Are bicycle-powered pedicabs just a diversion for tourists or are they a legitimate form of mass transit? Mayor Michael Bloomberg's veto of a bill to regulate the city's pedicabs has kept alive debate about the role of the fledging bicycle taxi industry in the city.

A LEGISLATIVE COMPROMISE

The New York City Council recently passed a bill that represented a compromise between pedicab owners and powerful opponents of the industry, primarily taxi, hotel and restaurant owners.

The bill would establish a cap of 325 pedicabs in the city and require the cabs have $2 million in liability insurance, that drivers be licensed and that vehicles undergo inspection. The legislation would also ban the use of electric motors to help with pedaling and authorize the police department to restrict pedicabs from Midtown during the holiday season and from any Midtown street for up to 14 days at other times.

Pedicab owners supported insurance and other safety regulations to maintain standards and prevent pedicab owners who are not paying insurance from charging lower rates to the detriment of those owners who are insured. The owners, however, opposed the cap on the number of pedicabs, as well as the bans on operation during the holiday season and the use of electric assists.

THE MAYOR'S SURPISE VETO

Ironically, it was not pedicab owners but their drivers who prompted the mayor to veto the bill.

Drivers testified at what was expected to be a routine bill-signing ceremony that they feared losing their jobs – seemingly with good reason since the current number of pedicabs, estimated at up to 500, probably exceeds the new cap. After hearing from drivers, Bloomberg surprised everyone by declining to sign the bill and on March 31 announced his veto. During his weekly radio show, the mayor commented, "Let the free marketplace decide." He suggested that a cap of 500 would satisfy him.

It is not clear whether the City Council, which adopted the bill with than the two-thirds majority needed to override a mayoral veto, will vote to do so.

The New York Sun reported that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn will force through an override, while the Village Voice quotes the bill's sponsor, Councilmember Leroy Comrie, as saying the bill's fate is undecided. An override vote - if there is one - is expected to take place at the council meeting scheduled for April 23.

If the council overrides the mayor's veto, the bill would formalize the city's acceptance of the pedicab industry as part of the Midtown landscape while limiting the vehicles’ numbers and potentially restricting their operation during the most congested -- and most lucrative -- times of the year.

PEDICABS VS. TAXIS

The council’s regulatory scheme for pedicabs is similar in some ways to the long-established taxicab medallion system. The number of medallion cabs is limited by law to about 13,000 vehicles and the industry is subject to an extensive set of requirements for insurance and driver licensing.

Yet the medallion cabs are never banned from Midtown -- in fact, they are allowed special access to some bus lanes and provided with taxi stands at key locations.

Insurance requirements are actually lower for medallion cabs than for pedicabs under the bill, an ironic contrast given that cabs can travel at much higher speeds and are thus more likely to be involved in accidents causing severe injury.

Proponents of the bill say that the cap, insurance requirements and licensing regulations are important to prevent pedicabs from further clogging traffic, to protect against unfair competition with taxicabs for street hails, and to protect pedestrian safety. This view essentially sees pedicabs as an entertainment option for tourists. It thus makes sense to limit their number and operations to prevent the pedicabs from interfering with other users of Manhattan streets.

ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION

Pedicab proponents paint them as a fast, safe and environmentally and passenger-friendly means of transportation.

Gregg Zukowski, a pedicab owner and driver, wrote in Gotham Gazette last year that because of its ability to weave through traffic, a pedicab can zip from Grand Central to Penn Station in eight minutes, while a taxicab could take 20 or 30 minutes. Pedicab drivers say that many of their riders are New Yorkers who value the faster ride or who cannot find a medallion taxi.

With the exception of one accident in which a private bus struck a pedicab in 2001, there have apparently been no major accidents involving pedicabs since their advent in New York City a decade ago. With pedal power, pedicabs do not contribute to either smog or global warming.

Leaders of several city transportation and environmental groups emphasized the environmental implications of the issue in a letter urging council members not to override the mayor’s veto. “If you are truly committed to protecting our environment and heading off environmental catastrophes such as those highlighted in the Academy Award winning film An Inconvenient Truth, you simply cannot vote in favor of legislation that is specifically designed to undermine evolving green industries,” the letter said.

Perhaps the greatest appeal of pedicabs is their passenger-friendly image, created by drivers who engage in conversation and will point out the sights along the way to tourists.

Pedicab owners implicitly point to a future Manhattan streetscape with fewer cars and cabs and more eco-friendly modes of transportation. Pedicabs would be part of this, joined by pedestrians, bicycles and clean-air buses, all of which use less street space per passenger mile traveled than cars or conventional cabs. There might be additions to this new transportation list; Vespa, the manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters, recently released a study that concluded that substituting motor scooters for cars would reduce global warming vehicle emissions in the city.

The council's bill does allow for changes in the future. The cap on the number of pedicabs would expire two years after the bill becomes law, unless the council renews it. Thus, neither this bill (nor a replacement that simply increased the numerical cap) really resolves the place of pedicabs in the city. The bill does take important steps toward making sure pedicabs are safe. But it does not settle the thornier issues about who should be using the city's congested streets and for what purposes.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 

Traffic congestion has been the focus of much recent discussion, but parking actually gets more complaints, according to a Tri-State Transportation Campaign public opinion survey , which last year found that more New York City residents consider parking to be a problem in their neighborhood than traffic. This was true even though only about one-half the survey respondents own a car. Finding a parking space is so difficult that some motorists have arrangements to sell their parking space to their neighbor or corner merchant when they leave their space in the morning.

Parking issues and possible solutions were highlighted during the first week of March by the visit to New York of UCLA professor Donald Shoup, author of “The High Cost of Free Parking.” In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Shoup was hailed as a “parking rock star" by Paul White of Transportation Alternatives, the host for his visit, not the usual description for a 68-year-old professor of urban planning.

Shoup proposes that cities raise curbside parking fees on commercial strips to achieve an equilibrium between parking supply and demand, in the same way that private garages raise rates for off-street parking if they find their garages are consistently filled. Shoup says that metered fees should be set at the “lowest price necessary” to maintain a 15 percent vacancy rate at curb spaces, a rate at which there is likely to be an open space on every block at all times. The rate might vary by time of day and would certainly vary by location. Areas with high demand for parking would have the highest meter rates. Tony neighborhoods in London, which follow this approach, charge $8 an hour for parking.

Benefits Of Increased Parking Fees

What are the benefits of this proposal? Shoup emphasizes that the incremental fee revenue generated by increased parking fees should be dedicated to fixing sidewalks, steam cleaning them every other month, planting trees, installing street furniture and otherwise enhancing the streetscape. These improvements might be managed by local business improvement districts (BIDs), thus creating a powerful constituency to ensure that the parking fees are collected and the revenue spent as intended. Shoup points to Old Pasadena, California, as an example of the success of this approach. This once-derelict downtown adopted market rate pricing for its parking and is now a thriving retail district that draws visitors from throughout Southern California.

Market rate pricing for curb parking would also reduce traffic. Shoup points out that a lot of traffic is generated not by motorists going to their destination but by motorists who have arrived at their destination and are searching for a parking spot. Various surveys in New York have shown that between 15 percent and 45 percent of traffic on the city’s streets consists of cars searching for a parking space. Freeing up spaces would greatly reduce the mileage spent cruising for parking, as well as reduce double-parking by motorists who cannot find a space, and thus reduce traffic and air pollution throughout the city.

Shoup suggests that the city could use technology to help make the program work effectively. Parking meters can be networked so that city officials know which spaces are currently being paid for. Devices implanted in the pavement can detect when a vehicle is occupying the space, so that parking enforcement can be directed to areas with high violation rates. These devices can also be used to track occupancy rates so that city officials know when to adjust parking fees to maintain a 15 percent vacancy rate. Devices that motorists hang inside their car windows can be used to pay for parking, doing away with the need to stock up on quarters and enabling drivers to pay only for the time they are actually parked.

Objections to Higher Curbside Parking Fees

Shoup’s ideas expand to auto parking the principles the city has already applied to commercial parking in Midtown Manhattan. The city’s commercial parking program charges delivery vehicles escalating curbside fees for spaces that were formerly free. The program has won the support of delivery companies by making it easier for delivery drivers to find a space and by greatly reducing double-parking.

