Max Heiman of Rockefeller University's "How Green R U" blog points out one thing that's missing from Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC: a mandate for improving the fuel efficiency of New York's taxis. The city has begun experimenting with a small number of hybrid taxis, and as Heiman argues, the logic for converting the whole fleet is pretty compelling:

As this op-ed in the Times City section points out, there are nearly 13,000 taxis in NYC, together driving on the order of 800 million miles per year. More than 9 out of 10 cabs on the street are Crown Vics, which are lucky to get 18 mpg.

The entire fleet turns over every three years, so a fuel efficiency standard put in place today would convert every taxi in the city to a higher standard by 2010. The authors say that the Taxi and Limousine Commission has looked at hybrid taxis that get 39 mpg and average just about $2500 more than the Crown Vic, while saving $3700 in gas each year.

This just seem like a no-brainer to me, and I don’t get why it wasn’t in Bloomberg’s plan.

I agree.

I'm not normally a Bloomberg booster, but the mayor's PlaNYC is really praiseworthy. Daniel has done a great job linking to reporting and analysis on the specific proposal for congestion pricing. He notes, correctly, that the devil is in the details. I want to argue that when you consider the details, congestion pricing comes out looking like an excellent - even crucial - idea.

It's true that congestion charges, viewed in isolation, would constitute a regressive tax (though New Yorkers paying an $8 fee would have it easy compared to Londoners, who pay twice as much). But the regressiveness can be mitigated. As Jackie Ashley wrote in the Guardian in February, "We need sharp, specialised instruments, not blunt ones." Congestion charges could be offset somewhat by reductions in other regressive taxes or fees; those who are particularly reliant on their cars - for instance, people with disabilities - could be provided with exemptions. This article in the Daily News suggests additional ways to ease the burden where appropriate: for instance, by allowing drivers five free trips a year and by reducing bus fares in neighborhoods not served by subways.

Balancing the burden would help make congestion pricing less regressive. But in a larger sense, it's a very progressive idea - especially when you consider that fewer than 5% of New Yorkers actually drive to work in Manhattan. Like a carbon tax, congestion charging would be a means of using tax policy to discourage behavior that hurts the public interest. Traffic congestion damages public health and costs the city billions of dollars a year; it also contributes to global climate change. And it is inherently progressive - redistributive - to focus transportation policy on improving mass transit as opposed to automobile traffic.

The real key, and the reason Mayor Bloomberg deserves a good deal of praise, is that congestion pricing is understood as being only one element in a far-sighted plan to address the considerable challenges New York faces over the next two decades. Give Bloomberg credit - he recognized a moment of fiscal and political opportunity, and rather than squandering it, he's using it to the public's advantage. It's only when you look at how congestion pricing fits into this larger strategy that you realize how progressive it actually is.

Think of PlaNYC as comprising four complementary plans. Congestion pricing is important to and made more progressive by each of them:

In their scramble to accomodate the massive increases in traffic that Ratner's Atlantic Yards project will mean for most of Brooklyn, the Department of Transportation has proposed changes for 4th, 6th, and 7th Avenues and 9th Street in Brooklyn. The plans for 4th Ave. and 9th Street have received some good reviews, but the plans to turn 6th and 7th Avenues into one-way streets in order to speed up traffic along these routes was overwhelmingly opposed by the community in part because these two Avenues have a high density of schools along their lengths, and ANY attempt to speed up traffic will increase the risk to our children.

The Department of Transportation has made two somewhat contradictary claims regarding these proposals. They have claimed that they need no approval from anyone to make these changes. They claim the right to change the rules with no oversight, even if it increases the risk to our children crossing the street to go to school. On the other hand, they made the promise that if Community Board 6 opposed their proposals they would not carry them out.

Well, after a massive outcry by a community that is just beginning to realize what Ratner's Atlantic Yards plan will really mean for them, Community Board 6 has comeout solidly against the changes on 6th and 7th Avenues. They have not taken a stand on the more acceptable changes for 4th Ave. and 9th Street.

Park Slope Neighbors brings you the following events relating to Brooklyn development and transportation:

1) Community Board 6 to Consider DOT One-Way Proposal, Wednesday, 6:30 p.m.

This Wednesday evening, at 6:30 p.m., the full membership of Brooklyn Community Board 6 will hold their monthly General Meeting, during which they will vote on the proposal presented last month by the Department of Transportation to convert 6th and 7th Avenues in Park Slope from two-way to one-way traffic flow.

Some 2,500 of you signed PSN's petition opposing this ill-conceived plan, and 700 of you turned out on March 15th to tell the DOT that their proposal was not acceptable to residents of Park Slope. Despite the massive community opposition, however, CB6's Transportation Committee passed a watered-down motion requesting that DOT "not proceed" with the proposal "at this time" "because there are too many questions about" how the plan would affect safety and traffic flow.

