Aquafina: $1.25 and Wasted Plastic - Straight from the Tap: PRICELESS

At least PepsiCo is coming clean...

It's not mineral water. It's not spring water. It's not vitamin water.

It's just plain tap water. The same as you get from your kitchen sink. Only you pay for it.

Do something good for both your wallet and your city. Stop buying bottled water. Carry a thermos, and refill at a faucet.

Creeping, Crawling Congestion Pricing

It looks like congestion pricing is creeping slowly closer toward becoming a reality. I wish, however, that Mayor Bloomberg and his staff would reconsider other ways to reduce congestion on Manhattan's roads.

The traffic congestion problem is not solely a transportation problem, even though it might manifest itself that way. This is a big-picture, city-planning problem, a neighborhood development problem. We could free Manhattan from the congestion stranglehold if we disincentivized what have become routinely long trips from one end of the city, or in some instances the region, to the other. By "disincentivize" , I mean to bring closer to people's homes the destinations pulling them so far away. This would mean more evenly distributing a diverse mix of jobs across the city and region, spurring job growth into secondary downtowns in the outer boroughs, neighborhood centers such as the intersection of Flatbush and Church Avenues in Brooklyn, and edge city business districts in the suburbs. With four years experience working in the child care industry, I've seen the sacrifices parents make to place their young children in quality - and unfortunately costly - day care centers. The issue again comes down to fair distribution: the city should locate a greater number of well-staffed, affordable day care programs more evenly throughout the city, so parents could walk their children to the center and continue hopefully by foot or pedal to a nearby place of employment.

Yes, the streets are crowded. And yes, the subways are in a poor state of repair and nearly packed to the gills themselves. But moving commuters from their cars on to public transit only shifts the problem. It does not solve it. The reason we have such intense congestion in Manhattan goes beyond the transportation network of roads and rail. It is time to think hollistically about this problem and reconsider all the contributors to congestion in our city.

Protest Needless Packaging

I never considered myself much of an environmentalist. I understood the basics - pollution bad, recycling good, deforestation bad, local produce good - but never took an active interest aside from recycling my household waste and shopping at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza farmers' markets. Last summer, though, I read Heather Rogers' Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, and I'd say it helped me turn the corner from vaguely aware to truly concerned and increasingly proactive. Preceded by a documentary of the same name, Gone Tomorrow attacks the packaging industry, corruption in waste management, our current throw-away culture, and methods of waste disposal and recycling.
Perhaps the most upsetting revelations from the book are how ineffective recycling is in the bigger-picture sustainability movement and powerless consumers have been to make a difference. Even when we drop our water bottles and soda cans in a recycling bin, the amount of energy needed to transport them, transform them into something new, and redistribute them is more wasteful than just producing sturdy, refillable containers that we can tote with us wherever we go.

That being said, I'll refer you all to the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, which aims to turn more people on to tap water and off from bottled water. In particular, the campaign addresses the privatization of water, a public good. The campaign targets Coca-Cola's Dasani and Pepsi's Aquafina brands as being guilty of packaging and privatizing tap water, something that we all have access to, and selling it to the public at a cost way beyond what it would be to fill up at the nearest sink. It seems partly bizarre for people in the developed world, where water filtration systems produce perfectly drinkable water, to be hooked on the bottled stuff. If bottled water is to exist anywhere, why not in the developing world where access to quality drinking water is so limited?

The Right and the Wrong Way to Redevelop

Williamsburg and Coney Island, two historic neighborhoods at opposite ends of Brooklyn, are both enveloped in the billowing clouds of redevelopment blowing across the city, and bloggers have written ad nauseum on the sweeping changes occurring, or about to occur, in each. I would be remiss as an urban planning blogger in New York if I did not throw my two cents into the discussion.

In the news this week are stories of the adaptive reuse of the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg and the planned swing of the wrecking ball in Coney Island. These proposals represent to me the right and the wrong way to redevelop New York City.