Yet despite the success of this approach for commercial parking, the idea of higher fees for cars to park on commercial strips meets with resistance by some residents and merchants. People do not exactly welcome having to pay more for something that was once free or very cheap. They are particularly concerned about the impact of higher fees on lower-income drivers and on local merchants.

Another objection involves parking fine revenue. If there were less double-parking or less illegal parking, would not this cost the city government a considerable portion of the $550 million in parking fine revenue it takes in every year?

A third objection focuses on the spillover effects of higher parking fees. Won’t drivers simply divert to side streets where parking is only subject to alternate side regulation, thus transplanting but not reducing the cruising mileage? Or won’t the availability of metered spaces attract more people to drive and park, thus offsetting the reduction in cruising?

Answering The Objections

There are counterarguments to these objections. For example, government survey data show that only two percent of shopping trips by lower-income people involve driving to the store and parking at a metered space. Shoppers are far more likely to walk or use the bus or subway than to drive; those who do drive primarily park in free off-street lots. Thus, far more lower-income shoppers would benefit through streetscape improvements than would be affected by higher parking fees.

The concern about fine revenue seems premature. This program would have to be very widely and very successfully implemented before there is any chance that parking reform turns parking enforcement personnel into the mythical Maytag repairman with nothing to do.

Since parking fees will promote turnover and thus increase the effective capacity of metered spaces, and ensure that a metered space is virtually always available, it seems far more likely to reduce cruising than increase it.

More broadly, maybe the real “problem” with Shoup’s ideas is that they seem too good to be true. Shoup claims that market rate pricing of metered spaces will be good for everyone – motorists who can depend on finding a spot, merchants who will have a higher flow of customers because parking spaces turnover more quickly, bus riders and other drivers because there will be less traffic and less double parking, and everyone who walks the sidewalks because revenues will be applied to streetscape improvements.

But -- there is no such thing as a free lunch, right? Let’s find the fatal flaw: it’s inequitable, it’ll clog traffic on the side streets, the city’s treasury will suffer, the plan will attract more drivers.

New Yorkers’ sharp-witted instincts might be applied more usefully to the dysfunctional operation of the street space that we live with every day. Who in their right mind would design a system that guarantees that a substantial portion of traffic is simply from motorists driving in circles? Why give a break to people who want to park all day instead of opening up spaces to a stream of people with shopping or other errands? Why should city officials collect five times more revenue from parking violations than from parking fees? Why does it make sense for landlords to charge market rate rents on one side of the sidewalk but for the city to vastly under-price the real estate it owns on the other side? Since motorists are almost entirely from the upper ends of the income scale, why is equity trumped as an objection to market rate curb pricing?

Shoup believes that none of this makes any sense. He thinks that once people think through the issue, they will see the merits of applying market principles that are so familiar for most goods and services to the problem of finding a parking space in New York

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 

Angry pedicab drivers booed and hissed from the balcony at the city council's biweekly stated meeting on February 28th. What was being voted on was important to them. Other actions were important to nightclubs, and to tax preparers and their clients, and to those who care about civil rights. Indeed, in the end, the council passed eight new bills and two resolutions, including one that Councilmember Lew Fidler described as the most important resolution he had ever voted on, and Councilmember Albert Van described as "the beginning of a movement."

PEDICAB REGULATIONS

Over the last four years, the number of pedicabs on the street has more than tripled, to about 350 on any given night, according to the New York Pedicab Drivers Association. These oversized tricycles carry a driver in front and up to three passengers, and are most common in Midtown, the Village, and areas between. Increasingly, tourists and residents alike are seeing the vehicles as a novel and speedy way to get around - Councilmember Rosie Mendez says she regularly rides one because a knee problem makes it uncomfortable to walk. But others complain that pedicabs add to traffic congestion, and need to be regulated because of safety concerns.

"Every other vehicle that transports people for hire on the streets of New York -- cabs, black cars, carriage horse drivers -- all of those vehicles and their drivers operate in a regulatory structure," said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. "The pedicab drivers have no structure at all."

With the mayor's blessing, the council passed a bill ( Intro 331-A) that would regulate this industry for the first time. This bill would cap the number of pedicabs allowed to operate in the city at 325, and make drivers disclose the methods by which they determine fares. Drivers would be required to obtain licenses and purchase insurance. The pedicabs themselves would have to meet certain safety standards such as having lights, seatbelts, and brakes that met certain requirements. The bill would also ban the use of motors on pedicabs, such as the small "electric assist" motors that some drivers now use to get an additional push.

Pedicab drivers themselves have said they want some rules governing their industry because its recent growth requires quality control. But drivers attending the stated meeting did not like the regulations they got. A loud group voiced their discontent on the steps of City Hall before the meeting, then moved to the balcony of the chamber, where they cheered for council members who agreed with them and booed and hissed at those who didn't.

The critics took issue with the idea capping the number of pedicabs in the city. The drivers present estimate their numbers at about 500 citywide, meaning that many would lose their right to operate under the new regulations. A cap would unnecessarily distort the market, they said. Some also argued that the city is asking for pedicab drivers to spend an unreasonably large amount on insurance. That, coupled with the cost of the other improvements, will make their businesses unprofitable, argued Mega Martinez, a pedicab driver in attendance.

Several council members had harsh words for the bill, echoing the criticisms made by the drivers.

"This is supposed to be a capitalist society --- even though I am a socialist -- and there is supposed to be free enterprise and competition," said Charles Barron, to the delight of the crowd in the balcony. "The taxi and limousine businesses want to put the pedicabs out of business."

Supporters of the bill responded by noting that the cap will be reconsidered in 18 months. The council will have to renew the bill six months after that.

"Is 325 the right cap? I have no idea," said Councilmember Oliver Koppell, who voted for the legislation. He said the cap would actually help the complaining pedicab drivers by cutting down on their competition, allowing them to increase their income and offset the increased costs associated with regulation.

The bill passed by a vote of 38 to 7. Council members Tony Avella, Charles Barron, Letitia James, Rosie Mendez, Hiram Monserrate, Annabel Palma, and Albert Vann voted against it. Four more council members abstained - Gale Brewer, Alan Gerson, Diane Mealy, and James Sanders.

NIGHTLIFE BILLS

The council also passed three laws and a resolution related to nightlife safety, a focus of the council since Imette St. Guillen was abducted and murdered while she was having a night on the town about a year ago.

Intro 442-a- would require clubs with cabaret licenses to install security cameras at all entrances and exits. Speaker Quinn said this was intended to serve as a deterrent and also would provide evidence in the case of a crime. Several council members expressed their concern over privacy issues, particularly for gay and lesbian patrons who may be especially wary of being captured on film at certain establishments. Still, the bill passed unanimously.

Intro 440-a require establishments with multiple or serious violations to hire safety monitors instead of being shut down. These monitors would cooperate with police to try to improve the clubs' behavior. Critics of this bill worried that it would be used to harass legitimate social clubs in minority neighborhoods. The bill passed by a vote of 46 to 3, with council members Charles Barron, Letitia James, and Diane Mealy voting no.

Intro 484-a would give the city the power to shut down stores that sell fake IDs under the city's nuisance abatement law. Another bill, Intro 515-a, would have also used the noise abatement law to close down bars or clubs where multiple violent crimes have taken place, but the council couldn't reach an agreement on the shape of the bill, and the vote was delayed.

Finally, Councilmember Melinda Katz sponsored a resolution calling on the state to address clubs that require patrons to buy entire bottles in order to enter. So-called bottle service, Katz argues, means leaving an unattended bottle of alcohol at a table, making it easier for underage patrons to drink and encouraging customers to drink excessively. She introduced a resolution that would have asked the state to ban bottle service altogether, but it never made it to a full council vote. Instead, the council passed a resolution on February 28 asking the state to require a waiter to oversee bottle service, rather than just plunking the bottle on the table.

"Clearly we don't have the power to pass these things in the city council, so we need the state legislature to step up," said Katz. The resolution passed unanimously.

Speaker Quinn stressed that these laws will be followed by additional measures concerning nightlife. Members of the council said they would continue to push for tougher restrictions on fake IDs, and would consider the industry's request that City Hall establish a mayor's office of nightlife, based on the office of film and broadcasting.

Another measure mentioned was paid detail -- when off-duty police officers are posted outside clubs at the owners' expense, armed and in uniform. Industry representatives are in favor of such a plan, saying it will improve security. The police department, however, is resisting, arguing that it may create a conflict of interest for the officers involved.

