This wasn't supposed to happen. The legislature was not supposed to be rushing to come up with a workable proposal to deal with Metropolitan Transportation Authority's flagging finances just a week before the MTA's self-imposed March 25 deadline for avoiding fare hikes and deep service cuts.

After all, Gov. David Paterson appointed the Ravitch Commission last June to address the MTA's budget gap and the commission came up with a plan that asked for shared sacrifice from different interest groups who would benefit from a healthy MTA. For months, the governor has been sounding the warning bell about what inaction would mean to straphangers who rely on the MTA for transportation. And Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver offered a compromise plan that would enact lower tolls on East River bridges than proposed in the Ravitch plan.

But then it came time for the Senate to act, and things stalled, thanks to a majority leader who has found himself handcuffed by a fractured majority.

On Monday, word came that the Senate had a "plan" to stave off the horrors of March 25. When the Senate finally unveiled its proposal on Tuesday, not many transit advocates thought Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith had saved the day. Instead, they felt that his plan was undermining the work that had been done to get various players to agree to the sacrifices asked for in the Ravitch plan.

What advocates saw on Tuesday was a plan that had no comprehensive strategy to deal with the MTA's long-term fiscal crisis. The MTA has a $1.2 billion operating deficit that is expected to reach $3 billion by 2012. The Senate proposal does not address the MTA's capital budget that goes toward maintenance and expansion. And it does not contain tolls of any amount on the East River bridges.

What was presented was a quick fix: a 4 percent increase in fares (said to amount to $117 million) and a 25 cent on every dollar payroll tax on businesses in all the counties served by the MTA. That feature would raise $1.16 billion to plug the MTA's operating deficit.

Spreading the Pain

After the Ravitch plan was finally completed, it took work to get business groups to accept the idea of a payroll tax and for transit advocates to swallow the idea that there would be significant fare increases. But those groups got on board to support the entire plan, including the bridge tolls. The Senate plan, though, does not ask drivers who use the East River and Harlem bridges to pitch in by paying a toll, making it harder for the other groups to feel they are part of an equitable solution.

Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York told reporters her organization was able to support the payroll tax included in the Ravitch plan because it was a "broad-based plan with everyone contributing on a fair and rational basis."

When asked by a reporter about the business community's concern that not everyone would have to sacrifice Smith responded, "The business community doesn't vote on the plan. We do." He then went on to note that the Senate plan has a smaller payroll tax than the one proposed in the Ravitch plan.

In response to another reporter's question about whether drivers from Brooklyn and Queens were somehow "special" because they did not have to contribute to the MTA bailout plan, Smith stammered and seemed to reveal the uncertainty of his position. "I don't think it's about special," he said. "They moved to part of the city they had a right to move to and the condition of the move provided them the ability to travel across certain bridges that are not tolled. We shouldn't say to them they have to foot that bill, but at the end of the day maybe they will."

The Senate Plan

Smith said he didn't want to "hand the MTA a blank check," nor did he wish to address the MTA's capital plan until later in the year. "We don't want to have an AIG situation with the MTA," he said.

What Smith does want is a forensic audit, a total review of all of the MTA's finances, conducted by an outside source. He said he will address the MTA's capital plan after such an audit takes place. Smith insists he is reluctant to provide the MTA with funding beyond operating expenses because of the authority's history of financial trouble.

Smith introduced a web site (nymtasolutions.org) that presents the Senate's plan and asks for public input on resolving the MTA's funding crisis.

The majority leader also tied his reluctance to act on the MTA's capital budget to its omission of funds for Long Island and upstate transit infrastructure. Smith said the Senate would make sure such funding was included, adding that the Senate represents, "One New York."

Some observers charge that all of this is posturing by Smith in an attempt to hide the fact that he cannot counter the whims of the gang of three, the Democratic senators from New York City who have been a thorn in the leader's side since Election Day.

The Reaction

The proposal attracted quick and largely negative reviews, with critics attacking the Senate's arithmetic and branding its "rescue package" as shortsighted.

MTA chairman Dale Hemmerdinger told reporters the Senate didn't take the time "to do the math" and that its proposal leaves a gap of at least $1 billion over a two-year period. With the Senate plan, he said, the MTA would have to raise fares by 17 percent.

Paterson was quick to counter, "They were probably just oversights. We don't want to make a big deal of it." Paterson said he would meet with Smith and said that perhaps, "we're just misunderstanding each other."

Paterson, who supports the Ravitch plan, called the Senate's suggestion a failure to achieve a "shared sacrifice." said he thought that senators "might not be able to appreciate" the severity of the MTA's funding shortfalls.

Paterson did turn up his rhetoric by saying that a delay in addressing the MTA's capital plan will result in losing a "generation" of service, as he said happened in the 1970s, when the state did not invest in mass transit infrastructure. "Pushing problems off into the future is going to only accomplish what putting problems off into the future did in the '70s -- which is creating all kinds of hardship."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had remained fairly quiet during this process, came out against the Senate recommendation, telling reporters, "We need a plan that solves the problem, not something that's going to get us to next year."

In a statement, Silver also knocked the shortsightedness of the Senate plan, saying, "I continue to believe that we must act now and that any viable solution must address both the immediate threat of a fare hike and service cuts and the long term needs of our mass transit system.

On the other side, opponents of tolls on East River bridges praised the Senate plan. "Any plan that doesn't have tolling is a much better plan," said Assemblymember Jose Peralta. "It is a good first start."

Peralta said that the 4 percent rate increase proposed by the Senate, "seems decent, something that riders can absorb. The payroll tax could have been higher but we understand that the business community doesn't want to absorb the entire burden on this."

Reaching Consensus

As for how a plan can move forward, Peralta said, "We will be talking further later today. The Senate proposal is now on the table, and we will move forward, but the Senate plan is not the end all. Now it is a matter of sitting down and negotiating."

Advocates hope that a plan more like the Ravitch plan might be achievable in the legislature if Republicans are brought on board — thereby eliminating the need to rely on the gang of three and other anti-toll Democrats.

Wylde said the Senate Majority failed to recognize something that advocates of the plan figured out a while ago: "We need bipartisan support for this plan."

Neysa Pranger of the Regional Plan Association said that she and other advocates have been pushing an agreement involving members of both parties for weeks. "We knew two weeks ago that the way out on this was to get bipartisan support in the Senate," she said.

Paterson said he would be willing to meet with "both leaders of the Senate." A leaders meeting took place Tuesday night, but Republican leaders were not invited.

Republicans would almost certainly want something in return for their participation, and Paterson said this week he would not hand out rewards for support of the MTA bailout.

On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos said that he and his members are not looking for mere "pocket change" in exchange for votes on the MTA plan. What Skelos wants is a seat at the table and influence over budget decisions.

For his part, Skelos spent the day railing against the fact that he and Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco have been cut out of budget meetings. Skelos told the Daily News that he would welcome the chance to reach a solution on the MTA, even though, he said, none of the Republican Senators support any of the plans on the table. But he urged the Democrats to "bring us into the discussions and maybe we can find something that we could be supportive of."

"No," said Sen. Kevin Parker curtly and flatly, when asked if he thought there would need to be bipartisan support to get an MTA finance bill passed in the Senate. He then added "We don't need Republican votes but we wouldn't mind them."

With the clock ticking, transit advocates and other observers think the legislature must act now. Most hold out little hope that the legislature would take action sometime in the future to enact some of the unpopular measures in the Ravitch report when they won't act on them now is simply absurd.

Richard Ravitch said, "The idea that the legislature will do six months from now that which they won't do now is to test the credulity of all of us who are familiar with what happens in Albany."

Images from uncivilservants.org

In early January 2008, little more than one year ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced a plan to scale back a program that is a cherished perk for city employees and an infuriating irritant to the rest of us. The three officials said they would "reduce the number and misuse of government parking placards" -- the often misused permits that allow city employees to park their vehicles in designated areas and at metered spaces free of charge for an indefinite period of time.

Citing efforts to "reduce traffic congestion, decrease the city's carbon footprint, encourage the use of public transportation and reduce the demand for curbside parking in connection with city business," the trio held a press conference and pledged to reduce the number of city-issued placards by 20 percent, prosecute individuals using counterfeit placards or misusing valid ones, and conduct a thorough review of citywide parking allocations and regulations.

A year later, city officials point to substantial progress. But community activists, from Parkchester to Chinatown, say that despite tough talk and some decisive city action, the problem has not gone away.

"I still feel like a prisoner in my own apartment and can't, on the best days, park in my own ZIP code, while placard abusers have carte blanche here," said a disgruntled Upper East Side resident, who asked to remain unnamed. "A no parking area is a free parking area for them," he added.

A Brief History of Parking Placards

Parking in New York City has been the subject of a Calvin Trillin novel, the set-up for a memorable Seinfeld episode and the cause of much malfeasance. It's an obsession for most drivers and has significant impacts on pedestrians, cyclists and transit users. It should come as no surprise then that the use of parking placards has long been hotly contested.