It is no longer the 1880s, when the refinery was built in Brooklyn. The modern city economy has evolved, and large industrial firms have fled the city, while the architectural traces of their once great presence remains. Furthermore, while a sugar refinery does not present the health hazards of, say, a radioactive or hazardous waste storage plant, I would say that separating residences from heavy industry is a good thing. Perhaps transitioning Williamsburg and Greenpoint into an even more dense residential area could place further pressure on heavily-polluting industrial firms to clean up or get out.

The adaptive reuse process stands to help communities respond to transitioning demand for particular land uses in an evolving urban landscape. The demand for housing in Williamsburg today trumps the need for industrial businesses, and the redevelopment of the refinery responds to this shift. In addition, the project would incorporate significant retail and community space to accommodate a burgeoning residential population, and would create a projected 550 new jobs. I would hope that local residents would fill these positions, lessening the impact on roads and public transit (see my previous post).

Adaptive reuse does not appear to be a strategy in Coney Island. Neither is creating services and amenities to serve the neighboring communities. The plan to wipe the slate clean and build anew in Coney Island seems reminiscent of a combination between urban renewal movement of the 50s and the city beautiful movement from the turn of the 20th century. Rather than work with existing assets of the Coney Island community, the plan seems intent on clearing nearly all that stood before and starting from scratch. Meanwhile, millions will be invested in developing recreational parks and resorts to bring money into the area and increase property values, just as cities 100 years ago invested heavily in major institutions such as museums and libraries, not for their inherently good qualities, but rather to increase property values in the areas around them.

Arithmophiles' Bible

Check out Crain's 2007 City Facts edition, if it's not too late to pick up a copy. It's 22 glorious pages of tables, charts, and graphs - an arithmophile's dream-come-true. Subject areas run the gamut, from demographics, to employment, to health care and transportation, and many in between.

I'd like to highlight a few interesting statistics from the 2007 City Facts, as they relate to my previous post on resolving New York City's transportation crisis through economic development:

Economy
The per-capital personal income in Manhattan 2005 exceeded $90,000, a 5.2 percent increase from 2004. While Manhattanites are earning more than those in the outer boroughs, they are also increasing their wages faster, as annual percent change in the outer boroughs range from 1.9 percent in Brooklyn to 2.9 percent in Queens. Meanwhile, average salaries in Manhattan are also more than twice as high as those in the outer boroughs. The inavailability of high-paying jobs in the outer boroughs puts more pressure on the transit system to bring more workers into Manhattan every morning.

Public Transportation
The number of people riding commuter rail and the subway have resumed their upward climb since slight reductions between 2001 and 2003, and are now as high at a 37-year high. If congestion pricing were initiated in Manhattan, and individuals who had once driven decide to take public transit, I wonder if our city's public transit could absorb the increase while attempting to improve its own infrastructure.

It still seems to me the answer to the city's transportation crisis lies in attracting a greater diversity of jobs to the outer boroughs and suburban areas. Further developing job centers throughout the metro area is good for transportation, good for local economies, and good for families.

Economic Development: The Stronger Transportation Solution

"Transportation is the greatest single barrier to achieving our region's growth potential," begins the transportation section of plaNYC, New York City's 2030 plan.

It’s true, the crumbling public transit infrastructure, over-crowded subway cars, and crawling highway traffic contribute to the longest commutes in the country. But the plan’s approach to alleviate the city’s transportation crisis – largely through the well-chronicled congestion pricing proposal and through expanding the region’s public transit network – misses an underlying cause of the problem: that the hour-long commute to work, while undesirable, has nonetheless become an accepted facet of urban life.

(Image from WNYC.org)

I would argue that a region in which lengthy commutes remain the status quo will inherently be one in which the transportation network and its associated infrastructure will remain forever congested and in poor condition. The expansion of both the public transit and the interstate highway systems made longer-distance commuting possible. Now both are being pushed toward their breaking points.

