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Upper West Side
At Peak Times, a Hungrier Meter?
By ALEX MINDLIN
PARKING spaces on the Upper West Side are precious resources, to be hoarded like coal in wartime. The familiar street-cleaning shuffle requires paramilitary levels of vigilance and guile. So it is no surprise that the city is eyeing the neighborhood as a place to test a new program that would raise and lower the price of parking to match demand.
The system, known as performance-based pricing, was pioneered by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles. Under the system, which is in use in Pasadena, Calif. and part of Washington, D.C., the price of parking fluctuates over the course of the day.
In peak periods, like the early evening, prices are kept high enough to dissuade some drivers from parking, with the goal of having two spots per block unoccupied at any time. Advocates of the system say it eases congestion and lowers emissions by sparing drivers the usual "cruise" in search of parking.
Over the last year, officials of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District have told the city they are willing to try out the new system, in return for street improvements like bike racks, benches, curb extensions and bike lanes. The city never formally agreed to such an arrangement, but Barbara Adler, executive director of the business district, said she learned a few weeks ago that performance-based pricing might be in the works for the avenue.
Nicki Bennett is an American aid worker who bounces around from one hot spot to the next, working for Oxfam. She has been deployed to Sudan, eastern Congo, Chad, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Guatemala. She is currently in Bangladesh working on post-hurricane reconstruction.
This week I’m back in Dhaka, the world’s undisputed rickshaw capital. With more than 300,000 of these brightly colored bicycle contraptions plying the city’s streets for trade, I rarely walk for more than a block before a rickshaw driver (known as “rickshaw-wallah”) pulls up next to me and urges me to hop on board.
I’ve learned it’s almost impossible to refuse a ride. This is partly because the rickshaw-wallahs are very persistent, partly because I feel I should be supporting people struggling to make a living (one in five of the city’s inhabitants depends on the rickshaw business for their income) and partly because Dhaka is now starting to get unbearably hot and humid (and I’m starting to get horrendously lazy).
Coming back from a meeting near my office this afternoon, I start chatting (well, mainly hand-gesturing) with my rickshaw-wallah and ask him where he’s from. I’ve heard lots of stories about families in the cyclone-affected coastal areas sending sons or brothers to urban centers like Dhaka to make a little bit of cash driving rickshaws (many people have not been able to return to their regular jobs as the cyclone destroyed their fishing boats and nets or washed away their crops). I’m wondering if my rickshaw-wallah is one of them.
Instead, he names a district that I’ve never heard of. We manage to establish that it’s somewhere north of Dhaka, near a river. “Floods,” he tells me. “In my village. Village underwater.” Finally the penny drops – he’s not just an economic migrant, he’s also a “climate migrant.”
Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism?
MICHAEL CRONIN's job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites - temples, monuments, markets - when one day he happened across a flier advertising "slum tours."
"It just resonated with me immediately," said Mr. Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years' salary for many Indians. "But I didn't know what to expect."
Soon, Mr. Cronin, 41, found himself skirting open sewers and ducking to avoid exposed electrical wires as he toured the sprawling Dharavi slum, home to more than a million. He joined a cricket game and saw the small-scale industry, from embroidery to tannery, that quietly thrives in the slum. "Nothing is considered garbage there," he said. "Everything is used again."
Mr. Cronin was briefly shaken when a man, "obviously drunk," rifled through his pockets, but the two-and-a-half-hour tour changed his image of India. "Everybody in the slum wants to work, and everybody wants to make themselves better," he said.
Slum tourism, or "poorism," as some call it, is catching on. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the townships of Johannesburg to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for crowded, dirty - and in many ways surprising - slums. When a British man named Chris Way founded Reality Tours and Travel in Mumbai two years ago, he could barely muster enough customers for one tour a day. Now, he's running two or three a day and recently expanded to rural areas.
Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these "green" fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.
These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.
New Operation to Put Heavily Armed Officers in Subways
By AL BAKER
In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city's subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday.
Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.
Officials said the operation would begin in March.
Financing for the program will be funneled to the Police Department and will come from a pool of up to $30 million taken from $153.2 million in new federal transit grants to the state.
Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced the grants at a news conference on Friday at Grand Central Terminal, where Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly outlined his plans to add a layer of security to the city's 24-hour transit system.
For Just a Few Dollars, a Big TV and Years of Debt
First thing Friday morning, before anyone showed up to rent a television for the Super Bowl, Deborah Williams walked in the door of the Rent-A-Center store under the Broadway el in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She was delivering $109 in cash, her February payment for a 27-inch television that she is buying over time.
If she does not miss any payments, she will own the television by the summer, for a total of about $900. Such televisions can be bought retail for well under $400, but that would require more money than Deborah Williams can put her hands on at one time.
This is a big week in the television rental business. Fliers were slipped under the doors at the Astoria Houses in Queens that urged people to hurry to the Rent-A-Center on Steinway Street so they could have a big new TV for the football game. Among the offers was a 40-inch Bravia, with payments of $47.51 a week. In 117 weeks, the customer would own the set outright, for $5,558.
January 20, 2008
Urban Tactics
Little Cambodia, Growing Still Littler
By DAVID SHAFTEL
...
