Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Topics

Topics

Trees & Sidewalks Repair Program


In a small but significant step forward for both street trees and public safety, the city has begun a $3.4 million pilot program to fix sidewalks that have been damaged by tree roots, at no cost to the homeowner. The program is targeted to owners of one-, two-, and three-family houses.

Previously, the owner of the property next to the unsafe sidewalk would be issued a violation by the city Department of Transportation and was responsible for the repair. Although the parks department would take care of trimming the roots, the homeowner had to arrange for a contractor to remove the old sidewalk and put in a new one, at a cost of around $1,000.

"I have reams of letters from homeowners, some anguished and some angry, lamenting the unfairness of having to repair a sidewalk when the damage was caused by a publicly owned tree, in many cases planted by the city," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "It was creating a great deal of frustration and anger toward the city and trees."

Under the new Trees & Sidewalks Repair Program, all homeowners have to do is call 311. The parks department will come up with a solution to the safety problem that also protects the health of the tree. Potential repairs include expanding the pit, especially on lightly traveled sidewalks; slightly raising the level of the sidewalk to go over the roots; or strengthening the flags. Top priority will be given to sidewalks with the most severe damage, with a larger percentage of the pathway affected, and with the highest levels of pedestrian traffic. The transportation department will continue to conduct inspections and issue violations, but will notify the parks department when violations appear to be caused by trees.

Good For The Trees, Good For The Bottom Line

Although for years the city was reluctant to allocate money for fixing root-damaged sidewalks, over the long term, it could prove to be a smart investment. It should lead to safer sidewalks, fewer people falling, and a reduction in lawsuits against the city. Until last year, when the city passed a law making property owners liable for injuries that occur on sidewalks in front of their buildings, the city spent about $20 million a year on lawsuits by people who tripped and fell on sidewalks, according to Kate O’Brien Ahlers of the New York City Law Department. Although claims have dropped 30 to 40 percent since the passage of the new law, it does not cover owners of one-, two-, and three-family houses, to whom the sidewalk repair program is targeted.

The program is also expected to enhance the health of the urban forest, boosting its value both in economic terms and to the city’s quality of life. It costs $1.110 to replace a street tree and, with the worth of a street tree with a 3-foot-wide trunk roughly $10,000, every tree that thrives helps the bottom line. That does not include the real (if not easily quantifiable) value of trees in filtering pollutants, reducing energy costs, and raising real estate values, to list just a few of the benefits. For example, a study by U.S.D.A. scientist David J. Nowak estimated that in 2000, New York City’s street trees reduced 1,500 tons of pollutants at an associated value of $8 million.

Conditions are difficult to begin with for the city’s half million street trees, which live in a hotter, drier, and more dangerous environment than their park counterparts. Historically, the city has provided minimal funding for maintaining the trees, and only for pruning. The frequency of street tree pruning was increased in 1997, but funding for pruning is one of the first things to be cut when budgets are tight. The city depends on citizens and nonprofits like TreesNY for other essential care, such as watering, cultivating the soil, monitoring for disease and insects, and putting up tree guards .

By having the parks department oversee the repairs, the new program will make sure that they are done with greater sensitivity to the health of the tree. And homeowners dealing with cracked and raised sidewalks will view street trees as less of a nuisance.

The program was funded in part by the borough presidents of Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. "It is a program we would like to see work and become permanent," said Dan Andrews, speaking for Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, noting that Queens has the most street trees of any borough.

Judging from the number of requests for sidewalk repairs in the first two days after the program was announced -- nearly 1,500, half the number of root-trimming requests the department received in an entire year in the past — there is a huge pent-up demand.

"It’s one of the extremely gratifying common-sense things that we’ve all wanted to do for years," Benepe said. "It will do more to improve both the survival rates of street trees and homeowners’ relationship to street trees than anything else we could have done."

Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Politics of Parking


 

Related In Community Gazettes:
• Flushing Draws a Crowd, But Where Will They Park?
• Restrictions Won't End Parking Woes in Bay Ridge

Tavi Fields, a 25-year-old rapper, found the city's alternate side parking regulations more than she could handle. "I was going through a hard period of time for a while, where I slept in for most of the day," Fields told the Daily News. While she stayed in bed, her Lexis remained on the wrong side of the street. The result: 90 tickets now totaling $10,433, making her, by the paper's reckoning, one of the top 10 parking scofflaws in the city.

