Where do the Democratic candidates stand on transportation issues?
Although transportation is a critical part of every New Yorker’s daily life, only two of the candidates running in the September 13 Democratic mayoral primary have announced positions on the major issues.
Council Speaker Gifford Miller centers his transportation agenda on giving first priority to continued restoration of the subway system. In a May 12 speech, the most comprehensive address on transportation issues of any candidate, Miller declared that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s two-decade program to bring the subway system to a state of good repair is “stalling.” Miller charged that the MTA cut the five-year construction budget for the subway and bus system by $5 billion, resulting in delays for “already underfunded items such as communications and signals systems, power stations, ventilation plants and passenger stations.”
Miller called for repairing and modernizing the system before spending money on new subway or commuter rail lines. He says that funding should be funneled to the repair program from expansion projects and new taxes. He would give priority to extension of the #7 line to the West Side and the Second Avenue subway project in preference to the commuter rail project that would send Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal. Miller also called for reinstatement of the commuter tax, once paid by suburban residents who work in the city but repealed in the late 1990s in an Albany political deal. Miller asserts that the mayor should “stop accepting defeat” on a commuter tax and proposed a graduated tax.
Another source of new revenue in Miller’s plan is to obtain full value on the West Side rail yards. Miller opposed the Jets/Olympic stadium plan and now opposes the new MTA plan to build a new headquarters on the site and thus generate funds by selling the MTA’s valuable Midtown office building.
The Council Speaker has also addressed transit security issues in the wake of the London subway bombing, advocated improved rapid bus services, and proposed an expanded ferry system.
In response to a question in the August 16 candidate debate, Miller opposed tolls on the East River bridges.
Congressman Anthony Weiner proposes to modernize the city’s transportation system, but in a quite different fashion. Where Miller emphasizes underground transport -- over which the mayor has no direct control -- Weiner emphasizes waterborne and surface transit programs that are subject to City Hall’s direction.
First on Weiner’s plan is building ferry landings throughout New York. Weiner would thus expand ferry service to neighborhoods like Red Hook, Long Island City, Sheepshead Bay, Marine Park, Coney Island, Bayside and the areas around LaGuardia and JFK airports. He believes that ferries, which are currently a small niche transportation provider, can circumvent congestion and spur economic and residential growth in these areas. Toward this end, Weiner, who sits on the House transportation committee, secured $15 million toward ferry service from the Rockaways to Manhattan.
Weiner also emphasizes creating a bus rapid transit system throughout the city, including bus-only lanes on major travel corridors. Weiner thus seems prepared to support plans currently being drawn up by a joint City-MTA task force to establish at least five bus rapid transit corridors in the city.
From his seat in Congress, Weiner also helped obtain $100 million in the new federal transportation bill for a freight tunnel between New Jersey and Brooklyn. The tunnel is a controversial proposal that lacks the support of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which would be charged with finding financing for the multi-billion proposal and building the tunnel. Mayor Michael Bloomberg at first supported, and then under pressure from Queens community groups opposed the tunnel plan.
Finally, Weiner also jumped on transit security issues after the London bombings. He announced a six-point security plan that includes bomb resistant trash cans, digital station cameras and 911 subway cell phone service.
Remarkably, a search of news clips and the campaign Web sites of Fernando Ferrer, the former Bronx borough president, and Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president, turned up only sparse comments on transportation issues.
Ferrer’s most widely publicized transportation issue has been reversing the expansion of metered Sunday parking instituted in 2003 and recently rolled back by the City Council. Ferrer assailed metered parking, which forced some worshippers to feed the meter in the middle of services, as “a tax on worshipping.” Ferrer has also advocated using the MTA surplus for security cameras and counter-terrorism training.
Fields has not made transportation issues a focus of her campaign. As borough president Fields has supported the Second Avenue subway and lower Manhattan’s new transit hub, and opposed the Jets stadium deal and MTA plans to purchase more diesel buses.