For years, local reporters like David Seifman of the New York Post and Pete Donohue at the New York Daily News published hard-hitting stories about the use and abuse of city issued parking permits, and community groups like the Brooklyn Heights Association and Lower Manhattan's Civic Center Resident's Coalition did their best to call attention to the issue. Not until Transportation Alternatives released Uncivil Servants, a snap-shot survey of parking placard abuse in Chinatown, though, did the public have data thorough enough to detail the extent of the parking placard problem.

The Uncivil Servants survey found that between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. on March 29, 2006 there were 99 cars illegally parked on sidewalks and in front of fire hydrants in a five-block study area, as well as 16 cars illegally parked blocking a pedestrian refuge island. More than 90 percent of the illegally parked cars had parking placards.

That survey was followed by the September 2007 publication of another Transportation Alternatives report, titled "Above the Law," that found "77 percent of permit holders use them illegally" and the launch of uncivilservants.org, a user-driven anti-placard Web site. By the winter of 2007, the parking placard issue had been cemented in the public's consciousness.

The Problem with Placards

In addition to the obvious "it's unfair" argument that surrounds the parking placard debate, advocates maintain that the inappropriate use of parking placards adds tens of thousands of additional vehicles to the city's already overcrowded streets. A 2006 study by Bruce Schaller, now deputy commissioner of planning and sustainability at the Department of Transportation, found that if government workers commuted by auto at the same rate as their private sector counterparts, 19,200 fewer vehicles would enter Manhattan every day. The report concluded that the free and convenient parking that placards allow encourages many civil servants to drive. It also finds that $46 million a year in potential parking meter revenue is lost as a result.

Transportation Alternatives, in its numerous studies, also points to the dangers and inconveniences caused by illegally parked vehicles that go unticketed and untowed. One of the group's earliest press releases on the issue proclaims, "Such egregious illegal parking slows emergency response times, jeopardizes public safety, cripples truck and delivery traffic, impedes pedestrian flow, damages businesses and sends a message to community residents that their neighborhood is less important than the private vehicles of civil servants."

Residents of neighborhoods where illegally parked cars clog the streets have even stronger words. "This crap is a severe quality of life issue for residents like me. If I could come and go as I please and park anywhere at any time I would have a significantly better existence here," said the Upper East Side resident.

But some city employees, particularly teachers, firefighters and police officers insist that being able to park easily is essential to their jobs. The author of NYC Educator, a blog focused on education issues, sarcastically responded to the mayor's placard reduction: "Of course, it behooves a good teacher to spend 20 minutes trying to snag a parking space, or walk to school from Connecticut, if that's what it takes to maintain 'accountability.' You can't effectively implement 'reforms' if you don't thoroughly inconvenience unionized employees on a regular basis for no reason whatsoever."

In response to such concerns, Bronx City Councilmember Maria Baez has introduced legislation requiring that every public school teacher receive a parking permit. Baez's office reportedly received complaints that teachers without placards were abandoning classrooms to go feed parking meters.

Christopher Fenyo, a firefighter, offered another argument in a comment on the New York Times' City Room blog: "We are often detailed midtour to other firehouses when there is a fire somewhere else, and some firemen get hurt," he wrote. "We use our personal vehicle because it is, believe it or not, more efficient to go from Harlem to Astoria, for example, at 2 a.m., than it is to use mass transit (and if the fireman detailed doesn't have a car, one of those who do will often loan them theirs). That fire company is out of service until they are fully staffed." He continued, "So the faster I get there, the better for everyone, civilian and employee alike. It ticks me off when I see permits abused. And it rightly angers the public. But make no mistake, we need to be able to park cars."

The Administration's Actions

In early 2008, when Bloomberg, Kelly and Sadik-Khan announced their plans, the stage was set for unprecedented action on the parking placard issue.

In mid-March, the Transportation Department followed up by releasing a comprehensive study of parking in Lower Manhattan that found fewer than 2,000 parking spots available to drivers without placards and more than 11,000 available to those in possession of them. In April, news came that the police department was aggressively cracking down on illegally parked cars with placards. The New York Post reported that 178 tickets were issued in a four-day Internal Affairs' sweep of streets in Lower Manhattan -- along with the arrest of a retired sergeant for using a fake placard.

Then in May came the meat and potatoes of the administration's plan: a drastic citywide reduction in the number of placards from 80,770 to 54,891, along with a pledge to cut the Department of Education's 63,390 placards by a similar percentage. By July, the Post was reporting that the police had issued more than 3,530 tickets to parking placard abusers over a three-month period.

The most recent numbers are even more striking. "The mayor's efforts have resulted in over 50 percent fewer placards being issued to city workers," according to Jason Post, a spokesman for the mayor. "To encourage compliance, a dedicated unit in NYPD's internal affairs bureau has issued over 6,000 summonses, and over 1,000 cars have been towed for placard violations."

As a result, he continued, "Neighborhood leaders have told city officials that they see a noticeable reduction in the misuse and abuse of placards, and with over 78,000 fewer placards on the street, it's easy to understand why."

Placards Today

Despite these efforts, critics insist that the most flagrant types of parking placard abuse, like parking in front of fire hydrants and employees' using placards after working hours, still go unchecked because many police officers turn a blind eye to benefit other cops, as well as city employees.

"On paper, the city has made enormous cuts [in the number of placards], and we give them credit for it," said Wiley Norvell of Transportation Alternatives, which will soon begin another citywide survey of placard abuse. "But without the day-to-day enforcement from NYPD to back it up, illegal parking and permit abuse are still rampant."

Some neighborhood residents are more explicit: "It has gotten worse," said Oscar Ruiz, who lives in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. "The same people, who I have pictures of from a year ago, have new placards and their committing the same violations. How can you park in front of a hydrant five days a week? I have pictures of that."

"I spoke with parking enforcement and they tell me they would like to give tickets, but they can't," Ruiz continued. "It's NYPD politics. They don't summons their own." For many residents, this is the sticking point: Despite the administration's efforts and the drastic reduction in the number of placards issued, the NYPD still shirks its ticketing duty.

Jan Lee, the owner of a Mott Street business and member of the Civic Center Resident's Coalition, said he has noticed some real change on Mott Street but worries about what will happen in this election year and what could come when a new commanding officer is appointed to head his local precinct.

"The issue is that all of a sudden there will be a huge blitz, but that can change with who's at the helm," he said. "That's why it's premature for City Hall to pat itself on the back."

To avoid such irregular enforcement, Lee and his colleagues want to get rid of the parking placards all together. In place of the permits, they suggest the city develop a 21st century system that would let civil servants who need to park for official business register their vehicle to a given space for a set amount of time using a telephone or computer, the city's 311 helpline and Department of Motor Vehicle information. Any ticket given to the vehicle while it was registered to use a particular space would be void, but a ticket given afterward would be as valid as any other.

"What this would do is discourage government employees from using cars and abusing parking privileges," Lee said. "More importantly, taking away the physical reminder -- the placard itself -- would remove a degree of intimidation for those whose job it is to enforce the law."

According to Lee, the mayor's office was not receptive to the idea. "We mentioned this to (Deputy Mayor) Ed Skyler and he laughed in our face. They don't want to give up a bargaining chip," he said, referring to the value of placards in union negotiations and during an election year.

How all of this -- the elections, appointments of future commanding officers and new technologies -- will affect the placard problem is anybody's guess, but what seems quite certain is that the issue will continue to raise tempers on all sides.

With the Metropolitan Transportation Authority less than one month away from having to pass a balanced operating budget for fiscal year 2009 and more than $1.2 billion short of the mark, plans to fill the gap and provide sustainable sources of revenue are almost as plentiful as the doom-and-gloom adjectives newspapers use to describe the authority's finances.

In the past month, the MTA, New York City Comptroller William Thompson and a blue-ribbon panel appointed by Gov. David Paterson and chaired by former MTA chairman Richard Ravitch have released plans to balance the authority's budget. Although each aspires to reach solvency, they take very different routes to get there.

"I'd be kidding you if I said I could predict the outcome," said Ravitch at the release of his plan, echoing a popular sentiment. The experts all also agree that something needs to be done -- and done soon.

The Budget Blues

On Nov. 10, the MTA held an emergency meeting of its finance committee and projected an operating budget gap of $1.2 billion for 2009.

In large part, the gap is the result of a decline in tax revenues slated for transportation. These revenues have been lower than estimated because of the economic slowdown. At the same time, the authority has to pay debt service on bonds issued to finance previous capital plans and cover its escalating pension costs.

In addition to an operating budget gap, the authority's next five-year capital plan (covering 2010 to 2014) could cost as much as $30 billion, of which there is "not one hard dollar," according to Ravitch.

As a result, whatever plan is eventually adopted will not only have to plug the operating budget gap so that the system continues to run day-to-day, but should also have an eye on the capital plan's needs so that maintenance and expansion can continue on schedule.

The Bad News First

If nothing is done before the end of the year, the MTA will pass an austerity budget that includes large service cuts and fare hikes.