Most New Yorkers manage to avoid such a dubious distinction, but for the people who own the 1.9 million cars registered in the city, parking borders on an obsession. Its rules have spawned at least one novel, a guidebook, sitcom episodes, and two companies dedicated to helping New Yorkers outsmart traffic enforcement officers.

Parking presents elected officials with a quandary. Many New Yorkers with cars view a free space to park as a God-given right. But other New Yorkers, pointing to pollution and congestion from automobiles, object to any move that encourages driving. The city's need for revenue from parking further complicates the picture, along with politicians' natural reluctance to attract the ire of voters who get tickets.

These issues arise again and again - in the controversies over parking at the West Side stadium and the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn and the debates over the future of city neighborhoods. (See related stories on Flushing and Bay Ridge.) The latest imbroglio is an election year tiff over the use of parking meters on Sunday, which the mayor's critic dubbed "pay to pray."

Most New Yorkers would say the problem is too many cars chasing too few spaces. But some planners disagree. The problem, they say, is not that parking is too expensive, but that it is too cheap. And some say the problem is not that there are too few spaces but that there are too many.

THE HIGH COSTS OF CRUISING

Paying for space in a parking garage, George tells Elaine as they seek a space on an episode of Seinfeld, "is like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay when, if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?"

Many New Yorkers apparently agree, and so spend long periods of time driving, in concentric circles or zigzags, looking for parking.

Even the smartest among us do this silly chore. In a 2000 interview, Horst Stormer, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, described his formula for finding parking spaces by scooting ahead of rival drivers.

The average cruising time for a parking space in some New York neighborhoods approaches 14 minutes, according to a 1993 study. That's twice the time spent in San Francisco, where it is so hard to park that residents leave their cars on the sidewalk.

But cruising takes up more than time. Environmentalists cite a 1984 study that found drivers in one 15-block neighborhood in Los Angeles spent 100,000 hours cruising, wasting 47,000 gallons of fuel and producing 700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year.

New York's rules complicate the process. Moving the car from one side of the street to the other is not required in every city. And any single spot can have three sets of rules governing its use at various times.

Such parking regulations attempt to address a variety of needs, according to Michael Primeggia, the Department of Transportation's deputy commissioner for traffic operations. In most of the city, the main concern is street cleaning, which dictates the alternate side rules.

But in busier commercial areas, particularly in Manhattan, other considerations come into play, such as the need to accommodate traffic flow and allow for deliveries. "New York City is not so lucky that there can be one regulation that regulates the curb for the entire day," Primeggia said. And that leads to two or three signs - with different rules - for a single space.

A WALKER'S CITY, DAMAGED BY PARKING

Ironically, the city famed for its convoluted parking rules and parking headaches is the only American city where a majority of residents do not own cars. This gives rise to a chicken and egg debate. Do New Yorkers not own cars because it is so hard to park? Or is it so hard to park because New York remains a pedestrian and mass transit city that has not destroyed itself to accommodate the automobile?

The number of cars registered to New Yorkers has declined by about 5 percent since its peak in 2000. According to the 2000 Census, 54 percent of all New Yorkers -- and three out of four Manhattan residents -- do not own a vehicle.

But cars still clog Manhattan streets. Although the number of auto trips into Manhattan dropped after September 11, 2001, it has begun to grow again. Some experts predict it could reach 1 million vehicles a day.

A majority of people in Brooklyn and the Bronx do not have cars, but two out of every three Queens residents and four out of five Staten Islanders do.

By some measures (.pdf format) , New York is the second most congested - after Los Angeles - of America's largest cities. In 1990, the average speed of crosstown traffic in a car fell to 5.2 miles per hour. Brian Ketcham, a Brooklyn transportation consultant, estimated then that traffic cost the city nearly $30 billion a year in losses in employee productivity, accidents, air pollution, noise and roadway damage. And a 2004 study concludes that congestion cost the metropolitan area more than $7 billion in wasted time and fuel alone.

HALF A BILLION DOLLARS OF PARKING TICKETS

Many New Yorkers decide not to own a car at least because parking costs so much - particularly for drivers who get a lot of tickets. City drivers paid $537 million for parking violations in 2004. This came from some 10 million tickets, a 20 percent increase from 2003.

