NYC NOW - July 12, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

A new report from New York City’s Independent Budget Office says the city has lost nearly $1 billion in property tax revenue because of state exemptions for Madison Square Garden. Also, organizers of the New York Comedy Festival announced an expanded lineup of shows coming this Fall. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson spoke with former New York City Transportation Commissioner Hank Gutman about the city’s approach to fixing a crumbling stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. One billion dollars of taxes that could have gone into the city coffers and didn't. It is shameful. It is absolutely shameful, fiscally irresponsible. New York City coffers are out of nearly $1 billion in property tax revenue since the 80s because of state tax exemptions to Madison Square Garden. That's according to a new report from the City Council's independent budget office.

Sarah Stefanski helped author the report. This tax exemption remains in perpetuity unless it's repealed by the state. So there's this real discontinuity between the city losing out on tax revenue, but the state controls the decision. State lawmakers have tried and failed to end the exemptions. Madison Square Garden declined to comment on the record, but owner James Dolan said earlier this year that lawmakers don't want tax exemptions taken away from other teams in New York. Some heavyweight comedians are making their way to New York this fall. WMYC's Precious Fondren has more. The New York Comedy Festival is returning to venues across New York City in November.

This year extended to 10 days. Bill Burr, Margaret Cho, and Michelle Wolf are among the headliners. Caroline Hirsch founded the festival in 2004. She says when her comedy club, Carolin's on Broadway, closed in December, it gave her more time to produce the exhilarating festival she wanted to see. When I walk into the venue, you know, we have to, we produce some. say at, you know, town hall like Michelle Wolfe, I'll walk in there and see the place packed and everybody having a great time. And that's what I enjoy most about producing the festival.

The New York Comedy Festival will run November 3rd through 12th. Tickets go on sale Monday. Stay with us. There's more after the break. It's been a couple weeks since the stretch of I-95 in Philadelphia reopened to traffic after an elevated roadway collapsed due to a tanker fire. The timing of that reopening was a surprise to many coming just 12 days after the highways collapse. It was a temporary fix that utilizes thousands of tons of glass nuggets to fill the underpass and get traffic moving again while a more permanent roadway is built. But it has some New Yorkers thinking. Could a similar approach work for the BQE's crumbling cantilever in Brooklyn Heights? Former New York City Transportation

Commissioner Hank Gutman led the DOT during the last year of Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration. He talked with WMYC's Sean Carlson. So 12 days to reopen a collapsed highway to traffic seems pretty remarkable. As a former transportation commissioner, were you impressed when you heard that news? I was incredibly impressed. I thought that the response was amazingly quick, efficient, and effective. The cooperation between three different levels of government was quite extraordinary and something that should be admired and emulated elsewhere.

No, I was clearly impressed by what they got done and how quickly. And well, they did it. So like we said, it's not a permanent fix. They're just filling a gap and reopening the highway to traffic while they're building a replacement bridge next to it. That whole thing is going to take months, but nonetheless, traffic is flowing again. So it leads us to ask, why can't New York try a similar approach for that triple cantilever?

It's that stretch of the BQE along Brooklyn Heights. Very nice view of the city for folks who maybe aren't familiar with it, but pretty obvious that it needs some help there. Yeah, I mean, sadly, I don't think it can. can be applied here for one simple reason based on on geography, on space. The problem is that the idea of a temporary highway is attractive and in the right place it makes enormous sense. The idea of building a new structure next to the old so that the traffic can flow unimpeded

obviously makes an awful lot of sense. The problem with the triple cantilever is there is not the room to do it. the space between the existing candeliever, which includes the Brooklyn Heights Promenade on the top, and traffic in two directions on the two lower levels. And Brooklyn Bridge Park is a two-lane street, one lane of which is covered by the existing structure. So the question in terms of a temporary highway is where?

In 2018, the DOT announced a plan that included a temporary highway that would be basically where the promenade is, that caused a huge public uproar for understandable reasons. And every local elected official, every community group, including the then-Berough president, who's now our mayor, denounced the plan as ridiculous and undoable. The only alternatives that have been proposed since, including in this latest round of effort by the DOT,

has involved moving that temporary highway over to Brooklyn Bridge Park so that instead of being exactly next to the promenade, it would overhang the park. It would be built over the park. And that's unacceptable for a whole host of other reasons. What is the current lifespan of the cantilever? And you talked about the former borough president, who is now the mayor. Do you think that the Adams administration is treating the matter with the appropriate level of urgency that it demands? In 2018, my predecessor said that if it wasn't rebuilt by 2026, you'd have to take trucks off the road and soon thereafter, all other vehicles.

Now, there were a few things that we did to extend the life. We reduced the weight on the structure by reducing it to two lanes. We also began the process of putting in place automatic ticketing for overworked. overweight trucks, that's going to help too. Congestion pricing, once it takes effect, should reduce traffic into Manhattan, which will reduce demand on the BQE. That should help. But the clock's running.

And there are good people in the Adams administration who are working hard to try and address this problem, but the efforts thus far have not shown much promise. You talk about things that we can do in the interim before a major fix to this. And you were the Transportation Commissioner who ordered the third lane of traffic. on the candle lever to be shut down. Two years in, do you think that that was the right decision and why? Absolutely. There's no question.

First of all, it did reduce the weight. And the other thing that it did was it has dramatically improved safety. The old three lanes were too narrow to be safe. They were below the regulation width. By going to two lanes, we were able to provide wider lanes that are safer and a shoulder for breakdowns and also entrance and exit ramps. And one of the striking things was that almost immediately after we implemented the change, the crash figures for that stretch of highway went down dramatically at a time when crash statistics

everywhere else in the city of New York were going up. So counterpoint to that, and I can attest to this because I drive that stretch of the BQ all the time and those two lanes, man, traffic can be real bare there. The Adams administration has considered restoring that third lane. Do you think that is a good idea? Traffic is a bear there. Traffic has always been a bear there. It's not just that it's bad on that stretch of highway.

It's also bad on some of the local streets that approach it. There are answers to all of that. And there are alternatives in terms of closing ramps that would address the traffic on Columbia and Hicks Street. But there are answers out there. The DOT just hasn't implemented them. The second problem is the administration seems to be committed to the idea of not rebuilding and rehabilitating the current structure, but tearing it down and building a new structure. And were they to do that, they would then be subject to new federal regulations as to the width of the road.

And at two lanes, it would be wider than it is today. And if they expanded it to three lanes, it would be dramatically wider. Yeah, let's talk about that because both Mayor Adams and Mayor de Blasio issued plans to reimagine, and I'm air quoting here, reimagined the BQE. How realistic are those plans and do you think they go far enough? Absolutely, the BQE should be reimagined. But that's not a question of addressing the cantilever. The candle lever is the place the DOT is focusing because it's the only part of the highway that's under city control. The rest is under state jurisdiction.

But look at the ditches to the north and the south of the cantilever that cut neighborhoods in half. Those should be covered over. There have been plans by elected officials, community groups that have been circulating for decades. If you're going to spend billions of dollars, why do it all on the cantilever? Transportation policy of this administration, like its two predecessors, is focused on the notion of reducing our dependence on private cars, to move people and on trucks to move goods. So if all of that is true, why is the current dietic assuming that it makes sense to rebuild

the BQE bigger than before and strong enough to last another century rather than to assume that some of those efforts will have some impact and perhaps we could do with the highway that is smaller? I think that's what everybody meant by reimagining the BQE. Why don't we plan for a future in which we've at least had some success in changing how people and goods move in the city? That's former New York City Transportation Commissioner Hank Gutman talking with WNYC's Sean Colson. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day.

We'll be back tomorrow.