Data from the 2000 census shows that the city’s Cambodian population decreased by 31 percent from 1990 to 2000. According to a census analysis by the Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center, the decline occurred as nearly all the country’s other Cambodian communities were expanding.
At the high-water mark of 1990, census figures show, 2,565 Cambodians lived in the city, primarily in the Fordham, University Heights and Bronx Park East sections of the Bronx. Most were refugees who were resettled in New York after fleeing the repressive Khmer Rouge regime, which fell in 1979 and claimed nearly two million lives. According to an analysis of 2005 numbers prepared by the Census Bureau, barely 1,000 Cambodians then remained in the city.
Next Stop
During January, Billie Cohen is riding to and from work with some of the commuting millions, documenting a different trip each weekday.
U.S. Approves $1.3 Billion for 2nd Avenue Subway
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
The long-dreamed-of Second Avenue subway will take another important step toward becoming a real thing of concrete and steel today, as the federal government plans to announce that it has formally approved $1.3 billion in financing for the project's first phase.
Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said in an interview that the money would be paid out over the next seven years as construction progresses on the subway's first leg, which will have stops on Second Avenue at 92nd, 86th and 72nd Streets and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began preliminary work on the line after Gov. Eliot Spitzer held a ceremonial groundbreaking in April.
Ms. Peters said the federal money would pay for about one-third of the work on the first phase, which is expected to cost more than $4 billion. The first leg is scheduled to open in 2014, and it will run as an extension of the Q line.
Grrridlock
TRAFFIC, apparently, hits a nerve.
In the wake of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to calm Manhattan traffic through a plan called congestion pricing, the City section asked its readers to offer their own solutions for easing the borough’s traffic woes.
More than a hundred responded, proposing ideas ranging from the wonky to the off-the-wall. Ban cabs. Ban private cars. Close streets. Add lanes.
Here are 20 of their suggestions, with assessments by two local experts on traffic: Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association in New York, and John Falcocchio, a professor of transportation planning at Polytechnic University in Downtown Brooklyn.
Although Mr. Zupan’s group supports the mayor’s plan, and Dr. Falcocchio argues that congestion pricing should be used only as a last resort, both experts said they were impressed over all by the suggestions. “The readers did very well,” Mr. Zupan said. “They also generated some thinking on my part.”
In Paris, Bloomberg Eyes Bike Program for Home
By DIANE CARDWELL
PARIS, Sept. 29 - Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, on his first trip here since he took office, acknowledged the challenges of bringing home a popular Parisian bike rental program the administration is exploring, saying he was unsure it would translate to New York.
Noting challenges like roads damaged by seasonal changes, the lack of bike lanes, liability problems and the possibility that commuters would not want to carry helmets to work, Mr. Bloomberg said: "You try to see whether it fits, and some parts of it will, but it may very well give you an idea to do something totally different."
Under the program, which started in July, thousands of bicycles are docked along Paris streets, and customers can rent them after buying a membership ranging in time from a day (about $1.30) to a year (about $38). Members pay by the half-hour, with the first 30 minutes free. To discourage long rides, the fee rises from $1.30 for the second half-hour to $5.20 for the fourth.
Judging from the lines of empty consoles in the city center and the ubiquity of riders, even in the rain, the program has been a hit here, despite occasional technical glitches and a lack in some places of empty spots to return a bicycle. One official told Mr. Bloomberg that 100,000 people had signed up for yearly membership and that customers had taken more than 5 million rides.
Whether such a system could survive in New York, where bike theft is common, remains to be seen. Lionel Bordeaux, a press officer for City Hall here, said the fact that all fees were paid by credit card, and a roughly $200 charge for unreturned bikes, discouraged stealing.
Panel Starts Debate on Congestion Pricing
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
The commission created to come up with a plan to ease traffic in New York City met for the first time yesterday and began its debate on whether Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposal to charge motorists who drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan is the best way to proceed.
The 17 members of the group, which met at Baruch College in Lower Manhattan, include transportation officials, politicians and civic leaders. Most of them are thought to be in favor of the mayor's idea, but whatever plan they agree upon must be approved by the State Legislature and the City Council.
Off-Peak Fares Eyed for New York City Transit
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday proposed charging people less if they ride subways or buses during off-peak periods, in hopes of easing overcrowding during the commuting rushes.
Under the plan, however, most riders would be hit with steep increases, as the authority seeks to generate $580 million from fare and toll increases during the next two years.
The City
Softening the Blow of a Fare Hike
Let's begin with the pocketbook-chafing fact that New York's bus and subway riders pay far more at the farebox than riders in any other major transit network. Their burdenwould go up again early next year under a proposal by the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The current base fare of $2 would rise 25 cents to achieve the authority's goal of boosting revenue by 6.5 percent. Another fare increase, as yet undetermined, would follow in two years.
The planned increases reflect the M.T.A.'s attempt to address projected financial woes, including huge out-year budget gaps, while also improving service and expanding the system. Its proposed solution depends on raising fares and tolls possibly as early as January. Foregoing a fare hike entirely, as the city and state comptrollers have both urged, may not be possible; there hasn't been an increase in more than three years. But every effort should be made to minimize the riders' pain.