THE "N-WORD"

On the last day of Black History Month, the council unanimously passed a symbolic moratorium on the "n-word."

The effort was spearheaded by Councilmember Leroy Comrie, who was distressed at the casual use of the word by teenagers in his Queens district as they gathered after school. He hooked into a movement to ban the slur that his staff found on the Internet. Over the last month, Comrie has written letters to the Grammies and BET asking them not to feature hip hop artists who use the word (he has not heard back). Over 30 middle schools in the city participated in an essay contest where students described what the word meant to them; the 17 winners were given free tickets to the Universal Soul Circus.

Comrie's original intent was simply to introduce the legislation as a way to spark discussion at a time that people are talking about black history. The council has been mocked for its resolutions in the past, and council members now say they are reticent to pass what are essentially statements of official opinion. But the momentum that has built up around Comrie's campaign warranted an exception, said numerous council members. Councilmember John Liu called the slur "the vilest word in the English language," and Councilmember Lew Fidler said the resolution was the most important one the council has considered in his five-year tenure.

Comrie takes pains to note the symbolic nature of the resolution. Some others have called for the word to be removed from the dictionary, but he believes it should stay there for historical purposes.

"I'm not interested in creating an opportunity to eliminate words," he said. "That's a slippery slope to go down."

WETLANDS, TAX SCHEMERS, AND $1.9 BILLION

Several other pieces of legislation also passed the council by unanimous votes.

Intro 505 extends the life of the city's Wetlands Task Force, which is examining the feasibility of transferring city-owned wetlands to the Parks Department for preservation.

The Tax Preparation Consumer Bill of Rights (Intro 81-a) would require tax preparers to give their customers information on fees, interest rates, and other "unfavorable charges." Last year, Earned Income Tax Credit recipients - workers whose income is so low that they qualify for tax relief - spent $325 million last year for tax preparation, according to Councilmember Eric Gioia, the bill's primary sponsor.

The council also passed a resolution (Resolution 729) known as a budget modification, which officially acknowledges that the city has $1.9 billion in unexpected tax revenue this year. Speaker Quinn said that City Hall would use the money to prepay expenses in fiscal 2008, which starts July 1. But she also called for the state to change the law that prohibits city officials from putting money away for lean years in the future.

"We would be in a more thoughtful place right now in city government if we could make a decision whether to prepay expenses or to take those funds and put them aside in a long term rainy day account," she said.

Other members said that the extra surplus indicated that it was time to re-examine the city's tax code. A recent report by the Independent Budget Office showed that New Yorkers carry a much heavier tax burden than residents of any other large city in the country. Councilmember Fidler called for a further reworking of the city's property tax system. Republican Minority Leader James Oddo said officials should look at income taxes, the major reason for the disparity.

"Let's bring in experts" to examine the fiscal implications of a cut, said Oddo. "They can pooh-pooh it, they can praise it, they can say it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I think it's incumbent on us to analyze it."

 

Transportation plays a central role in all three of the central challenges that Mayor Michael Bloomberg said face the city over the next quarter century, as he explained during a speech that outlined his plan for New York in 2030. New York City faces:

• the addition of a million more city residents (a projection that some dispute, according to the land use topic page by Tom Angotti) -- How will a million more New Yorkers move about the city without overtaxing the roads and subways?

• an aging infrastructure -- How will the aging infrastructure of roads, bridges and subways be brought to a state of good repair?

• environmental risks -- How can motor vehicle emissions be reduced to reach environmental sustainability goals?

As the city administration scurries to publish a detailed “sustainability” plan in March, it faces a challenge all its own: How can Bloomberg make his long-term plan have lasting impact when he has less than three years left in his term of office? Will the new sustainability plan be itself sustainable into the next mayor’s term?

BIG IDEAS, DIFFERENT CHALLENGES

The mayor and his chief aid working on the plan, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, are clearly attracted to big ideas. Doctoroff championed bringing the Olympics to New York long before he imagined being a City Hall insider. Bloomberg has successfully pushed for taking control of the city schools. Bloomberg also sought and achieved major rezoning on Manhattan’s far west side and the Brooklyn waterfront that will shape development of these areas for years after he leaves office.

There is no shortage of big ideas in transportation -- subway expansions…. congestion pricing in Manhattan …a freight rail tunnel connecting Brooklyn to the mainland United States. Getting big ideas implemented in transportation presents different challenges than in schools or zoning, however, with important implications for how to design a successful approach to transportation issues.

Possible Last-Minute Derailment

For one thing, to quote Yogi Berra, it’s not over ‘till it’s over. With control of the schools or rezoning, once the Legislature or City Council acts, the deed is done. Change may come slowly to the school system, but the mayor will be in control. Development may take many years on the west side, but the new zoning will continue to encourage it.

Big ideas in transportation, in contrast, can be derailed at the last minute. The Second Avenue subway will not be assured of construction until the financing is committed. If the mayor proposes congestion pricing, his successor could scuttle the scheme if it is not actually implemented by the end of Bloomberg’s term in 2009.

Vehement Defense Of Status Quo

Another big difference between zoning and transportation is the prominence of defenders of the status quo. The West Side rezoning, for example, affects relatively few residents or offices. With transportation, changes to the use of roads are most critical where there are the most users: in the Manhattan business district, for example, and on congested highways and roads throughout the city. There are plenty of people, some within the mayor’s own administration, who will vehemently defend maintaining the chaotic status quo.

Reliance On Other Levels Of Government

A final major difference is that the mayor controls only pieces of the transportation infrastructure. He does not control the subways, bus operations or state-owned highways. Yet his goal of reducing commute times, for example, necessitates close cooperation and coordination with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

THREE SUGGESTIONS

Given the nature of the challenges, how should the mayor proceed with the transportation components of his sustainability plan? Let me offer three big ideas: fix the skewed economic incentives to drive, implement targeted transit improvements throughout the city, and make more efficient use of the limited street space in congested areas.

Create Economic Disincentives To Drive

Transportation can very much benefit from the mayor and Doctoroff’s penchant for big ideas. Current economic incentives are skewed in favor of driving since motorists do not incur the cost of delay they create for others, and many do not even pay for the bridges or tunnels they traverse or the value of the real estate they park on. Too many motorists drive simply because it IS more comfortable and convenient, and they create real costs for the city’s economy and quality of life.

The economic signals need to fixed. That means congestion pricing for the Manhattan business district. Pricing should be applied as narrowly as possible, affecting only those motorists who by driving at the busiest times and places most contribute to slowing down everyone else. I’ve outlined a plan for peak period charges inbound to Manhattan in the morning peak period, outbound in the evening peak period, and for driving anywhere in the business district midday.

The mayor has expressed worries that congestion pricing is too unpopular to get it approved. My research shows that a targeted plan, combined with other steps I’ll describe below, can win public support on the basis of being effective and fair and offering choices to motorists. Congestion pricing is a big idea which has been successful in London, Stockholm and Singapore. If tailored to New York’s needs, it can create a legacy for the mayor in transportation in New York.

The main problem with congestion pricing is the tendency to think that this one big idea is sufficient. New Yorkers are actually very sophisticated about the multifaceted nature of the traffic problem. They know that traffic congestion has many causes, and that it’s a citywide problem, so congestion pricing by itself is not enough.

Target Improvements Throughout The City

What else needs to be done? The key to making congestion pricing work is to bolster the public transportation system, especially in areas where many people use their cars. That means far better express bus service from outlying areas of the city. It means figuring out how to make the commuter railroads a meaningful part of the city’s transit system. It means adding options for drivers such as park and ride lots. And it means spreading pricing strategies outside Manhattan, in particular, through tolled express lanes on outer borough highways.

The growth of the city also means adding rail capacity to handle the additional riders. While the Second Avenue subway and #7 extension will add new track mileage to the system, cost makes system expansion an inherently limited approach. Through technology such as computer-based train control systems, however, the effective passenger capacity of existing lines can be enlarged by increasing the number of trains that can be operated through the system. The MTA is slowly implementing these new train control systems. Speeding up that implementation could expand capacity of overcrowded lines in a matter of years instead of decades.

All of this will take money, lots of money, and that’s where the second big idea comes in. The mayor will need to make a grand deal with the MTA and Port Authority on how the congestion fees are collected, who gets them, what it pays for and how the use of the money is guaranteed for the promised purposes. That grand deal would be another Bloomberg legacy.