In the August 16 candidate debate, Fields said she is open to the idea of London-style congestion pricing and using the revenue toward improving mass transit. But like all her opponents, she opposed tolling the East River bridges. She also stated her support of a commuter tax, with revenues directed to mass transit.
Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.Â
Evgeny Friedman, with slicked-back hair and Adidas trainers -- talkative in two languages and on two cell phones -- is the no-nonsense co-owner of Taxi Club Management Inc., managing a fleet of 650 cabs that cruise the streets of New York. Talk to him about the City Council’s plans to replace the city’s taxis with hybrid vehicles, and he has a...well...hybrid reaction.
The typical hybrid vehicle combines a gas engine with an electric motor, using the gas engine to charge up the electric motor, and the electric motor to supply supplemental power when needed. The result is about half the gas consumption of a regular vehicle. It also means more headaches for mechanics learning to deal with the added complexity.
"My mechanic has to wear a rubber suit just to avoid electrocution," says Friedman.
Complications aside, however, Friedman is a big fan of staying one step ahead of the technology curve. That is why, when the Taxi and Limousine Commission offered up its first set of hybrid vehicle medallions at auction this spring, Friedman and his partners ponied up an $8 million bid for 18 medallions.
"It's a no-brainer," he says. "Look at gas prices now and look at the Middle East. Within five to six years there's not going to be a regular gas taxi on the road. Every cab you see will be either hybrid or alternative fuel."
And, he says, "with hybrid vehicles, my drivers don't have to put in so many hours, and I don't have so much turnover.”
Friedman is not the only enthusiastic pioneer. Hybrids are a can't-miss both politically and fiscally. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was equally enthusiastic in May when he signed a law requiring a 20 percent boost in city fleet's fuel economy through additional hybrid vehicles.
But they are, by definition, an imperfect solution, especially in a city already earning poor marks for air quality.
In the course of putting the hybrid medallions to use, Friedman and his partners have hit a major bureaucratic pothole. His company received a congratulatory note from the commission after winning the auction and had its initial $486,000 deposit accepted. A few weeks after the deposits, however, the bad news arrived. Citing a 2001 mandate on minimum back seat leg room for authorized cab models, the commission said it could find no hybrid models available yet on the market that met the current standard.
Friedman promptly filed suit in local court to get a resolution on this regulatory Catch 22. He suspects that somebody inside the Taxi and Limousine Commission chafed at the medallions' reduced cost. The usual market price for a New York City taxi medallion is $800,000, meaning Friedman and his colleagues received a 40 percent subsidy at city taxpayers' expense . Given the cabs' experimental status, however, he expects to spend the bulk of that subsidy on maintenance costs: "At the end of the day, I'll probably break even.”
Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Matthew Daus, meanwhile, says the key sticking point isn't cab company buy-in so much as manufacturer buy-in. Taxi cabs, much like police cruisers, undergo a rigorous qualification process, focusing on everything from interior amenities to long-term durability. In the case of the Crown Victoria, currently the most popular model among city cabs, the Ford Motor Company went out of its way to build a special New York City model. So far, no manufacturer has stepped forward to do the same for hybrid vehicles.
"There's no one who's told us yet that they want to focus on this as a market," Daus says. "There's been give and take, but right now, [the manufacturers] have not presented vehicles to us and asked them to put them on the road for testing."
The New York City Council recently passed legislation to help break the impasse. Three years after authorizing 900 new medallion sales on the condition that nine percent go to hybrid vehicles at a discounted price, the council passed a bill that now makes it possible for all new medallion holders to operate hybrid cabs. Lauded by environmental groups such as the Coalition Advocating for Smart Transportation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the bill leaves it up to the commission to decide which exact models qualify but puts a 90 day limit on the deliberation process.
Although the bill still awaits the mayor's signature, Daus says the commission is ready to accept the council's challenge. It is currently in talks with Ford and Toyota about taxi versions of the Escape and Highlander SUV models respectively. The Toyota Prius, while currently the most-recognized symbol of hybrid technology to most U.S. consumers, remains "totally unworkable" Daus says because of interior legroom limitations.