There are ways this could be done. The M.T.A. is proposing to raise $262 million through higher fares and tolls. Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, a nonprofit riders' advocate, suggests a more equitable sharing of costs. His group is calling for the city and counties to contribute $65 million, and the state to pitch in an equal amount. If they did that, riders would face only a 10-cent fare hike. It is a reasonable approach, and lawmakers should give it serious attention.
Keeping fares affordable is critical in a city where so many riders have low incomes. It also encourages people to use mass transit instead of their cars.
Cabs Are on Strike, but Are on the Street, Too
By JAMES BARRON
A strike called by a New York City taxi drivers' group over city plans for a high-tech video-and-fare system thinned the ranks of yellow cabs on the streets yesterday, producing frustrating waits on corners, long lines at the airports and angry exchanges over an ad-hoc fare system.
Union leaders and city officials differed over the effectiveness of the walkout. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which called the strike, maintained that 90 percent of drivers were idle yesterday. But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the figure was far lower.
Still, many would-be passengers spent more time with hands in the air, stuck in that eternal pose of big-city hopelessness. And at the airports, a five-minute wait for a cab stretched to half an hour at some terminals, with 25 people waiting in line, looking at their watches, wondering why they were suddenly going nowhere when the plane had been on time.
The city had introduced a zone-based fare structure during the planned two-day strike - the ride into Manhattan from Kennedy International Airport would be set at $45, for example - but according to anecdotes, at least, the plan seemed to sow more confusion than convenience. It permitted group rides, but some drivers were unaware of it and were uncertain how much to charge. That led to more than one instance of audible angry dialogue between passengers and drivers.
DRIVING a taxi in New York City can be a grueling, thankless job. It is also a unionless job. But on Wednesday, many of the city’s 44,000 licensed cabdrivers are planning to go on strike for 48 hours to protest the new global positioning systems being installed in the city’s 13,000 yellow cabs.
While the Taxi and Limousine Commission supports these devices and has mandated that they be up and running in the city’s entire fleet by January, many cabdrivers — myself included — see this new technology as one big expensive headache. Perhaps the commission should listen to cabdrivers before pushing a device that we’d be better off without.
The device has no navigational abilities. The monitor, which is set into the partition separating the driver from the passenger, cannot be seen or accessed from the front of the cab. It does not give directions or plot routes. All it does is keep track of where you are — both on- and off-duty — and this information is then stored in the commission’s databases.
Officials at the commission say the primary purpose of the devices is to track lost property and make sure cabbies aren’t taking passengers from point A to point B by way of point Z. Sadly, there are some bad cabdrivers out there who take visitors for a “ride,” but in reality, we have much more to fear from our passengers than they have to fear from us.
However, for me and many of my fellow drivers, privacy issues aside, it’s all about money. With prices ranging from around $3,250 to $4,000 to lease and install each unit, the initial costs alone are enough to drive some cabbies out of business. For private owner/operators, this could kill their year.
The costs continue to pile up after the devices are installed. The test drivers who already have the touch-screens have reported finding the monitors covered in spray paint, stickers, soda and scratches.
By JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY
BEIJING, Aug. 25 - No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.
But just as the speed and scale of China's rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.
Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.
Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud. Only 1 percent of the country's 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union. Beijing is frantically searching for a magic formula, a meteorological deus ex machina, to clear its skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution; a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.
China is choking on its own success. The economy is on a historic run, posting a succession of double-digit growth rates. But the growth derives, now more than at any time in the recent past, from a staggering expansion of heavy industry and urbanization that requires colossal inputs of energy, almost all from coal, the most readily available, and dirtiest, source.
Is That Finally the Sound of a 2nd Ave. Subway?
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
The neckties are wide and the sideburns long, the pickaxes gleam in the sunlight. The governor thanks the president for providing money. The mayor jokes that "whatever is said about this project in the years to come, certainly no one can say that the city acted rashly or without due deliberation."
The governor swings his pickax, but the pavement is too hard. A jackhammer is brought in to loosen things up. Now the governor and the mayor lay to with gusto.
The Second Avenue subway is born.
Or so it seemed at the time.
The sideburns were long and the neckties wide because it was 1972. The president was Nixon. The governor was Rockefeller. The mayor was Lindsay. And nearly 35 years later, no trains have ever run under Second Avenue.
But the line has had at least three groundbreakings.
On Thursday it will get another one.
All Hail the Green Cabs
Published: May 27, 2007
By doubling mileage requirements for city taxicabs, Mayor Michael Bloomberg seems to have locked in one piece of a potentially historic environmental legacy - not the most ambitious piece, but a significant one nonetheless. His action will transform New York's taxi fleet from the most polluting in the nation to one of the cleanest, and do so in five years, making the city a leader as municipalities compete to cut carbon emissions.
New York Underground
Take This Job and Love It
By ALEX MINDLIN
EVERY few months on Rider Diaries, an online forum for New York transit buffs, someone posts a message with a subject line like “I’VE BEEN CALLED!!!!” That particular exclamation appeared in October 2005; its writer, a skinny 20-year-old named Jason Brown, crowed that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had “finally reached my number.”
Congratulations poured in. “This is the biggest news of today!” one enthusiast wrote. Another added, “I wish I was in your seat.”