Primeggia says parking regulations are not designed to produce revenue or to confuse drivers. Any average citizen who reads English should be able to figure where and where not to park. When there is more than one sign applying to a space, the city puts the most restrictive sign on top. "All it takes is reading the signs in order and determining which sign is in effect," Primeggia said

But not everyone agrees. Louis Camporeale said he became aware of the faulty enforcement of traffic regulations in the 1980s. As a student, he would try to park at broken meters. "Three or four dollars in meter money was a couple of hours work," he recalled.

But sometimes the plan backfired, and he got a ticket -- an unfair ticket. (You can park at a broken meter -- but only for an hour.)

Such disputes led Camporeale to become an advocate for New York City parkers. He has written "The New York City Motorist's Guide to Parking" and runs a web site www.parkingpal.com with parking tips. "New Yorkers think they're so savvy, but when it comes to parking regulations, they're not," he said.

Glen Bolofsky, the author of the city's first alternate side parking calendar, now runs a business www.parkingticket.com that fights people's tickets - for a fee. Its successful challenges arise from confusing signs, mistakes on the ticket itself and other gaffes by the city. The company, which also operates in Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and Philadelphia, claims that it won dismissals or reductions on 75 percent of the tickets it challenged last year.

"The rules and regulation are pretty much stacked against the average person," Bolofsky said. "The city goes out of its way to create a situation to intimidate and bully people."

Although the city consistently denies setting quotas for parking agents, Bolofsky disagrees. "The city budget dictates what the revenue [from parking tickets] is going to be," he said.

THE DEMISE OF THE PARKING LOT

People risk tickets to park on the street, though, because lots and garages cost so much - and the fees seem likely to rise even higher.

A reserved space in a garage in midtown cost $496 in 2004, the highest rate in the country, according to a recent survey. This has prompted some developers to offer parking condos where people purchase a space for tens of thousands of dollars and then pay a monthly fee.

But, despite this, lots are closing as New York's real estate boom makes land too expensive to park on. The city owns lots, but when the land becomes valuable, sells them for other uses. (See related story on Flushing.)

The same thing is happening with private lots. Broker Anne De Marzo told the New York Times that she has sold five parking lots and two garages in the Hudson Yards area with 20 more deals in the works. And Sean Sweeney, director of the civic group SoHo Alliance said he counted 2,000 parking spaces that had been lost in his area. Owners say they can sell their property for $350 for each "buildable" square foot.

POLITICS AND PARKING

In Calvin Trillin's novel about parking - "Tepper Isn't Going Out" –fictional Mayor Frank "Il Duce" Ducavelli sees his poll numbers rise after he goes after the "scofflaws in striped pants" - Ukrainian diplomats who did not pay their parking fees. Trillin obviously drew his inspiration from Mayor Rudy Giuliani's attacks on United Nations diplomats who parked illegally and used diplomatic immunity to avoid paying their tickets. While the problem has eased, New Yorkers still hold a special animosity for foreigners who park freely and illegally, and politicians continue to use that sentiment to their advantage.

Similarly, because alternate side parking rules have few fans among voters, City Council has added to the list of days when rules are suspended, aiming the dispensations at various religions and ethnic groups. In 2002, for example, the council voted unanimously to suspend rules on Asian Lunar New Year, Purim and Ash Wednesday, overriding the mayor's veto.

This year's political parking dispute concerns the use of meters on Sundays -- something the city has done in recognition, it says, of the fact that stores now stay open on Sunday. The move also brings in about $7 million a year.

But a Bay Ridge minister complained that parishioners were ducking out during services to feed the meters. In response, City Councilmembers Vincent Gentile and Hiram Monserrate introduced a bill that would ban metered parking on Sunday. (See related story)

Other Democrats picked up the cause. "There shouldn't be a tax on worshipping," mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer said. "People shouldn't have to pay to pray."

The city has done a done a few things on parking that have met with general approval, particularly the use of multiple space meters. Rather than feed coins into a metal meter on a post, motorists purchase a ticket from a machine and then leave it on their dashboard. Cars can then park more tightly. The system also enables the city to charge different prices at different times or discourage long stays.

Currently, Primeggia said, many of the meters charge $2 for one hour but $9 for three hours to spur turnover. "We're encouraging them to use it as long as they need it, but when they're done leave," he said.

The city also addresses parking in zoning decisions. Residents often cite increased parking difficulties as a hallmark of rapidly developing - or overdeveloped - neighborhoods. So, on Staten Island, for example, the city has increased requirements for parking to accompany new buildings. Of course, more space for parking can mean less land for other uses, including lawns and gardens.