In the most congested parts of the city from the Manhattan business district to downtown Brooklyn to Flushing, a complete package of transportation improvements should include giving priority to the most efficient uses of the public space. New York needs to accommodate growth not only underground, but also above ground. That means priority for buses, pedestrians and cyclists. The city Transportation Department declares in broad policy terms its support for new paradigms in looking at these issues, but in practice it is either slow to implement changes, or lets its historical mission of moving motor vehicles hold sway. The joint city/MTA project to implement five bus rapid transit lines, a noble effort, has been slowed by traffic engineers worried about the impact on traffic movement.

Finding the right balance is difficult, but studies aimed at finding that balance too easily lead to paralysis by analysis. The city has shown it knows a better way, as when it has implemented traffic plans for a limited period such as during the holiday season, and during the transit strike, or in a limited area such as the initial Midtown commercial parking Muni-meter program. The genius of these plans is that they are either temporary or limited in scope, so they do not undergo the time-consuming reviews to which more ambitious plans are subject.

Set In Motion Small But Efficient Steps

The mayor’s sustainability plan could expand this approach. Why not try some seemingly good ideas on a pilot basis? Measure the outcomes. Then decide whether and where to apply them permanently. Armed with real-life results, the required studies should go faster and be more credible.

A host of initiatives are amenable to this approach:

• Raise the price of metered parking to encourage turnover and expand the availability of on street parking.

• Try to make bus lanes actually exclusive to buses by installing “soft” barriers like bollards and truncated domes and “quick curbs.”

• Beef up enforcement of traffic rules like don’t-block-the-box and, for taxis, pick up and drop off only at the curb.

• Close Broadway to traffic on Sundays in the summer.

• Even restrict Broadway traffic throughout the week (my favorite idea is to alternate one-way northbound with one-way southbound operation, allowing local traffic but eliminating through traffic.)

The pilots could also lead into some of the bigger projects that are still on the drawing boards. Take, for example, the well-known bottlenecks on First and Second Avenues where the M15 bus idles away much of the day. Why wait for the end of a multi-year study of bus rapid transit to deal with this? Pilot a truly exclusive bus lane to speed the buses through that morass. Measure the results, make adjustments as necessary, and fold the changes into the bigger bus rapid transit program.

So the third big idea in the mayor’s sustainability plan should be to set in motion a series of smaller steps that will gain a momentum all their own. As New Yorkers see the benefits of these pilots, they will demand them for their own neighborhood. It’s a viral approach to transportation improvements that worked with bus rapid transit and high-tech traffic signals in Los Angeles. It’s also an approach that can make the mayor’s sustainability plan self-sustaining.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 

By Gale Brewer

Two pedestrians were killed in my district on the same day last October, one by a city bus, the other by a truck. When I arrived at the scene, I was immediately struck by how the two intersections where these tragedies took place – Amsterdam and West 74th, and Broadway and West 73rd – exemplify the problem of traffic and congestion in our city. They are thronged with vehicles day and night, at levels that seem only to increase. One the one hand, some say this shows how New York is thriving; on the other, so much traffic causes inconvenience, harm to the economy and the environment and, on some days, death.

Eight in ten New Yorkers see traffic jams on city streets as a problem; half believe congestion is already unacceptable. More people are driving, and traffic in the central business district is higher than it was before 9/11, according to the Department of Transportation. Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall says that this is not a crisis, but rather a "challenge." I do believe traffic congestion is at crisis levels. To confront this, I have introduced legislation that would require city officials to set concrete goals for reducing its ill effects, and then measure how well they are doing to meet those goals.

THE COST OF CONGESTION

Increased congestion is a well-known drain on both citizens and economies. It is worse here than almost anywhere else in the country. According to the Census Bureau, New Yorkers endured the second-longest commute in the nation in 2006, and spent an average of one hundred hours a year just getting to work.

The Department of Transportation reports that, while more people are using private vehicles, there has also been a increase in the use of public transportation. This is good news. But public transportation is not immune to traffic congestion, despite city officials' attempts to improve bus lanes. As of October 2006, nine bus routes in Manhattan had average speeds below five miles per hour. The most laggard is the M14A, which crawls crosstown on 14th Street at 3.9 miles per hour – slower than most of New York’s fast-paced pedestrians.

But traffic congestion is not only about wasted time and lost productivity; congestion also degrades air quality. Motor vehicle emissions are the main contributor of hazardous air pollutants on an average day in Manhattan. Diesel emissions are known to be especially harmful, and there are many studies linking high concentrations of diesel-powered vehicles with increased respiratory disease, especially asthma. Recent studies have reported that areas of the Bronx with a high volume of diesel-powered trucks are experiencing almost epidemic levels of asthma, especially in children.

There is a way to ease such damage. A well-cited study from Atlanta reports that when the Atlanta Olympic Games prompted the city to reduce its auto use by 22.5 percent, asthma admissions to municipal hospitals simultaneously decreased by 41.6 percent, revealing the strong likelihood of a correlation between respiratory health and vehicle emissions.

The quality of social and cultural life in the city may also be threatened by traffic congestion. Transportation Alternatives, a non-profit group promoting biking and cycling in New York City, recently released a survey on " traffic's human toll," showing that residents in high-traffic neighborhoods, beset by unbearable noise, pollutants, and dangerous intersections, have a perception of their blocks that is more negative than residents of adjacent areas, and they also have fewer relationships with their neighbors, and spend less free time outdoors.

These conditions call for decisive action, but we must select carefully among many proposed solutions. That means getting a full picture of the issue at hand.

SETTING GOALS AND MEASURING PROGRESS

So what can be done to reduce congestion and the ills that it causes? First, we should initiate a well-publicized, open public debate on traffic congestion, and especially on its impacts on health, land use, housing, and economic development, and quality of life.

Reliable data will be critical to this informed discussion. City officials lack the basic information necessary to redress the current gridlock, much less plan for future growth, according to a recent report by transportation consultant (and Gotham Gazette columnist) Bruce Schaller. This information gap should be immediately addressed by wide public input, and studies and metrics of better design and implementation.

I have introduced New York’s “Traffic Information and Relief Bill” (Intro. 199), that if adopted by the City Council, would develop the metrics needed to set reasonable congestion relief targets. This way, city officials would have set goals in terms of congestion reduction, and clear ways to measure their performance in meeting these goals.

Under its terms, the Department of Transportation would adopt measurable goals in terms of commute time, pollution and noise reduction. They would constitute the core of annual performance measurements: the Department of Transportation would report twice a year to the mayor’s office and the City Council on its traffic relief efforts and achievements. The updates would also be readily accessible on New York City’s public website. The adoption of such good government practices for an urgent problem like congestion should be a standard practice of the city, an objective shared by Mayor Bloomberg in his PLANYC 2030 sustainability plan.

In addition to measuring progress on primary goals, collecting this information would give officials a better picture of the overall, helping us improve safety conditions for bikers and pedestrians by revealing weaknesses in traffic enforcement, or by telling us where to create protected bike lanes and adjust pedestrian crossing times.

CHANGES WE CAN BEGIN MAKING TODAY

Traffic relief must become a top priority for New York’s sustainability and development. We already know many incremental changes that could be started on immediately, forming part of a strategy for long-term traffic relief:

• Better street design is key, especially as the city’s senior citizens and the disabled are increasing; they will need improved street safety and access strategies.
• Larger, cleaner sidewalks with increased numbers of curb cuts are reasonable expectations for all our citizens, and have a direct impact on street safety.
• Encouraging office buildings to set aside space for bike parking, providing safe bike parking elsewhere, and creating and maintaining genuinely safe and dedicated bicycle lanes would doubtlessly foster bike riding.

Such measures should not be underestimated. While they will not alleviate the massive congestion that defines life at the city’s core, they are achievable now, cost little, and will involve citizens where they live and work. They are a simple and practical way to engage the public, to make congestion issues an everyday concern. They can show the way toward a long-term, more comprehensive approach to congestion and the city’s wellbeing.

Gale A. Brewer represents the Upper West Side in the City Council. Fabrice Aubert, a policy aide to the council member, assisted in writing this article.