Mr. Brown had just gotten the subway fan’s equivalent of a Broadway callback. A year and a half earlier, he had taken the examination to be a conductor, and now he was being called in for a medical exam and an interview.
Had Mr. Brown scored lower, he might have waited even longer. The current list of conductor candidates, which is based on the 2004 exam, had 21,749 names on it in 2005. If previous lists are any guide, only about a third of those names will have been called by the time the list expires in 2009.
Investors Plan New Monorail Linking Soweto to Johannesburg
By MICHAEL WINES
JOHANNESBURG, May 16 - A Malaysian investor pledged on Wednesday to link central Johannesburg to its famous suburb, Soweto, via a 27-mile, $1.7 billion monorail to be built and operated entirely with private money.
The project could deliver huge economic benefits for Soweto, a once-impoverished township that has blossomed into an increasingly desirable residential area for South Africa's black middle class. It also would help with preparations for the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament, part of which will take place in Soweto.
The Malaysian consortium Newcyc plans to start construction in September and complete the light-rail system within two years, the group's chief, Jeyakumar Varathan, said in a statement. Mr. Varathan said that he and private investors, whom he declined to identify, would finance the first phase of the project.
He indicated that the consortium was also planning other investments. "Our vision is for 2020," the statement read. "We are speaking to the government on a daily basis, and we want South Africa's transportation to be 100 percent efficient by then."
Agency Might Replace Bridge and Tunnel Tollbooths With Cashless System
By KEN BELSON
The backup at the tunnel - a phrase as familiar to New York and New Jersey drivers as rubbernecking delays - will never go away. But it may be used less frequently if the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has its way.
The head of the agency, which operates six tunnels and bridges that empty more than 125 million cars, trucks and buses into New York City each year, said yesterday that in a few weeks it would consider financing a study to look at removing tollbooths and at the impact that would have on traffic and pricing.
By going cashless and asking all drivers to use an electronic E-ZPass, said Anthony E. Shorris, the executive director of the Port Authority, the agency hopes to introduce what it calls "dynamic pricing," charging higher tolls during peak periods and lower tolls when traffic is lighter.
Mr. Shorris also said that going entirely electronic would improve air quality because cars and trucks would spend less time idling at toll barriers.
Members Named for Panel Studying Traffic-Cutting Plan
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
A commission heavy with advocates of congestion pricing was named yesterday to study Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's contentious traffic-cutting proposal and present a recommendation to state and city lawmakers.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer nominated Marc V. Shaw, a former deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, as head of the 17-member commission, which must make its recommendation by Jan. 31 on whether to impose an $8 daily charge on drivers entering Manhattan below 86th Street. The charge for trucks would be $21.
The commission includes two other members appointed by the governor, who has endorsed the mayor's proposal, three members appointed by Mayor Bloomberg and three appointed by City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who has also supported the plan.
It would appear from those appointments that the mayor can count on a majority of commission members to back his plan. The commission was created by a law passed during a special legislative session in July as a compromise between supporters and opponents of the congestion pricing plan.
The federal Transportation Department said last week that it would give New York $354 million if it went ahead with the mayor's congestion plan. The money would go mostly to improve bus service for drivers who switch to mass transit.
City Experiments by Adding Color to Bus Lanes
By Sewell Chan
bus lanesA new red bus lane on 57th Street. (Photo: New York City Department of Transportation)
With support from the Federal Highway Administration, New York City will be the first locality in the United States to test painted bus lanes, the city's Department of Transportation announced today.
As part of a trial period, existing bus lanes on East 57th Street, from Second to Fifth Avenues, and on Fordham Road, from University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, are being painted terra cotta, a deep red like the color of bricks. If the experiment works, officials hope that more motorists will stay out of the lanes, which are used during the morning and evening rush, on weekdays.
The coloring of bus lanes - red is the most common color, but green and yellow have also been used - has been used in London; Edinburgh; Rouen, France; Seoul, South Korea; and Melbourne, Australia.
The colors do not affect the current bus lane rules. Vehicles other than buses may not drive in any bus lanes during the hours that they are in operation, except to make the next legal right turn. On East 57th Street and Fordham Road, the bus lanes are in effect from Monday to Friday, 7 to 10 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.
The painting on 57th Street should be complete by Sept. 1, and the Fordham Road painting will begin after that.
Two different paint treatments are being evaluated. "One option involves adding color to the entire bus lane, while the other option involves applying the color only down the center of the lane," the department said in a news release. "A five-foot wide strip down the center may be more cost effective and more durable, since the strip will experience less wear from bus tires than a full lane striping would. However, this treatment may not be as effective as the full lane striping at reducing unauthorized use." On 57th Street and Fordham Road, one treatment will be used on one side of the street, and the other treatment on the opposite side.
New York Up Close
Hue and Cry
By GREGORY BEYER
...
In 2001, the city's Transportation Department tested a light blue bike lane in Downtown Brooklyn and found that in terms of making the lane sufficiently visible to cyclists and drivers alike, it did the trick. But at the urging of the Federal Highway Administration, the department has forgone blue for the Brooklyn Heights bike lane and decided to experiment with green, echoing a growing national movement to make green the official bike lane color.