On average, the fare would go up 23 percent across the board in early June, bringing in roughly $670 million. That 23 percent, though, would affect different commuters in different ways.

The base subway and bus fare would likely jump from $2.00 to $2.50. Long Island bus customers could see a 43 percent increase, and Access-a-Ride passengers would likely have their fares double from $2.00 to $4.00, according to the New York Times.

The service cuts would eliminate the Z and W subway lines, which overlap the J and N/R respectively, as well as truncate G and M service. The M8 bus would be eliminated, as would many other local bus routes. Off-peak bus, commuter rail and subway service would be curtailed, and some station booths would be closed on subway and commuter rail lines.

Elliot Sander, the authority's executive director, has described the cuts and increases as "draconian," "very severe," "very harsh" and "extremely painful" but has insisted they are needed to balance the budget if state and city leaders do not find some other way to raise money for the transportation system.

The Comptroller's Solution

Just two days after the MTA painted its bleak picture, New York City's comptroller, issued "A Regional Proposal to Increase Mass Transit, Promote Energy, and Ease Parking Shortages," a four-page report detailing a strategy to create sources of funding that would be go directly to fund MTA operations.

In essence, Thompson's plan would place an additional charge on vehicles registered in the metropolitan area, depending upon their weight. According to the report, all vehicles in the MTA's service area would pay an extra $100, plus $.09 for every pound of curb weight over 2,300 pounds. Under this formula, a Toyota Yaris would cost $100 to register, while a Lincoln Navigator, weighing more than two and a half times as much, would cost $430. This would be in addition to the $20 to $50 a year fee now paid to register most vehicles in New York City.

The comptroller's report figures that, at an average of $200 per-vehicle, the proposal could generate an additional billion dollars for public transit each year. This, of course, would not close the operating budget gap entirely, but it would go a long way to keeping fares lower and service more consistent. Presumably, the remaining hole would have to be filled through fare hikes or smaller service cuts.

Thompson also suggested that his plan would encourage people to buy lighter, more fuel-efficient cars that are smaller and easier to park, reducing the environmental impacts of driving and unsnarling city traffic.

Ravitch to the Rescue

The most comprehensive proposal so far has come from the Ravitch Commission. It includes a "mobility tax" on payrolls, tolls on the East River and Harlem River bridges, an 8 percent fare hike, and greatly improved bus service.

The payroll tax is one third of one percent, or $0.33 for every $100 and would apply to all area businesses, including, much to the shock and chagrin of some, city and state governments and the non-profit sector. The employer -- not the individual worker -- would pay. It is estimated that the payroll tax would raise about $1.5 billion a year.

The report calculates that tolling the city-owned Harlem River and East River bridges, and using E-Z Pass and camera technology to do it, would generate roughly $600 million in net revenue.

Presented to the MTA on Dec. 4, the Ravitch report has Paterson's support. Although Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared at the press conference announcing the report, he has not issued a full-fledge endorsement, saying instead that it is up to the legislature "to come up with solutions."

Ravitch insists that the commission's proposals are not individual items on a menu of options, but interlocking pieces in a comprehensive strategy to plug the operating budget gap and help fund future capital plans. To this end, he also proposed creating a Capital Finance Authority to collect payroll tax and bridge-toll revenues that in excess of what is needed to fund the operating budget.

The plan's tolling component, in particular, is seen as a heavy lift. For many area politicians the plan is all too reminiscent of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal, which faltered in the State Assembly early this year. Many Brooklyn and Queens officials quickly assailed it as an unfair burden on their constituents.

In a burst of candor, Ravitch reportedly addressed these naysayers by commenting, "Obviously, I have to assume they must know of some secret fairy godmother who has piles of money she is going to send and solve the problem. Otherwise, they'd better damn well explain how the system is going to be paid for."

Many share Ravitch's sentiments, though express them a bit more diplomatically. Transportation advocates like Gene Russianoff of the Straphanger's Campaign and Carol Kellerman and Charles Brecher of the Citizens Budget Commission, who may not agree with everything the Ravitch Commission has suggested, have both editorialized that no matter what happens, something must be done to prevent huge fare hikes and massive service cuts.

What's to Come?

For now, the authority's future rests in Albany. Almost all of the significant suggestions made by the Ravitch Commission and the comptroller - tolls, tax increases, new registration fees - require a vote by state legislators, which is unlikely to occur until the new year.

Sander has called March the "drop-dead time," implying that if no action is taken by then, the MTA would have to begin implementing its service cuts. Fare hikes would go into effect in June. Between now and then, there is sure to be a great deal of politicking, grandstanding, soap-boxing and dialoguing between straphangers, elected officials, authority employees and advocates to see whether transit riders pay 50 cents more for a lot less -- or motorists and employers pick up some of the tab.

 

Photo by Ya-Hsuan Huang

18-year old Umar Irshad, whose father owns Pakistan Tea House in Tribeca, insists that his family would take money from their own pockets to keep employees on the payroll.

Ever since he began driving taxis a few years ago, Mohammed Chowdhury has started his 5 p.m. shift the same way, steering off the Brooklyn Bridge to lower Manhattan's Water Street in search of his first fare. Upon finding a passenger, he would coast up the FDR Drive usually to an Upper East Side destination. It was an easy $20 to start the night.

People used to go "crazy" trying to catch a cab in the financial district, Chowdhury said, gliding through light, rush-hour traffic a few weeks ago. But now that more than 13,000 finance jobs have been lost and another 18,000 are expected to disappear before Wall Street revives, things feel different.

Photo by Siobhan Devine

Chowdhury in front of his cab

The routes are less predictable, and the passengers are harder to find, Chowdhury said. "Every time I start working from there, I don't see that many people. It's really hard to find a passenger," he said. "This financial crisis is like a chain system. If the passengers lose their jobs now, they don't take cabs that much, or if they do maybe they do once in a week. Now we're losing those passengers, so ... we're making less money."

In other words, the effects of the turmoil on Wall Street extend far beyond investment bankers. As the recession's effects deepen and spread many people will turn to the city for help. But given the government's own strained circumstances, how much can - and should it do?

The Falling Dominos

In looking at the current economic turmoil, the New York City comptroller's office has focused on the financial sector's "multiplier effect," the process by which one job lost on Wall Street leads to an estimated one and a half lost jobs elsewhere in the city. As firms dismiss staff, they "don't require as much in terms of support, like from an outside legal counsel or from a consultant, or in terms of office supplies," said Marcia Van Wagner, deputy comptroller for the budget. Less business for the supporting industries sparks additional layoffs, all linked in a chain through their own multiplier effects. Moreover, said Van Wagner, as people lose income, "they're not spending their money in restaurants, they're not going out and buying their new apartment, they have to fire the babysitter."

The economic downturn is national - earlier this month, the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed that the country was in a recession and the U.S. Department of Labor announced an overwhelming 533,000 jobs lost in November. Although New York's economy initially seemed immune, expanding while the nation's began to contract, a report released last week by the Fiscal Policy Institute showed that the city is catching up. Initial unemployment filings for the 12 weeks ending November 21 increased almost 42 percent over the same period last year. The institute predicts an unemployment rate between 8.5 and 9 percent in 2009 and Comptroller William Thompson announced Thursday that job losses could reach 170,000 by late 2010. For its part, the city's Office of Management and Budget expects a loss of 147,000 jobs.

New York suffers from a "double whammy" given the weight of the securities industry in the local economy, said Van Wagner. "The finance sector has such a disproportionate impact. There may be some other [city] sector that has unusually high wages but they're just not anywhere near as big as the finance sector," she said. According to a 2007 osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt5-2008.pdf report by the New York State comptroller, the securities industry accounts for 23 percent of the city's wages and 9 percent of its tax revenue.

Wall Street employs only 5 per cent of the city's workers, and the Office of Management and Budget expects it will absorb only 31,000, or roughly one fifth, of the city's layoffs. But the generous year-end bonuses and lavish spending that accompanied the boom have faded, affecting businesses throughout the city and weakening city tax revenues. In short, it has taken little time for the fallout to trickle down to people like Mohammed Chowdhury.

Trickle Down

Taxi rides in October, the latest month for which data is available, averaged approximately 425,000 per day, including weekends, a level that Commissioner Matthew W. Daus of the Taxi and Limousine Commission characterized as "consistent" with previous levels. And while the commission did not have data readily available, it dismissed the idea that there has been a significant change in the duration of the average ride.

Nonetheless, Chowdhury maintains that passengers are scarcer than they were last year and that trips are not as long. He said he has also had customers short the fare. "I ask them, 'What happened?'" he said. "'They say, 'I don't have enough money, is that OK?' Forget about the tips! ... They're giving me $3 less [than the fare.]" In total, Chowdhury estimates that he is earning roughly $100 less per weeknight this winter than he did in 2007. Weekend business remains fairly stable, he said: "Lots of kids going out, they don't care if they don't have a job, they still going to the bar."

