NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: NYC Public Hospital Strike Looms, NJ Judge Rejects Affordable Housing Delay, Members-Only Clubs for Dogs, and Potential Roadblock on Eve of Congestion Pricing

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Get up and get informed! Here's all the local news you need to start your day: Doctors at four public hospitals plan to strike over stalled contract talks. Meanwhile, a New Jersey judge has rejected 26 towns’ bid to delay affordable housing mandates. Plus, New York City’s latest trend: private clubs for dogs, complete with trainers, organic food, and playgrounds. Finally, on this week’s segment of On the Way, WNYC reporter Stephen Nessen and editor Clayton Guse discuss the looming launch of congestion pricing and the legal uncertainties that could still halt it. They also examine recent subway crimes and their broader implications, plus answer a listener’s question about why PATH trains and stations are cleaner than NYC’s subway system.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, January 3rd. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. Doctors at 4. The City's public hospitals say they're planning to strike this month overstalled contract negotiations. Dr. Gray Ballinger is a primary care physician at Queens Hospital Center. She says the city recently decided to cut the time allotted for new patient visits.

it's cut it in half. When you see your patient's time being cut in half, that is just enraging. Dr. Ballinger and other doctors threatening to walk out are all employed by private organizations affiliated with New York Health and Hospitals, which provides funding for their salaries. The hospitals affected are Jacoby Medical Center, North Central Bronx Hospital, Queens Hospital Center and South Brooklyn Health. A spokesperson for NYC Health and Hospital says it hopes all parties involve reaching agreement to avoid a strike. A New Jersey judge has rejected an attempt by 26 towns to put the state's affordable housing requirements on hold. W&MIC's Mike Hayes has more on the fight unfolding as New Jersey reckons with a growing shortage of affordable homes. Judge Robert

Logie wrote that putting the brakes on a state affordable housing law would leave New Jersey's low-income households in worse shape than they already are. The judge's decision comes weeks after 26 towns argued that requirements to build more housing will overburden their infrastructure like roads and sewers. They'll now have to work towards meeting those requirements even as their lawsuit moves forward. On average, towns are being asked to build 150 affordable units over 10 years, though some towns have to build considerably more. Some new clubs in New York City are catering to a unique clientele. City dogs. These members-only spaces offer dog trainers, organic pet food, and curated experiences for humans, some offer dog-friendly playgrounds

and special dog grooming stations. Irving Fala's co-founded Happy Tales in Tribeca. He says the dogs don't want to leave his club. At pickup, they're like, please don't take me. And they like stop their feet, so they can't get out the door. Nobody's going to say, doggone, to see photos of the dogs at one of the clubs. Check out our news site, Gothamist. 34-by flurries now, chance of flurries this morning, mostly cloudy, a high near 40 real feel near the teams. Up next, our weekly segment of On the Way, covering all transportation news. That's after the break.

I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It's Friday, which means it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment on all things considered, breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us, WNYC's transportation reporter, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Goosa. Happy New Year, happy 2025 to you both. Same to you, Sean. Well, it's a new year, but same old story. We're just days away from the MTA flipping the switch on congestion pricing. And yet, there's still uncertainty about whether or not it's actually going to happen.

Seriously, there's still a chance. This thing is not going to happen. The MTA got a little New Year's Eve surprise, Sean. Okay. Remember, we were still waiting for a final ruling on the New Jersey lawsuit that was seeking to halt the program, well, it landed on New Year's Eve conveniently. There was good news and bad news for the MTA. The ruling found on the one hand the agency pretty much did as much study as it needed of the program

and that the plan to charge drivers atoll followed all the proper steps and procedures that it needed to. New Jersey, remember, had wanted the MTA to do more study of the plan, which would delay it by years and likely kill any chances of it going into effect. The judge was basically like, nah, they did all the study they needed and more. But here's the bad news. He did leave open the possibility for delay. I mean, the bad news really is that Leo Gordon, this judge, wrote a 72-page ruling and didn't answer the key question. Can congestion pricing move forward?

Leo Gordon needs an editor. But New Jersey is saying, hey, this says you can't move forward. New York and the MTA, which is ultimately in charge of turning on the tolls Sunday, says, yes, we can move forward. They're back in court on Friday at 3 p.m. New Jersey is asking for a temporary restraining order to pause the program. New York just wants them to get him to give one more rubber stamp. They also want clarification from what he wrote on Wednesday because both sides declaring victory. So there is a chance that the judge could come through less than 48 hours before the tolls come on and say, hold on, hold off.

