Around the clock, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, crowds fill the narrow Chinatown sidewalks waiting to board buses run by companies such as Double Happiness, Fung Wah and Lucky Star. For as little as $15, these buses take budget-conscious riders to Philadelphia, Boston or Washington, D.C.
Critics of the buses say while they might benefit riders' pocketbooks, they put a burden on residents and businesses near the stops, polluting the air and crowding the streets and sidewalks.
"The cheap service is only possible by the very fact the bus companies that profit off of this don't have to pay for the problems caused," said Community Board 3 member Thomas Yu. Yu, co-chair of the Chinatown Working Group and chair of the board's Parks, Recreation, Cultural Affairs and Waterfront Committee, blames the buses for clogging traffic, blocking truck and pedestrian business and worsening already high air pollution levels.
"The residents pay for that cost while the bus company keeps the profits," he said.
As residents and merchants complain, the city has few tools to regulate the buses and keep them from clogging the already congested area.
Down through lower Canal and Allen Streets, passengers assemble on sidewalks on nearly every block. It was not always this way. The phenomenon of Chinatown buses goes back only to 2001, when according to its website, Fung Wah began a van shuttle service for restaurant and other low-wage Chinatown workers in Manhattan and Queens. Over the years, the company added service to Providence and Boston, employing large coach-style diesel buses to meet the growing demand.
As budget travelers from all over the East Coast caught on to the low cost and convenience afforded by the buses, other companies sprang up. Bus routes now range as far south as Atlanta and as far north as Portland, Maine. The main hub continues to be Manhattan's Chinatown. But many say the business has expanded faster than Chinatown's capacity to handle.
A recent visit to the corner of Allen and Hester streets found 60-passenger interstate buses taking up four metered parking spots while loading and unloading for periods of 15 minutes and more. Others pulled into Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus stops or stopped to unload in an active traffic lane, creating congestion on the narrow, crowded roads.
Every time a bus idles or circles the block it burns diesel fuel that releases dust, smoke and fine particles into the air. The federal Environmental Protection Agency classifies these particles -- known as PM2.5 -- as harmful pollutants because they are small enough to inhale directly into the human lungs, causing respiratory problems and long-term side effects.
The federal agency found that particulate pollution has long been the leading factor in air pollution in New York City, with smog, or ground-level ozone, a distant second. In 2008, fine particulate matter was the main pollutant in Manhattan on 251 of the 336 days when air quality was tracked, according to the EPA Air Quality Index.
In Chinatown, the site of heavy truck and bus traffic moving over three bridges, some of those particles likely come from diesel emissions. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Chinatown has one of the highest rates of fine particulate matter concentration in the five boroughs.
Asthma, often linked to particulate pollution, is a major health problem in Chinatown. According to the 2007 Community Health Survey conducted by the city, 6.4 percent of respondents in lower Manhattan reported having asthma attack or episode during the year, the second highest rate in Manhattan (after Central Harlem).
These numbers don't surprise Mae Lee, the executive director of the Chinatown Progressive Association, a non-profit agency providing free services and promoting health justice for immigrants. Residents are so concerned, she said, that the association is now gearing up to conduct its second community-wide asthma survey. The first survey, made in 2002, found that one in five households reported a family member with asthma symptoms.
Jennifer Long, a volunteer spearheading the new survey, hopes it will help draw attention to traffic congestion on Chinatown streets. "There will be a section on idling buses" she said, "and in this survey, there will be a link to diesel pollution."
The effects of diesel exhaust on human health are multi-faceted, said Stephen Markowitz, an epidemiologist and professor of occupational medicine at Queens College's Department of Earth and Environmental Science. "Diesel exhaust … does cause cancer, and in the shorter term it is associated with asthma and other respiratory diseases," he said. Moving buses, he continued, pose less of a threat to human health than idling buses, because idling buses "produce higher concentrations" of fine diesel particulates. "It's preposterous that buses should be sitting there idling." he said.
Requiring ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and particle filters on engines -- restrictions already in place in New York City for some vehicles -- might help alleviate the worst effects of diesel pollution.