With the sale of $2 billion in bonds in December, the financing for construction of the West Side extension to the No. 7 subway line is in place, and construction will begin later this year. The project will extend the No. 7 line from Times Square to a new subway station near the Javits Center at Eleventh Avenue and West 34th Street. An intermediate station, at Tenth Avenue and West 41st Street, has been discussed but is not currently funded.

The Number 7 extension was once merely one item on a laundry list of possible transit improvements. Now it has leapt past such long-discussed mega projects as the Second Avenue Subway in the journey from planners’ dream to reality. What happened to bring this about? What are the lessons for getting other big transportation projects done?

One key to the No. 7 extension’s fast progress involved the financing. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, champions of the project, recognized early on that the 7 extension would go nowhere if it had to compete for funding with the Second Avenue subway, connection of the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, airport rail access projects, a new tunnel from New Jersey, replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge and other mega projects. Thus, they developed a novel funding method. The bonds issued last month, and another set of bonds to be issued in several years, will be paid off using payments made to City Hall in lieu of taxes by new residential, retail and office development on the West Side, payments for development rights in the eastern part of Hudson rail yards themselves, and from other taxes collected from the area. Having its own funding source was immensely important to bringing the 7 extension along.

Is this funding approach transferable to other projects? The city’s budget director, Mark Page, was skeptical when he addressed this question at a Bond Buyer’s conference in December. Page cited the unique circumstances of the far West Side development – the combination of the need for office space, proximity to Midtown and public investment in the area – as casting doubt that this financing plan could become a model to be replicated elsewhere in the city.

Part Of A Larger Goal

Other projects are indeed unlikely to replicate this funding structure. Yet there is a larger point that bears attention. The 7 extension was seen as critical to a bigger plan that involved development of the far West Side and Javits Center expansion. One lesson is thus that it is easier to get transportation projects to move forward when they are linked to broader goals.

A second lesson is that the benefits of accomplishing those goals – in this case, office, commercial and residential development of a declining industrial area – helping finance the transportation project itself. This is a critical point. Traditional sources of transportation funding are fuel-related taxes, motor vehicle fees, sales taxes, federal funds and voter-approved bonds. Using these sources, the beneficiary of the project pays, but so does everyone else.

What if the beneficiary were to pay? What if, for example, increased property taxes were used to finance a portion of the cost of the Second Avenue Subway? What if a similar arrangement were considered for downtown property that would benefit from direct rail access to JFK?

How would that work?

Funding Approaches

One approach is called tax increment financing (for more on TIFs, see this Independent Budget Office report). The problem with TIFs is defining the very generalized benefits from projects such as improved commuter rail access to the East Side. How do you identify and capture a portion of the flow of financial benefits?

Another approach to innovative financing involves various forms of public-private partnerships. One local example is the International Arrival Terminal at JFK Airport, where a private company invested $1.4 billion to construct a new passenger terminal in exchange for a 25-year concession. The private operator will collect user fees from the airlines using the terminal. Another rather spectacular example was a concession agreement for the Skyway Bridge in Chicago, which generated $1.83 billion for the City of Chicago. Officials in New Jersey are discussing such partnerships for the New Jersey Turnpike.

The State Transportation Department has pushed for “Transportation Development Partnerships,” which allow private investment in infrastructure projects although the public agency retains ownership. State Transportation Department staff have suggested that Transportation Development Partnerships could be used to build new highway lanes, replace the Tappan Zee Bridge or build new rail service. Such private-sector involvement is currently prohibited under state law, however.

Although the discussions do not explicitly make this point, under any private sector investment users of the facility will have to pay tolls or other charges in order for the private entity to recoup its investment.

Acting On Opportunities, Not Reacting To Problems

Another lesson from the 7 extension involves the merits of acting on opportunities. Local government tends to be reactive to problems. The far West Side development is an excellent example of government officials – in this case, fresh from the private sector – recognizing a huge opportunity for the city. This refreshing approach could be applied in other areas. Why, for example, ask whether traffic is bad enough to institute congestion pricing (discussed here last month)? Why not ask whether there isn’t a great opportunity to improve the quality of life in New York through less traffic, less noise, less pollution, greater safety, and greater funding for transportation improvements? Thinking in terms of opportunities frames the discussion around ways of making the city better and more attractive rather than bogging down in a debate over whether we can continue to tolerate long-standing problems.

The Need To Address Risk

A final lesson from the No. 7 extension is the need to address risk. City officials guaranteed payment on the bonds, using general fund revenues if necessary. One of the final decisions to be made was the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s agreement to pay for any cost overruns that exceed $100 million, an amount that City Hall agreed to pick up. The MTA has expressed confidence that it can manage the project within budget, although the Independent Budget Office’s deputy director, George Sweeting, testified before the City Council in October that “the likelihood of costs overruns are high”, considering that construction costs are increasing at 1 percent per month.

Whether the MTA should have accepted this risk is now a moot point. The need to bear – and ultimately to manage – financial risks, however, are an inherent part of any large construction project.

So in fact, the No. 7 extension does have some lessons for other projects, particularly those in desperate need of funding, such as airport rail access, a freight tunnel under the harbor, putting the Gowanus expressway replacement underground, or the Tappan Zee Bridge.

In his State of the State address, Governor Eliot Spitzer mentioned reform of the Wicks Law, which mandates cumbersome contracting procedures and is viewed as driving up costs. It remains to be seen whether the new governor puts more far-reaching changes such as private-public partnerships on his already bulging legislative agenda.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 

In his much-anticipated speech on long-term planning for New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg laid out “10 aggressive but achievable goals” to meet the “three major challenges” of the future. One of the major challenges, he said, will be an expected explosion in population growth; one of the goals within that challenge will be to make sure traffic congestion “doesn’t bring our economy grinding to a halt.” And what would assure this? In his speech, the mayor talked about “adding to the capacity of our regional mass transit system, so that travel times stay the same – or get better.” But members of the panel discussion immediately afterwards specifically touched on whether congestion pricing – charging a fee to use congested streets or highways – should be used to provide traffic relief.

The mayor’s highlighting of the traffic issue came on the heels of two major reports, released a week earlier, on the traffic problem and congestion pricing as a potential solution.

The Partnership for New York City, a leading business group, released a report estimating that traffic congestion costs the region’s economy over $13 billion per year and over 37,000 lost jobs. The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, released a study, (which I was commissioned to conduct) which concluded that congestion pricing need not be the political non-starter that many people think it is, if it is carefully crafted to target the times and places where congestion is most severe.

Presentations on these two reports and an ensuing discussion at a Manhattan Institute forum are ably summarized in Streetsblog and the overall issues in Tom Angotti’s Land Use column on Gotham Gazette.

Meanwhile, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer called on the city to apply for a federal grant to study congestion pricing, following in the footsteps of San Francisco. Councilmember Gayle Brewer announced that she plans to introduce a congestion pricing bill in the City Council to begin a public discussion of the issue.

Several newspapers weighed in with editorials, all saying much the same thing – it’s worth considering.

As the focus on congestion pricing intensified, pricing opponents stepped up their efforts to argue against a pricing plan. A newly formed group called the Committee to Keep New York City Congestion-Tax Free is being led by former Council member Walter McCaffrey. Queens Council member David Weprin has also been an outspoken opponent.

Opponents believe that they have the upper hand in this debate. Indeed, there is evidence for this view. Mayor Michael Bloomberg avoided mentioning congestion pricing in his speech. He was previously quoted in the New York Times as citing political obstacles in Albany as a reason to keep pricing off the agenda. The New York Post reported that Bloomberg would only support congestion pricing if all city residents – who account for most trips into the Manhattan Central Business district – were exempt.

Yet to achieve traffic relief, no other measure would be as effective as congestion pricing. What counterargument do opponents of pricing put forth? At the Manhattan Institute forum, McCaffrey declared, “A tax is a tax is a tax.”

Emphasizing an anti-tax message appears to be a smart strategy. In the focus groups I moderated for the Manhattan Institute study, it was clear that if people start by focusing on congestion fees as a tax, it is almost impossible to get them to consider possible benefits that might make it a worthwhile program. Opponents may be able to short circuit the debate by defining congestion fees as simply another tax.

An assessment of their arguments shows why they may want to end the discussion with the “tax is a tax is a tax” argument. Let’s take a look at the arguments that opponents are making.