Other streets are getting paint jobs, too. Last week, in an experiment in making bus lanes more visible, the city laid down coats of terra-cotta-colored paint on bus lanes along part East 57th Street, and it will soon do the same for lanes on Fordham Road in the Bronx.
After the Second Avenue subway finally rolls, it also may eventually bring a new color. The Web site of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows a T - the letter tentatively chosen to denote the new line - sitting in a circle of turquoise. (According to Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman, the agency has not yet chosen a permanent color for the circle.)
The choice is of special interest to Lynne Lambert, whose New York City Subway Line is an official licensed maker of subway-themed merchandise. Whatever color is chosen will make its way onto T-shirts, hats and other items Ms. Lambert produces, and she said she would be happy to see the choice on the transportation authority's Web site become permanent.
A Bike Race With a Mission, Plus Cigarettes
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
So how do a bunch of bike messengers and their friends unwind on a weekend afternoon? With a bike man's holiday - a grueling race that substituted the claustrophobic corridors of Manhattan with the wide, steep boulevards of Staten Island.
Shortly before 3:30 p.m. Saturday, about 40 men and women on bicycles pedaled through the parking lot of the Staten Island Ferry terminal, having just received the day's orders from two long-haired men drinking from tall cans of Budweiser.
The competitors had a deadline and a mission: Get their manifests signed or stamped at various spots around the island. "Real bike racing is a rich man's sport," said Mike Dee, a messenger and an organizer of the race, called the Staten Island Invasion. "This is like the bike race for the rest of us - people who like to drink a beer in the mornings."
It was the kind of race for which Pete Lang, a 25-year-old messenger, warmed up by smoking a cigarette. There was no set course, just a starting place, a finish line and about 20 checkpoints in between.
Mixed Signals: Driving to Work as a Tax Break
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
They have made it a priority at the United States Department of Transportation: Get people out of their cars.
This week, the department announced $848 million in grants to help cities discourage people from driving, in many cases by imposing new tolls or fees.
But at the same time, another arm of the federal government seems to be sending a very different message. Congress provides a tax break to many of those same drivers to help them shoulder the costs of taking their cars to work.
Close to 400,000 commuters nationwide - about half of them in the New York City area - take advantage of a provision in the federal tax code that allows them to use up to $215 a month in pre-tax wages to pay for their parking at work, according to executives at corporate benefits firms that specialize in administering the tax break.
While some drivers use it to pay for parking at commuter rail stations or bus stops, most take advantage of it to pay for parking near their workplace, mostly in city centers, the executives said.
The tax savings can equal about $1,000 a year for some drivers. And the effect makes driving to work more desirable.
"It is perverse," said Jeffrey M. Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association in New York. "If you're going to institute pricing measures that are intended to reduce the amount of driving, you don't want to keep in place other measures that encourage people to drive. What you want is a set of policies that work together."
The federal government said on Tuesday that it would provide $354 million for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s broad plan to reduce traffic, but left it to the city to come up with more than $200 million needed for the most controversial part of the plan: a system to charge people who drive into Manhattan.
In addition, under the agreement outlined by the United States secretary of transportation, Mary E. Peters, the release of the funds is contingent upon the City Council’s and the State Legislature’s approving the plan, including the new fee on drivers, by next March.
The announcement was mixed news for Mr. Bloomberg, who is trying to establish the first broad-based congestion pricing program in the country, and to raise his national profile on environmental issues. While the federal support helps to advance his initiative, it is now up to the mayor to find the money — through borrowing, appropriation, or perhaps from a private corporation — for what has been seen as the centerpiece of the plan, the new charge on drivers.
In its federal application, the city estimated that it would cost $223 million to install a computerized system to monitor traffic and impose the fee on cars entering the busiest parts of Manhattan, and asked the United States to cover $179 million of that. But the Department of Transportation said it would contribute only $10 million to that initiative. Most of what the department agreed to provide on Tuesday is designated for the construction of bus depots and other mass transit improvements.
AMSTERDAM, Aug. 8 — On a recent Saturday during the confusion of this watery city’s annual Gay Pride Parade along the majestic Princes Canal, a beach umbrella was knocked into the water from the foredeck of Jackie Wijnakker’s houseboat, so she dove into the water to fetch it, unsuccessfully. It was only the second time in 17 years that she had jumped into the canal, and she cannot recall what she was trying to retrieve the first time. At any rate, she said with a laugh, “I’m too old to be diving into canals.”
She told the tale as a testament to how clean the water is, despite its murky, khaki color. “The canals are flushed regularly,” said Ron Van Heukelom, a neighbor who lives on dry land and has never ventured into the canal.
The flushing is necessary because, while most of Amsterdam’s 2,800 houseboats have running water, electricity and gas heat, few are connected to sewerage systems and continue to spill their waste into the canals.
The houseboats’ lack of toilet training is their dirty little secret, one that sits uncomfortably with a new generation of wealthier, more demanding owners who are leading a gentrification of the houseboat scene. In the process, they are displacing the less affluent boat people, many of whom are relics of the 1960s and 1970s era of flower power now struggling to pay the upkeep on their boats.
“The water is cleaner than it looks,” said Monique J. M. Jacobs, an official of the city agency responsible for water and the boats. The canals, she explained, are flushed by opening and closing locks about twice a week, and in summer more often. “Small fish are coming back, and also birds that feed off the fish,” she said. “In the old days it was awful. It stank in summer.”
