Update from a German correspondent:
Aaron, that building does exist, but it's not a parking lot. It's the delivery centre of the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg. They put it up a few years ago as a centre-piece of a theme park about cars, the idea is that future car owners come there to collect their cars personally, in a quasi-religious ceremony.

------------------
Original posting: A correspondent sends along these photographs of a super-automated, ultra-efficient, futuristic parking structure in Munich, Germany. I almost can't believe this exists (though, if such a structure does exist, I'm sure it's in Germany). Can anyone confirm that these aren't just computer-generated renderings?

Related links:
Parking Management Best Practices
The High Cost of Free Parking
Tepper Isn't Going Out

3:54 PM | Link | (8) comments   

Last night's public hearing on the proposed NASCAR track on Staten Island turned into a melee. Union members, many of whom were apparently shipped in by the developer, shouted down and physically intimidated community people who had come out to voice concerns about the project. New York 1 showed video last night of one particularly huge union guy throwing Staten Island Councilmember Andrew Lanza into a headlock and wrestling the microphone out of his hands. The scene looked more like a drunken bar fight than a community meeting. NY1 hasn't put the video on its web site [Update: Here is the NY1 footage. Pretty incredible], but ABC 7 caught some of the action and put it online. The NYPD rolled in and shut down the meeting after just a half an hour.

For anyone who has attended official public hearings on Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards project, the scene looked familiar: Real estate developer buses in project supporters. Supporters shout down and intimidate community members. The democratic process and opportunity for thoughtful community input is undermined.

In my personal politics I have always sympathized with labor. My grandfather was so proud of getting beat up by New York City police during a 1930's strike that he had a formal portrait taken of himself with his head wrapped in bandages and his arm in a sling. But these days, I'm finding it difficult to support New York City's unions as their members stomp public meetings and prevent well-meaning, thoughtful community people from participating in New York City's development processes. Increasingly, it seems that the building trades unions serve as little more than muscle for New York City's big developers and corporate interests. That's definitely not what Grandpa Abe got his head bashed-in for.

It is also worth noting that last night's ruckus started as Councilmember Lanza began talking about his community's traffic and transportation concerns. If, as Robert Yaro wrote in the Gotham Gazette, New York City is going to add another one million people in the next 25 years, development, construction, and increased density is essential and inevitable. Yet, virtually every big development project across the city is being fought by neighborhood and community groups on the grounds that any new development will bring too much traffic.

It doesn't have to be this way. Urban development doesn't have to be the enemy of neighborhood quality of life. But until New York City puts in place a thoughtful, long-term, community-oriented plan for reducing motor vehicle traffic and improving more efficient modes of transportation, New York City's growth is going to be bogged down by neighborhood-level battles like the one we saw on Staten Island last night. So, what is it going to take for Mayor Bloomberg to notice that his administration's development agenda, and ultimately, his legacy, is being hindered by a lack of any sort of cohesive, citywide transportation strategy? Perhaps we'll get an answer in June when Mayor Bloomberg plans to make a major speech on land-use and transportation.

11:09 AM | Link | (8) comments   

Jane Jacobs lived at 555 Hudson Street when she wrote "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." I happened to be in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon and I saw this bouquet of flowers and card on the front door. The card reads, "Jane Jacobs, 1916-2006. From this house, in 1961, a housewife changed the world."

A number of people had left flowers and notes...

Despite the fact that this section of Hudson Street is now, essentially, a three-lane highway, I'm sure Jane would have been pleased with the little bench, the tree, and all of the bikes parked in front of her building. Greenwich Village is still one of the world's great urban neighborhoods thanks to her work...



12:06 PM | Link | (10) comments   

From today's Daily News:

Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a watchdog group, said "basically nothing has changed" since The Daily News conducted a six-week investigation in 1999 showing widespread abuse of tens of thousands of the city-issued parking placards.

He charged that many of the culprits are cops.

"Chinatown is being choked to death because the sidewalks and streets are so saturated with illegal parkers," White said. "The community is at the end of their rope because the very people with the power to remedy the situation are the worst offenders."

The New York City Streets Renaissance web site has two videos that illustrate the problem:

• Government employee parking in Chinatown
• The inefficient and inequitable allocation of public space in Chinatown

10:39 AM | Link | (3) comments   

One of the most influential urban thinkers, writers, and activists of the 20th century dies at age 89 in Toronto, Canda.