1. Charging motorists to use the East River bridges amounts to a tax.

At the Manhattan Institute forum, Weprin commented that he personally, as well as his constituents, detour to the Queensboro Bridge to avoid the Midtown Tunnel toll. The result of their choice is to clog other people’s neighborhoods with their cars in order to use a free bridge that is maintained with millions of taxpayer dollars.

The anti-congestion pricing folks are thus not so much defending their right to be tax-free as their desire to have other people pay for the bridges they use – with tax money, no less.

2. Auto commuters don’t have access to public transportation.

There is no doubt that neighborhoods in eastern Queens, southeastern Brooklyn and Staten Island that are beyond walking distance of a subway station need better transit service. Trips that some days take an hour can take two hours on other days. This problem should be a focus of any plan that includes congestion pricing.

But it is simply not true to imply that therefore, there is no access to public transportation from these outlying areas. In fact, census data show that only 28 percent of Manhattan-bound commuters who live in eastern Queens, southeastern Brooklyn or Staten Island drive to work. All the rest take the subway, express bus, Long Island Rail Road or ferry. Auto commuters do not lack access to transit; they simply choose the convenience and comfort of their cars over the inconvenience, uncertainty and hassles of transit.

3. Auto commuters are not wealthy individuals.

Defining “wealth” in New York City is highly subjective. But census data show that Manhattan-bound auto commuters from the outlying parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island earn 35 percent more than their more numerous counterparts who take the subway. Drivers may not be wealthy – but their less-wealthy neighbors would benefit from better public transportation that could be funded through congestion fees.

4. Drivers would park in neighborhoods just outside a congestion pricing zone, thus clogging streets and multiplying the parking problems in these neighborhoods.

Anyone who has searched for a parking space in downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City or the Upper East or West Sides of Manhattan would probably like to know exactly where commuters put off by a congestion fee are going to park in these neighborhoods. The only all-day parking I’ve been able to find is in garages that make a congestion fee look quite affordable.

A congestion fee is thus unlikely to attract drivers to park just outside the Manhattan central business district. A fee would, however, reduce traffic flowing through these neighborhoods since over one-half of the cars traveling in Long Island City, and nearly one-half in downtown Brooklyn, are bound for Manhattan. Reducing traffic into Manhattan would thus provide traffic relief not just in Manhattan, but also Queens and Brooklyn.

5. Congestion fees would burden people who use their car for business.

Some, perhaps. But a lot of business people would gladly trade faster traffic and more predictable travel times for a few dollars a day in congestion fees.

6. Congestion charging is a punitive measure.

This is in many ways the core of the anti-pricing argument. My focus group research found that fees are punitive – “taxes” – when there is no avoiding them. That’s why providing decent transit service to auto-heavy areas is so important. It’s also why it is important to point out that most drivers use their cars for reasons of comfort and convenience and do in fact have a transit alternative.

7. We should focus on trucks rather than autos.

Truck traffic is a problem for both motorists and for residents of neighborhoods beset by high truck traffic. Conversely, traffic jams are a problem for truckers and for businesses and consumers who pay inflated prices for goods deliveries. But the traffic problem can not be solved by dealing with trucks, which make up only a small fraction of total traffic, especially during rush hour.

8. The economic effects of the plan will be devastating.

The Partnership study is the most comprehensive and rigorous evidence of the costs of not having a pricing program in New York. The most authoritative study conducted in London found that the economic effects of congestion pricing were “broadly neutral” – even without accounting for the value of travelers’ time savings. An article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives concludes that overall benefits from the London pricing program far outweigh the costs.

9. Congestion charging in London has hurt businesses – 62 percent of businesses in London reported a drop in customers.

There was a drop in business during a recession that happened to coincide with the congestion charge. In fact, however, most businesses feel the charging scheme has been positive or neutral for their business and most firms in the charging zone support the pricing program.

10. Improvements to public transportation service to eastern Queens such as more express buses and park and ride lots are badly needed.

Agreed. But do opponents have a way to pay for it? Maybe with someone else’s taxes?

11. The answer to traffic congestion is enforcement of double and triple parked cars and taxis stopping in the middle of the street.

Yes, better enforcement is needed. Opponents can show the sincerity of their commitment by lobbying Albany to approve camera enforcement of bus lanes. But enforcement requires expensive police efforts (paid for, presumably, by someone’s taxes) and will never be sustained at a level necessary to truly dent traffic congestion.

New York could well decide that it would rather live with traffic jams, even though they are only likely to worsen and lengthen as the city grows, than take the big leap forward of congestion pricing. New Yorkers might decide that they do not really mind the way that traffic affects our quality of life, our ability to get around by bus and taxi, and the lost jobs – at least not so much as to set up an elaborate pricing apparatus. But I think it is worth having that discussion as part of the mayor’s “conversation” about the city’s future.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. 

Though it happened a year ago, the 60-hour transit strike of 2005 is still very much alive for the members of Transport Workers Union Local 100.

--They await the findings of a state arbitration panel on the terms of their new contract, terms that, under state labor law, they must accept.

--Union members are electing a president and other local officials, with results to be tallied on December 15.

--The union members remains sharply split over the effects of last years strike on their individual well-being, on the union and on the labor movement as a whole.

The strike began on December 20, 2005 as 30,000 New York City transit workers walked off their jobs, shutting down the city’s subways and Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses. The move, in violation of state law, came after the Local 100 and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority failed to reach agreement on a range of issues, including health benefits and pensions. Two days and a half later, following marathon negotiating sessions with state mediators, labor and management reached a tentative agreement. To the delight of commuters, holiday shoppers and other New Yorkers, the subways were running again.

But the accord was short-lived. Union members rejected the pact agreed to by union president Roger Toussaint and other TWU leaders by a mere seven votes. In a revote, members approved the deal, but then MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said it was too late: The offer was no longer on the take.

That sent the dispute to binding arbitration, in which a panel dictates terms of a new contract. That settlement could come any day – and around the same time union members learn who their president will be.

The following comments by Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint are adapted from a recent conference on the impact of the transit strike sponsored by City University, Cornell University Labor Programs and TWU Local 100 and from a debate between four of the five candidates for president, sponsored by the City University’s Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies.

Assessing the Transit Strike

By Roger Toussaint

We knew that the first transit strike in a generation would be a big deal. But I am not sure we at Transport Workers Union Local 100 fully grasp, even today, just how big.

The message we have received since December is: You struck, you shut down New York. There has been public punishment, a public flogging, crippling finance, and an end to dues check off. A constant barrage in the media and the attacks by political leaders. The refusal of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to honor the contract they agreed to and signed off on back in December.

The other side has said to trade unionists, “Don’t strike or else you will suffer heavy consequences. Awfully bad things will happen to you.”

So how should we assess the strike? An overall assessment will have to wait a bit but there are a couple of questions that I think are appropriate to address now.

One is why we struck and two is why we went back when we did.

WHY WE STRUCK

Let me state for the record that we did not go on strike to undo globalization, to topple the U.S. economy or to overthrow the Bloomberg regime. I know we have a reputation as a militant union and that I have a reputation for direct action. But that is not why we went on strike.

Creating a ‘Credible Threat’

The short version why of why we went on strike is because the transit authority did not believe that we would go on strike. In order to get anything at the bargaining table, in order to stop the full-scale looting, we needed the credible threat of a strike. Credible threat. Did we have one? Not from the viewpoint of the MTA. The MTA did not think we would strike. The mayor did not think we would strike. Neither did the governor.

My guess is that even our members thought that eight or nine months of bargaining and threats of strike would not result in a strike. Most transit workers thought it would come down to the wire and we would back off.

That was not an unreasonable assumption on their part because that is what has happened for a quarter of a century, not just with us but with almost every other union. The MTA probably concluded that we were just talking tough and that we were not ready to strike.

Preparing for Action

In 2005, Local 100 told the MTA that if they screwed with pensions there would be a strike. We prepared for a strike very publicly, and they still did not believe us. The actions started a year before the strike deadline arrived: union building and training hundreds of new shop stewards, action with the rank and file, basic training for a new generation of strike captains. We marched with picket signs saying, “just practicing.”

In early December, we had simultaneous actions at 85 properties with thousands of members participating. For those of you who are practitioners and students of the labor movement and labor historians, we had a greater percentage of members involved in strike preparation than those who participated in the famous Flint sit down strike against General Motors in 1937.