With less income, Chowdhury and his fellow drivers are cutting back on the same luxuries that other New Yorkers are eschewing, such as eating out. "Most of the yellow cab drivers, they used to sit down, take their sweet time eating and gossiping, because they make enough money," he said. "Now I think they work more, and they bring their food from home."

The trend is widespread. According to Nina and Tim Zagat, creators of the restaurant guide, one third of respondents to their most recent survey are eating out less, and one fifth say they're ordering less alcohol and fewer appetizers and desserts. Restaurant openings in New York City fell from 163 last year to 119 this year.

The Zagats believe that the nation's restaurant industry will prove resilient, though, as they wrote in an October Wall Street Journal op-ed. One reason for optimism is the emergence of what they call BATH, or Better Alternatives to Home, establishments. These are "modestly priced eateries," including "noodle shops and myriad ethnic places," that can be a more efficient choice than home-cooked meals, they wrote. But even some of those restaurants are feeling the effects of the downturn, if one, Tribeca's renowned Pakistan Tea House, is any indication.

The restaurant offers combination plates of South Asian fare, including fresh-baked bread, for less than $10. Its lunch crowd is dominated by businesspeople, while the late shift hosts the restaurant's taxi-driver clientele, for whom the kitchen concocts an extra-spicy chicken curry. Business during both shifts is slower this year than last. "Before, at lunchtime, after 12, it used to be really good, the line was outside the door on the sidewalk," said 18-year old Umar Irshad, whose father owns the Tea House. "Now, it's not like that."

Although drivers still stop by, they order less, Irshad said. "They buy a tea, or a samosa. They won't take a whole plate," he said. To try to increase business, Irshad has begun making deliveries on his own and passing out business cards to friends from school. While business remains slow, Irshad insists that his family would take money from their own pockets to keep employees on the payroll.

Not all employers can promise the same. Irshad said he has overheard business people at the Tea House lamenting being fired and taxi drivers wishing they could find different work. Job insecurity has become a recurrent theme in headlines and water-cooler talk around the city: the production company that fell short of its projected budget, the writing workshop whose recently laid-off participants needed to pay the class fee in installments, the non-profit that might close its doors entirely.

Chowdhury worries that job losses in other sectors might lead to an over-supply of taxi drivers, as people look for new, or additional, sources of employment. "Before, they don't have enough drivers, they're looking for the drivers," he said. "Now, the garage has enough drivers, more than enough." His fears of heightened competition may be well founded. According to Commissioner Daus, 23.9 percent more licenses were issued between August and November of this year than during the same period in 2007.

Safety Nets

While workers in the finance industry may have felt the recession's effects first, they also are more likely to be able to weather the downturn. According to the state comptroller's report, the average securities-industry salary in 2006 was $339,310, while the city estimates that roughly 44 percent of New Yorkers live below 150 percent of the poverty line (or a little more than $39,000 for a family of four). Many of those caught in the wake of the crisis have had to turn to charities and other safety nets.

Unfortunately, a decrease in donations and corporate giving has constricted the budgets of many of the city's charitable organizations, causing safety nets to wear thin. (See Gotham Gazette's slide show, "Feeling the Pinch Despite the Season.") City Harvest, which collects unwanted food from New York's restaurants and redistributes it to emergency food providers, is experiencing a $315,000, or 9 percent, shortfall in its annual budget. But demand for its services is growing. "Not only are we a charity affected by financial downturn, but we're also trying to help the people who are affected by the financial downturn," said City Harvest's vice president of operations, Jennifer McLean.

According to a survey that City Harvest conducted this fall, 75 percent of responding emergency food providers said that they were serving first-time clients, and 60 percent said that their clients were traveling farther to receive emergency food. At the Mobile Market in the South Bronx, one of two sites where City Harvest distributes produce directly to individuals, McLean estimates that demand has increased by 20 percent since August. "Ever since mid-summer, all of a sudden the numbers just started climbing at every single market," she said. "We're not giving away anything that's super tantalizing, like a finished good," she continued. "They're lining up for cabbage! ...They're lining up for carrots! And they're getting there at six in the morning!"

Looking to the City

The city has taken some steps to address the problem. In October, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced 18 initiatives to ameliorate the crisis, including providing $1.3 million in frozen vegetables for the city's emergency food providers. "We can't eliminate the burden many will feel and we can't act as a substitute for failing or missing federal assistance in every case, but by creating real jobs and providing targeted assistance to small businesses, homeowners and vulnerable New Yorkers, we can provide meaningful help to those who need it most," Bloomberg stated in a press release.

City Hall plans to use federal and state funds to support the initiatives, which include investing in local infrastructure to create 25,000 jobs, expanding the city's loan guarantee program to 400 small businesses and non-profits, enhancing job training and placement services, and funding the acquisition of up to 115 foreclosed properties to develop more than 250 affordable homes.

Advocacy organizations like the New York City Coalition Against Hunger praised the plan. In particular they applauded proposals to expand the city's in-classroom breakfast program and to ease the food stamp application process for eligible seniors.

Some advocates, though, think the city should be doing more. "Though Bloomberg's initiatives will help some struggling New Yorkers, we call on the city to support the very poor by fighting for raising welfare benefit and affordable housing," said Veda Myers, hunger and food stamp coordinator at Hunger Action Network of New York State, in an email.

On the other hand, some critics worry the city is spending money it does not have. An editorial in the New York Post faulted the mayor's plan for "shoveling out the cash like Halloween candy." It warned that the initiative would make it harder to "convince the public that the city's money spigot is dry."

Certainly, it may become increasingly difficult for the city to provide assistance. The Office of Management and Budget predicts that the tax revenues collected in 2009 and 2010 will fall shy of the amount collected in 2008 by $2.6 and $3.1 billion, respectively. As a result, the city faces having to cut billions in spending. In September, the mayor ordered that city agencies cut their 2009 and 2010 annual budgets by 2.5 percent and 5 percent, respectively. And last week he called for an additional 7 percent reduction in spending for the 2010 fiscal year, to begin July 1, 2009. Bloomberg has promised that the city's quality of life will not suffer as a result, but Van Wagner warned that sweeping budget cuts would inevitably lead to the deterioration of public services, such as policing and education.

Fiscal constraints presumably also preclude the city from taking sweeping steps to help the newly unemployed or underemployed, and could cause the city to cut programs aimed at helping low income New Yorkers.

City Harvest's McClean remains concerned about the future. "At what rate are people going to have to start needing help?" she wondered, adding that she didn't think New York had felt the full effect of the crisis yet. "That's my biggest concern," she continued, "where's it going to stop and will we have enough to do something meaningful about it?"

Nevertheless, Van Wagner believes the city is doing it's best. "You can quibble about particulars, but generally, under these circumstances, what do you do? You have to cut spending and you have to find ways to raise revenue. Given a problem of this scale, one or the other really isn't going to do the trick. You really have to have a multi-faceted approach to get the situation under control."

In the meantime, the city problems continue to affect lives even beyond its and the nation's borders. According to Chowdhury, the most significant reduction in his expenditures is the amount he sends home to his family in Bangladesh. "I used to send them every month like $600. Now I'm sending them like $300, $320" he said. "Maybe before they used to eat better, now they have to cut back, they have to eat something different because I cannot afford it." According to the World Bank, the global flow of remittances to developing countries began to slow in the third quarter of 2008, and is expected to decelerate further in 2009.

But while funds may be limited, sympathy is not. "They're very used to taking a cab, going to the Upper East Side," said Chowdhury of his passengers. "Now I feel bad for them because they have to go to the subway and fight with other people, standing up."

Photo (cc) Dan Bruno

Across the country, evidence of the need to invest in America's transportation infrastructure abounds. From the tragic collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis last year, to the plans for a new Tappan Zee Bridge in New York, major road projects need serious attention and federal support. The American Society of Civil Engineers has reported that the nation's infrastructure deserves an overall grade of D and set the price tag for repair at $1.6 trillion.

America's public transit system needs support as well. Gas prices are high, purse strings cinched and environmental consciousness as broad as ever. Accordingly, more American's are using transit and regional rail along with biking and walking. The American Public Transportation Association found that Americans took 88 million more transit trips in the first three months of this year than in the same time period last year. In New York City, overall public transit use rose by between 1 percent and 13 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year.

In short, both New York City and the United States are experiencing a transit boom and a roadway bust. Dealing with both will take thoughtful planning and serious commitment from city, state and federal government. It will also take a president committed to addressing the myriad issues facing the nation's ailing highways and over-crowded buses and trains in new and creative ways.

So what can New York commuters expect from the two major party presidential candidates? Sen. Barack Obama has often spoken of the need for better transit funding, smarter development and more infrastructure investment by the federal government, while Sen. John McCain has long preached the gospel of fiscal responsibility and a hands-off role for Washington. Both men have made statements about their inclinations and plans, and both have transportation-related legislative records that indicate what their administration might mean for the nation in the next four years.

The Buck Stops Where?

A key test for the new president could come with the reauthorization of the next federal transportation bill in 2009. While many critics have problems with this omnibus approach to transportation spending, and the planning that results, for about two decades the bill and its predecessors have played a key role in shaping the transportation landscape in the nation and New York City.

