NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: City Council Approves Housing Plan, NYPD Still Seeking Midtown Shooter, Queens Casino Debate, and NYC’s Mayoral Candidates Talk Transit

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here's all the local news you need to start your day: The City Council has approved Mayor Adams’s $5 billion “City of Yes” plan, which aims to create 80,000 new homes by easing zoning restrictions citywide. Meanwhile, the NYPD is still searching for the shooter who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. Also, Queens residents debated an $8 billion casino and entertainment project near Citi Field on Thursday. Plus, the city is hiring emergency snow shovelers ahead of winter to help keep streets and sidewalks clear. Finally, on this week’s segment of On the Way, WNYC’s Stephen Nessen and Elizabeth Kim explore how transit issues, like busways and fare evasion, are shaping the NYC mayoral race and how platform controllers manage crowds at rush hour.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, December 6th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. The New York City Council is green lighting Mayor Adamsett's $5 billion plan that could see 80,000 new homes built across the five boroughs. The city of Yes Plan approves a variety of changes to local zoning restrictions that limit the size of new developments in every New York City neighborhood.

The mayor praised the 31 council members who voted for the plan. They heard in their communities on a block. We have not done one town hall that people do not stand up and say, we need more housing. We hurt you, we responded, and we will continue to respond to the needs of the people of this city. City data indicate New York is experiencing a historic housing shortage. Dozens of Queens residents are making their voices heard on a planned $8 billion casino and entertainment complex near City Field.

Most voiced their support for the Metropolitan Park Project at a hearing yesterday, but Astoria resident and former recovery coach William Kramer says he's concerned about the connection between gambling and fentanyl addiction. Anybody that feels that, the pain of addiction and the pain, having known people that have died for fentanyl addiction, I would like to humbly give up my extra minute for a moment of silence of victims of the fentanyl epidemic because I know this. will increase use of federal on this area, period. The hearing was part of the city's lengthy land use review process.

The city's sanitation department is looking for emergency snow shovelers this winter. WNYC's Elizabeth Shway has more. Emergency shovelers are called on after heavy winter storms to remove snow and ice from public spaces, like bus stops, crosswalks, and fire hydrants. Pay starts at $18 an hour. That goes up to $27 after a shoveler works 40. hours in a week. Applicants need to be at least 18 years old and able to perform heavy fiscal labor in order to qualify. New Yorkers can register for an application appointment at

NYC.gov slash snow. New York City requires property owners to keep their sidewalks free of snow as best they can. Otherwise, citations and fines could follow. 31 with clouds out there right now. It's cold. Mostly sunny. Just 34 for a high today. Windy, the real field just above the teens. Cold again tonight. Then tomorrow, increase in clouds just a high of 38 and wind chills down near 20. You again. Up next, our weekly segment of On the Way covering all transportation news. That's after the break. It's Friday, which means it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WNIC Transportation Reporter Stephen Nesson and special guest from across the newsroom, Liz Kim, who covers City Hall. Okay, Liz, let's start with you. You moderated a panel this week with six people who have either announced the running for mayor or are planning to.

Now, the topic was transportation, which is why it's topical for this conversation. Before we get into the substance, can we just take a step back here? Are you surprised that transportation is such a big topic this early in the race? And what does that even mean? Not at all, Sean. You know, I was really happy to be asked to moderate this forum. Public transit is the so-called lifeblood of the city. And I think nothing makes you more of a bona fide New Yorker than being someone who knows how to get around, whether on foot or transit.

And, you know, as we all know, congestion pricing was one of the biggest stories of the year. You know, transit is an issue that affects the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers. And obviously it's a big topic for On the Way. We think it's important. We know the vast majority of people in the city get around on mass transit. There's one and a half million daily bus riders, nearly six million daily subway riders. So it's definitely an issue that matters. And the mayor, who actually doesn't have a ton of control over this network, can move the needle on some issues when the mayor chooses.

Take bus speeds, for example. In Manhattan, in most places, it's bare. barely moved, except in places where there's a dedicated busway, like 14th Street. That's maybe the most extreme example. And to do something like that really requires buy-in from the city and the MTA, who are, of course, more than happy to do it. And they've been calling for more busways like that. But the mayor can do things like that.

They can also add more bus lanes. They can clear the streets of illegal vehicles like cars with ghost plates and illegal parking placards, something no mayor is really seriously cracked down on. And still, you know, the MTA does control, the MTA is controlled by the state. So there's not a ton the mayor can do on that, but using the bully pulpit, which is, of course, quite powerful. Now, former governor Mario Cuomo used to say that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Political realities have a tendency to kind of get in the way of those grand campaign plans. Look no further than Mayor Adams, right, who promised to create a state-of-the-art bus network in the city, but went on to cancel or scale back several projects that

would have sped up a service. So what transportation proposals are you hearing from this batch of mayoral candidates? So one idea that really caught my interest came from two candidates, Jim Walden, who's an attorney, and Queen's Assembly member, Zoran Mandani. Now, the two couldn't be more different. Walden is a former federal prosecutor.