It was the biggest strike preparation in Local 100 history. We stressed in private sessions that if the MTA continued with its assault on our pensions, we were walking, Taylor Law or no Taylor Law. I don’t know what else we could have done to tell them we were serious. Maybe we could have rented the Goodyear blimp, but it seemed the MTA still would not believe us.

The ‘Bare-Bones Contract’

So what happened? When MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow entered the room at the 11th hour the MTA’s intention was to force the transit union to accept a bare-bones contract. We told them that this could not be a bare-bones contract, that we needed a pension refund, medical coverage for retirees, paid maternity leave, that needed paid schooling and all of these items that were critical for transit workers.

The MTA voted to reduce pensions for new hires right from the start. We said, “Hell no” right from the start. That was off the table by early December. Then the MTA came in at the very last minute, after we had bent over backward to try to reach a deal, after we had extended the contract for 12 days, they came back after the weekend with a new demand to create a lower pension tier for all new hires -- for our nephews and nieces and all our children and our neighbors’ children.

Forget the fact that this new pension demand was illegal and improper under the law. They were willing to risk a strike and what the MTA claimed was up to $1 billion of economic activity for a pension provision that had a value of $20 million. They thought we were too weak and too divided to resist.

The results of a generation without strikes had emboldened the MTA. From their perspective, we did not present a credible threat. I think, however, that they will believe us next time. I also think that they will take labor leaders more seriously now.

Disgust with the MTA

Local 100 did not want a strike. The strike was forced on us. But Local 100 members badly wanted a fight. Local 100 members wanted a chance to take a shot at the MTA after all the years of abuse and disrespect. Our members rejoiced at the chance to stand up straight and tell management where to go. They told us that it was time to take the MTA down a peg, whatever it cost.

When we came into office, there were thousands of disciplinary actions against transit workers a year. There continue to be thousands of disciplinary actions a year, and there is a lot of work to be done in this area, but we have eliminated for 70 percent of all members the notion of being under house arrest when they are out sick. Our members are no longer required to stay at home when they are sick.

At the end of the day, though, the way to handle a transit authority that is out of control on discipline is to have a strong union on the job. A strong union, strong policing, enforcement of the contract, that’s the way you push back against management. You need contract language and protection, but without enforcement and policing on the job, the contract language means nothing.

We polled our members quietly in the weeks before the strike deadline, and the polls showed that 65 percent of the members were in favor of a one-week strike. We conducted another poll while we were negotiating, and that percentage had climbed to 73 percent of the members in favor of a strike. Those are huge numbers in this business.

Against the Odds

The strike posed real risks and threats to Local 100. I have conducted six strikes in Local 100 – two with Liberty Bus Lines, two out in Queens, and two out in Connecticut. In my previous lives I have been involved in many strikes, bitter strikes. They are very, very serious business. It is easier to go out strong than it is to come back strong.

A losing strike threatens the very survival of the union itself. A losing public sector strike in 2006 damages the labor movement. Reflect for a moment on the defeat of the air traffic controllers in 1981 and the impact that that has had on the labor movement for a quarter of a century.

My responsibility as the president of the union was to get a victory and to bring back our members as quickly as possible. We were up against the MTA, a governor who wants to be president, a billionaire mayor, media, a united New York City business establishment, an international union president who told our members to return to work, longstanding public dissension inside Local 100, and mounting fines against the union, its members and all its leadership. We are up against a culture back decades of arrogance by one of the most out of control agencies in the state.

But we went out on strike strong and united. We put 11,000 members on the picket lines and over 20,000 in support of the lines. We had some scabs – not many, but too many.

This was not a union where people could be expected to hold their tongue until the strike was over even though that is the time tested union way of doing things. We are talking, after all about Transport Workers Union Local 100. We have a long history of dissension inside our union. We wash our laundry out in public even before it is dirty.

WHY WE RETURNED TO WORK

Why did we end the strike? Because we were able to stop the MTA assault on our pensions. Because we were able to get advances in several areas with real value to transit workers. We ended the strike because we were able to secure pension reform good for all our members and for all future transit workers. We ended the strike because we were able to obtain a new medical benefit for transit workers between the time they retire and when they become eligible for Medicare at age 65. We ended the strike because the MTA had enough and was feeling more pressure than it thought it would.

And we ended the strike because there did not seem to be a full army of reinforcements on the horizon inside the labor movement. We had a conference call with labor leaders during the strike. I told them I was not looking for someone to hold my coat. I was looking for leaders who would take off their coats and step into the ring. I did not see a lot of coats come off.

And there were serious risks: the risk of the international union imposing trusteeship on Local 100, and the risk of direct seizure of the union by the courts or the NYPD. It was time to claim our victory and end the strike.

LEARNING FROM THE STRIKE

Looking over the months from December to date, probably the most important lesson that we learned is how to communicate the provisions in the contract for the members. Clearly there were some weaknesses in that area. In the first vote, we relied more on written communication than in one-on-one discussions with our members in the crew rooms, the lunchroom or the shop. The second time we voted on the contract, we relied more on one-on-one conversations with members. This is, of course, an enormous undertaking because you’re talking 35,000 members spread over a very expansive property.

Strikes are very serious. And if one is on the transportation industry of New York City, a global village, it is even more so. The pain is real. The wounds are real.

The dark clouds that surround the entire labor movement, the adverse climate nationally and the concessions being made by unions around the country, make it much more difficult for us to defend what we have. This will be the defining battle for the labor union for the next several years. The outcome is not dictated by the Local 100. All we can do is stand with the rest of the labor movement and urge that a common line be drawn to defend health benefits and pensions so that decent jobs in America continue include guaranteed health benefits and guaranteed pensions.

It is often said that freedom is a hard won challenge and every generation has to win it again. After a generation without strikes we had to win back the sense that we have the right to stand up for ourselves. We had to win back the sense of sacrifice that every real struggle demands. We had to win back the tool of a public strike in a city that has lost its tradition of solidarity.

We did all of this and more. For myself and for all the thousands of strikers who stood up when we had to, it was our proudest hour. We did not strike to make history. We struck and so we made history.

Roger Toussaint is president of TWU Local 100.

The Other Candidates: The Union Is Failing Its Members

In the election, Toussaint faces four challengers: union vice president Ainsley Stewart, who opposed the proposed contract; Michael Carrube, a former Toussaint ally; Anthony Staley, a subway cleaner and relative newcomer to union politics; and Barry Roberts, a union vice president. The following statement by three of the candidates are excerpted from comment they made at a debate sponsored by the City University’s Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. Barry Roberts was invited to that debate but declined to participate.

Workers Need A Strong Offense

Our founding father, Mike Quill, said: “We were no experts in the field of labor organization, but we had something in common with our fellow workers – we were all poor. We were all overworked. We were all victims of an 84-hour week. In fact, we were so low down on the economic and social ladder we had no way to go but up.”

That fact still holds true today.

The current leadership has lacked in the area that really affects our membership -- how members work hours upon hours just to make ends meet. How our wage increases have been below the cost of living. Our members donate their time to this job away from their families and their loved ones. That has got to change.

Discipline rules have been modified, but not enough. Discipline is an epidemic with the transit authority.

There have been no negotiations regarding the night differential [extra pay for working at night]. The last time our night differential was negotiated was in 1988. In 1996, then president Willie James gave away our night differential on overtime. To this day, that has not been renegotiated.

We are looked upon in the public arena as weak. And that has got to change.

Our current bylaws have never been handed out to our membership. Our membership is not educated in the sense that they know how to stay out of trouble and how the contract protects them. We need more union representation in the field and better-educated shop stewards in order to fight management.

I think [the negotiating on the last contract] was poorly done. Right after a contract is ratified, you have to set your union up for three years down the road, investigating all the MTA’s holdings with a team of members, officers and lawyers. Then we would be prepared for anything.

The union has always been on the defensive. It’s time that we go on the offense.

-- Michael Carrube

Losing Ground

The union never took a really strong position to defend the members. If you are paying dues you should be treated better and defended better than we were being treated.

With discipline, management is running amok. This discipline has gotten worse because nothing has been done to stop the MTA from doing what they want. They continually write people up. One of the things that I would do is train representatives to represent people at their hearings. Under the present president, discipline has gotten worse, because nothing has been done to stop the MTA from doing what they want.

If you walk through the system, that’s the best way to get your gauge on what’s going on. Ask some of the people actually doing the work. The present president lost touch with the membership, he doesn’t know what’s going on within the system, he doesn’t even walk through it.

