NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: A Plan to Build a New Neighborhood Goes for a Vote, A Bronx Father is Indicted for Murdering His Two-Year-Old Son, NYC Pools Open Today, The Latest Transit Segment of On The Way.

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

WNYC’s David Brand reports the city wants to build 6000 new apartments at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. Meanwhile, in the Bronx, twenty-year-old Arius Williams has been indicted for allegedly throwing his two-year-old son off the Bruckner Express Overpass. Next, NYC pools open today, including the brand new Gottesman Pool in Harlem. Finally, our transit team speculates how the recent election primary might affect the future.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. A plan to build a new residential neighborhood along an industrial stretch of Brooklyn waterfront heads to a key vote later today. WNIC's David Brand reports on the proposal before local leaders. The city's Economic Development Corporation wants to build 6,000 new apartments at the Brooklyn Marine terminal. They also propose modernizing some of the ports and investing $200 million in nearby public housing sites. To do it, they want to bypass the city's usual land use review process.

But first, the city task force has to give them permission. The task force is made up of 28 elected officials and community leaders. They're voting today. The final outcome is still unclear. The vote was twice postponed because of insufficient support. A Bronx father has been indicted in the killing of his two-year-old son by throwing him into the Bronx River. E.E.2.C. Charles Lane reports. Montral Williams disappeared after a Mother's Day party in May. Prosecutors say his father, 20-year-old Arias Williams, was seen on surveillance video walking

with the boy moments before allegedly tossing him from the Bruckner Expressway overpass. Montrault's body was recovered by NYPD divers nearly a month later. Williams has pleaded not guilty to murder another charges and is being held without bail. Montreal's funeral is scheduled for Saturday. The attorney for Arias Williams declined to comment. New York City's public pools open for the summer season starting today. New Yorkers can head to any of the city's more than 50 outdoor swimming facilities, including its newest near the northern end of Central Park.

The goddess manned pool in Harlem is officially open. Construction started back in 2021. State Senator Cordell Clear represents Upper Manhattan. For many families who don't get out of the city, for many families who may not be able to make it to beaches around the world and resort places, isn't this a resort? This is quality. The pool serves as the centerpiece of the new $160 million Davis Center near the Harlem Mere. It has room for more than 1,000 swimmers. Stay tuned for more.

After the break. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment unpacking all things transit in New York City. Joining us is WNYC's Transportation Reporter Ramsey Caliphay and editor Clayton Gouza. All right, let's start by taking a transportation-oriented look at the biggest story in the city this week. Zoran Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary. So we should be clear, he still needs to officially clinch the nomination and he still needs to win November's general election. But Clayton, he has some pretty big swing for polls when it comes to transit, doesn't they? Right.

main, a central piece of his campaign, has been fast and free buses. He's also pitched a lot more car-free streets or kind of pedestrianization zones, especially in Manhattan's congestion price an area below 60th Street where we have seen some pretty significant reductions in traffic and car usage. He's called for more bike lanes and expanding the existing bike lanes to, you know, be two ways following the streets master plan framework that was passed in 2019. That's largely been ignored. That requires a certain number of bike and bus lanes ever. year. He's pitched homeless outreach drop-in centers and subway stations filling in vacated retail shops or newsstands at 100 stations. It's a big contrast to Merrick Adams, who's focused on, you know, is scaled back a lot of bus and bike lane redesign projects for political reasons.

He's also, Adams has also criticized parts of the congestion pricing program. I mean, Mumdani's pitch is very urbanist, very transit writer first, and it, was really picking up, if you look at the election results, he had huge gains, huge wins in areas where rates of car ownership are lower, right? Not so much in very car in neighborhoods where you're more likely to own a car in transit deserts, but areas where you don't in a car, like these ideas really resonated in a big way, you can tell. And Luke, Sean, it actually might be hard to read what Democrats are thinking about Mum Donnie's rise to prominence, but MT Chair General Lieber was maybe less ambiguous this week. He says the results of the race actually good news for riders.

One major outcome is transit one across the board. All of the people who won are big supporters of transit. And I welcome the fact that there are major candidates who are winning or who are pushing new ideas about how to make transit better. So it's clear that advocating for transit in New York City is just a winning ticket. Mamdani aside, primary winners for city council seats, even the Comptrollers raised have all aligned themselves with resolving transit issues. So some examples put together by our good friends at Streets blog include Mark Levine.