PARKING AND NEW PROJECTS

Concerns about parking also enter into one of the year's hottest political controversies: the proposed Jets stadium on the Far West Side. The extension of the No. 7 subway line aims to make the proposed West Side football stadium friendly to transit users and discourage automobile use. The Jets anticipate 70 percent of people attending games will arrive by mass transit. This would require parking for 7,000 cars.

And an anti stadium group, the New York Association for Better Choices, sees that number as unrealistic. It predicts that each Jets game would attract 16,000 cars and 100 buses, requiring 70 acres of parking lots and garages.

For the short term, the city has said it plans to allow approximately 1,500 new spaces near the railyards. Eventually, it says, thousands of new parking spaces would be provided to accommodate the residential and commercial development of the surrounding area.

Parking is also a concern for the Nets arena in Brooklyn, which, like the Jets Stadium, aims to be accessible by mass transit. The arena plans call for 3,000 parking spaces but critics say this will not be enough. And, they charge, an already congested area will grow more crowded as thousands of Nets fans cruise the streets looking for parking.

Parking is such a problem for new projects that developers want even racecar fans to get out of their cars. The proposed NASCAR track on Staten Island would accommodate about 95,000 people, but the plan only calls for parking for 8,400 cars. International Speedway Corp. hopes fans will park at some 16 off-site lots and take shuttle buses to the track.

PAYING TO PARK

Even though parking is a cherished commodity in New York, the city gives it away. A 2002 survey found that only 24 percent of the almost 30,000 curbside parking spaces in Manhattan south of 59th Street had meters.

Donald Shoup, a professor at University of California Los Angeles, argues in his new book "The High Cost of Free Parking" that free parking creates many costs, helping to explain "extreme auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl and extravagant energy use." Just charging $1 an hour for those unmetered Manhattan spaces, he said, would generate $250 million a year.

"People are paying a very high cost for housing and people even go homeless and cars are parking for free," he said.

Shoup believes the city should set rates for on-street parking high enough so that about 15 percent of the spaces are usually unoccupied. In some areas of London, this is eight pounds -- about $15 -- an hour.

To make such a sharp increase in rates politically palatable, Shoup proposes the money go to local community agencies to fund neighborhood improvements. "Nobody ever wants to pay for parking, so you have to create someone on the other side of the meter who wants the money," he said.

Some critics say such policies are unfair to lower income people. And while this is less true in New York City than other places, businesses worry (.pdf format) that high priced parking will keep people from driving to their establishments and spending money.

Some cities, though, have taken more drastic measures to stop parking. Copenhagen for example has a policy to reduce parking by about two percent a year.

That would be fine with Kit Hodge, campaign director of Transportation Alternatives, as long as people take transit, bike or walk instead. "Our aim is to discourage parking," she said.

For More Information

Organizations

New York City Department of Transportation
Alternate side parking, other parking regulations and how to pay a ticket online.

Parking Pal
Information and tips designed to help drivers park in New York City

Transportation Alternatives
An advocacy groups that seeks to reduce automobile use. Its web site includes information on car and bicycle parking.

Resources

Colliers Parking Rate Survey (in pdf format)
A survey of how much it costs to park in 55 North American cities.

Gridlock Sam
Web site run by former New York City Traffic Commissioner Sam Schwartz with information on parking, driving and congestion in the city.

New York City Department of Planning
Maps showing the locations of all licensed parking lots and garages in the five boroughs.

parkingticket.com
Company that will fight your parking ticket - for a fee.

2004 Urban Mobility Study
The Texas Transportation Institute's study of mobility and traffic congestion on freeways and major streets in 85 cities.

Articles

The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road)
(New York Times Magazine)

A Brief History of Parking: The Life and After-life of Paving the Planet
(Architecture Magazine)

The Dynamics of On-Street Parking in Large Central Cities
(Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, NYU)

Fewer Cars (Same Traffic)
(Gotham Gazette)

The High Cost of Free Parking
(Donald Shoup)
The site includes the book's first chapter, articles on the book and comments by the author.