The current version of the bill, dubbed SAFETEA-LU, which was passed in 2005 and is active through 2009, is a $286.4 billion piece of legislation that primarily shapes transportation planning through funding specific projects in specific areas.

Although generally considered a highway bill -- about 85 percent of it goes to roads -- it also includes a good deal of start-up transit funding and even some money for non-motorized transportation (bicycles and pedestrians), although that amount is less than 1 percent of the total. Critics claim that it is loaded with pork projects and earmarks for certain key legislative districts that have been traded for "yes" votes.

McCain, who, judging by his campaign Website, has never met an earmark he liked, was one of only four senators to vote against SAFETEA-LU. His official statement on the legislation read: "This monstrosity of a conference report which costs an astounding $286.4 billion is both terrifying in its fiscal consequences and disappointing for the lack of fiscal discipline it represents."

Certainly, SAFETEA-LU is a huge spending bill filled with earmarks and potential pork barrel projects, but pork is often in the eye of the beholder. SAFETEA-LU money funded a number New York City projects from better buses and subways and bike lanes to the Safe Routes to School program. There is no way of knowing what McCain thought of any of those particular items -- his Website says little to nothing about specific transportation projects -- but his emphasis on fiscal consequences and fiscal discipline would seem to imply that if he were president, a do-more-with-less approach to transportation funding, with private companies taking up more of the responsibility, would be the model.

Obama, on the other hand, not only attended the SAFETEA-LU bill signing but also praised the work of the Illinois delegation in winning its passage. He hailed the nearly $2.1 billion secured for mass transit in his home state of Illinois and over $500 million for major road and bridge projects in the state. Perhaps a President Obama would deliver more transportation funding to urban areas. Both his energy and environment platform and his urban policy say as much. He pledges to "reform the tax code to make benefits for driving and public transit or ridesharing equal," and to alter the "transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account."

Any reauthorization of the federal transportation bill would be very significant for New York City. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority needs money to help pay for its capital plan, which includes projects like the Second Avenue Subway, the extension of the Number 7 train and East Side access for the Long Island Rail Road. Other major projects, like the cross-harbor freight tunnel and the new Tappan Zee Bridge, require funding too.

With five New York Democrats on the House Transportation Committee, it seems likely that a good amount of federal dollars will be headed toward New York City, at least in early drafts of the next Transportation Equity Act. Whether those fund make it here or not, of course, depends to a great extent on the inclinations of our next president.

Not surprisingly, Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the New York delegation's senior member on the House Transportation Committee, thinks an Obama administration would help the city more than a McCain one. "Sen. Obama has been very supportive of public transportation programs and improving our flagging national infrastructure for the sake of safety and efficiency," Nadler said. Nadler criticized McCain's opposition to the transportation act, SAFETEA-LU, calling it "arguably one of the country's most valuable and effective programs." "McCain also opposes giving members the ability to help direct SAFETEA-LU funds toward projects they know are essential to their own districts," Nadler said.

A National Plan

The debate over each candidate's stands on the next transportation bill assumes that Washington continues to dole out transportation dollars the way it has for years. This might not be the case in the near future. Many advocates, economists and policy makers would like to see a major shift in the way transportation funds are allocated and federal transportation planning is conducted.

The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission has called for a "new beginning" for the nation's transportation policy. It supports a system that moves away from the piecemeal process of earmarks and pet projects in favor of a holistic approach that corresponds with interrelated federal concerns like oil independence, greenhouse gas reductions, creation of green-collar jobs, public health and safety, and even national security.

America 2050, a joint venture of the Regional Plan Association, a New York City based research, planning and advocacy group, and the Lincoln Land Institute, a research organization focused on the use, regulation and taxation of land, has called for a "new, more active role of the federal government in establishing principles, priorities and plans to guide transportation investment in the dawning 21st century."

Jonathan D. Miller of the Urban Land Institute has echoed this call and suggested that one way to do this would be to "set federal funding guidelines to force states and regions to integrate their highway, mass transit, rail and airport planning, combined with local initiatives to reduce car dependency." He contnued, "We need smart, multi-modal, inter-regional solutions - no more single-shot 'Roads to Nowhere.' The huge government deficits we face make the case for strong federal incentives - perhaps a national infrastructure 'czar' to insist on integrated, economical approaches - all the more compelling."

There are also calls for a National Infrastructure Bank that would rigorously evaluate specific project proposals from local and state government to assess their regional and national benefits, and then compile an investment portfolio to pay for the selected programs. A bill currently in both houses of Congress could help create that kind of entity, and Obama has spoken out in favor of such a bank.

All of these new approaches seem to run counter to McCain's general reluctance to increase the role of the federal government in any sphere -- although he has made few specific comments this election cycle. Obama, on the other hand, has a transportation policy position that seems much more likely to bolster a national-and-regional approach instead of the ad hoc strategy used today. In addition to supporting the idea of a National Infrastructure Bank, he has pledged to "unlock the potential of all our regions by connecting them with a 21st century infrastructure."

This new approach to structuring transportation funding would greatly benefit metropolitan areas like New York City. If money were allocated based on the number of users instead of by earmark, dense population centers almost certainly would see much more funding for transit and roads. Furthermore, as public transit can help meet the country's broader strategic goals, such as achieving energy independence and reducing greenhouse gas emissions reductions, the region's under-funded commuter rail lines, buses and subways could well see an increase in federal dollars.

No matter who the American people elect on Nov. 4, the next president will have to address our nation's -- and New York City's -- transportation infrastructure. Whether that will mean double-checking every line item in the 2009 reauthorization bill or boldly laying new tracks for a new century is anyone's guess and every voter's choice.

 

Photo (cc) Naomi A.

On a recent Wednesday evening, Erin Brown waited for the Fung Wah bus to Boston with a dozen or so other people on a crowded Canal Street sidewalk. "It's such a crush - the people, the vendors, the cars, narrow sidewalks, narrow streets. I don't know why they leave from here, but the price is right," she said.

Brown is not alone in her sentiment. It often feels as though every inch of Chinatown is jam-packed. Cars clogs street from the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel. Sidewalks overflow with tourists, workers and neighborhood residents. Stalls spill out from shops, and lately it seems that every few blocks there is a line of 20 or so people queuing up for an interstate bus.

The buses are nothing new. Since 1998, companies like Fung Wah, using spaces reserved for tour buses or agreed upon spots in the neighborhood, have run curbside operations, picking up and dropping off passengers. The recent surge in travel costs, though, has made more outfits see the benefits of such a low-overhead way of doing business. This means more buses jamming city streets and curbsides and more bus queues on already crowded sidewalks.

It has reached the point, according to City Councilmember Alan Gerson, where there now are more interstate bus pick-ups and drop-offs in Chinatown each day than there are at the Port Authority. Although the competition has driven down prices for travelers, it has created some difficult situations for neighborhood residents, passing pedestrians and local businesses.

Dollars and Sense

The trip from New York to Boston on Amtrak is $89. By car, at $4 for a gallon of gas, the 220-mile drive costs somewhere about $30, without tolls. The Fung Wah or Lucky Star bus leaving from Canal Street or Chrystie Street respectively is $15, and their upscale neighbor, the Bolt Bus, which departs from the sidewalk outside of Penn Station, is about $20 with a reserved seat and wireless internet. Given the economics, it's no surprise that the bus business is booming.

Eron Shosteck, a spokesperson for the American Bus Association, believes some travelers have started to see motorcoaches as a green alternative to driving. And at 184 passenger miles to the gallon - compared to 42 passenger miles to the gallon for domestic flights and about 28 miles to the gallon for average American automobiles - buses certainly seem like an environmentally friendly choice. People who live near the makeshift stops and staging areas, though, have a very different opinion.

More Buses, More Problems

Chinatown already has one of the highest childhood asthma rates in the city - one study estimates that one in five households has at least one person suffering from the condition. Some neighbors believe the increase in buses and the traffic they generate waiting and circling can only exacerbate the situation.

What's more, the multiple drop-off and pick-up points used by the various bus operators complicate the neighborhood's notoriously tricky traffic patterns. In a Chelsea Now article, police officers from the nearby Fifth Precinct report that it is difficult to maintain a steady flow of both pedestrian and automobile traffic because of the buses. The buses' multiple staging areas also make it difficult to regulate trash and parking.

"It's a part of the city where there is already an intense utilization of the curbside," said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives. "When things go wrong at the curb, nothing else on the street functions well. There is a definite need to consolidate and take stock of our curbside regulations: where buses are aloud to park and idle, and where passengers are allowed to queue."

And the City Says

In 2006, Michael Lau, the commanding officer of the Fifth Precinct, told the City Council Transportation Committee that the crowding of discount buses in Chinatown brings dangerously congested streets, the possibility of accidents and even violence as bus operators compete for parking spots and passengers. He claimed that 30 different bus companies dispatch more than 100 buses each day from Chinatown's curbsides

In response, city officials presented a plan to the local Community Board, Manhattan Board 3 that would have consolidated the interstate bus stops in a two-block area near where Pike Street meets the F.D.R. Drive. Residents of the nearby housing projects understandably were none too pleased and urged the board to vote down the proposal. It did 23 to 7.