"We're excited about the opportunities opening up, but we've had to be proactive just to get to this point," Daus adds. "Usually the manufacturers come to us and say, 'Can this be a cab?' In this case, none of the vehicle models existed until a very recent period."
As for Friedman, he remains in limbo, waiting to see if the medallions he legally purchased at a discount also qualify for the new program. He expects a court to resolve the issue this summer.
"I hate to go up against the TLC, because, to be honest, the TLC has made me a lot of money," he says. "I just want to close this issue and put these vehicles on the road and make TLC part of the solution."
Attempts to put hybrid diesel buses on the streets of Manhattan have drawn less attention and, interestingly, less acclaim from local environmental groups. Chalk it up to diesel's dirtier reputation as an air pollution source and a still lingering dispute over bus depots north of Central Park.
The dispute began with a 1998 deal between West Harlem Environmental Action, a group that goes by the acronym WE ACT and the Metropolitan Transit Authority to put more "clean air" buses burning compressed natural gas instead of diesel on Manhattan streets. Backed by Governor George Pataki's office, the deal pegged the Manhattanville bus depot at 133rd St. and Broadway as the most likely site, although left the site open for negotiation.
In the following years representatives of New York City Transit, the MTA agency responsible for public bus and subway transit inside the five boroughs, pressed to make the Mother Clara Hale Depot, a smaller facility located at 146th and Lenox Ave., the main site for compressed natural gas buses, noting the smaller cost of re-conversion.
According to Swati Prakash, environmental health director for West Harlem Environmental Action, the negotiation process began to falter around 2003, the year New York City Transit opened a new depot at 100th Street and closed one of its two remaining depots in Lower Manhattan. When the agency announced a year later that it would be housing hybrid diesel buses instead of compressed natural gas buses at the Mother Clara Hale depot, negotiations broke down completely.
"We were waiting for the agreement to wend its way through the legal department," says Praksash. "Then we read a story in the New York Times saying that the MTA is set to use hybrid-diesel in its buses."
Prakash says hybrid buses are an unsuitable compromise for her group, because Harlem and nearby neighborhoods already boast some of the nation's highest youth asthma rates. According to a 2003 Harlem Hospital study, one in four Harlem children has asthma, more than four times the national rate as determined by the Centers for Disease Control.
Linking those rates directly to diesel is tough, but not impossible. Diesel engines tend to be more efficient than regular fuel and compressed natural gas engines, lowering the number of carbon-based "greenhouse gases" produced as well as overall fuel consumption. At the same time, however, even the cleanest-burning diesel engines generate soot and ozone, two chemical "triggers" of youth asthma according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.
"Despite tighter regulation of air pollution, widespread diesel engine use generates microscopic particles that penetrate deep into human lungs and circulation," reads an Academy summary of a recent health journal article. These particles contain chemicals that lead to cell damage.
For New York City Transit, the choice of diesel hybrids over compressed natural gas comes down to cost. In a 2003 study published by the U.S. Department of Energy, New York City Transit noted that hybrid diesel buses require no major capital investments in terms of fuel storage, resulting in a $1,800 incremental cost per new bus vs. an $8,000 incremental cost per compressed natural gas bus.
So far, New York City Transit has already seen delivery on its first major order of 125 hybrid buses and is slated to have at least 325 operating on Manhattan streets by the end of the year. In the meantime, members of WE ACT and their Harlem neighbors have taken their complaints to the MTA board. In May they asked the board to resume talks on a natural gas depot above Central Park but left without a commitment.
Prakash is undaunted. She labels her group's appearance at MTA headquarters a "show of numbers" as her group gears up to remind neighborhood voters of the deal forged back in 1998.
"The MTA already sites six diesel bus depots above 99th Street," she says. "Community residents are not going to let this go."