"I enthusiastically endorse the campaign to close Central Park’s loop drive to regular automobile traffic. We had the same sort of fight in Washington Square Park in the late 1950s and in my neighborhood here in Toronto a couple of years ago: same prediction of traffic chaos, same result of no chaos, diminished traffic counts and no counts increased elsewhere in consequence. Isn’t it curious that traffic engineers are so loath to learn something new even after repeated demonstrations?"

--Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, and Systems of Survival.

1:11 PM | Link | (9) comments   

Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma
Thursday, April 27 through Saturday, April 29

On Thursday at 4:00 pm I'll be moderating a panel discussion on energy-efficient urban transportation with Paul White, George Haikalis and Charles Komanoff.

April 27 at the Community Church of New York
40 East 35th Street

April 28-29 at the Great Hall at Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

The Energy Dilemma…

The American economy and the lifestyle it supports are predicated on a cheap, abundant source of energy. Until the early 1970s, the U.S. produced enough oil to meet domestic needs and was a major exporter as well. After production of U.S. oil peaked, we became increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas to meet our growing demand for energy.

But times are changing, and we face many challenges. In addition to the security risk posed by our dependence on imported fuels, our economy is heavily burdened with debt, the dollar is falling, and our military is overextended. Underlying it all is the slowly emerging debate over the future of oil. More and more geologists are warning that the current supply crunch is due not to politics, but to the unavoidable fact that oil production will soon reach its maximum, and begin an irreversible decline.

The peaking of world oil production will surely prove to be one of the most fundamental challenges of our times. That is why here in New York City , the cultural and economic capitol of the world, we must ask the tough questions about a fossil-fueled future.

As we face this crisis, the early environmentalists' motto of “think globally, act locally” takes on new and profound relevance, as it becomes increasingly clear that the best response to a global energy crisis will be local solutions. At the Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma conference, we will thoroughly explore these solutions. Regional experts in economic localization, sustainable food systems, alternative transportation, and responsible financial management will share their insights into the evolution of a low-energy, sustainable society. Numerous networking opportunities will be available with established local organizations that have already embarked on this vital transition.

10:59 AM | Link | (4) comments   

Passover in Tucson, Arizona to visit my wife's family. The Sonoran Desert is a beautiful and truly distinct place, especially in the spring time.




The same, however, can not be said of the built environment. Arizona is the second-fastest growing state in the nation after Nevada. Water and energy are big concerns but that doesn't seem to be slowing down development or changing the way it is typically done. Tucson is sprawling out into the desert fringes at a staggering rate.

It is a very seductive way of life out there in the desert sprawl. There is lots of space, everything is clean and new and conveniently accessible by automobile. Parking space is abundant and free.

And much of the city's social life takes place in parking lots.

In some spots, it is a long, lonely wait for the bus.

Tucson is also a great biking city. That wide lane you see running alongside the curb above is a bike path. Motorists seem to respect it and have a general awareness of cyclists. A dedicated corps of community activists are working hard to change the way development and transportation is done in and around Tucson. One of the leaders of that movement is Steve Farley, founder of Citizens for a Sensible Transportation Solution. A visual artist by profession, Steve has developed a plan to bring light rail to Tucson. He and his impressive, hard-working compadres have managed to put a very progressive transportation plan on this year's ballot. Recently Farley announced his candidacy for the Arizona state assembly. Steve says that much of Arizona's state legislature is backed by real estate developers and automobile dealerships. It couldn't hurt to have a public artist and transportation activist sitting alongside them.


We had a good time watching the cousins have fun.

1:40 PM | Link | (6) comments   

Transportation Alternatives' publishes another fine e-bulletin announcing "the 8th Avenue bike lane in Manhattan will soon become a reality" after a full three years of advocacy. I know that it is proper form after a big advocacy win to pay tribute to the New York City Department of Transportation for their wisdom and generosity. But I won't be applauding DOT for anything until I see them starting to develop these projects within the context of an over-arching transportation, energy and environmental strategy for New York City. I won't applaud them for taking three years just to paint two white stripes on the asphalt. I won't applaud them for being at least a decade behind other major world cities in developing dedicated bike infrastructure. I will, however, applaud the advocates who had the persistence and staying power to push against the bureaucracy for three years to get this done. Kol haKavod to Noah Budnick and the rest.