A 2005 report by the non-profit law and science group Clean Air Task Force found that these technologies can reduce toxic diesel particles released into the atmosphere "by up to 90 percent." But the group said existing federal clean diesel regulations only extend to engines manufactured after 2007. This leaves out diesel vehicles already on the road, which includes interstate Chinatown buses.
All interstate buses larger than 10,000 pounds and carrying more than nine passengers are required to obtain operating permits from the federal government. But national Clean Air guidelines are enforced by individual states.
Joe Ionnati of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation said that the city and state have passed laws regulating diesel engines, but that the laws do not apply to the private interstate buses.
Ionnati said the ambiguous status of interstate buses also creates problems for state emissions enforcement. All heavy-duty diesel trucks and buses registered in New York must submit to yearly emissions and safety tests. But many Chinatown buses, subcontracted from various carriers, are not registered in New York.
Ionnati said the best enforcement tool city environmental officers have is the power to do out on-the-spot roadside emissions inspections that carry a fine of $700 or more per offense. "If it’s 8,500 pounds in weight and it's diesel, it can be pulled over." Ionnati said. "If you had a truck or a bus coming from Canada and it's smoking, it can be pulled over." He was not sure, though, how widely these inspections have been used in New York City.
The city and state environmental conservation department used roadside inspections to target heavy trucks and buses in East Harlem during a crackdown on visible exhaust in 2007.
But both Long and Lee of the Chinatown Progressive Association said these tactics would encounter obstacles in crowded Chinatown. "You have to make the public want it," said Lee, "especially since these buses are extremely popular." More enforcement would have to go hand in hand with what she termed "a solution that's culturally acceptable to the community."
To limit pollution, the city does bar engines from idling for more than three minutes. Leo Lee, a manager at Apex/Universe Bus, said his buses are routinely targeted by police for illegal idling while unloading passengers at the company's 13 Allen Street terminal, even though the company provides an indoor waiting room for riders. "If any police go by they give us a ticket," Lee said. "If the driver doesn't speak English, you get an extra ticket."
Rising demand and tough competition force operators to load customers where they can. On a recent day, Fung Wah's front curb on Canal Street was lined with steel police barriers as a result of police department efforts to keep Manhattan Bridge traffic routes clear. Undaunted, the Fung Wah buses simply pulled around the corner to the Bowery and loaded customers at the first available space past the barriers.
Some businesses around the stops complain about buses and crowds of riders that block their storefronts.
"Business is very slow and people cannot park sometimes because of the buses," said an attendant at a wall and floor-covering store who asked to remain unnamed.
Many residents and businesses would like to see the city regulate more closely where buses can load and unload. But with so many buses using the same small area of Chinatown -- up to 291 arrivals and departures a day, according to 2009 study conducted by the Department of City Planning -- there simply is not enough curb space to meet the demand.
At the same time, there is a maze of conflicting regulations. City law dictates that operators who use spaces not specifically designated for bus loading are breaking the law and can be ticketed. A signed and designated bus layover stop did exist until recently at 88 East Broadway, but the police department put up barricades and closed it down.
In 2007, the mayor's Community Affairs Unit attempted to find new spaces to relocate the buses, the study said, but "none of the recommended sites have proven to be feasible." Private bus companies may use city bus stops to quickly unload passengers, but it is "illegal to wait, layover or park in a bus stop," and many Chinatown bus operators have abused their privilege, the study notes.
The planning department concluded that unless a permanent solution can be found, bus operators will be forced to continue negotiating on a daily basis with the local police to find temporary curbside space to load and unload.
Lee said that his company has repeatedly applied to the city Department of Transportation for a permanent loading space and received no response. "We're trying to make it convenient for the people of Chinatown to get places. I just don't understand why we don’t get a space to load customers." he said.
Managers for Fung Wah and Lucky Star, two of the most established bus companies in Chinatown, told the same story: repeated requests for loading space and no answer from the city.
Transportation department spokeswoman Suchi Sanagavarapu said the department "can allocate a permit right now" on an individual company basis. But there is no overall system in place to determine who gets permits, and with so many companies applying, no way to make everyone happy.
That is why, said Colleen Chattergoon, another transportation department spokeswoman. the department "has been deferring to the community boards and referring all requests to them."