He's the Manhattan Borough President. He had a dominant win against city council member Justin Brannon for the comptroller seat. So while Levine has been an advocate for public road infrastructure, like getting rid of the elevated section of FTR South, Brandon was publicly sharing his disagreements with congestion pricing, calling it a tax on his constituents in South Brooklyn. So there's also assembly member Harvey Epstein, who just won his primary for a city council race in District 2.

he's been a consistent safe streets advocate calling for protections for pedestrians and cyclists. Altogether, these candidates and the advocates supporting them see that Tuesday's primary is a big win for walkable cities, bike lanes, and a better and faster public transportation system. I feel like this is going to become our new congestion pricing where we talk about this every week on on the way. But let's drill into Mom Dani's main transportation pitch, fast and free buses. How realistic is that? Let's remind listeners, so a version of this has been done before, in large part, to legislation that Mumdani actually passed in the State Assembly. That gave New Yorkers one free bus route in each borough for about a year. This happened last year.

And the results were positive. We saw increases to ridership on those free routes and even assaults against bus drivers decreased tremendously on those routes too. But the MTA and Chair Lieber might see it a bit differently and maybe they're not as big of a fan of that program because of patterns of fare evasion on buses. That's something we talked about all the time. Nearby routes of those free buses during this program saw a boost in fare evasion,

but that also matched citywide patterns. So the MTA has made it their mission to fight and decrease fare evasion, which at one point reached nearly 50%. It's a lot of people who are not paying their fare. That program, the free bus ride program, costs about $15 million and was funded by the state. So while running on his campaign, Mamdani's proposed that making buses free citywide, so every single bus in the city would cost.

north of $600 million a year. And whether this is realistic or not, we'll have to see for a more specific proposal. But on the campaign trail, he's been saying, we can fund this by increasing our taxes on the richest New Yorkers. Those are people who make more than a million dollars a year. Right. And a couple major points, the MTA is a state agency, right?

The city doesn't control it. They have a minority representation on the agency's board, but really has no sway. But so much, and we've been skeptical on this program over, you know, taking away ferrets from buses because they need that revenue to pay drivers. $600 million. You know two ways about it.

He needs a new tax, and that tax has to come from Albany's proposed it on millionaires. As Ramsey pointed out, Hockels kind of indicated that she doesn't support that. Now, there are other ways that he can accomplish some goals and help transit riders subsidize their fares, expanding the city's fare fare program, which gives half-price metro cards or fares

to low-income transit riders. Raising the threshold from that could accomplish part of this goal, But also, you know, he's going to need taxes for a bunch of his agenda, including child care, some of his proposals for free grocery stores. What's interesting to me is that what he's proven in this campaign is that his base, this kind of movement, this political organization that he's formed this year, is very influential and is very powerful and can get people out to the polls. Think about this. Next year, Hockel is going to be facing an election. She four or three years ago, she beat Lee Zeldin in an uncomfortably close race. she's likely to be primaried by her sitting lieutenant governor Anthony Tolgado and maybe some other people.

She might need Mamdani's political organization base. She might need that turnout in the city. As they pass the budget next year, and if Mamdani is a sitting mayor, he might have some leverage to maybe not get all $10 billion in revenue that he wants, but maybe a chunk of it. It's something that's really like the whole political calculus over who has leverage and who has what. we're seeing rapidly shift beneath our feet. So people say, well, Hockel said that's dead in the water. I'm not so sure about that. Interesting.

Yeah, whatever happens with Mom Dani becoming mayor and Iowa, the next couple of months are certainly going to be really, really interesting to watch all this stuff. Okay, every week on the way, on the way newsletter, we answer a question from a curious commuter. This one is from Jacob and Manhattan. Could more lines be built today using modern cut and cover construction techniques? Clayton, I feel like this is something you can speak voluminously about. Take it away. So let's define cut and cover.

That's how most of the subways were built in the first part of the 20th century, very rapidly. I mean, obviously the city wasn't built out or dense then. Cut and cover, you dig up a street, you dig a tunnel, you put in tracks, you build the street over top. It really worked in the first part of the 20th century. It was cheaper. It was fast. Now the more modern way is to kind of create a... put a tunnel boring machine deep underground.

You're not disrupting the street above. You're just kind of mole digging the tunnel underground. It is more expensive. It has proven to be more expensive, but less disruptive to city life in a dense place like New York. What is interesting is that the city's next plan for a subway line is extending the 2nd Avenue subway from the Upper East Side in East Harlem. They're doing both, mainly tunnel boring machine, more expensive. I mean, this is the project to $7.7 billion at some. the most expensive subway expansion per mile or one of the in the history of the world.

For five blocks, they're going to do cut and cover just because it's shallower and they can. But then the tunnel is going to go deeper. It has to get really deep up closer to 125th Street. So they're going to use a tunnel boring machine that's also helping drive up the costs. So yeah, cut and cover can be cheaper if the tunnel that you're trying to build is shallow enough. And if you have the political will to turn a neighborhood streets into a crater, a construction site for months or years on. Well, thank you, Jacob, for that question.

And thanks to WNYC's Clayton Goussa and Ramsey-Kleafay. You can keep up on the latest in New York City Transportation News by signing up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcast.