Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Rohit Aggarwala models the latest in Long-Term Planning & Sustainability chic: Gray flannel, subway token cuff links, Columbia U. class ring and a global warming mug: Pour a hot drink and coast lines disappear.

This is the second segment of a four-part interview with New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Rohit Aggarwala. We're talking about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal for a three-year congestion pricing pilot project in New York City. Part 1 of our interview can be found here.

Aaron Naparstek: Why does the mayor's congestion pricing plan designate 86th Street as the northern boundary rather than 60th Street, which is traditionally considered the top of the Central Business District?

Rohit Aggarwala: There are a couple of problems with 60th Street as a boundary for congestion pricing. The CBD traditionally ends at 60th Street, but on the west side up in the 60s you've got Lincoln Center, ABC TV, and other big office buildings. On the east side, you've got the hospitals, the buildings to the north of Bloomingdale's and the museums. There are lots of non-residential destinations for drivers well above 60th Street. That's the first issue.

Second, if you look at traffic patterns, it's not as if the traffic immediately dissipates as you cross 60th Street going northbound. Depending on the time of day, depending on which avenue you're looking at, the traffic really changes in the quality of the congestion and delay somewhere between 72nd and 110th Street. And so while that doesn't dictate 86th as exactly the right line, it suggests that the boundary should be somewhere north of 60th Street.

Finally, some people have argued that people are going to drive in and park in Greenpoint or park on 87th Street and take the subway the rest of the way in and, frankly, we don't see that as being a big risk. Compared to a round trip subway ride, you're only saving $4 and you're adding a lot of time to your trip, both because the parking itself is scarce and because the subway trip will add time. So, it's unclear to us why anybody really would do that.

But if somebody is going to Bloomingdale's on 59th Street, certainly, if you charge $8 to drive south of 60th Street they're going to park on 61st and walk. And if somebody is going to Columbus Circle or Carnegie Hall, or any of the many businesses and offices in the 50s, you are more likely to have that parking problem.

So, those three reasons combined suggested to us that the boundary ought to be somewhere between 72nd and 110th Street. We picked 86th Street as a place that we thought made sense but as the mayor has said many times, we're open to conversation about that.

AN: Wouldn't it be far less expensive and nearly just as effective simply to toll the East River bridges?

RA: Not really. The largest vector through which cars enter the Central Business District is not the East River, it's 60th Street. More cars are coming south from upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Westchester than are crossing the East River. So, you would get some of the benefit by only tolling the bridges but you wouldn't get all of it.

The once traffic-filled street between Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery is now a thriving plaza.

Climate change is a greater threat to London than terrorism, one of the city's top planners said yesterday.

Debbie McMullen (right), a one-time New Yorker who heads implementation of the "London Plan," made this matter-of-fact announcement at a Tuesday evening forum, sponsored by the Forum for Urban Design and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and held at the Center for Architecture in the East Village. As New York awaits the unveiling of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030, McMullen outlined the "spatial development strategy" that London Mayor Ken Livingstone has spearheaded during his seven years in office.

Like PlaNYC, the London Plan, published in 2004, is designed to help mitigate the environmental impacts of a predicted one million new residents in the coming decades. Backed by the power of the Greater London Authority (GLA) -- a city-wide governmental structure established in 2000 -- the London Plan integrates sustainable development practices with innovative social and economic policies.

As London becomes "younger, more female and less white," said McMullen, the city wants to build 305,000 new housing units over the next 10 years, spread throughout its 32 boroughs. The London Plan calls for 50 percent of those units to be priced for low- and moderate-income citizens. New construction standards cover insulation requirements, building orientation (to make the most of solar power potential), green (or "living") roofs, and renewable on-site energy.

To reduce CO2 from vehicle emissions -- in addition to congestion charging, which McMullen said has reduced car trips by 50,000 per day -- the London Plan prescribes that scattered "town centres" in the boroughs be linked by public transport routes radiating from the city core, along with other light rail and tram service. The city's canals are to be relied upon for ferrying more freight and waste, reducing truck traffic on the streets.

The plan is aimed at nothing less than making London a "zero emission city," said McMullen, with CO2 reduction targets of 30 percent by 2025, and 60 percent by 2050.

Read more...

After Mayor Bloomberg's December announcement of his PlaNYC initiative to prepare for a sustainable New York of 9 million people by 2030, New York New Visions, the group of architects and planners originally organized around Ground Zero rebuilding, announced it was expanding its scope to tackle the new challenge. Last night, in a stark white room in the basement of the American Institute of Architects building in Greenwich Village, a collection of almost equally stark white faces began reimagining the New York of the future.  

Rohit Aggarwala, the management consultant tasked by Bloomberg with heading up the new project (pictured right), began by laying out the PlaNYC goals, a laundry list of urban niceties that it should be hard for anyone to disagree with: more housing, parks within a 10-minute walk for all residents, a well-maintained transportation grid, cleaner air and land and water. (All these were in the newspaper insert the city placed in local newspapers back in December; if you missed it, you can still download one from the mayor's website.) Noting that "sustainability" is a "terribly overused word," Aggarwala nonetheless offered his own definition: "a city that is cleaner, healthier, more reliable, and in general better."

The devil, of course, lies in the details, something that NYNV's assembled panel of architects and planners wasted no time in pointing out to Aggarwala, even as they gave the mayor points for just raising the questions:

• Where will the new housing for all these new New Yorkers go, and who will be living in it? "The million people who are coming are not coming with MBAs," noted Bloomberg's former Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Jerilyn Perine, saying the city needs to be "screaming our heads off for a new [federal] public housing program." (Less seriously, she also suggested "trading Staten Island to New Jersey for Newark.")
• "I don't want to be the harbinger of doom here," began structural engineer Joseph Tortorella, "but I will be." The flood of new construction already underway in the city, he said, is already creating a rush to use non-union labor to keep up with the workload, something he worries could lead to "a war in this city" that will make inflatable rats seem tame. The quality of work is also already at "a dangerous level," he said, with city building sites averaging one collapse a week.
• How will all this be paid for, and what gets cut from the agenda if the money falls short? "This is a great PR beginning," said former City Planning Commission chair Donald Elliott, stressing he meant that as a compliment. "But you're going to have to get into some evaluation of the opportunities and constraints."

And that's not even getting into some of the bigger questions about PlaNYC: Will new residents, most expected to be immigrants from Asia and Central and South America, really "bring jobs" with them, as Aggarwala asserted? If the city swells to 9 million people, what happens to the surrounding suburbs? And while the "GreeNYC" portion of the plan sets a laudable goal of cutting city carbon emissions by 30% (and cleaning up pollution), there's little else about preparing for what's likely to be a radically altered climate 23 years hence. Talk of a "more reliable" New York is likely to sound quaint if the Stillwell Avenue subway terminal has been washed out to sea.

NYNV has scheduled working group meetings the next three Fridays to follow up on last night's meeting, but the more interesting bit will likely be the public town hall meetings that Aggarwala promised would be announced soon. That's when the mayor should hear from not just those who hope to design the future New York, but those who hope to live in it.

Photo: SvdR on Flickr 

Chris Smith has an outstanding story in this week's New York Magazine pointing out that New York City has fallen behind other world cities in addressing climate change and challenging the Bloomberg Administration to do more. An excerpt:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been cruising through his second term. At this point, with a gaudy approval rating, Bloomberg should be willing to risk his popularity on behalf of a life-and-death subject. But on global warming, Bloomberg has so far been more gesture than guts.

It is only now, five years into his reign, that Bloomberg has started considering the broader changes that could bring striking improvements, and that might inflict short-term political pain. In December, he raised the stakes at a flashy press conference in Flushing Meadows, introducing his "sustainability" agenda for the city through 2030. The speech was long on meritorious goals and almost completely free of specifics. Those are supposed to arrive in March or April.

The mayor's sustainability brain trust is headed by Rohit Aggarwala, an academic expert in city history who was working as a management consultant at the ubiquitous McKinsey & Co. before being hired by Dan Doctoroff. The task force is mulling anti-car ideas that could stir serious rage, like shrinking the number of parking spaces in Manhattan. But Bloomberg punted on congestion pricing, which would have cut traffic and pollution, because he considers it politically impractical, and he's far more likely to pursue technocratic and financial avenues.

At an event hosted by the League of Conservation Voters, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will deliver a major speech outlining sustainability challenges and goals for the City of New York through the year 2030. This will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by NBC News Special Correspondent Tom Brokaw.

When

Tuesday, December 12th, 2006, 11:00 am

Where

The Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, Queens

The speech is the next step forward for the Long-Term Sustainability initiative that Mayor Bloomberg announced during a visit with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California on September 21.

As reported by Streetsblog, the Sustainability office is headed by Rohit Aggarwala and, we can only hope, has been significantly influenced by the work of Dr. Rachel Weinberger, an Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in land use and transportation planning.

And, yes, this is the big sustainability speech that Streetsblog incorrectly reported was happening last month. Hey, if the headline is labeled "Rumor Mill" take it with a grain of salt. Still, the editorial commentary from that story still applies to tomorrow's big speech:

There are high hopes that tomorrow's public unveiling, whatever it may show, begins to lay the groundwork for a serious traffic reduction program in New York City, perhaps in the form of London-style congestion charging. With this year's elections out of the way there is no longer any worry that the inevitably difficult public discussion of congestion charging might force a gubernatorial candidate into a corner. Governor Elect Spitzer's vow to raise subway fares only as a last resort almost guarantees an MTA fiscal crisis in the coming months. Might a fiscal crisis also serve as the impetus for a congestion charging push? Among political insiders there is a feeling that the only possible way to sell congestion charging to New York is in response to a serious crisis. In other words, the Doctor needs to make it clear that the patient is sick and needs to make dificult, but ultimately fulfilling, lifestyle changes.

And it's important to note that the Mayor can do a ton to enhance New York City's long-term sustainability without London-style congestion charging.

As we reported this morning, Mayor Bloomberg is in California with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a major policy announcement on a major, long-term, environmental sustainability initiative. The key components of the Mayor's plan include:

• The creation of the Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.
• The undertaking of a major greenhouse gas inventory for City government and the City overall.
• The appointment of a Sustainability Advisory Board to advise the City on environmentally sound policies and practices.
• The creation of a new partnership with the Earth Institute of Columbia University to provide the City with scientific research and advice on environmental and climate change-related issues.

Here are some of the more interesting snippets from the City's press release:

The announcement took place during a visit with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bloom Energy in Sunnyvale, California, where the Mayor and Governor talked about the State of California's groundbreaking sustainability initiatives.

"Now, we intend to make New York City a national leader in meeting the challenge of making ours an environmentally sustainable city. To make New York a truly sustainable city, we need a bold plan to use our land in the smartest way possible," Bloomberg said (Editor: Clearly the Mayor here is referring to this morning's Park(ing) Squat in Midtown).

The Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability is led by Director Rohit T. Aggarwala the Office's mission is three-fold: to help develop a plan for the City's long-term growth and development, to integrate sustainability goals and practices into every aspect of that plan; and to make New York City government a "green" organization.

The Mayor announced the launch of an unprecedented effort to measure the entire carbon emissions of New York City. This much broader effort, with a target completion date within six months, will give us the first picture of the total carbon impact of everyone who lives in, works in, or visits New York City.

The Sustainability Advisory Board will be chaired by Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding Daniel L. Doctoroff, and its kick-off meeting will take place on Wednesday, September 27th.

Members of the Sustainability Advisory Board include:

• Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council
• James F. Gennaro, Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection
• Carlton Brown, COO and Founder, Full Spectrum
• Marcia Bystryn, Executive Director, New York League of Conservation Voters
• Robert Fox, Partner, Cook + Fox Architects
• Ester Fuchs, Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
• Peter Goldmark, Program Director of NYC Office, Environmental Defense
• Ashok Gupta, Program Director of Air and Energy, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Michael Northrop, Program Officer of Sustainable Development, Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Ed Ott, Executive Director, NYC Central Labor Council
• Elizabeth Girardi Schoen, Senior Director of Environmental Affairs, Pfizer, Inc.
• Peggy Sheppard, Executive and Co-Founder, West Harlem Environmental Action Coalition (WE ACT)
• Daniel Tishman, Chairman and CEO, Tishman Construction Corporation
• Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO, Partnership for New York City
• Robert Yaro, President, Regional Plan Association
• Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director, UPROSE