High Costs Drive Car Owners Crazy
(Daily News)

NYC Parking Policy is Backwards and Dangerous
(Transporation Alternatives magazine)

No Parking. You're Welcome
(New York Times)

The Overdevelopment Debate
(Gotham Gazette)

Parking Space and Public Spaces: Why Parking Can Destroy Communities and How to Find a Place for It
(Project for Public Spaces)

The Savvy Parker
(New York Chapter, American Automobile Associatin)

Shakedown: Sometimes It's the Little Things that Drive Your Over the Edge

"Tepper Isn't Going Out" by Calvin Trillin
(Salon)
Discusses the novel about parking in New York

Ticketing Blitz?
(Gotham Gazette)

Taking on Carbon Dioxide In Defiance Of Bush; Also, Tracking Detectors For Carbon Monoxide


Call it a characteristic display of Big Apple chutzpah. Last month, city and state attorneys scored a $1.1 billion legal victory against out-of-state polluter Ohio Edison for violating the federal Clean Air Act, which regulates pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. But now, the New York State Office of the Attorney General and New York City Corporation Counsel, along with half a dozen other governments in the Northeast and West Coast, are going after carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is currently unregulated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical, CO2, is a natural byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. Though benign from a chemical safety standpoint, its ability to absorb and retain heat has led many scientists and governments around the world to attribute a recent rise in global mean temperatures to unchecked industrial and automotive exhaust.

Many business groups and even a few scientists challenge this so-called "greenhouse effect" theory, but evidence of rising carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is incontrovertible. A study of atmospheric concentrations at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, the longest continuous study on record, reported an 18.8 percent increase in the mean concentration of carbon dioxide between 1958 and 2003.

With the Bush Administration currently distancing itself from the Kyoto Protocol, the recently-enacted treaty forcing developed nations to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions, state and city governments with financial and political stake in climate stability see the legal system as the best way to reduce U.S. emissions.

"I think if we want to see progressive, responsible environmental policy, it's going to have to come from the state and local governments,'" says Judith Enck, policy advisor to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "If you get the West Coast and the Northeast teaming up, sooner or later you get a national global warming policy even if the federal government won't act."

Bush's Clear Skies Act Ignores Carbon Dioxide

Last month, just about the same time Ohio Edison was agreeing to a court-mandated installation of smokestack-scrubbers at its largest coal-burning power plant, the Bush Administration's efforts to spare other power companies the same indignation were stalling out in Congress.

Dubbed the Clear Skies Act, the Bush air pollution plan would abandon a decades-old policy of forcing power companies to clean their facilities whenever they expand or upgrade production -- a policy known as "new source review" by insiders -- in favor of a market-oriented policy in which clean companies earn pollution credits which they can then sell to dirtier companies as a monetary reward for compliance, This policy is known as "cap and trade."

According to the Bush administration, this market-driven system would reduce sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury emissions by as much as 70 percent over the next two decades while at the same time reducing the number of costly lawsuits. Opponents, however, see major flaws: During the first decade of the plan, or at least until 2012, the so-called Bush "cap" would actually be lenient enough to relieve power companies from the compliance duties already required under new source review. More importantly, however, the Bush plan makes no mention of carbon dioxide whatsoever. Although Bush promised to regulate during the 2000 election campaign, his administration voided the promise less than 60 days into his first term, citing recessionary concerns.

Looking At 19th Century Law To Get Around Bush In The 21st

Since then, Democratic-voting coastal states such as New York, Massachusetts and California, and even swing states such as Iowa, have been looking for alternate ways to remedy the rising cost of severe weather storms and lost wetlands. Environmental lawyers have found their remedy not in the federal case law built up since the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 but in the common law that governed most environmental disputes in the days of limited federal authority.

David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the 19th century nuisance laws that once allowed cities such as New York to ban slaughterhouses, rendering plants and other unpopular businesses and to regulate their activity across jurisdictional lines offer an opportunity to go after fixed-point carbon dioxide producers. Doniger cites, in particular, State of Georgia v. Tennessee Copper, a 1907 case that worked its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. In that case, the state of Georgia asserted its legal right to limit the tree-killing sulphur dioxide emanating from a copper smelter operating in Tennessee. In 1915, the Supreme Court sided with Georgia, setting up the modern framework for interstate environmental regulation.

"This is old, hallowed stuff," says Doniger of the 1907 case. "A lot of it was put aside or put on pause during the last few decades because most kinds of pollution are now addressed by the Clean Air Act."

Most but not all. As noted previously in this topic page, the Bush administration's undisguised antipathy to the decades-old new source review policy has already created a vacuum of leadership which many states and cities are rushing to fill. That carbon dioxide remains off the federal enforcement agenda only adds to the shifting legal momentum.

"It's ironic," observes Frank O'Donnell, president of the non-profit monitoring group Clean Air Watch. "Historically more liberal groups sought to make sure the federal government had primacy in matters of this sort. Since the Bush administration has in effect dropped the ball, however, it is now up to state attorneys general to clean up the environment."