Similar problems tie the community board's hands, said Community Board 3 transportation and safety chair David Crane. Without criteria for determining which companies deserve a piece of Chinatown’s limited curb space, he said, the board's now simply denies all requests.
Lucky Star desk agent Ken Huang said he doubts the city will ever be able to find a solution." There are a lot of bus companies in Chinatown and I don't think they can give everyone a space," he said. Further he does not see signs that the city is trying. "I don't think they really approve of us," Huang said.
The city, though, does seem to be getting more involved. In response to rising resident complaints, several city agencies, including the city transportation department, are conducting studies to find solutions to the problems created by congestion and unregulated curbside loading.
In its study, the Department of City Planning recommended the transportation department auction off curb space. At a Community Board 3's transportation and safety committee meeting in March, Crane called such a plan "doable" and told the board that it would "solve a lot of problems." Now, Crane said, some bus companies change their corporate names in order to avoid burdensome federal safety. This, Crane said, wouldn’t happen if companies were tied to a city-enforced permit.
A new permitting scheme would need to clear several hurdles, though, including approval the state legislature in Albany.
Meanwhile, some bus companies continue to petition for their own spaces. At the March community board meeting, Double Happiness Travel appealed for two passenger pick-up and drop-off locations on Pike Street. The board rejected the request unanimously.
"There’s no way for us to do this fairly," Crane told the company's Teddy Gonzales. "You're the fourth company in a year to petition for these spaces." When Gonzales expressed frustration, District Manager Susan Stetzer urged him to keep lobbying city and state officials to take action on the planning department's recommendations.
State Sen. Daniel Squadron, whose district includes part of Chinatown, has started to looking into drafting a law, said community liaison Rosemary Diaz, but with plenty of other issues taking up Albany’s time right now, the process may go forward slowly. Diaz said more bus regulation is needed. "They're contributing to an area with one of the highest asthma rates in the city," she said.
This article was written under a partnership between Gotham Gazette and the Baruch College's Department of Journalism and Writing Professions.
The Bloomberg administration's garbage plan has been sitting on a shelf awaiting full implementation for four years, and some critics think it's on the verge of spoiling.
After extensive political wrangling, the administration and the City Council in 2006 agreed on a solid waste management plan, which shuffled the location of solid waste stations and relied on trains and barges for moving trash instead of diesel-spewing trucks. Though it was hailed as a major step forward for environmental justice at the time, four years later many of the plan's fundamental proposals have been held up due to permitting delays and lawsuits.
Eight rounds of budget cuts have devastated the Department of Sanitation's public outreach and education funds. The city hasn't even come close to meeting its recycling goals, which were supposed to be accomplished in 2007. And now we're sending more of our garbage to out of state landfills at a cost that has increased by 51.4 percent between 2000 and 2010.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Bloomberg administration announced it would incorporate its solid waste management plan in its long-term sustainability vision — PlaNYC 2030. Environmentalists and garbage experts now say it's time to take another look at how the city handles the millions of tons of trash New Yorkers dispose of every year. Some of them argue we should throw out the city's original solid waste plan altogether.
Following the closure of Fresh Kills in 2001, the city piled tons of dirty diapers, day-old take out and spoiled vegetables on to diesel trucks. Those trucks traveled to transfer stations in a handful of impoverished city neighborhoods and then sputtered to out of state landfills. The city's waste management plan was supposed to provide relief for those neighborhoods — particularly the South Bronx and central Brooklyn — which were saddled with most, if not all, of the city's garbage burden.
The plan put transfer stations for both refuse and recyclable materials in more affluent neighborhoods, including the West Village and the Upper East Side.
But since the plan's approval, two of the seven proposed city-owned stations have received the necessary state permits and are under construction, according to the Department of Sanitation. Only one is fully operational. According to the original plan, four of these proposed transfer stations should have been completed by 2010. Now, several won't be done until at least 2013.
The state's permit process gets some of the blame for the delays. In addition, lengthy court and political battles have stalled transfer stations in affluent areas of Manhattan. As a result, the vast majority of the city's trash is still being trucked around the five boroughs and is still festering in low-income neighborhoods.
"The process has been slow, but not as a result, in this instance, of delays at the city," said Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There was hope that it wouldn’t take a full decade to really advance the barge and rail transportation ... It does seem now to be heading in the right direction."
But not everywhere, according to environmentalists. One area slated for a transfer station is still trash collection-free. In the Upper East Side, the Gracie Point Community Council has filed a second lawsuit against the city to try to quash a marine transfer station slated for 91st Street across from the FDR Drive.
Standing at the corner of 91st Street and York Avenue in Manhattan, just one block down from the proposed site, Tony Ard, the chair of the Gracie Point Community Council, said the city had not reasonably considered how a transfer station would affect the community and its environment — from trucks congesting tiny side streets to the health of its residents. He pointed to the athletic fields next to the transfer station's proposed driveway, where kids from nearby schools play, and to the Upper East Side's air quality — the worst in the city, according to new data from the health department.
"We're not saying choose minority residential neighborhoods," said Ard. "It doesn't belong in any residential neighborhood."
Ard expects a decision from the Supreme Court in Albany any day now. If it doesn't come down in the community's favor, he said, this isn't over.
"We're going to keep at this until we have no more courts available to us and no more legislatures," said Ard. "Why? Because it's wrong."
A spokesperson from the Department of Sanitation said the city carefully considered the public health and welfare when selecting transfer station sites, and the city has proved that the station is reasonable and necessary at 91st Street.
Other parts of the city's solid waste plan have moved forward. Twenty-year contracts have been either negotiated or are in effect with Waste Management of New York to export trash from Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. The sanitation department is currently negotiating with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for a long-term contract to take the vast majority of Manhattan's refuse to a waste-to-energy plant in New Jersey.
At the time of the solid waste management plan's approval, the administration argued long-term contracts would save the city money, and it would get the city's trash off of dirty diesel trucks. Almost 90 percent of city trash, the mayor promised, would be sent by rail or barge instead.
According to the Department of Sanitation, the cost of exporting the city's trash has increased per ton from $61.30 in 2000 to $92.80 in 2010 — a 20 percent increase over the rate of inflation. As of April, 33 percent of the city's trash has been unloaded from trucks and put on rail cars — an increase from 14 percent in 2006, according to the solid waste plan.
None of the city's waste is currently exported by barge, according to the Department of Sanitation, because those transfer stations have not been completed.
Politics may have held up parts of the city's garbage plan, but ordinary New Yorkers bear some of the responsibility for the city's failure to meet its recycling goals.
By 2007, according to the solid waste management plan, the city was supposed reach a 25 percent recycling rate for residences and a total rate citywide of 35 percent. According to the Mayor's Office of Operations, only 15.9 percent of trash was diverted from the residential waste stream for recycling so far this fiscal year, and only 24.6 percent of trash was recycled citywide.
Bottom line, New Yorkers aren't recycling like they should be.
"It’s a combination of a lot of things and to find out the answers to those things you have to spend a lot of money," said Robert Lange, the city's director of the Bureau of Waste Reduction, Reuse and Recycling, of the city's dismal recycling rate. "We only have two tools at our disposal: One is public education and one is enforcement. Clearly a lot of elected officials are not in favor of enforcement, including the City Council."
The problem is worse in some communities more than others. Public housing facilities have fetid recycling rates, said sanitation officials. If you dropped by Melrose or Port Morris in the Bronx during fiscal year 2009, less than 5 percent of the trash at the curb was set aside for recycling. Ten other neighborhoods, including Brownsville, Bedford Stuyvesant, Harlem and Hunts Point, put between 10 and 5 percent of their trash out for recycling in the same time period, according to the mayor's management report. Those neighborhoods also typically have the lowest median incomes in the city.
At the start of the Bloomberg administration, the city recycled more than 330,000 tons of metal, glass and plastic. In fiscal year 2009, about 231,000 tons were recycled — a decrease of 30 percent.
Officials in the Bloomberg administration and at the City Council are now turning to more regulation to boost the volume of clear plastic bags on city streets. Last month, Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a package of legislation aimed at increasing the city's recycling rate, including a proposal to expand the types of plastics the city recycles. A bill, which has widespread support among the council, would add rigid plastics, like yogurt cups and take-out containers, to the city's recycling program. Another bill would establish textile-recycling drop off locations throughout the city, and another proposal would start hazardous waste collections for toxic household products. The council is also exploring forcing the city to study the feasibility of a widespread composting program.
The Department of Sanitation has expressed support for the vast majority of the ideas.
While advocates champion the proposals, some say there is still a long haul ahead.
Now that the administration has decided to incorporate its solid waste management into PlaNYC 2030, advocates say the city should rethink the entire waste cycle: from the packaging of products to the 500-mile journey to a landfill down south.
"The revision of PlaNYC and the fact that solid waste is being brought into that plan now provides the opportunity to look at these issues of ultimate disposal and land filling and waste reduction," said Andy Darrell, the New York regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Start with a carrot: use the city's buying power to curtail the amount of packaging of certain products, said environmental advocates. Concentrate on recycling construction materials, others add. (During his address in Times Square on Earth Day the mayor said the city would look into waste reduction.)
Other refuse experts are willing to use a stick instead.
"We need to work through the system step by step," said Benjamin Miller, an author and former director of policy planning for the Department of Sanitation. "We should prevent as much waste as we can. The single most effective system to do that is to charge people for the waste they send out."
Once the city's waste has been reduced, advocates say the administration should consider its far larger challenge: exporting trash.
A majority of Manhattan's trash goes to an incinerator in Newark, but the rest of our refuse is sent to quickly filling landfills out of state — in the far reaches of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina. Set aside the environmental hazard of landfills for now, advocates say. Consider this: As these garbage pits fill up, it costs more for New York City to reserve space for its trash — hence the 20 percent increase over inflation in the cost of exporting refuse.
A solution, Miller argues, would be for the city to explore another waste to energy facility in the metropolitan area. Once extremely controversial, this technology, some environmental advocates say, has caught up with the industry, and now incinerators that burn trash and convert it to usable energy are much cleaner than they used to be. The idea is not palatable to all of the city's environmentalists, like Goldstein. And it too would come with a hefty price tag.
Clean solid waste management may be a foreign concept to some. But ultimately, experts say our trash piles need to go somewhere, and Southern hospitality won’t last forever.
"There aren’t many good things you can do with garbage at the end of the day," said Darrell. "We're a city of between 8 and 9 million people. We generate a lot of trash."
The American Lung Association's annual State of the Air report released last week concludes that, while New York's air quality has improved, the city once again failed to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's health-based standard for fine particulate matter (or "soot") pollution.
Particulate pollution is a one-stop shop for many health impacts. Studies show that it is linked with increased asthma emergencies, bronchitis, lower birth weights, heart disease and tens of thousands of premature deaths every year across the nation. And, it poses a particular threat to children, the elderly and anybody with heart or lung ailments. Millions of New Yorkers live in communities with some of the highest asthma levels in the nation.
Unlike many other regions, in New York, heating oil from buildings is one of the largest sources of local soot pollution. And most of this heating-related soot pollution comes from the roughly 1 percent of the buildings that still use residual fuel oil, alternatively known as No. 4 or No. 6 oil. These grades of heating oil typically contain about 175 times as much sulfur as the diesel fuel used in the city's trucks and buses, along with metals like nickel that worsen heart disease and other ailments.
Heating oil contributes 14 percent of all local particulate soot -- more than all of the city’s cars, trucks and buses, according to The Bottom of the Barrel, the Environmental Defense Fund's December 2009 report about the heating oil problem in New York City. The report found that the roughly 9,000 buildings that still burn residual fuel oil contribute 86 percent of the city's heating oil-related soot pollution and are major contributors to airborne nickel levels that are nine times higher than the average levels of other U.S. cities.
Unlike the diesel pollution that plagues low-income communities and communities of color that house bus depots, marine terminals, and busy truck corridors, the heating oil problem is not confined to the city's poorest communities. The plume of black smoke from some of the city’s most recognizable addresses, including the Dakota and the San Remo on Central Park West, is a telltale sign of No. 6 being burned in the basement.