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The bombing of three subway stations and a bus in London on July 7 brought into stark relief, once again, the ongoing threat to New York City. New Yorkers have long known that their city -- and its often jam-packed transit system -- is a prime target of terrorists. While the city's residents and visitors may sometimes set aside the risks, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who is not aware of the possibility of another terrorist attack.
The London bombings also cast the spotlight on the NYC transit system's snail-like progress in spending nearly $600 million to improve security in the subway system. Two and one-half years after announcing the completion of a thorough security review, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) reportedly has spent only $30 million of that sum, mostly on studies and consultants. Boston and Washington have deployed sensors to detect the presence of biochemical agents in the subway system. Houston has closed-circuit television cameras that can be used for surveillance. Atlanta upgraded two-way radios to allow transit workers to communicate with police and rescue workers. Compared with these efforts, New York lags behind.
Reaction to this news was predictable. Senator Charles Schumer called for a "crash program" because terrorists "have chosen mass transit as their target of choice." Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the MTA to "ratchet up the pace of increasing security on our subway system." Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner said, "It's not money that's standing in the way, it's bureaucratic foot-dragging that's stopping the MTA from doing it."
According to press reports, the MTA plans include
• strengthening transit facilities against explosives
• restricting access to sensitive areas
• detecting intrusions
• surveillance
• and communications systems.
These are clearly valuable security improvements that will improve the MTA's ability to monitor and respond to possible security threats.
While spotlighting the transit system's vulnerability, reaction to the London bombings also highlighted New Yorkers' sophistication in understanding and responding to the terrorist threat. A simplistic reaction to physical threats would be to seek absolute safety, no matter the cost or consequences. The power of this reaction is seen in the newly fortified design for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, and NASA's struggles to define acceptable level risk and safety after the two shuttle accidents. Discussions between the MTA and the Army, reported by the Times, aiming to develop motion detectors, infrared sensors and sophisticated software to monitor subway tunnels and other infrastructure also evidence the notion that the system can be "hardened" to repel attack. The comment in a television interview by Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security chief, that "there is a technological and a system-based solution for this" is another example of this way of thinking.
New Yorkers do not seem to be buying the idea of absolute protection, however. On-street interviews carried in various press reports show a public partially willing to accept, partly trying to deny and partly attempting to rationalize the risk of terrorist attack. Mainly, the public seems to be trying to get on with life, knowing that they can neither avoid nor prevent what officials in London called a "shock" but not a "surprise." As an example, it was notable that in the two days following the London bombings I sat through a series of day-long meetings with city staff and others without anyone even mentioning what happened in London.
Terrorism and transportation experts cite four basic tasks in dealing with the threat. The four are:
• Deterrence, such as police patrols and chemical-sniffing dogs;
• Prevention, such as intelligence to catch terrorists before they strike, "saying something" when you "see something" in the subway and erecting bollards around key buildings to keep truck bombers some distance away;
• Mitigation, such as hardening stations and tunnels to minimize the damage from an explosion; and
• Prompt response to minimize casualties, such as good communications between emergency response personnel and regular drills to sharpen response procedures.
None of these approaches are foolproof, but each has been shown to be effective in reducing the risk.
Experts such as Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation (In PDF Format) also emphasize creating a net benefit rather than simply displacing the threat or the threatened. Jenkins says that security measures "should not merely displace the risk toward other equally vulnerable targets" - for example, from train stations to equally crowded shopping malls. Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (In PDF Format) points out that it would be counterproductive if people stop using mass transit and drive instead, since the risk of a fatal traffic accident far outweighs the risk of dying in a terrorist attack.
In addition to these practical considerations, there are larger dangers to overreacting to the London bombings. As Jenkins has said, "We cannot allow fear to become the framework of American governance." Thus, we will continue, as Susan Jacoby wrote in Newsday, to try and do "a very good job of not thinking about what I know perfectly well - that it is absolutely impossible, in a city the size of New York, to make the subways and buses and public buildings safe from bombings."
Meanwhile, New Yorkers might feel a bit safer, and a bit more in control, if we act on the advice from the ad in the subway, "When you see something, say something."
Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.Â