This motion does not reflect Park Slopers' unified opposition to the DOT proposal. Our community is overwhelmingly against the idea of converting 6th and 7th Avenues to one-way operation, and any motion passed by CB6 pertaining to the one-way proposal should reflect that unanimity. We encourage you to email or call CB6 in advance of Wednesday's meeting to urge them to adopt a stronger position. And we urge you to show up for CB6's meeting on Wednesday, to let them know, through our collective presence, that Park Slope residents are united in opposition to the DOT's one-way proposal. [Please note that the public will not be permitted to speak at this meeting before the vote is taken -- we recommend that you bring a sign to register your point of view.]

I love the snow. Absolutely love it. Grew up in Southern California, so I went camping in the snow but never LIVED with snow.

My first experience with LIVING with snow was, ironically, a White Christmas in Kyoto Japan. GORGEOUS! Japanese architecture seems designed to look gorgeous in the snow. Walked all over snow covered Kyoto that first snowfall in a place I lived.

Most New Yorkers I know hate it when it snows. They say the snow gets dirty too fast and it becomes impossible to walk and all the people who refuse to clean up their dog's shit leave frozen little presents for pedestrians to step on weeks later when the snow melts. All true, but by and large I love looking up at the snow falling through the light of the street lamps, love hearing the snow hitting the window as I sleep and love seeing the snow on the ground before anyone steps on it.

But today, NYC SUCKED in the snow, culminated in iced over stairs at train stations that no one was willing to deal with despite the fact that it made the stairs almost impassable.

First off, in NYC the corners of intersections get all the snow from the streets piled up, making it hard to cross the street. Fine, the road is clear, but the drains are now covered, so the street floods, and pedestrians can't cross without great effort. I used to see that as a minor irritant, but you try pushing a stroller through NYC city streets after a snow. It is terrible! I can only imagine what it is like for someone in a wheelchair or an elderly person. What's with NYC? Can't they figure out how to clear the corners? It's not like no one walks here. I understand that after one day you can't expect them to be cleared. But there are times they don't get cleared away for weeks, except for that tiny path hordes of people have to squeeze past that are formed by the pedestrians wading through themselves.

As the first ripple of Ratner's overdevelopment of Central Brooklyn crossed Flatbush into Park Slope, those Ratner backers who have grown to expect getting their way no matter what got a major surprise. Park Slope stood up to the Departmentof Transportation (DOT) and, if the DOT keeps its word (something I am doubtful of) this first of many Ratner ripples to cross Flatbush has been stopped.

The DOT has a plan that is intended to relieve some of the traffic problems that will be created by the Ratner overdevelopment plan. Of course I have heard Ratner supporters even deny that any traffic problem would result, but EVERYONE with any grain of sense realizes that the already horrendous traffic in and around Flatbush will be made considerably worse by Ratner's plan. So the DOT came up with a dubious plan, a mere band aid, designed to alleviate the problem. Narrow 4th Ave, reducing traffic and making it safer to cross the street while turning 6th and 7th Aves. one way to carry more traffic faster. Ignore the fact that 6th Ave. is too narrow and too residential to accommodate much more traffic and the fact that both 6th and 7th Aves. have many schools and churches and speeding up traffic along them will only increase the number of children hit by cars.

Are you are like me, constantly irritated that subway service declines even as rate hikes pile up...and the MTA keeps two sets of books, one to plead poverty so they can increase our fares, one to plead plenty so they can pat themselves on the back, and who knows which is true? Well, your perception of the declining subways may be true.

According to the Straphangers Campaign, subways have gotten dirtier for the second year in a row.

The number of clean subway cars decreased for the second year in a row, according to the eighth annual “subway shmutz” survey by the NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign, released today. The survey was conducted on 2,200 subway cars on 22 subway lines between September 2, 2005 and January 5, 2006.

Campaign surveyors rated 47% of subway cars as “clean” down from 61% of cars rated clean in a survey released in the spring 2005. This continued to reverse an earlier trend of improvement found between 2000 and 2004, with the percentage of clean cars going from 32% in the campaign’s 2000 survey, to 47% in 2001, to 59% in 2003, to 66% in the 2004 survey.

Cars on 15 of 22 subway lines saw significant deterioration since last year’s survey (2, 7, A, B, C, D, E, G, J/Z, L ,M, N, R, V and W), while cars on only three lines grew better (1, 3 and 4). Cars on the remaining four lines were largely unchanged (5, 6, F and Q.)

How much traffic is too much? As it happens, it depends, as you may have suspected, on what the meaning of “is” is – and of course, who are. At a NYC Council Transportation Committee hearing, the views of Department of Transportation officials and concerned citizens diverged completely. They were considering a bill introduced by Council Member Gail Brewer, Intro 199-A, which would require the NYC DOT to gather data on traffic and its impacts in preparation for planning to reduce vehicle traffic. While the Brewer bill might sound tame, boring and non-controversial, it would turn transportation planning in NYC on its head – because NYC now plans transportation in the dark with only the goal of moving cars, trucks and buses faster through intersections. If, as has recently been proven, in an elegant epidemiological study, diesel soot from trucks causes asthma in exposed children, that is no concern of the NYC DOT (at least at present.) For another report of adverse health impacts of traffic see Tuesday's NY Times

As I re-read what I’ve written here, some of it is fairly dense and difficult to understand – either as a result of my own limitations or because the subject is difficult or both. The bottom line is this: Public interest transit advocates support Intro 199-A; Mayor Bloomberg and his DOT do not. If that’s enough for you, email your NYC Council Member right now and ask him/her to sign on to 199-A. by clicking here. If you want to know more, read on till your eyes glaze over.