For sometime now, the Department of Transportation has been working on a study of the bus traffic in Chinatown. Although a department spokesperson was unavailable for comment, judging by its efforts with Community Board 3, the department doe seem to be paying attention and listening to stakeholders.

Still, with gas prices high, air fare exorbitant and the expense of Amtrak tickets, the curbside bus boom in Chinatown and elsewhere around the city seems likely to continue, pressing officials and bus operators to come up with ways to keep fares low and streets and sidewalks clear.

 

Photo (cc) Jon Protas

The Bloomberg administration has been on a traffic-taming tear since PlaNYC was announced in April 2007, but many of those efforts could be for naught, according to a new study by Transportation Alternatives.

"Suburbanizing the City: How New York Parking Requirements Lead to More Driving" argues that New York City zoning rules will bring 170,000 additional cars to city streets by 2030. These rules require that developers build parking lots along with new buildings-regardless of their proximity to transit or the anticipated demand for the spaces. As the new parking lots make car ownership easier by decreasing the time and financial costs of owning a car, they encourage more New Yorkers to drive.

Of course, both Mayor Michael Bloomberg's PlaNYC and the parking requirements that allegedly undermine many of PlaNYC's goals stem from a root concern: the influx of residents and cars to New York City. So what can be done to make room for the arrivals while keeping the city sustainable?

Traffic, Traffic Everywhere

Bloomberg introduced PlaNYC and its most contentious component, congestion pricing, by asserting that one million more residents would live in New York City by 2030. To avoid near-constant gridlock, the environmental impact of traffic jams and the $13 billion price tag stuck to all the delays, the city had to charge people for driving and adopt other measures that reduce the amount of vehicle miles traveled.

Although congestion pricing did not make it through the State Assembly last spring, the mayor and the city Department of Transportation have continued to enact measures that discourage driving in hopes of taming traffic.

Broadway was put on a "road diet" earlier this summer when the city replaced two lanes for cars and trucks with a pedestrian island and a traffic-protected bike lane between 42nd Street and 35th Street. The city also narrowed and simplified the Madison Square Park intersection at Fifth Avenue and added colored bike lanes and pedestrian plazas that removed space for cars.

Bloomberg has also looked to parking reform as a traffic reduction measure. Last January he announced a plan to limit free parking permits issued to city workers -- known as placards -- as part of "efforts to reduce traffic congestion, decrease the city's carbon footprint, encourage the use of public transportation and reduce the demand for curbside parking in connection with city business."

"A reduction in placards isn't just about opening up curbside parking spaces," said Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. "It also speaks to the city's efforts to be smarter about the allocation of our transportation resources and to a transportation policy that aims for a greener, greater and less congested New York."

It was with this sentiment in mind that the Transportation Department introduced its "Sustainable Streets" strategic plan, which calls for initiating "citywide parking policies to help reduce cruising for parking and congestion." The agency is looking to "exploring new curbside management'' that could "even cut back on congestion by reducing the need to circle for a parking spot."

With all this afoot, how could the city miss the mark so badly in the eyes of the authors of the Transportation Alternatives report? Simple: When planning for new developments - an estimated 265,000 additional dwelling units are on their way by 2030 - the city requires too much off-street parking.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Broadway's "road-diet" and the reduction in parking placards make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists by creating and preserving dedicated space for them. The policies also discourage car use by taking away traffic lanes and generating longer wait times for drivers. Although it might seem counterintuitive to reduce traffic by decreasing driving and parking space for cars, there is a time-tested and well-documented logic behind it.

When parking and road space is free or cheap and when other transportation is available, as it is in most neighborhoods in New York City, two additional factors affect whether or not people choose to drive: the amount of space available for driving and parking, and the user's available time. Once space becomes limited, the amount of time it takes to drive and park increases until it reduces the demand for driving. Adding traffic lanes or parking spaces creates more capacity for vehicles and so reduces the amount of time it takes to drive. This encourages more car use until the roads once again become packed.

In other words, people will only wait in line for a free ice cream cone for so long. After a while, the time you waste waiting in line is more valuable than the free ice cream and so you end up skipping out on a treat. If another person starts passing out free ice cream, the line won't be so bad but eventually, more people will get in it and soon things will be just as bad as they were to begin with.

So, when the city zoning rules set minimum requirements for off-street parking requirement, say .39 parking spots for every new unit, which is the case in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint developments, they create more space for cars and thus take away one of the limiting factors on car ownership. According to the study, residents of new development are at least 40 percent to 50 percent more likely to own automobiles than today's New Yorkers, about 45 percent of whom own cars, according to census data.

What's more, "Under the current zoning regulations, mandating parking at new residential developments will add over one billion annual vehicle miles traveled. This is 40 percent to 50 percent more than if the city were to maintain its existing rate." All of that additional auto use would add 431,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, a figure that significantly overshadows the 351,000 tons of carbon dioxide that the green taxi and fuel-efficient black car initiatives will take away by the same year.

Furthermore, by adding parking space but not road space, the city further unbalances an already top-heavy equation: More cars with the same amount of roadway means more traffic, more congestion and more air pollution from idling vehicles. It also means fewer on-street parking spots and more cars entering pedestrian spaces.

Still more troubling, when parking space is included in the cost of developing housing and/or in the cost of renting or buying a home, the price of housing increases and the cost of car ownership decreases. That affects not just people who own cars, but those who wish to live without them. The authors of "Suburbanizing the City" write that in bundling parking with housing, "both markets are distorted and likely result in both lower rates of homeownership and higher rates of car ownership than would be seen if the uses and costs were unbundled."

Getting Parking on Par with PlaNYC

What explains the disconnect between off-street parking regulations and the goals of PlaNYC? Rachel Weinberger, a professor of urban planning at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study's authors, cites a lack of information available to policy makers in the Bloomberg administration.

"Public transit is in the hands of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, city streets are under the purview of the transportation department, and off-street parking information and regulation is controlled by the Department of City Planning," she said in a phone interview. "The information that one needs isn't integrated anywhere."

"Although the city is becoming increasingly aware of the effects of on-street parking on traffic and congestion, they seem to be ignoring the possibility that off-street parking can generate car trips," said Lindsey Lusher of Transportation Alternatives.

In a section of the report titled "What the City Doesn't Know," the authors write, "In developing the research reported in this study ... every possible data source on residential off-street parking was consulted .... Unfortunately, we found these data woefully inadequate for the task of developing citywide policy on parking."

They go on to discuss "grave inaccuracies and omissions" in the available records such as erroneous or unverifiable garage locations and thousands of additional square-feet dedicated to parking that were not unreported. The report concludes: "We were also unable to uncover any analysis or methodology that would lead to parking policy decisions."

A Department of City Planning spokesperson responded to a request for comment by email: "In order to minimize car use and create a more sustainable city, we are encouraging growth near mass transit while directing it away from auto dependent areas. DCP and DOT are also studying mechanisms for reducing the number of cars on city streets to achieve the mayor's PlaNYC goals. We are reviewing off street parking regulations, but most areas south of 96th Street in Manhattan do not require any parking, and in other neighborhoods, lack of parking is a frequent community complaint."

"Suburbanizing the Streets" paints a grim picture of the relationship between land use planning and transportation planning in the city today. Certainly there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Bloomberg administration is serious about taming traffic and its attendant ills, and it is certainly impressive how much officials have accomplished in so short a time. This report, however, suggests that there is still a great deal more work to do.

With millions coming, there is no time like the present.

 

Photo (cc) Kumar McMillan

In the first three months of this year, scooter sales nationwide rose 24 percent, and according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, a national trade association, scooter sales in New York City, Long Island, and northern New Jersey grew 310 percent from 1996 to 2005.

With that rise in popularity, scooter riders, or "scooterists," are becoming a more vocal constituency, adding their concerns to the debate over street space, parking and rights to the road that has long served as the proving ground for transportation decisions in New York City.

Naturally, that increase in volume brings boosters and bashers. Many claim that the personal conveyances, which can go 70 to 100 miles on a single gallon of gas, are a long overdue addition to New York City streets, while others point to the dangers to riders, pedestrians and cyclists.

Why Scooters? Why Now?

With the average price of a gallon of gas in New York City hovering around $4.15, up about $1.10 from this time last year, many New Yorkers are looking to drive less or at least drive for less.

The New York Times recently reported that vehicle volumes at Metropolitan Transportation Authority crossings were down 4.2 percent in April, and preliminary data for June shows a similar decline. Meanwhile, bus, subway, light rail and commuter rail all show rider increases of between 4 percent and 9 percent, biking is booming, and the scooter's popularity is surging.