A focal point of plaNYC should be to stimulate job growth in the outer boroughs and surrounding counties, in order to shorten the commuting times for the region’s working population. Shifting future job growth away from Manhattan would bring jobs closer to where people actually live. Such an approach would: 1) shorten average commutes 2) redistribute traffic more evenly through the region, and 3) make alternative forms of transport such as bicycling and walking more practical.

The plan clearly depicts the need to address the poor state of repair debilitating the region’s roads and transit infrastructure, the potholed streets and antiquated train signaling system. It also aims to relieve the suffocating traffic congestion on the city’s streets and subways and the region’s commuter rail lines. The problem is that it intends to accomplish this, by and large, by augmenting the current transit system with additional travel options such as the Second Avenue subway line, the Metro North and Long Island Rail Road East Side Access project, an expanded Penn Station, and bus rapid transit routes. The plan is reminiscent of Robert Moses’ transportation projects of the 1930s and 40s – bringing more and more people into Manhattan, faster and faster. Whether the mode of transport be car, train, bus, or ferry, creating additional transit lines to accommodate the long-distance commuter will only contribute to congestion.

A solution that more directly attacks the source of the problem would be to redirect traffic flows throughout the metropolitan area, thereby reducing the total number of persons commuting at any point in time. Rather than providing commuters with additional subway and commuter rail lines and bus routes – the “better,” more environmentally-sensitive, cost-effective option – it seems a more logical response would be to provide individuals with potential destinations closer to home. I applaud the plan’s recommended creation of a Nassau County Hub transit route, which would connect LIRR lines. It is this type of initiative, coupled with strategies to create jobs along the transit way, that could ultimately reduce traffic into and out from New York City, and particularly Manhattan, and should be implemented in Brooklyn and Queens, New Jersey, and Westchester County. On the other hand, congestion pricing would only place further pressure on a public transit system operating nearly at capacity, even with redirecting the revenue generated into improving public transit.

Progressive planning advocates for alternative forms of transportation, such a bicycling or walking. But when so few people work within a reasonable distance of their homes, public transit and driving become the only feasible options. In 2005, only six percent of New York metro area employees walked or road a bicycle to work. Even within city limits, not even 10 percent walked or biked to work, according to American Community Survey data. More than 59 percent in the metro area and nearly 30 percent in the city drove to work, most of them alone. More than 40 percent cross borough or county lines to get to work, and more than half commute in excess of 30 minutes each way. Nearly 70 percent of those working in Manhattan, according to 2000 census data, came from outside the borough, with 38 percent coming from outside the city altogether. It’s no wonder that nearly a quarter of New Yorkers traveled more than one hour each way.

When people live far from where they work, long commutes – whether they be on Interstate-80, Long Island Rail, or the 6 train – are all but unavoidable. The plan should more strongly pursue initiatives aimed at developing more job centers throughout the city and region. Rather than developing strategies to facilitate long-distance travel routes, be they from Canarsie on the subway or from Suffolk County on the LIRR, why not develop job centers throughout the region, creating job opportunities closer to the homes of the region’s 18 million? Perhaps once Downtown Brooklyn, Jamaica, the Bronx Hub, the Nassau Hub, and other secondary central business districts have emerged as competitive, diverse job centers, it will become more practical for the region’s residents to walk or bicycle – or at least drive shorter distances – on their daily commutes, relieving the region’s traffic congestion. The Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, for instance, would benefit from making office and retail space the emphasis of the project.

It is great that plaNYC would accelerate the establishment of 1,800 bicycle lanes in the city, expand ferry service, and achieve a good state of repair on roads and transit infrastructure. However, until commuters’ workplaces are more geographically dispersed throughout the city and region, I fail to see how it would become feasible for area commuters to choose an alternative to their cars or public transit, and it seems likely that transportation will remain an obstacle to growth.