Mandani is a socialist. But both of them embrace this idea that's been tried out in Philadelphia, which is using vacant retail space in the subway system as a place to offer services for the homeless. The idea is that you're meeting people where they are, and it could be this incremental step before forcibly removing someone to a hospital if they appear to be mentally ill. So in Philadelphia, the initiative was called Hub of Hope. In 2018, they opened up an 11,000 square foot facility in their underground transit network. And it was serving 200 people a day.

It offers food, showers, a place to do laundry. In 2022, the Times did a story on Philadelphia's effort. And the idea is that homelessness has been this intractable issue in the city, right? So maybe it's time to inject some new ideas or at least borrow ones from other cities. And speaking about borrowing things from other cities, several of the candidates were lavishing praise on the former mayor of Bogota in Colombia, Enrique Penedaloso, where he created a world-class bus network. It's the envy of the world. But to do something like that in New York City would really require taking precious space away from other vehicles, which is always contentious, as we know. But state senator Jessica Ramos, whose family is from Colombia, says she knows the system well and believes something like that could work in this city. I've seen it my whole life how it works and how effective it can be precisely on places like Flatbush Avenue or Northern Boulevard where the bus lanes should really be down the middle of the boulevard and actually then have protected bike lanes and then provide for a flow of traffic in both directions in a much easier way. Of course, we didn't hear a lot about how the candidates would make more busways. but we did hear several people say they would be more dedicated, let's say, than Mayor Adams when it comes to doing right for buses.

Here's Assembly member Zoran Mamdani. If the Botanical Garden calls me to cancel the busway, I'm not going to be picking up that phone call. And I think the term community interest has lost almost all of its meaning, right? It is often used as a shield to prevent any kind of change, oftentimes by the most powerful within whatever community we are speaking of. And that Botanical Garden reference is to, in reference to the Fordham Busway that was killed, the Mayor Adams killed after some pushback from the New York Botanical Garden and other institutions in the Bronx. But there were other candidates like Comptroller Brad Lander who called for a dedicated busway on 34th Street, just like the one on 14th Street that we have now. And State Senator Zellner Mirey, who is called for pushing more aggressively for the Flatbush Avenue. busway, which is really just getting underway.

Now, fair evasion was a topic that elicited some division, right? Kind of going to what both we've been talking about, how much control does the mayor really have over that anyway? The mayor does control the NYPD, and under Adams, we've seen police officers crack down on fair evasion with the blessing of the MTA. What was interesting was that at the mayoral forum, most of the candidates said they believed it is important to have police presence in the subways with the caveat that they didn't believe in over-policing. I think there needs to be a conversation on what over-policing means and

looks like. And what the candidates also said was that they didn't want the National Guard in the subways. Now, Liz, you cover politics. Stephen, you covered transportation, those things so often intertwined. At a form like this, it's not like any of these people that are going to say, oh, I hate transit. So were these candidates genuinely wedded to the things they're talking about or were they just playing with a friendly transit-oriented crowd? I mean, to be fair, I know most of these candidates. I've covered them in some way or another. And they really are some of the most pro-transit folks I've seen in years. Everyone there at the forum, Liz, as you saw, was jockeying for this title of bus mayor.

And for the coveted bus mayor jacket. This is actually a thing shot. Okay. It's black satin. It's got an MTA bus on the back. and the words bus mayor embroidered on it. And actually the group Riders Alliance gave one of these to Mayor Adams. But then they actually asked for it back after he killed the Fordham Road bus lane.

Sources tell me he has not returned the jacket. And it was sort of like when Barack Obama was given the Nobel Prize before he was even president. But so just to get back to the forum, let's hear Scott Stringer talk about bona fide, someone who's really gunning for bus mayor. By the time I'm done, I want a jacket, but don't call me to bus mayor. Call me to street mayor because that's what this is about. It's about the streets. And here's how we're going to do it.

He referenced a 17-point plan from his last run for mayor, which I checked isn't apparently online anymore. And when you talk about pro-transit candidates, I do have to say this is a pretty fervent group that does walk the walk. Comptroller Brad Lander's been doing this for years. He pushed for the Prospect Park bike lane. He's tried to crack down. He has cracked down on reckless driving. He pushed for Sammy's law, giving the city the right to lower the speed limit. And he even sued Governor Hokel to get congestion pricing turned back on.

Others, like State Senator Zellner Myrie, is so in the weeds on transit. He's even picked up one of our on-the-way topics about the no-strand interlocking, an underground bottleneck that makes all the trains on the two and three lines slower. So talk about transit. These are some nitty-gritty folks. I agree 100% with Stephen. You know, I think the candidates, they recognize that transit. is a high-stake issue.

Like we've talked about, it touches the lives of so many New Yorkers. At one point, they were asked if they rode the bus themselves recently, and almost all of them raised their hands. So they know that voters care about this, and they need to be well-informed and offer up convincing solutions. It's WNYC, Stephen Nesson, and Elizabeth Kim. You can stay in the know on all things transit or ask a question of your own by setting up for our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way steven liz thanks so much thank you

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