Last summer, eight states, including New York, together with New York City and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed lawsuits in the Southern District of New York against five power companies which, added together, account for 10 percent of the country's carbon dioxide emissions. The list includes Ohio-based utilities American Electric Power and Cinergy, Atlanta-based Southern Company, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, and the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority. The since-consolidated lawsuit demands that defendants reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.

Pat Hemlepp, spokesman for American Electric Power, says his company is already reducing its carbon dioxide emissions voluntarily.

"We're the leader in our sector on carbon [gas reduction] efforts, which is why, frankly, we were quite surprised to be one of the companies named in the suit," says Hemlepp.

Then again, American Electric Power is also the country's largest consumer of coal and a strong supporter of the Bush administration reasoning that any national carbon dioxide standards take into account growing industrial competition from countries such as India and China, a Kyoto treaty signatory that, under the treaty terms, won't have to curb its emissions until the next decade.

An Environmental Scopes Trial?

Economic issues aside, the current case pushes the carbon dioxide debate out of Congress, where the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is currently locked in a 9-9 stalemate on the Clear Skies Act thanks to moderate Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chaffee and Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords, and into the courts. Green Car Congress, a blog that tracks environmental issues, has already likened the case to Tennessee v. John Scopes, the sensational 1925 trial in which attorneys debated the scientific validity of Darwin's theory evolution.

In a statement issued at the time of last summer's filing, Michael Cardozo, head of the New York City legal department, described the city's participation as response to global warming concerns and "part of the Bloomberg Administration's commitment to maintaining a clean and sustainable city."

Speaking after last month's court victory, Judith Enck of the Attorney General's Office sees things in even more dramatic terms. Like O'Donnell, she sees ironic payback for a Republican party that, during its own time as a minority power, sought to transfer federal authority on issues such as environmental regulation back to the states.

"When [conservatives] were designing the new federalism, they weren't banking on an aggressive attorneys general," Enck says. "The federal government can assert its power over much more territory and more jurisdictions, but an aggressive, focused attorney general can accomplish more than a lumbering federal bureaucracy."

TRACKING CITY CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR USAGE

While New York officials focus on carbon dioxide, Boris Riabov, a sophomore at the Bronx High School of Science, has been keeping tabs on its more dangerous cousin: carbon monoxide.

Based on data from a recently collected school assignment, Riabov estimates that nearly a third of Manhattan residents have yet to install -- or have their landlords install -- carbon monoxide detectors.

Riabov, 16, created the survey for a class called Science Instrumentation and Problem Solving (SIPS). As noted in a December 2003 column, carbon monoxide detector sales have historically been tragedy-driven. People read grisly stories such as the October, 2004 suffocation deaths of an Albanian family in its Staten Island home due to a blocked exhaust vent, and go out and buy detectors. A city law enacted last November seeks to break that pattern, however, mandating the purchase and installation for all rented units.

Taking inspiration from that law, Riabov created an anonymous questionnaire which he circulated at various public libraries in and around Washington Heights. The questionnaire asks people to list carbon monoxide's effects and to report the number of detectors in their apartment or house. Although 93 percent of the survey's 70 respondents knew about carbon monoxide and almost every returned questionnaire listed at least one negative effect caused by the gas, 30 percent of respondents reported no carbon monoxide detectors.

"That was most surprising to me," says Riabov. "I also found that ten percent of homes with children didn't have a detector, and one of the facts about carbon monoxide is that it affects children quicker than adults."

Less surprising was the statistic showing that 44 percent of respondents reported new detectors in their homes since November 1, 2004, a sign that the law, while not reaching everyone, has certainly affected a significant number of people. Riabov says he hopes to use this finding as a foundation for a more ambitious study, documenting code compliance later this year.

"There are a couple contests I'd like to enter," he says. "If you get approved, they give you a grant to get started. I'll have to wait and see if they give me a grant."

Riabov completed his survey just days before the latest news story involving the odorless, colorless gas firefighters and parametics call the "silent killer." On March 31, police in the Douglaston section of Queens discovered the bodies of a hearing-impaired husband and wife. The medical examiner has yet to determine the cause of death, but police officials speaking to the Associated Press believe the couple left their car running in the garage and suffocated from the fumes after failing to hear their alarm go off.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Print Friendly and PDF

Editor's Choice


Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years