Our babysitter was sick today so my wife and I split childcare duties. So, I decided I would go over to the Atlantic Yard's hearing today...the ONLY public hearing on the project the state is deigning to allow.

Well a quick subway trip took us to Metrotech. It was immediately clear to me that one hearing really was not enough. The line to get in went around the corner and was still growing. Well, I was with a nearly 2-year old baby and my chances of getting through that line without risking a large tantrum was pretty low. But I decided to see if it was worth it. I went around to the front only to see that the crowd got so thick that no stroller would make it through. I am pretty certain that was also indicative of how crowded it was likely to be inside. So, the one and only public hearing pretty much excluded families with children. Typical. Now maybe if I had come back later it would have been better, but families have something called a routine. I had to get back home to cook dinner and after that are bedtime rituals. So, it seems like the one and only public hearing was hard for families to navagate.

But I did get a chance to poke around. Yassky, Suozzi and Diamondstone all had signs up. Well, at least Suozzi and Diamondstone have taken stands on the issue. Yassky has been a fence sitter, so not sure who he was playing to. Perhaps everyone. The only person more ambiguous on his stand has been Hakeem Jeffries. Yassky at least has the excuse that he is running for Congress, not a body that will have Atlantic Yards as one of its major issues (so why does he have signs up?). Jeffries does not have that excuse.

I am not going to deny that Daniel Goldstein blunered in recent statements he has made. DDDB is not made up of professional PR people, so they are learning this as they go. Doesn't excuse his gaffe, but it is perhaps part of the growing pains of such an organization.

But to me, the whole thing is STILL irrelavent when it comes to the real issues at hand. I will point out that Ratner's supporters have accused their opponants of racism as well. The truth of the matter is that both sides are multiracial and all races should be concerned with the issues raised by Atlantic Yards.

So, by all means take DDDB to task if you want. If they are going to win against Ratner they have to be able to take attacks and to grow into their task. But, as a reminder of what this is all really about, here are some unaswered questions I have posed on this blog for Ratner and his supporters that have, as yet, gone unaswered:

1. Why do we need all that office space when Ratner's previous projects have never filled up or even come close?

2. How affordable will the "affordable housing" be in 5 years? 10 years? If it is tied to the floating market value of the area it will not stay affordable for long. And how will the "affordable housing" clause be enforced?

3. How do you justify the use of Ratner's lawyer by the Empire State Development Corporation, paid for by Ratner himself, to judge Ratner's project?

4. How can you claim community involvement when dissenting groups are disinvited from the negotiations and when surrounding properties have already been promised to Ratner by Bloomberg and Pataki in secret, revealed only by a freedom of information act request made by DDDB? (Give them some credit for that one, folks.)

5. Just where is all that sewage going? Seriously. Brooklyn already is overflowing its system. Upgrading at the site itself is not enough because, in case you hadn't noticed, sewage flows downstream. This stuff will back up into people's apartments. I know. I have suffered such events even without an arena and 17 (or is it 16 now?) skyscrapers.

6. Fire houses. Whatever the cause of the recent fires in Prospect Heights, it is clear that already Brooklyn is not adequately covered by the FDNY since Bloomberg's closing of firehouses. Are there plans to open new firehouses?

7. Schools. Brooklyn schools already have problems. There are great schools and there are lousy schools. The good schools are already filled to capacity. Class size is still far higher than is optimal for teaching children. As far as I know there is no plan for more schools.

8. How can we trust Ratner's promises when he has told so many lies. That glossy pamphlet we all got had more fiction than fact. Nothing in it even showed the arena and skyscrapers! It was a complete misrepresentation of the project. So, how much else is misrepresentation?

9. Traffic congestion. Flatbush is already insanely dangerous. Crossing at 4th Ave. is crazy when traffic is flowing. At other times it is safe to cross because traffic is at a standstill. What happens when all that arena traffic hits?

10. Subway. The upgrade to the Atlantic and Pacific stations was great. Kudos to the city and state. But an arena and 17 skyscrapers will negate all that upgrade, making those stations worse than they ever were! And I know there are no plans to upgrade because the MTA keeps saying it has no money each time they raise our fares. Unless they have some other secret books they can bring out.

11. And not to harp on it, but this is one that really is most frightening to me: where is all that sewage going?

12. And can we put to rest forever the threat of eminent domain? Let's go on record Bloomberg, Pataki: Will eminent domain ever be used to transfer private property from one private citizen to another private citizen for the profit of that second person?

These are the questions I have posed many times to Ratner supporters and never gotten an answer. Once, the "good cop" Ratner thug I was opposite at a Ferrer rally asked me whether I would be open to supporting the Atlantic Yards project if many of my concerns could at least partly be addressed. My answer is SURE! But until these questions are answered definitively and believably, with enforcability, I don't think ANYONE, of any race, of any political persuasion or of any economic class should support Atlantic Yards.