Americans are commuting longer and farther than ever. It's a little bit hard to believe but Dave Givens, the winner of a nationwide contest to find the longest commute, "drives 370 miles to work and back every day and considers his seven-hour commute the best answer to balancing his work with his personal life." I'd love to know how exactly Dave balances the seven hours per day he spends in his automobile. It must be one heck of a cocktail he mixes for himself after a tough day at the office. A recent census report says that 2.8 million Americans have commutes of 90 minutes or more.

Oil hits $75/barrel, gasoline breaks the $4/gallon mark, and pumps are running dry in some parts of the country as gasoline refiners phase out MTBE, a chemical that makes gas burn cleaner but was proven to contaminate groundwater, cause cancer in rats and mice, and do who-knows-what to humans. The Democrats think that November's elections are going to be about Hurricane Katrina. They might be right but don't be surprised if Karl Rove finds success in blaming the environmentalist Democrats and their MBTE regulations for the $4/gallon. By November, I don't expect the Texans currently selling off personal property at pawn shops to pay for their gasoline will be thinking much of the misery that last year's hurricane dumped on others.

New York City, of course, has two things going for it during the never-ending energy crisis that is now upon us. First, New York State and New Jersey rank 45th and 51st on Forbes list of states hardest hit by rising gas prices. Though a gallon of gas is expensive in these parts, dense urbanization and relatively high per capita income save us from the pain being felt most deeply in poor, rural and southern states (it's a shame they published the list in this annoying slide show interface but it sure is interesting). Keep your eye on Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming and other members of the top 10. In the coming months and years, these are the states where, if James Howard Kunstler is correct, we will find "an angry and grievance-filled public" turning "to political maniacs to preserve their entitlements to the easy motoring utopia."

But you won't find anything like that here in New York. Because the second thing we've got going for us is Chuck Schumer, the husband of our very own Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall. Never one to let an entitlement go un-preserved, Schumer announced this week that he is using his considerable Senatorial resources to investigate oil companies.

"The oil companies are just raising the prices up and up and up. The question is are they doing this based on the laws of supply and demand or is something else at work," Schumer told reporters over the din of city traffic at a press conference in front of a Manhattan gasoline service station.

Might I suggest, Chuck, if you really want to help Americans begin get a handle on rising gasoline prices, don't bother investigating oil companies. Investigate geology. And while you're at it, why not take Iris on a well-deserved vacation? Go somewhere sunny and relaxing. Insist that your wife sit on a beach, stop thinking about pot holes and traffic signals for a few days, and start developing a strategy to reduce that din of city traffic in New York. She deserves a little time off, don’t you think?

9:46 PM | Link | (11) comments   

WNYC is running a nice follow-up story to Tuesday's bus rapid transit meeting on the Upper East Side:

REPORTER: The busy M-15 route along First and Second Avenue isn’t the only area under consideration for Bus Rapid Transit. The city has identified 15 routes – six of them in Queens. A total of five will then be selected for a demonstration project to begin in 2008. That time table stumped transit advocates. Paul Steely White is executive director of Transportation Alternatives.

WHITE: Systems in Bogata, Seoul, South Korea, and also in Jakarta, Indonesia went from conception to study to full operation within 2 and a half to three years. It’s been more than 2 years and we’re still in the study phase in NYC.

12:38 PM | Link | (3) comments   

Today's editorial in the New York Times, "How Dare They Use Our Oil!" sounds all of the right notes. It lays down a brief but harsh critique of the Bush administration's continuing failure to address energy policy in a serious way. And on the occasion of the Chinese president Hu Jintao's visit to the White House, it takes the administration to task for "asking other countries to lay off the world's oil supply so America can continue to support its gas-guzzling Hummers." It almost sounds like Bill Maher has joined the editorial board.

Then there is this jarring line: "The United States doesn't have the right to tell a third of humanity to go back to their bicycles because the party's over."

It's just a quick little transition, a throw-away line, probably not something that anyone put a lot of thought into. And yet this one sentence highlights a profound set of assumptions about how a city should be.

It's a little reminder that a significant segment of New York City's decision-making class still views bicycling as something to be done by children, Lance Armstrong and impoverished people in Third World countries. Biking isn't seen as an integral part of the healthy, sustainable 21st century urban metropolis. Rather, it is more often perceived as a disruption, an annoyance, and maybe even a little bit backwards and uncivilized. To the writer of this sentence, a city filled with bike commuters clearly does not represent progress.

That's so different than how I see it. Getting on my bike to drop my son at day-care, run an errand, or go to a meeting isn't a sacrifice. It doesn't mean "the party's over." It doesn't represent some sort of personal or societal failure. The way I see it, a city filled with bike traffic is the party.