Citywide, roughly 5,500 large boilers burn approximately 227 million gallons of No. 6 oil annually. An additional 3,500 large boilers burn about 84 million gallons of cleaner No. 4 oil, which is typically a 50/50 mix of No. 2 and No. 6 oils. In contrast, city buildings burn about 700 million gallon of the cleanest No. 2 oil each year.
Luckily, heating oil pollution is a solvable problem. In his State of the City address in January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signaled that solving it would be a top priority for the year. Ever since, the city, environmental stakeholders and heating oil industry leaders have been working to design a plan. Any comprehensive solution will require Albany and City Hall steps.
While some aspects still must be worked out, the broad outlines of the solution are clear.
First, the state needs to cap the sulfur level of No. 2 heating oil at the same level as the clean, ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel now used in all trucks and buses. Just as removing sulfur was the first step toward reducing diesel pollution from trucks and buses, reducing sulfur levels in heating oil is a necessary first step toward solving the heating oil pollution problem.
Putting this sulfur cap on No. 2 heating oil would eliminate more than 1,000 tons of particulate soot pollution each year and would be comparable to shutting down two and a half coal plants in New York state. The Assembly has passed a version of a bill to do this, but the Senate has refused to move forward on a similar bill, proposed by Sen. Bill Perkins, which would require that cap go into effect in 2012.
Industry groups are split on the bill -- the Oil Heat Association of New York and the Empire State Petroleum Association, for example, strongly support the cleanup of this fuel. With cleaner, cheaper natural gas acquiring an increased share of the heating market, the oil industry needs a cleaner form of heating oil to keep its environmentally aware customers. On the other hand, the New York State Business Council opposes the measure, claiming that it will raise heating oil prices in the middle of a recession.
Proponents of the bill argue that cleaner heating oil would save money in the long run. In fact, the heating oil industry calculates that ultra-low sulfur heating oil would save consumers up to 6 percent on their heating bills, thanks to increased boiler efficiency, reduced maintenance needs and reduced fuel use. These savings more than offset any price increase from switching to the cleaner fuel. (During 2008 and 2009, ultra-low sulfur diesel cost an average of 1.74 percent more than No. 2 heating oil in New York state.)
The city could take additional steps to reduce heating oil pollution.
For example, the Department of Environmental Protection could adopt regulations that eliminate the use of No. 6 oil altogether. This would eliminate more than 500 tons of particulate soot in the city in the first year, as buildings with older burners switched to the No. 4 oil and more than 800 tons if the Perkins bill becomes law. Such a step could be accomplished quickly because it would not require any major capital investments, although buildings would have to do some extra maintenance to get ready, such as testing their burners to ensure that they wouldn’t leak when they switch to a lighter grade of oil.
Taking this step would buy time to finish a citywide conversion to dual-fuel burners that can use either natural gas or No. 2 oil. This conversion is critical to the long-term resolution of the heating oil pollution problem and to putting the city's buildings on an environmentally sustainable path for heating.
The conversion to dual-fuel systems that burn either No. 2 oil or natural gas is likely to be the trickiest component of any comprehensive city plan to solve the heating oil problem. Today’s existing equipment can last for decades so many building owners have been reluctant to replace boilers and burners that still work.
As the city and state move toward finalizing their plans to clean up the pollution from heating oil, a number of issues will need to be resolved. These include questions about the timetable for the phase-in of dual-fuel systems and phase-out of older equipment, whether buildings that already have dual-fuel systems will be able to use No. 4 oil as a backup fuel, and what incentives the city and state should offer to help buildings convert their equipment and fuels. Policy makers will also have to determine how to monitor and enforce a program that covers all of the roughly 800,000 buildings in the city.
The bottom line is that heating oil pollution poses a serious problem in New York City, but the outlines of a long-term solution are becoming clear. With the right steps in Albany and City Hall, the plume of black smoke rising from many of the city’s largest buildings, within a few years, could become a thing of the past.
Rich Kassel is a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where he focuses on urban air pollution and transportation issues. He also chairs the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a regional transportation advocacy organization; is on the board of the New York League of Conservation Votes and blogs on a variety of environmental issues on the NRDC Switchboard.