"People [are] coming up to me at gas stations, getting out of their SUVs, and saying, 'Where did you get one of those?'" said Jonathan Perkel, a scooter rider and an organizer for the New York Scooter Club. It costs Perkel only about $8 to fill up his tank.

But there's more to their popularity than gas prices, according to Allison Waters, another organizer for the New York Scooter Club. She thinks many New Yorkers get on scooters so they can avoid mass transit. "You don't have autonomy on the train, but on a scooter you can buzz about, weave through traffic jams, go where you want," she said. "Scooters are small enough to sneak through small spaces and powerful enough to keep pace with traffic on larger roads."

Still others are drawn to scooters because they fit in parking spaces that cars couldn't dream of. Considering that in some New York City neighborhoods vehicles cruising for a parking space account for two thirds of traffic on the street, scooters have the potential to cut congestion.

Scooterists also point out the pleasures of moving about the city in the open. "The air flowing past you, the nimbleness. When you ride through Manhattan you can hear and feel the reaction of people. You don't get that kind of reaction in a car," said Waters.

Street Fights

Despite their practicality and panache, scooters and scooterists are not poplar with everyone.

Environmental groups have expressed some hesitance about the increase in scooter use. Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, said, "Scooters are obviously a step up from the car in terms of efficiency. That said, we're in a fluid moment in terms of transportation habits. For the first time we have hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers giving up their cars and we want to encourage them to switch to the most city-friendly, environmentally savvy and spatially efficient modes: Biking, walking and transit. If people are going to give up their car, we want them to go all the way."

A Department of Transportation spokesman expressed a similar sentiment, "From our perspective, scooters aren't as clean as mass transit. The primary mode shift we're looking for is from vehicles to transit. That's why we're focusing our efforts on things like Bus Rapid Transit, bike lanes, and pedestrian improvements."

Mike Drury, a cyclist stopped behind a scooter on Sixth Avenue, has more immediate concerns. "Too many of those guys ride like bad bikers," he said. "They don't signal. They're in the bike lane. They weave through traffic. They might be smaller than a car, but they're still big, heavy and dangerous, and riders need to treat them as such."

By law they do. Scooters that can travel over 30 mph, or Class A Mopeds in Department of Motor Vehicles parlance, fall into the same category as motorcycles. This means they must follow the same traffic laws as cars and cannot travel in bike lanes, or park on sidewalks. Scooter operators also need a Class M designation on their driver's license.

Scooterists, worried about having their vehicle knocked over by a parking car or tampered with, sometimes park the scooters -- illegally -- on the sidewalk. There, they compete for precious pedestrian space and make enemies in the process. On Christopher Street, a mother pushing her child in a stroller down a scooter-pocked block said, "They lock them to everything. The sidewalks down here are already too narrow. Sometimes I can't get by and have to push her out into the street. They don't belong on the sidewalk."

The police department agrees. Last October, the blog Brownstoner reported that police were impounding scooters parked on the sidewalk along Third Street in Park Slope. The police also have started impounding scooters parked without license plates, an old trick to keep from getting parking tickets.

Making Room

As more people ride scooters, they need places other than the sidewalk to park them. In 2007, the New York Sun reported that the Department of Transportation was considering setting aside discounted parking for scooters in municipal lots. Although nothing has materialized, scooter advocates are pushing hard and hope that the city can find a way to make garage parking simpler for two-wheeled users. As it currently stands, many garages and parking lots refuse to rent spaces to scooters even at the car rate, sometimes claiming their insurance does not cover the smaller vehicles.

There also have been private efforts to ameliorate scooterists' parking problems. For two months last year the Piaggio Group, which imports the popular scooter brand Vespa, made 48 spaces in lots and garages in Chinatown, TriBeCa, Midtown and the theater district available for free to Vespa riders. During the parking space giveaway, Peter Scanlan, a Vespa rider who took advantage of a free spot near 44th Street and Sixth Avenue told the New York Times, "It's incredible. We win, we win!" Still, one-off events are far from a sustainable solution.

In a 2006 New York Times op-ed, Neil Barton, one of the New York Scooter Club's founders, argued for dedicated street space for two-wheeled vehicles. He pointed to Toronto as a model. There the City Council passed legislation increasing the amount of parking space available for two-wheeled vehicles and made motorcycle and scooter parking free. "Toronto obviously realized that it did more harm than good to punish those who reduced congestion and emissions in the city. It's only a matter of time, I hope, before New York City comes to the same conclusions," Barton wrote.

For now, scooterists are just one of the many voices calling for more respect on New York's chaotic streets. If current gas prices remain high, environmental trends remain and scooterists continue to make their needs known, city officials may take greater notice.

 

Photo (cc) Timo Arnall

A bill that would help enforce bus lane regulations has been blocked in the State Assembly.

"No one has done more to preserve, protect and defend gridlock in New York City than Assemblyman David Gantt (D- Rochester), and Tuesday he made sure that bus riders are condemned to commuting at a crawl," the Daily News said earlier this week after Gantt, the chair of the Assembly's Transportation Committee, effectively killed a bill allowing enforcement cameras for city bus lanes, at least for this legislative session.

Gantt blocked a bill (S7229 Golden / A10233 Bing) championed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as scores of New York City advocacy groups, that would have allowed the city to use cameras to enforce restrictions designed to keep cars and trucks out of bus lanes. Supporters saw the measure as key to the success of the bus program. "Bus lane enforcement cameras are a key element to keeping bus lanes clear and bus riders moving," said a memo by the Campaign for New York's Future, an umbrella group of city advocates.

Both the mayor and advocates were disappointed.

"Gridlock will not simply disappear on its own," said a spokesman for the mayor. "The lack of action without any explanation ... means that transit riders can expect slower buses and longer commutes."

Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives was a bit more pointed: "Twice this spring," he said, referencing the Assembly's recent decision to not even vote on congestion pricing, "Albany has been offered the opportunity to decongest our streets and get our city's 2.7 million bus riders moving. Twice they've stood in the way. After an unprecedented year focusing on the city's transportation crisis, we're left wondering if our legislators even grasp the problem."

So What is the Problem?

Gene Russianoff, senior attorney at the Straphangers Campaign, frequently says that it takes less time to get from New York to Philadelphia on Amtrak than to go from Harlem to City Hall on the M-15 bus.

Russianoff, of course, is an advocate with an agenda. But sweltering Staten Islanders standing around X-1 stops in Midtown express almost identical sentiments.

"On a bad day, and there are a lot of bad days, it's usually around two hours. On a terrible day, I've been onboard and standing for more than four hours," said Jim Litterelle, a financial consultant who has commuted from New Dorp, Staten Island to Midtown Manhattan for the past five years. Four hours, by the way, is more like an Amtrak ride from New York to Boston.

Litterelle's story is by no means unique. Many of city's bus commuters have contended with multi-hour traffic tie-ups for years. The Straphangers Campaign and Transportation Alternatives have been doling out Pokey Awards to New York City's slowest buses since 2002, and "changes in bus speeds since 2004 have generally been too minor to demonstrate significant trends," according to the Pokey's most recent press release.

Speeding the Buses

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the city Department of Transportation and advocates, however, have seen the glimmering of a green light at the end of the congested tunnel. The city's first Bus Rapid Transit project, called Select Bus Service, is scheduled to start along the Bx 12 route in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx on June 29. With enhanced bus lanes, payment before boarding, increased spacing between stops, and priority for buses at traffic lights, many believed this new route, along with four other planned Select Bus Service corridors, would act as surface subways, providing a faster, more reliable and appealing bus commute.

Bus lane enforcement cameras were a crucial part of the Select Bus Service plan.

"Bus Rapid Transit needs to be rapid and for that to happen we need an easy way of keeping autos out of the bus lane. Cameras are a simple way of making that happen." Russianoff said.

Judging by the success of bus lane cameras in London, Russianoff is right. Since the technology was first deployed there in 1997, the length of average bus trips was reduced by 10 minutes, wait times decreased by 15 percent, bus speeds increased by 12.6 percent, and bus lane violations decreased by 60 percent, according to the most recent Transport for London reports.

According to a Department of Transportation briefing memo, depending on the bill's final language, the cameras, which would be used exclusively along the Bus Rapid Transit demonstration corridors, could be installed on buses, at fixed locations or on mobile units along bus lanes. Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., the cameras would capture photos or videos of vehicles violating bus lane regulations. The owner of the offending vehicle would receive the equivalent of a parking ticket in the mail. No points would be assessed against the driver.

In many ways, bus lane enforcement cameras would be similar to the city's red light camera program, which has had a great deal of success since implemented in 1994. It has not only saved traffic officers time, but early studies showed a 40 percent to 60 percent reduction in speeding violations and a 24 percent reduction in injuries where the cameras were installed.

The Opposition

Civil liberties advocates have traditionally voiced concerns about the deployment of cameras for enforcement purposes. The New York Civil Liberties Union carefully watched this particular bill and decided it could accept it. "We talked a lot of things through with city DOT and developed a good framework for addressing privacy concerns," said the group's legislative director, Bob Perry. "We would not oppose the bill. We would offer support with amendment, because we felt we were engaged in a good faith effort to get privacy principles reflected in the bill."