4:03 PM | Link | (12) comments   

A correspondent sends in this photo of the morning commute on Bergen Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Moments before snapping it the photographer says he was "stopped at a light with six cyclists, all of whom looked at each other and smiled as if to say, 'any more of us and we'll need a permit!'" Including the cyclist who appears to be riding illegally on the sidewalk and the photographer standing in the middle of the street blocking traffic, I count six bikers.

The neighborhoods around Downtown Brooklyn have the highest rates of bike commuting in all of New York City. This spring and summer is likely to set new records.

8:50 PM | Link | (8) comments   

The Oil Drum has coverage of last night's bus rapid transit forum on the Upper East Side:

Despite the broad-based community support for faster, more efficient and higher quality bus services all that is being discussed by city/state/MTA officials is a STUDY that will examine 15 routes to pick JUST 5 in June 2007 and then (assuming the planets are aligned) to implement by late 2008.

Bus rapid transit is a great idea for New York City. We have some of the slowest buses in the world here in New York. The M34 lurches across Midtown Manhattan at 4 mph during so-called rush hour. And you can ride the train to Philadelphia in less time than it takes the M15 to run its 10-mile route from South Ferry to East Harlem.

The best BRT systems work by giving buses their own dedicated lanes separate from cars and trucks. Fares are collected on the platform before passengers board, reducing the waiting time at each stop. The vehicles are extra-long, clean-burning and have low floors, again, for fast boarding. Real-time information systems let passengers know exactly when the next bus will arrive and allow routers to manage more effectively. And buses have signal priority. If a bus is running late, traffic lights automatically turn green for it.

BRT has produced dramatic increases in bus speeds, reliability and ridership. Bogotá, Columbia is one of the biggest successes. BRT has been a key part of this city of seven million's rapid transformation from a traffic-choked disaster to a model of sustainable urban development.

BRT is an ideal solution for New York. It would simultaneously allow our surface streets to move more travelers while decreasing traffic congestion. Plus, it's relatively cheap to implement. And yet attendees of last night's forum came away with the impression that BRT is moving too slowly in New York. Why is that?

An MTA source working on a part of the BRT in the Bronx study tells me that the initiative is being stymied by New York City Department of Transportation traffic engineers. To make BRT work, lanes of roadway that are currently dedicated to automobiles would have to be given over to buses. My MTA source says that DOT simply doesn't want to give up its roadway capacity to buses. So the agency is doing what it can to nibble away at the project, slow it down, and kill it. This account of DOT intransigence has been confirmed by an engineer at a private consulting firm that has also done work on the city's BRT study. Both sources are still working on the project and have asked that their names not be used.

The Oil Drum reports that community support for BRT was strong at last night's Upper East Side forum. It's hard to find an elected official who opposes BRT. Increasingly, it seems that the biggest barriers to BRT are being erected within the city's transportation bureaucracy itself.

In the amount of time that has been spent studying BRT, a quick-and-dirty test run could easily have been set up along First and Second Avenues in Manhattan. To get BRT running you don't have to lay track or dig up the streets. It could be tested with little more than paint, signs, and plastic cones. No mass transit system is cheaper and easier to get going. Sure, there would likely be a fight on the community board level about the loss of some parking spaces. But that kind of opposition could be easily overcome if Mayor Bloomberg simply said that this was an important project for the future of the city and something that he wanted to make happen.

In fact, Bloomberg has said just that. On July 11, 2001, the long-shot mayoral candidate issued a campaign position paper on New York City transportation called "Untangling Traffic." The paper is filled with great ideas and very much worth revisiting. If elected Mayor of New York City, businessman Mike Bloomberg promised to do the following:

• As Mayor, I would give one person – reporting directly to me – the authority to coordinate the city’s traffic policies and all other transportation-related issues. We must make one person accountable for all peoples’ everyday experience in getting where they want to go.
  
• As Mayor, I would work with the Governor and the state Legislature to transfer the NYCTA to the City... when it comes to subways and buses on the streets of New York City, the Mayor should be calling the shots. Period.
  
• I also would... establish a "Subway on the Surface” on the East Side of Manhattan. Introduce “high-speed” limited-stop bus service along an enforced semi-dedicated right-of-way on First and Second Avenues.

The Mayor supports bus rapid transit, the community wants it, it's relatively inexpensive to get going, and it would make our surface streets vastly more efficient and functional as people-movers. Over the last decade in New York City, a lot of great transportation initiatives have been studied, literally, to death with very few practical results: Truck routes, Safe Routes to School, Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming, the list goes on. Bus Rapid Transit isn't going to do New Yorkers any good if it ends up as yet another thick volume collecting dust on a book shelf in the DOT archives.

10:51 AM | Link | (7) comments   

Here's a novel method for dealing with needless horn honking: Don't honk at granny.

12:21 AM | Link | (5) comments   

Today's New York Times covers bloggers' coverage of the Atlantic Yards project.

And journalist Norman Oder covers the Times coverage of the coverage. Check out Norman's ten story ideas. Wouldn't it be great to see the Times follow up on a few of these?

11:53 AM | Link | (3) comments   

Oil Drum points to a recent spike in motorist insanity on Staten Island this week: A retired Port Authority cop out with his wife, pulls in to a strip mall to pick up some Chinese food. An ex-NYPD detective jumps out of his car and guns the guy down in a barrage of 17 bullets. Why? He had been driving too slowly. Add to that, a crash on the Brooklyn-bound side of the Verrazano backing up traffic for miles and a car plowing into the front of a house, and it's just another day in Shaolin.

Mobilizing the Region notes that Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki's support for a new Metro-North train station at Yankee Stadium might not be all that it is cracked up to be. "Neither the Yankees, the state nor the city have pledged a dime for the train station" and "if the MTA is forced to undertake the project with its own resources, it is likely that its funding will come from other essential Metro-North or NYC Transit projects." And while the elimination of new parking garage structures from the Yankees plan could save the state $70 million, "few politicians or media outlets appear to understand a basic fact—the more parking available at a site, the more likely people are to choose driving over transit. With the construction of thousands more parking spaces near the Yankees stadium, the Metro-North station, even if constructed, will not do as much as it could to reduce game-day traffic in the South Bronx." Sigh.

The Village Voice reports two volunteers from Transportation Alternatives were detained and harassed by police officers at the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown for conducting a survey of illegally parked cars. Chinatown, as you may have heard, has become a de facto parking lot for the private vehicles of government employees. Apparently, the cops were displeased when they saw TA’s volunteers taking photos of the illegally parked vehicles. Why? Those illegally parked vehicles belong to the cops. “They said the Patriot Act is somehow involved. The commanding officer, an Asian man, chimed in and said to me, 'Are you familiar with the Patriot Act?'” Considering events in Staten Island, I suppose the TA volunteers should just be happy they weren't shot.

Oil prices break $70/barrel, inching closer to record highs. If nothing else, that should help sell a few more tickets to the big, upcoming NYC Energy Solutions Conference also known as “The Woodstock of Peak Oil” (Watch out for the brown acid, folks, it’s making people freak out…). I'll be there.

And in answer to a question that was discussed on this web site a few weeks ago: Yes, speed cameras can work as a deterrent, even when they're fake! A homemade speed camera erected by an irate citizen along one of the most dangerous roads in Britain is effectively slowing down traffic. It does everything but mail the speeders a ticket. Now if only someone on Staten Island could slap together a makeshift road rage deterrent.

10:45 PM | Link | (5) comments   

Council member Gale Brewer of Manhattan's Upper West Side has introduced a new piece of legislation that would compel New York City's Department of Transportation to completely re-conceive of the way it measures and evaluates its own performance and the performance of the city's streets.

Currently, DOT's metrics are set up mainly to measure the minutia of day-to-day operations. You get a good sense of this in the Mayor's annual Management Report (PDF document), where DOT accounts for things like the percentage of "traffic signal defects responded to within 48 hours of notification" and "on-street parking meters that are operable." The city, of course, needs its traffic signals and parking meters to function. But is that all we need from our transportation agency? DOT's operations-oriented goals start to look profoundly lame when you see the kinds of goals that other world cities are setting for themselves.

In London, England, for example, the city's transportation agency has set aggressive ten year targets for reducing overall traffic congestion, improving air quality, increasing bus and bike ridership, creating 100 new public spaces, and even reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Once the goals are in place, the city then creates policies to help achieve them. Can you imagine New York City's transportation agency functioning as though it actually had a responsibility to do something about global climate change? It's hard enough just to get them to install a speed bump in your neighborhood.

Intro. 199, conceived with the help of Transportation Alternatives, would finally rectify this situation and, hopefully, in the process, force New York City's government to establish a real set of citywide transportation and public space policies. The new bill would force DOT to establish and meet specific "performance targets and indicators" that work "towards the goal of reducing traffic congestion citywide." Brewer's legislation would mandate that DOT put in place targets and indicators with the aim of "reducing commute time citywide, reducing household exposure to roadway emissions, reducing the proportion of driving to the central business districts, and increasing the proportion of walking, biking, and the use of mass transit to the central business districts."

There are still some rough spots in the language of the bill and only a few Council members are signed on, but this looks like a really great piece of legislation. New York City needs a transportation agency that measures its success by more than just the number of pot holes it fills and traffic signals it fixes each year.

3:39 PM | Link | (4) comments   

Why is the Atlantic Yards project different from all other real estate development projects?

Question 1: Why is it that Brownstone Brooklyn consists of unleavened low-rise buildings, but at Atlantic Yards Bruce Ratner wants to build seventeen high-rise buildings?

Question 2: Why is it that in all other projects the community would be happy for a real estate developer to bring them “jobs, housing and hoops,” but in this project the community is so extraordinarily bitter?

Question 3: Why is it that in all other projects, the developer dips only into his own budget, but in the Atlantic Yards project the developer dips twice – $100 million from the state’s budget and $100 million from the city’s budget?

Question 4:

Why is it that in all other projects, the buildings stand straight, but in Frank Gehry’s designs for the Atlantic Yards project, the buildings recline to one side?

The oppressed masses of Brownstone Brooklyn can click this link for more great ideas for this year's Passover seder.

7:15 PM | Link | (5) comments   

At a luncheon of 100 political donors at the Four Seasons on Wednesday, Mayor Bloomberg handed out wallet-sized plastic cards labeled "The New York City Card '06," according to the Times. Bloomberg said that in the 2004 election year, people living in just six New York City ZIP codes gave more than $61 million to candidates nationwide. That amounts to enormous political leverage, the mayor said, at a time when the city is being "short-changed" by Washington and Albany. The card lists the Bloomberg Administration's top five lobbying priorities. They are:

• $2 billion in federal money to finance a rail link connecting Lower Manhattan, Kennedy Airport and Long Island
• anti-terrorism financing based on threat assessments
• opposing restrictions on eminent domain
• authorizing more charter schools
• financial incentives for low-cost housing.

It's interesting to square the Big-Donor-Top-5-Priority list with your own priorities and the list of concerns you hear most frequently at New York City community board, neighborhood organization, and citizens group meetings. Schools and affordable housing: Check. Terrorism and security: Mostly not a neighborhood-level concern, but we know we need the city to focus on it. Making it faster and easier for the government to seize people's private property: Definitely not on the Average Joe's priority list. And while a rail link from Lower Manhattan to JFK and Long Island would be a great thing to have, is it really the #1 transportation priority for New York City? Is it the best use of a whopping $2 billion in federal and state transportation funds?

Every City Councilmember in New York would tell you that traffic congestion and transportation is one of the top 5 priorities in their district -- probably top 3. Sure, car-oriented suburban Queens sees the problem differently than the transit-oriented Lower East Side. Still, the fundamental concerns throughout all five boroughs are the same: An over abundance of motor vehicle traffic and a complete absence of plans to reduce traffic is limiting the region's mobility, damaging New Yorkers' environment and quality of life, and stagnating the city's economic growth and development.

So, why doesn't traffic reduction find its way into the top 5? And what about critical big picture issues like global energy depletion and climate change? Yeah, yeah, I know that it's naive and idealistic -- childish, even -- to imagine that macro issues like these could be at the top of New York City's brass knuckles political agenda. But, guess what? These global priorities are being placed at the top of other world city's political agendas. And in a global economy, these other world cities are New York's direct competitors.

I don't know about you, but I'd be a whole lot more willing to accept the seizure of my or my neighbors' private property by eminent domain if I knew my government needed the property to build a more sustainable city and prepare for the serious environmental challenges of the 21st century. For that, I'd take one for the team. But, these days, it's the team that keeps wanting to take one from you and me.

Across the region, $4.5 billion is being invested in building new stadia for nine professional sports franchises. Local governments are contributing over a billion dollars towards these projects and using the awesome power of eminent domain on behalf of private property owners to make them happen. Yeah, I'm as big a sports fan as the next guy (feeling really good about the Mets this year). But, really, whose priorities are these?

10:32 AM | Link | (12) comments   

A couple of people asked me to post the introduction talk I did at last week's Boerum Hill Association transportation panel discussion. So, here it is:

Traffic-clogged streets, horn honking, jammed subways, sluggish buses, sidewalks too narrow for strollers-pushing parents to pass each other, children unable to play outside in front of their own homes for fear of being hit by a car, dozens of hours and gallons of gas burned as we idle in traffic and circle the block looking for our parking spaces. No matter what block you live on or how you commute to work, chances are, if you spend a lot of time in or around Downtown Brooklyn, then you well know the negative impacts of traffic congestion.

A century ago many New Yorkers assumed that cholera epidemics, tenement fires and child labor were inevitable and unavoidable products of big-city living. Today, we tend to look at traffic congestion in a similar way. Many of us have come to assume that traffic is like the weather, the natural order of things, the way it has to be if you want to live in New York City.

This is not so. Cities around the world are solving the problem of urban traffic congestion. In doing so, these cities are improving their mobility, growing their economies, strengthening public health and quality of life, and, perhaps most important, they are preparing themselves for the serious environmental challenges of the coming decades.

Brooklyn is growing. I’m not going to go through the entire littany of development projects big and small that are currently underway. You see them with your own eyes and read about them in the local papers. I’ll leave you with just this one statistic: Downtown Brooklyn alone will gain 20,000 new residents over the next decade if all the housing currently being built is filled. And that doesn’t include the 7,300 units included in Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan.

Our corner of Brooklyn is blessed with some of the greatest neighborhoods in the entire world, without exaggeration. Brooklyn is no longer a place to escape from. It’s not just a pit-stop on the road to the suburbs. People want to live, work and raise their families here. This is a great thing. But as the pace of development in and around Downtown Brooklyn accelerates, how will our area’s overtaxed traffic and transportation infrastructure be effected? What can we do to ensure that our transportation systems remain functional, and that our neighborhoods continue to be great places to live?

These questions are not just a parochial concern. American-style automobile dependency and surburban sprawl, now being exported to place like China and India, is rapidly becoming one of the most destructive forces in the world today. On the local level this destructiveness ranges from the minor aggravation of horn honking to the more serious problem of New York City’s record-setting rates of childhood asthma. On the macro level, automobile dependency bears a significant share of responsibility for global climate change, fossil fuel depletion and resource wars in oil-producing regions of the world. These crises are not just happening to polar bears in the Arctic. And they are no longer viewed by scientists as problems for our grandchildren. From the increasing threat of a major, Northeastern hurricane to the grieving families of Iraq war dead, these global-level crises are here in New York City today.

I don’t say this to make you feel ashamed or defensive if you own a car. Rather, the point is this: New York City is one of the last places in America where you can live a full and complete life without having to take on the burden of automobile ownership. And yet so many of this city’s transportation and public space policies encourage and reward motorists while punishing bus riders, cyclists, pedestrians, and subway users. Even if you own a car, you should want that to change. Because your car is exponentially less useful the more other cars there are around it.

The good news is that there are a lot of really good ideas being implemented in cities all around the world that we can use here in New York to improve the efficiency, safety, mobility and all-around quality of our surface streets. The better news is that these very same ideas are helping global cities grow economically, create nicer public spaces, better transportation and higher quality of life. In the case of transportation and public space, doing the right thing by our community and our planet isn't even a sacrifice. So, what is New York City waiting for?

2:27 PM | Link | (3) comments   

This week's issue of Mobilizing the Region has some great stuff. Here are some of the highlights:

SF to Gauge Pricing's Benefits
San Francisco's transportation authority is considering congestion pricing and new bridge tolls to cut traffic congestion, reduce air pollution, and improve bus and light rail service. According to MTR, "San Francisco’s willingness to confront and discuss congestion and the appropriate direction for transportation policy puts it squarely ahead of New York."

A New Stop in the South Bronx
Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki line up at the last second in favor of a new Metro-North train station alongside the new Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately, MTR says, "the plan still calls for huge increase in parking supply, with garages displacing parkland." In addition to building big new parking structures, the city is refusing to look at residential parking permits or any other means to discourage people from driving into the congested South Bronx and endlessly circling neighborhood streets for free parking.

City's Credibility on Transport Ebbs
All signs point to something going very wrong within New York City's Department of Transportation. MTR points out that in the last two weeks the agency's leaders, Commissioner Iris Weinshall and Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia have been caught in public making false and misleading statements on major issues. MTR's take? "The city DOT is free to make such pronouncements largely because the city has no operative transportation policy or goals. Unlike San Francisco’s 'transit first' agenda or European cities’ even more aggressive steps to reduce driving, New York’s approach is to muddle through and prevent dramatic crises even while trends like mushrooming truck traffic in neighborhoods overtake it."

