the poles to cause the sea level to rise, New York City is in a world of trouble.  read more »

A little more than a year ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his pathbreaking "PlaNYC 2030" urban sustainability plan. According to the city’s own progress report on the plan’s first year:

The implementation of PlaNYC's 127 initiatives requires the effort of more than 20 City agencies; the help of our Sustainability Advisory Board; partners and supporters from all across New York City; and close cooperation with the City Council and other elected officials. In the first year since the release of the plan, we completed rezonings, planted 54,484 trees, moved our taxis and black cars toward fuel efficiency, encouraged bicycling with 60 new lane miles, and engaged New York City in the most significant transportation discussion in a generation.

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Yesterday, Dan Hendrick of the New York League of Conservation Voters stopped by City Hall, just in time to chat about Earth Day!  read more »

As David Paterson took the oath of office as New York’s 55th governor earlier this week, you could almost taste the sense of relief in legislative chambers. Our new governor gave a remarkable, deeply personal and engaging talk and then left to face the challenges of rebuilding the broken machine of state government.

With Wall Street melting down, the economy heading south, and the war in Iraq continuing to drain the nation’s treasury and will, Governor Paterson faces a budget gap estimated at $5 billion. Upstate New York has been in a generation-long recession and now those of us in the City wonder if our own remarkably resilient post- 9/11 era will end with a crash.

New York City and New York State have been counted out before, and have demonstrated the capacity to come back. In the mid-1970’s, then-Governor Hugh Carey, the city’s labor unions and financial industry got together with then President Gerald Ford and figured out a way to dial back our near bankruptcy. Some of us remember the summer of 1977 as immortalized by sportscaster Howard Cosell’s famous phrase that “the Bronx is burning” during the Reggie Jackson-dominated World Series.  read more »

In an apparent effort to bolster political support for congestion pricing, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority released a $29.5 billion five-year capital plan for all sorts of transit improvements and updates today, counting on $4.5 billion to come from the mayor’s controversial plan.

Included in the capital plan are hundreds of new train and subway cars, updated signaling systems, money for the Second Avenue Subway, and a rebirth of a grand entrance to the redone Fulton Street Transit Center downtown (the entrance was scrapped last month in the name of cost overruns).

The message from the state agency was clear: if the Legislature does not approve congestion pricing, the MTA will have to substantially scale back its ambitions.  read more »