In the Region | Connecticut
Now Arriving: Reverse Commuters
By LISA PREVOST
MANY companies that have opted out of the tight Midtown Manhattan market in favor of Greenwich and Stamford office space are attracting growing numbers of young city dwellers who are turning the traditional commuting pattern on its head.
So-called "reverse commuters" - workers who live in New York City and commute to Fairfield County - are one of the more subtle indicators of the robustness of the Stamford and Greenwich office markets. The trend is particularly prominent in Stamford because the central business district has developed around the city's transportation center.
UBS, the giant investment banking and wealth management firm, which now claims more than one million square feet of office space in four Stamford locations, draws "several hundred" of its 4,500 workers from New York City, according to Kristopher Kagel, a company spokesman.
Jeffrey Zupan, senior fellow for transportation at Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit organization that monitors various planning issues across Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, said, "Reverse commuting works in Stamford because the city is developing in a way that can take advantage of it."
A significant increase in reverse commuters is reflected in ridership rates on the Metro-North Railroad. The number of peak-time riders in the morning who board at a New York City station and get off in Stamford has doubled in the last decade, and has increased nearly 150 percent since 1990, according to figures provided by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
New York-to-Greenwich ridership has increased at roughly the same rate, though the number of reverse commuters is smaller, with about an average of 870 commuters getting off there in the morning, compared with 1,900 in Stamford.
A FEW minutes into the opening reception for an exhibit on the intersection of design and technology at the Chelsea Art Museum, one of the pieces caught fire. The installation, called “Saws,” accidentally ignited when one of the work’s three chainsaws became caught on a stripped extension cord that dangled over a metal sheet on the floor.
Propelled by smoke and dust, the crowd emptied out onto West 22nd Street, where they were met with another curious sight. An oversize tricycle was rounding the corner, weighed down with a video camera, a laptop computer, a digital projector and, attached to its frame with bungee cords, two loudspeakers playing “Doobie Ashtray” by the Houston rapper Devin the Dude.
The cyclist was a 30-year-old robotics engineer named James Powderly, who, among other projects, once helped develop a remote-controlled arm for NASA’s Mars rover program. Alongside the cycle walked Evan Roth, a 28-year-old artist whose graduate thesis at Parsons the New School for Design analyzed graffiti tags as a source of mathematical data.
In the fall of 2005, the two formed an entity called the Graffiti Research Lab, a nonprofit design studio with the mission of producing tools for urban communication. The cycle is their latest invention, and its appearance in Chelsea was its official New York debut.
As Mr. Powderly neared the museum’s entrance, he jumped off the cycle and pointed it toward a bare stretch on a garage door across the street. Mr. Roth pulled a laser pointer from his pocket, and as he moved the laser’s green dot across the wall, a line of what looked like thick, drippy paint lit up its surface, roughly following the motion of his hand.
But what seemed like an illegal tag was in fact a projection, an ephemeral splash of digital graffiti that would vanish with a flick of a switch on the cycle’s gas-powered generator.
“You want to try?” Mr. Roth asked the growing crowd behind him. He handed the laser pointer to a young woman standing nearby. She nodded, hesitant but curious.
The cycle is designed to be an accessible, almost playful simulacrum of street tagging, giving passers-by a whiff of the thrill of posting a message in places they’re not supposed to. It is what its creators call a gateway graffiti experience. The idea is to put the tools for unfiltered, unsanctioned public expression in the hands of those who might otherwise shy away from grabbing a spray can or a paint marker.By night’s end, several dozen people had used the laser to scribble personal messages, squealing with amazement each time the projected beam of light appeared on the wall.
August 10, 2007, 12:07 pm
New Bus Shelters Let You Plan Your Shopping and TV-Watching but Not Your Trip
By David W. Dunlap
In the department of missing transit information, the absence of route maps and trip tips at a few of the new bus-stop shelters being installed by Cemusa scarcely rises to the level of outrage.
But mild indignation may be in order, since the same shelters seem to have a full complement of advertising.
On the Avenue of the Americas at 56th Street, for example, riders cannot find out what lines serve the stop, where the buses go after they leave the stop or how to pay their fare, which is no small question for an out-of-towner. They can, however, learn about Verizon’s new BlackBerry 8830 World Edition for $199.99 (after rebate) or contemplate how delicious a Corona Extra or Corona Light might taste about now, just as long as they “relax responsibly.”
Twelve blocks south on the avenue, the shelter is silent on the question of whether riders can expect an M5 or an M6 or an M7 to pull up. Instead it, it lets them know that Glenn Close is starring in “Damages” on the FX network. Oh, yes, and that Verizon BlackBerry. Only $199.99. (After rebate.)
Is this another case of a corporate takeover of the public realm without the full benefit that was promised to the public? Not quite. Cemusa, the Spanish company that won a citywide street-furniture franchise last year, is not to blame.
New York City Transit System Is Crippled by Storm
Click on the map for reader comments, audio clips from commuters and photographs from the aftermath of the storm.
The day after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared the strikes by Al Qaeda “more than acts of terror. They were acts of war.” Bush’s “war on terror” was “not a figure of speech,” he said. Rather, it was a defining framework. The war, Bush announced, would begin with Al Qaeda, but would “not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” The global war on terror, he said, was the “inescapable calling of our generation.”
The phrase and the agenda that grew out of it caught on, and from 9/11 onward, the administration used its pulpit to propagate several new premises. First, with the threat of Islamic radical terrorism, new rules, new tools and new mind-sets had to be devised to meet the novelty of the menace. As Vice President Dick Cheney put it, “old doctrines of security do not apply.” The criminal justice approach of trying terrorists would have to be scrapped, supplanted by a military approach. Second, we were told, the states that sponsored terrorism or offered lodging to terrorists had to be treated the same way as those nonstate actors who carried out the threats. Even more dramatically, America’s friends had to prove their loyalty by taking concrete steps in our global war. As Bush put it, the “duties” of peace-loving people “involve more than sympathy or words. No nation can be neutral.” By requiring governments to step up, we would be able to root out the unreliable and distribute sanctions and favors accordingly.
Fitness
For Athletes, an Invisible Traffic Hazard
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
SUSAN JAMES, a 50-year-old probation officer in Bakersfield, Calif., has been a competitive runner for almost three decades. "I've spent a lot of hours running through this city," she said.
Which is beginning to worry her.
"Twenty years ago, I didn't have asthma or allergies," she said. Today, she has both, probably due to the same improbable cause. "My doctor told me I'm allergic to Bakersfield air," she said. "I'm actually allergic to it."
In May, the American Lung Association called Bakersfield the third-sootiest city in the country, behind Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.
The news didn't surprise Ms. James. "Sometimes my chest aches" midrun, she said. To combat the pollution, she may soon join a gym for the first time. "I've got a lot of years to run still, and I'm not sure if I can do it outside," she said.
Air pollution is on the minds of many athletes this summer, especially those who, in a reverse of Ms. James's plan, have moved their workouts outside.
Fitness chat rooms resound with worried postings about air quality. As one cyclist wrote on SoCalCycling .com, "During the summer months, I have to ride in the morning and be home no later than 11, otherwise I will feel miserable and cough all day long."
For Parking Space, the Price Is Right at $225,000
By VIVIAN S. TOY
In Houston, $225,000 will buy a three-bedroom house with a game room, den, in-ground pool and hot tub.
In Manhattan, it will buy a parking space. No windows, no view. No walls.
While real estate in much of the country languishes, property in Manhattan continues to escalate in price, and that includes parking spaces. Some buyers do not even own cars, but grab the spaces as investments, renting them out to cover their costs.
Spaces are in such demand that there are waiting lists of buyers. Eight people are hoping for the chance to buy one of five private parking spaces for $225,000 in the basement of 246 West 17th Street, a 34-unit condo development scheduled for completion next January. The developer, meanwhile, is seeking city approval to add four more spots.
Parking in new developments is selling for twice what it was five years ago, said Jonathan Miller, an appraiser and president of Miller Samuel.
Although spaces in prime sections of Manhattan are the most expensive, even those in open lots and in garages in Brooklyn, Queens, Riverdale and Harlem are close to $50,000, although at least one new Brooklyn development is asking $125,000.
Editorial
Global Warming and Your Wallet
At long last, Congress is showing a willingness to confront global warming. The Senate's recent approval of higher fuel economy standards is a constructive step and key lawmakers are promising comprehensive legislation this year that will, for the first time, limit the emission of greenhouse gases.
But for all the talk about warming, leading politicians have yet to educate their constituents (and their colleagues) about an unpleasant and inescapable truth: any serious effort to fight warming will require everyone to pay more for energy. According to most scientists, the long-term costs of doing nothing - flooding, famine, drought - would be even higher than the costs of acting now. But unless Americans understand and accept the trade-off - higher prices today to avoid calamity later - the requisite public support for real change is unlikely to build.
Energy is currently underpriced in part because its cost does not reflect the damage inflicted by fossil fuels. Underpricing leads to overconsumption. Worse, it leads to underinvestment in alternatives. As long as today's energy is relatively cheap, there is little incentive for private firms to develop new fuels and technologies.
Op-Ed Contributor
Clear Up the Congestion-Pricing Gridlock
By KEN LIVINGSTONE
London
THE New York State Assembly ended its session on June 22 without reaching a consensus on Manhattan's congestion pricing proposal - a delay that may cost New York City some $500 million in federal transportation money. Assembly members have voiced concerns about the economic impact of the program, the effect on traffic outside Manhattan and even the effectiveness of the idea itself.
Four years ago, London was engaged in a very similar debate. We now have the luxury of hindsight. While the two cities' situations are not identical, they certainly have analogies and therefore, perhaps, the success of London's program can shed light on the current debate in New York.
At that time, London's business district was undergoing rapid growth, but it was at capacity in terms of traffic. Efforts to channel more cars into the city center simply led to ever lower traffic speeds, which in turn led to business losses and a decrease in quality of life. Simultaneously, carbon emissions were mounting because of the inefficiency of engine use.
In 2003, London put in place a £5 (about $9) a day congestion charge for all cars that entered the center city (the charge is now £8). This led to an immediate drop of 70,000 cars a day in the affected zone. Traffic congestion fell by almost 20 percent. Emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide were cut by more than 15 percent.
A Pretend Preacher, a Real Arrest and a Debate About Free Speech
By ETHAN WILENSKY-LANFORD
A satirist dressed as a preacher and protesting what he called the Disneyfication of New York City was arrested Friday for harassing police in Union Square before the start of a monthly bicycle rally that the Bloomberg administration has been trying to rein in.
Bill Talen, who performs under the name Reverend Billy, said that he was arrested after trying to defend the cyclists' rights by reading the First Amendment to the police - through a bullhorn. The authorities said that he was arrested after repeatedly being told to stop.
Mr. Talen was charged with two counts of second-degree harassment. He was released without bail pending a court date in August.
"We were full of the holy spirit of the First Amendment," said Mr. Talen, who is in his mid-50s and was dressed like a big-tent evangelist, with a white suit and a dyed-blond pompadour. He sometimes spreads his message with the help of the Church of Stop-Shopping Gospel Choir.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Talen defended his performance art. "New York City won't exist if we won't let creativity happen in public space," he said.
Mr. Talen said he was at Union Square to support the cyclists taking part in Critical Mass, a monthly ride aimed at promoting nonpolluting forms of transportation. Critical Mass riders gather the last Friday of every month at Union Square.
Manhattanites Face Driving Fee on the Way Out
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
In promoting his sweeping traffic reduction plan, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides have stressed one provision: drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street would be charged an $8 fee.
But what has not been widely mentioned is a measure that could startle some Manhattanites: those who live within the zone would have to pay $8 to drive out.
The congestion pricing program was devised to cut traffic, chiefly by persuading people from the other boroughs and beyond to leave their cars behind and take public transit into Manhattan. But planners say that those who live inside the congestion pricing zone also contribute to traffic when they drive out, and should pay their share, too.
That means a man from Greenwich Village who drives to visit his grandmother in Queens would pay the fee. So would a C.E.O. who has a reverse commute, driving from the East Side to Stamford, Conn., each morning, and an Upper Eastsider who likes to drive to the Fairway supermarket in Harlem.
It might seem that anyone taking a car out of the congestion zone ought to be rewarded instead of penalized, but officials disagreed.
"We're not trying to get people to leave the zone in their cars," said Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who played a leading role in fashioning the plan. "Overall what we're trying to do is get people to use their cars less."
YONKERS
It weighs 20 tons empty — 45 tons when full — smells a bit racy and has become known as the Yonkers Chomper. Lumbering down a street in southern Yonkers on Monday, it made quick work of the mountain of garbage piled in front of an apartment building and still had room to polish off a few piles down the street.
Children seemed delighted by its saw-toothed jaw and polka-dotted body. Adults tended to warm to it after learning that the whimsical bit of street theater they were watching had not cost taxpayers a thing.
Some cities commission murals to bring art to the masses. Others design sculpture parks. But Yonkers took a different tack last month when it outfitted 6 of its 45 garbage trucks to give residents something less drab to look at each morning. The experiment has been such a success that residents asked to have the truck routes alternated to let the artworks tour the town.
“We’re going to rotate them so more neighborhoods can see them,” said John A. Liszewski, the commissioner of the Public Works Department for this city of about 200,000. He would like to see the rest of his fleet undergo makeovers if his staff can attract more private sponsors.
“I’m becoming the city’s arts commissioner,” Mr. Liszewski joked.
Some Subways Found Packed Past Capacity
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
They are just lines on a graph, but for many subway riders they will provide unique insight into one of the great aggravations of life underground: why trains on some lines are so often both crowded and late, while on other lines the trains seem to cruise along on schedule with almost no one on board.
In an unusually candid effort at self-examination for a habitually insular agency, New York City Transit yesterday presented what could be called an index of straphanger frustration. It made an analysis of each subway line that shows at a glance how often trains run late, how crowded they are and whether more trains could be added to ease the problems.
What is revealed is both predictable and eye-opening. Many subway lines are simply maxed out, meaning there is no room on the tracks they use to add trains that could carry the swelling numbers of riders. And that has implications that range from day-to-day decisions about how trains travel through the system to long-term planning on how to best move people around a growing city.
"From my point of view, this is scary," said Howard H. Roberts Jr., the president of New York City Transit, who presented the data to members of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board. "This is scary in the sense that right now, on a lot of these lines, we're several years and a big capital construction project away from being able to provide what I consider adequate service. We're constrained."
Not Buying It
By STEVEN KURUTZ
ON a Friday evening last month, the day after New York University’s class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of Third Avenue North, an N.Y.U. dormitory on Third Avenue and 12th Street. They had come to take advantage of the university’s end-of-the-year move-out, when students’ discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb.
New York has several colleges and universities, of course, but according to Janet Kalish, a Queens resident who was there that night, N.Y.U.’s affluent student body makes for unusually profitable Dumpster diving. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the gathering at the Third Avenue North trash bin quickly took on a giddy shopping-spree air, as members of the group came up with one first-class find after another.
Ben Ibershoff, a dapper man in his 20s wearing two bowler hats, dug deep and unearthed a Sharp television. Autumn Brewster, 29, found a painting of a Mediterranean harbor, which she studied and handed down to another member of the crowd.