11:02 PM | Link | (3) comments   

The news is getting increasingly worrisome over at Brooklyn's "Atlantic Yards." From an urban environmental perspective, every time a new iteration of the plan comes out it seems to be worse than the plan before. The latest version, as described by the Empire State Development Corporation's Environmental Impact Statement Final Scope of Analysis (PDF file), describes some truly bad urban design ideas that you've really got to hope don't come to fruition, even if you support the project in all it's 17 skyscraper, 19,000-seat arena glory and want to see it succeed.

First off, the new plan is significantly bigger than what was originally announced in December 2003. The New York Times and other media have been reporting the latest plan as a 5% reduction in bulk. In fact, the latest plan is more than half a million square feet bigger than what was originally announced. It is also even more Towers-in-the-Park-ish than the old plan. The new plan has taller buildings with less bulk at street level and more "open space." Forest City Ratner is presenting this as a better urban design and a response to community concerns. But this new design likely only means more big gaps in the street-wall, a less healthy and viable pedestrian environment, fewer opportunities for street level retail and, almost certainly, more dead, semi-useless “open spaces” on the interior. Think: 1960's-era housing project.

The most disturbing change (and one I predicted but hoped would not happen) is the announcement of an interim surface parking lot of unspecified vastness on the eastern end of the project footprint. The lot would be used for arena event parking during Phase I of the project. Phase II of the project isn't slated to start until 2016 but these timelines are notoriously unpredictable. All it would take is a downturn in the residential market (perhaps when the first big wave of 7-year adjustable rate mortgages come due around 2009) and this land could remain a parking lot for decades. You've also got to assume that once a big parking lot becomes an integral part of the arena's transportation "system," it may be awfully hard to get rid of it. The memory of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn urban renewal area is still fresh for locals. Another fine project brought to us by the State of New York, Hoyt-Schermerhorn stayed a parking lot for about 30 years. It is only just now being developed.

I know that a lot of people think that an arena parking lot is a kind of traffic "mitigation." It's not. A big arena parking lot will function as a gigantic traffic magnet. If people know that they can find parking, they are far more likely to drive to arena events rather than use transit. Arena parking is, in many ways, the most onerous kind of parking because huge numbers of vehicles flux in and out simultaneously. This parking lot will put huge stress on the streets and neighborhoods around it. It is the worst possible land use for that area (OK, not as bad as, say, a nuclear reactor or trash incinerator, but it's up there). You've got to wonder what ever happened to the original sales pitch: That an arena could work at the congested intersection of Atlantic, Flatbush and Fourth Avenues because it was being built atop of a major transit hub?

To try to accommodate this additional traffic that will be created by the arena's parking lot, the EIS is also calling for "improvements" such as the widening of Flatbush, Atlantic and Sixth Avenues (page 6 of the PDF). New York may very well be the last major city in the Western World that is trying to solve urban transportation problems by widening roads and creating big new parking lots in its urban core. When you hear traffic engineers announcing "improvements," watch out.

Forest City Enterprises is known for doing relatively innovative and forward-thinking "smart growth" development in other parts of the country. That doesn't appear to be what we're getting in Brooklyn. Rather, the Atlantic Yards project seems as though it is being conceived within an archaic and discredited urban planning paradigm. This is bad news for the city and bad news for the value and sustainability of the Atlantic Yards project itself. I still hold out hope we can get the developer, state and city to come to their senses. After all, it's in their own best business interests not to create an urban environmental, quality-of-life catastrophe in the heart of Brooklyn.

12:11 PM | Link | (4) comments   

Here are our newest Tahoe ads. Check them out and stay tuned for more:

Chevy Tahoe: If this is freedom...

and

Chevy Tahoe: What's good for GM...

And if you see other good Tahoe ads out there, please e-mail them to aaron_naparstek ((at)) hotmail . com

11:10 AM | Link | (12) comments   

I kept my entire creative team in the office late into Saturday night and here is the new batch of Chevy Tahoe ads they came up with:

Chevy Tahoe: Roomy interior
Chevy Tahoe: Power, Freedom, Speed, Happiness
Chevy Tahoe: At least the seats are nice

I think we're starting to take it to the next level.

12:05 AM | Link | (1) comments