Gantt has long opposed traffic enforcement cameras, often citing privacy concerns as his reason. But, with such a blessing from reputable privacy advocates, what concerned him this time around?

To add to the confusion over his thinking, the Assembly member recently introduced a piece of legislation that "would allow any community in New York State to install red light cameras ... and to boost government revenue from fines levied on violators," according to a recent article in the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Gantt did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but several news outlets (click here and here) have reported that his red light camera legislation was written as a "contract bill," a bill that favors a particular lobbyist. Robert Scott Gaddy, Gantt's former counsel and the principal of Excelsior Advocates LLC., represents CMA Consulting Services, an Albany-based company vying for the state's red light camera contract. This, by the way, is not the first time that the press has suggested that a piece of Gantt's legislation is a "contract bill" favoring Gaddy and CMA.

To further twist this tale, a staffer in Gantt's Rochester office said that Gantt has never supported any type of traffic enforcement cameras. The staffer said that, although he could not speak for the Assembly member, there is a "slippery slope of automation" and that cameras "might make a mistake," issuing a ticket for a necessary violation and unjustly punishing a driver.

When asked why Gantt would bother to introduce a camera enforcement bill, the staffer responded that, "it was to control the legislation -- to do what he wants with it."

Where are We Now?

Whatever Gantt's reasons for opposing the legislation, it's quite clear that, for now, New York City won't see bus lane enforcement cameras operating along the first Select Bus Service route. For supporters of the plan, this is a heavy blow.

"Without bus lane enforcement cameras Select Bus Service will be good, but by no means as great as it could be," said Norvell. "Perhaps this will make the DOT look at other ways of ensuring the integrity of bus lanes and speeding bus commutes, like physically separated lanes that don't need to be OK'd by Albany"

Others have suggested more radical remedies. Comments on the progressive urban planning Website Streetsblog called for New York City's succession. One individual, writing under the moniker Urbanis, wrote, "I'm outraged. Once again another livable streets initiative for New York City has been stymied because of our corrupt and dysfunctional state legislature in Albany. I feel all transit riders here have been collectively slapped in the face. New York City has been deprived of home rule on so many fronts, ranging from rent regulation to congestion pricing to bus lane enforcement. It's time for us to secede."

Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, who introduced the legislation, gave the New York Times a more measured comment in a similar vein: "This is such a specific New York City issue, it's one of the many things where you wonder why the State Legislature has any role in it at all."

Graham T. Beck is the managing editor of Transportation Alternatives' StreetBeat, and a freelance writer. He lives in Brooklyn.  

Photo courtesy of Triborough

In 1982, Richard Ravitch, then chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, cobbled together $8.5 billion in city, state and federal financing to fund an MTA Capital Plan that helped turn the troubled system around.

On April 8, Gov. David Paterson announced that Ravitch would have the rare opportunity to try his hand again. This time, Ravitch will not be serving in an official MTA capacity but as the head of a blue ribbon panel of business, civic leaders and economists charged by the governor with recommending ways to patch the $17.5 billion hole in the MTA's $29 billion Capital Plan.

When the New York Sun asked Ravitch about his appointment, he said, "I am not sure it is anything but a Sisyphean task, but I will undertake it with energy and enthusiasm," an appropriate response considering that he has pushed the MTA's budget boulder uphill before, and today it's low on the slope once again.

The Capital Plan

The MTA's 2008- 2013 Capital Plan was released in late February, 18 months ahead of schedule, in accordance with the deal that formed the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, the panel that recommended congestion pricing. Many of its specifics, including use of revenues from congestion pricing, are now moot because of the state legislature's failure to approve the plan to charge people to drive in Manhattan. The capital plan, though, still stands as a fairly accurate predictor of the MTA's financial needs for system maintenance, improvement programs, completion of current expansion projects and expansion to provide new capacity.

The Capital Plan consists of three funding tiers. The first tier, the Core Program, allocates just over $20 billion to address the agency's core needs including bringing the systems to a state of good repair, normal replacement and system improvement. The vast majority of tier 1 funding, about $15 billion, would go to NYC Transit, with around $2.6 billion going to the Long Island Rail Road, $1.8 billion to Metro North, and $400 million to MTA buses.

The second tier allocates $5.5 billion for existing expansion projects like phase one of Second Avenue Subway construction, the Fulton Street Transit Center, the South Ferry Terminal and regional investments that would maximize the benefits of expansion projects.

The third tier focuses on new expansion projects, allocating $3.2 billion for computer-based train control and more cars on the 7 Line, Penn Station Access, phase 2 Second Avenue Subway construction and Jamaica Station improvements.

Meanwhile, rising construction costs have opened up a $3 billion gap in the 2005-2009 Capital Plan.

The MTA's financial situation extends beyond construction and equipment budgets, however. An analysis of the July four-year Financial Plan by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli shows several items straining the budget. These include the debt service on bonds issued during the Pataki administration to finance past Capital Plans as well as the rising costs of healthcare and pensions, and the economic downturn. DiNapoli's report predicted that the operating budget deficit will grow from $965 million in 2008 to $2.1 billion by 2011.

Paying the Bill

To cover all these costs, the MTA has four potential funding sources: fares from subway, bus and commuter-rail riders; city, state and federal government contributions; an increase in existing taxes dedicated to transit, like the mortgage recording tax; and new revenue streams slated for transit, such as congestion pricing.

An increase in all four of these sources will almost certainly be needed if the MTA wishes to maintain the level of service, reliability, cleanliness and safety that 8.5 million daily riders have grown accustomed to and if the agency hopes to expand and improve the system.

The agency will almost certainly, however, have to raise fares more sharply than it did a few months ago if it hopes to keep up with the rate of inflation and balance the operating budget. DiNapoli, in his analysis, reported that the MTA has proposed another 5 percent fare increase for January 1, 2010. That said, it is very unlikely that the MTA will look to fare increases or fare backed-bonds to fund the Capital Plan.

Increased support from the city, state and federal government is always on the MTA's agenda. Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer had made it clear that he planned to fully fund the MTA's Capital Plan, although he never offered details on how he would do that. Paterson has been less explicit, though there are rumors in advocacy circles that another transportation bond act may be in the state's future.

On the federal level, in his State of the MTA Address, Sander pointed out that China spends 9 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure, while India aims to boost its spending from 3.5 percent to 8 percent in the coming years. The United States spends less than 1 percent of its GDP on infrastructure.

"Even after Albany and City Hall resume making significant contributions to the MTA Capital Program, it still won't be enough," Sander said, "We must join other national transit providers to persuade Washington to pitch in and provide a much higher level of federal support."

Increasing transit-dedicated taxes and fees will certainly be a big part of the equation. The economic slowdown, though, makes this a daunting task. The MTA will require increases in several transit-dedicated taxes and fees like the mortgage recording tax, the petroleum business tax and vehicle and license registration fees, to simply compensate for money lost, let alone to generate billions of more dollars.

Looking for Money

The heart of any Capital Plan funding strategy, then, in large part may be focused on identifying new transit-dedicated revenue streams. A 2004 report by the Regional Plan Association titled "Financing Options for the MTA Capital Program" looks at possible sources of revenue. It considers a few possibilities

--Traffic pricing, such as the congestion pricing plan: With the State Assembly having refused to even vote on Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to charge a fee to drive in Manhattan during the work week, this seems off the table for the time being. However, according to Marc Shaw, former chair of the Traffic Mitigation Commission, Ravitch has not taken the option off the table.

--A gas tax: As gasoline prices have risen, some politicians, notably presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, have called for doing away with the gas tax. Raising it in the current political climate appears unlikely.

--A commuter or payroll tax: The commuter tax, which raised $325 million the last full year it was collected, has popped its unpopular head out of the water repeatedly since it was drowned in 1999 by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for New York City, the Queens Civic Congress and others have at various times all floated the idea, but the general consensus is that the commuter tax is a non-starter in Albany.

Acknowledging this, the Regional Plan Association report suggests that the commuter tax could be refashioned into a mobility fee or payroll tax that draws on more earners and employers and is openly dedicated to transit. Based on 2000 income data, a 1 percent tax on wages after the first $50,000 could generate $820 million annually.

Looking Ahead

Tough times for the MTA mean tough times for the city and tough times necessitate tough measures. That could mean anything from service cuts to further construction delays to double-digit fare hikes to layoffs.

For now, we'll have to wait and see what revenue-generating proposals Ravitch's Commission recommends, what the 2009-2014 Capital Plan looks like and whether the economy warms, cools or stays where it is.

Despite the tough times, seasoned transit advocates are hopeful. "I'd be deeply depressed if we hadn't managed" to fund the capitol plan since 1982 said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign. "If there is anyone who can find the funds needed to keep fixing transit now, it's Ravitch."

Graham T. Beck is the managing editor of Transportation Alternatives' StreetBeat, and a freelance writer. He lives in Brooklyn.