We don’t have anyone intelligent enough to challenge the MTA and make them go by the contract and stick to the rules. Nobody is strong enough to do that, and that is why the members are suffering now.

People who get up out of their beds to come to work should be compensated justly, as well as have decent health benefits. But in the last two contracts, this union regressed. It is not the formidable union it once was.

-- Anthony Staley

Too Much Secrecy, Too Little Money

A fair day’s work requires a fair day’s pay. It is a human right to be able to work and get livable wages. If the transit authority has money, transit workers must get their fair share. You’ll never see money like this again in the transit authority; if you can’t score now – you’ll never score.

Toussaint agreed with the transit authority to write us up whenever we use up our sick time, even if we have a doctor’s letter. At the same time Toussaint accused the transit authority of plantation justice, he was aiding the enemy in a new and more aggressive path toward terminating all members when they use those 12 sick days. But we have no control over the viruses that attack us and the hazards that we are exposed to over the years

The representation we have is more concerned with giving back to the transit authority than demanding more for the workers, so we can keep up with the cost of living.

Short of eliminating the disciplinary system what we need to do is ensure that members receive representation from the reps they elect -- and that those reps are educated in how to handle disciplinary cases. We will take them to training where they will spend three to six months learning every word in the contract, they will have access to all the resources within the union, which cases we won, why won them how we lost them and how could move toward winning them in future. We will ensure the member’s voice is heard

The problem now is a lack of transparency. The union has headquarters that it sold. We have never seen an ad in the newspaper saying the building was up for sale, we have never seen an appraisal report, we have not seen a check from the proceeds of the sale.

In the last negotiation, more members participated at the street level. But when it came to negotiating health benefits everyone was excluded. The president alone did that. In my administration, that will not happen. The ability to express different ideas and opinions is the backbone of every union. You must have people express those ideas and opinions and then pick up from there and move forward.

Everything is being done in the dark. We have never had one meeting to discuss what is going on in the arbitration process.

Under my administration, that will never happen. As a matter of fact we would never get to arbitration. We will have a contract on that deadline.

Transit workers recognize that we do not come here as a hobby, we come here to make money to take care of our families and to advance the labor movement. At the end of the day, we need to get fair wages and fair compensation for the work that we perform because we move New York.

-- Ainsley Stewart

 

Every two weeks the New York City Council holds its "Stated Meeting" to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette covers these meetings.

CLEANER, MORE ACCESSIBLE TAXIS

The City Council passed four bills designed to make taxis accessible to disabled riders and less harmful to the environment at its stated meeting on December 6, 2006. Council members who spoke in favor of the bills said their long-term goal is for every single taxi in the city to be environmentally friendly and accessible to the disabled. Today, less than one percent of all the city's taxis are so-called clean air vehicles – either hybrid-electric models, or vehicle that use efficient compressed natural gas as fuel. Only 81 of the more than 13,000 taxis in New York are wheelchair-accesible.

One bill (Intro 352-A) would require the Taxi and Limousine Commission to develop a plan to significantly increase the number of clean air and accessible taxis within six months, and then regularly report to the council on its progress. The commission would also be required to put information on its Web site explaining to taxi owners the economic benefits of clean-air and accessible vehicles.

Another (Intro 158-A) bill would allow owners of clean-air taxis and wheelchair accessible taxis to operate their vehicles for five years. Currently taxi owners must buy a new vehicle every three years. The longer life of clean and accessible taxis will make a big difference in deciding what kind of car taxi owners buy, said David Yassky, the primary sponsor of the bill.

"Ever since the [Environmental Protection Agency] started keeping track, the city has flunked the standard for air quality. There's a lot we need the federal and state government to do. There are things we can do here. One of those things would be to get all the 13,500 taxi cabs on the street to be clean-air vehicles," said Yassky.

The other two laws would require cab owners to clearly identify their clean-air and accessible vehicles as such (Intros 353-A and 354-A, respectively).

City officials have been trying to increase the amount of environmentally and disabled friendly cabs for the last several years. When New York State decided to sell 900 new taxi medallions in 2003, City Hall passed a law requiring that nine percent of those medallions be designated for clean air cabs, and another nine percent for accessible taxis. The last of these medallions were sold this June, in an auction that included 54 medallions specifically reserved for accessible cabs and another 254 set aside for clean-air vehicles. Last year, the council has also passed a law requiring the Taxi and Limousine Commission to approve the use of certain models of hybrid cars as cabs.

"We're in an ongoing struggle to make the taxicabs more accessible and also environmentally sound," said Councilmember Oliver Koppell. "The goal is to have a 100 percent accessible fleet."

LOBBYING REFORM

The council also passed a law speeding the pace of a lobbying reform plan it passed this May. The plan bans lobbyists from giving gifts to elected officials, changes the campaign finance laws so that campaign contributions from lobbyists will no longer be matched by public funds, and requires random audits to make sure that lobbyists are reporting their activities properly.

As part of the new reporting requirements, lobbyists were required to begin disclosing certain information electronically in June 2007, giving city officials the time to create a system making that possible. The system was completed ahead of schedule. The law passed at the most recent council meeting (Intro 485-A) would require lobbyists to start using it at the beginning of 2007.

BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICTS

The City Council also passed a bill (Intro 465 – A) that would increase the amount of money allocated for two business improvement districts. The Hub Third Avenue BID in the Bronx would get a $91,000 increase, bringing the city's annual contribution $400,927, and the North Flatbush Avenue BID would get a $22,000 increase, bringing the city's annual contribution to $115,000.

Every bill passed unanimously, and will become law if signed by the mayor.

The next stated meeting is on December 20, 2006. It is the last meeting of the year.  

The election of a new governor and the Democrat's takeover of both the House and Senate bode well for funding of transportation projects in New York City. The bottom line is that New Yorkers can seriously talk about not only the two megaprojects that are furthest along in obtaining critical federal funding -- the Second Avenue subway and linking the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal -- but also a second set of projects whose prospects have been less luminous.

THE SENATE: SCHUMER GAINS POWER

While it was expected that the Democrats would likely take control of the House, adding Senate control by even the one-vote margin that the Democrats gained adds considerably to the influence of New York in the new Congress next January. Senator Charles Schumer headed the Democratic Senate fundraising committee and brought in $23 million more than his Republican rivals. As New York Magazine pointed out, the Democrats taking over the Senate "was all Chuck." And as Schumer himself said in the New York Times, "Now when I say to one of my colleagues, New York needs something, or I need something, they'll be more amenable." Schumer, who has strongly supported funding for transportation projects as well as homeland security, will thus be in a enhanced position to secure funding for top transportation projects such as the Second Avenue Subway and East Side Access (the LIRR connection to Grand Central), which recently won a full-funding agreement from the Federal Transit Administration that will cover about 40% of the project's construction costs. The project is now expected to be completed by 2013.

Construction on the first leg of Second Avenue Subway is expected to begin later this year. The $3.8 billion first phase that includes stations 96th, 86th and 72nd Streets is funded and will be completed in 2013. Schumer's influence will be essential to obtain federal funding to continue the new line the length of Second Avenue to downtown Manhattan .

Schumer has also been a strong supporter of a new Hudson River rail tunnel to double the number of trains coming from New Jersey into Penn Station. The $6 billion two-track tunnel has gained Port Authority and New Jersey Transit funding but will need federal monies as well.

THE HOUSE: NADLER'S FREIGHT TUNNEL

On the House side, Representative Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) becomes the top-ranking Northeast Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Nadler has long championed a cross-harbor freight tunnel between Brooklyn and either New Jersey or Staten Island. The freight tunnel is intended to reduce truck traffic into the city, reducing both congestion and air pollution from trucks. The City's Economic Development Corporation produced a draft environmental impact statement in 2004. In 2005, however, Mayor Michael Bloomberg withdrew his support for the tunnel. The new governor, Eliot Spitzer, has only urged further study of the project. But with Nadler gaining a more influential position in Washington, he can return a greater focus to the freight tunnel.

Democratic control of Congress also means that Spitzer may have an easier time making good on his transportation priorities. If he chooses to endorse the controversial rail link between JFK airport and lower Manhattan , he may have an easier time getting Congress to allow unused Liberty Bonds to be converted for the purpose. Spitzer might also be able to get those funds used for other purposes if he can gain the support of Schumer and others to do so.

Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.