NYC NOW - August 23, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Coney Island Beach was forced to close Wednesday because of inadequate water quality. Plus, a handful of licensed cannabis dispensaries may still be allowed to open, even after a state supreme court judge paused New York's retail rollout last week. And finally, WNYC’s Stephen Nessen looks at other cities across the globe that have had congestion pricing, and how each offers a sort of blueprint for New York City’s program.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. If you were planning on swimming at Coney Island Beach, there's some bad news. The city issued a beach advisory Wednesday because of, quote, inadequate water quality. Officials say the water is contaminated with sewage or storm runoff. Just think fecal bacteria. New York's combined sewer system often becomes overwhelmed after heavy rains. And untreated sewage flows into the...

the city's waterways, sometimes days after a storm. Swimming in this kind of water can cause illnesses. It's especially risky for children, pregnant women, and the chronically ill. Earlier this month, a judge paused New York's cannabis rollout. But now, a handful of licensed dispensaries may be allowed to open. WNYC's Caroline Lewis has more. Judge Kevin Bryant issued a preliminary injunction last week blocking any new dispensaries from opening and any new licenses from being issued. But he offered existing license holders a glimmer of hope. He said if they already received state approval for their dispensary locations, they could open.

And he asked the state to make up a list of those who qualified. That list has been submitted, and it has just 30 businesses on it, leaving more than 400 current license holders in limbo. Some have poured months of work and thousands of dollars into opening dispensaries. Those left off the list will be, able to submit individual pleas to the court to become exempt from the injunction. Stick around. There's more after the break. NYC.

Next year, New York will likely become the first American city to charge drivers a fee just to enter its downtown streets. The MTA will run the city program, but it's still figuring out how much to charge vehicles that enter Manhattan below 60th Street. But New York isn't the first city in the world to implement a congestion. pricing scheme. WNYC's Stephen Nesson looks into a few international examples. On a typical summer afternoon in Soho, there's a bumper-to-bumper crawl to the Holland Tunnel. No one likes sitting in traffic, but it appears the best way to reduce traffic, congestion pricing isn't popular either. I think it's enough with the money that the city got from tunnels and bridges. It's ridiculous.

That's driver Cecilia Solis from Bayside. Queens. She's a tour guide and often drives around the city for work. I'm not the only person who is against this new lot. She's not. Tom Glatt from Hoboken, who's breathing in exhaust fumes from the comfort of his Mercedes convertible, agrees. It's absolutely insane. I don't know who would agree to that. That was the feeling in Stockholm, Sweden, too, before that city implemented congestion pricing in 2006. It was really, really a very, very heated issue. And Swedes are not failing. for, you know, going out on the streets and holding banners and kicking up a lot of dust.

That's Jonas Eliasson who helped launch the city's program. He says at first, two-thirds of Stockholm residents were against the charges. So the government made a deal. Try it for six months, then hold a referendum, let the public vote on whether to keep congestion pricing. Not long after the program launched, traffic dropped by 20% downtown. No one really expected that the positive effects would be so big. It was literally speaking the difference between almost like gridlock on these congested bridges towards seeing traffic moving all of the time.

In the end, two-thirds of the voters chose to keep congestion pricing. It remains in effect today, with charges as much as $4.50 in the summer and $1.50 in the winter. That's not much compared to what the MTA has been discussing, with charges as high as $23, unless traffic might not be enough to persuade drivers to swallow that charge. But it might have to be that high. The state requires the MTA to bring in $1 billion a year through congestion pricing. And then all that money must go toward transit improvements.

The city of London did it the other way around. When we introduced congestion charging in London, that was accompanied by a massive increase in improvement to the bus fleet. That's Alina Turk. She's head of strategy and planning for roads and freight at Transport for London, which has run the program since 2003. She says 90% of the trips into central London are now made by transit, foot, walking, or cycling. So the focus of how that space is used has shifted over time. And it's fair to say that without the charge, that wouldn't have been possible. But all those additions mean getting around the same. city by vehicle is still slow. People who are against congestion pricing use this to say London

has been a failure. But Turk says, while there are fewer vehicles in the congestion zone, the reason they're moving more slowly is because there's more room for other kinds of transportation. Back at the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, where traffic has barely budged, Tom Glatt in the convertible isn't convinced the Stockholm model would work here. No, because I think we still have a problem with voting. I think most people, People are just fed up with government generally, and it works to the favor of bad policy because people aren't animated enough even to change.

But Cecilia Solis, the tour guide, says she'd prefer the Stockholm model. Hold a vote on congestion pricing six months after it launches. That's the difference, because if they ask you to vote, is a different theme. Would that sway you at all if the money went to making the roads and the bike lanes better, as well as subways and buses? Of course, of course, it is. Yeah, that's a good point.

And there's real pressure on the MTA to get it right. If the transit agency succeeds, its congestion pricing program could be a model for reducing pollution and traffic, not to mention funding mass transit in the U.S. and around the world. If it fails, it could be a setback for any other city thinking about launching congestion pricing. That's WNYC's Stephen Nesson. New York City is known for all of its noise, fire engines speeding down the street, trains passing underground or over your head, and don't forget about those block parties that bump late into the night.

Before a handful of New Yorkers, the noise isn't just part of city living. It's literally ear-shattering. Some live with a rare condition called hyperacusus or acoustic trauma. Cleo Chang is a writer for Curbed. She reported on some New Yorkers living with acoustic trauma. and says loud noises can become more than an inconvenience. Ordinary sounds can cause people discomfort, and in the most severe cases, it can be extremely painful.

Some studies estimate that one in 50,000 people live with this condition, but people diagnosed who brave the five boroughs are few and far between. Those who do are taking major precautions, like Joyce Cohen on the Upper West Side. Chang describes Joyce's place. They have rugs all over their floor, They have, you know, towels in their bathroom. They have, like, cloth place mats all over their kitchen counters.

And even in their fridge, right, they alternated their bottles from plastic to glass so that nothing would actually clink together and make a noise that I think, you know, you and I would hardly even think about. And when Joyce is out on the streets, she even wears earplugs under protective earmuffs to stave off the sound. And yet she won't leave New York City. Chang says Joyce's explanation is simple. If you move away, you're just trading one noise for another.

So, you know, in New York City it's sirens and garbage trucks and stuff like that. But in suburbs, she says there's lawnmowers and leaf blowers, which I know anyone who's like her leafblower knows how annoying it can be. That's not to say the sounds of city living aren't excruciating sometimes. But for Joyce, she'd rather take the occasional fire truck over a persistent woodpecker. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day. We'll be back tomorrow.