We're not doing it. There's, of course, you know, that would be a very last minute shocking decision. But we're going to know for sure tomorrow by the close of business. So there is disagreement about what the ruling actually means from both sides. But one thing that was clear was he gave the Federal Highway Administration until January 17th to clarify one part of the plan, which was how much mitigation is going to go to New Jersey. We know how much is going to the Bronx, but it wasn't clear how much to New Jersey. So they have until January 17th to respond.

But then New Jersey has another month after that to respond to their response, which lands us smack dab into the middle of or the, at least the start of the Trump administration. Yeah, it drags out this process in a way that Hockel didn't want. She wanted to get this launched before Trump came in office because he's promised to use the federal authorities at his dispense or at his on his fingers to kill the program. We don't know if he has a legal authority to do that. Either way, this proceeding is going to drag out into the next presidency. Yeah, man.

So really, just days away, and we still don't know for sure if drivers are going to have to pay this toll. What does that say? Like, what conclusions can we draw from that that were so close and yet one judge could still kill it? We've always known that congestion pricing is pretty much political kryptonite and it really is just politics because no politician really wants to be the face behind a new charge for something that people have been expecting to get for free for so long. Even though most economists and transportation planners say it is sound policy with a proven record around the world of being successful. Successful means, of course, reducing traffic and raising money. surveys, studies of people who drive into the zone, you know, have found that it is really harming, or at least impacting, I should say, higher income people. There are about 15,500

low-income New Yorkers that do drive into the zone. So one of the complaints is that it's a regressive tax, a tax on the poor. But the studies don't necessarily bear that out, at least certainly not the majority of the thousands of vehicles in the zone. You know, I spoke with traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz, who says the opposition to congestion pricing he believes is rooted in our deeply ingrained American culture. We have become so enamored of the car that we believe it's covered in the Constitution that we shall be able to drive wherever and whenever we want. And the car has replaced the horse. We're cowboys and we've valued our loss. Here we are with the car. and we have that same attitude. One thing that maybe would have helped the, you know,

supportive congestion pricing is if the money didn't go directly to the MTA. There's been such a long history of mismanagement of cost overruns on big projects that, you know, I think a lot of the opposition as well is to how the MTA is going to manage all this money. Right. And that's the other part of this is that the money from the tolls is supposed to pay for $15 billion in subway upgrades. But it's also, you know, trying to push people out of car. as not a transit. But it's a little bit of a hard sell because all the money, all that money is going to be spent on upgrades, new track, new subway cars, but it's going to take years for riders to notice that. So if you want to avoid a $9 toll on Monday and take the subway instead, you're

not going to see the impact of that $9 toll on your commutes for years and years and years to come. All right. Let's pivot a little bit here and talk about crime in the subways. There's been a rash of high-profile crimes over the past week or so. And no matter what way you cut it here, undoubtedly, those are negative headlines for the transit system, right? So what does it tell us about crime overall underground? Not ideal for sure. The last murder of 2024 was a homeless woman who was set on fire in a subway car. This week, another man was charged with attempted murder for shoving a man on the subway tracks. And this just caps off what was a rough year for major crime in the subways. There were 10 murders in 2024. And that's a huge,

huge spike compared to the year before when they had half that. But let's not forget, Mayor Adams has surged thousands of officers in the last two years. And that's in part because 2022 also had 10 Subway murders. Hockel recently has also surged the National Guard, we should add. And the NYPD does have some stats. They go back to 1997. And 10 is the most murders in any single year in the subway system. And we have hit that in two of the last three years. And third, Thursday morning, you know, as well, there was an MTA cleaner who was stabbed on the job. Details about that are still coming in. But when it comes to assault on workers, it has also been pretty consistent for the past couple years. There are four to ten each month. Yeah, and kind of when you

think about this wave of subway crime, you think about four years ago when Mayor Adams was running from Mayor, there was a, you know, coming out of the pandemic ridership was low, but there was still, there was another high wave of high profile transit crime incidents, a string of shoving, similar to the one this week. Some of our listeners might remember this, but in 2020, in the winter of 2021, when four homeless people were stabbed on the subway overnight by another homeless man, two died in a really grisly scene

that they also led to, you know, former Mayor de Blasio flexing more police into the subway. So you're kind of thinking about that, and some of the candidates are already, you know, referencing these incidents, these recent crimes in their campaign materials, you know, you look out. The mayoral candidates.

So look out for that in the next five months. months as this becomes more of a conversation. Adams ran on a tough on-on-kind approach four years ago. Now he's in charge of the subway system. We have another stringer crimes, but he also used that tough-form crime approach four years ago to be elected to City Hall. Well, thank you, as always, to our transit brain trust here. That's WNYC, Stephen Nesson and Clayton-Glaughton. You can ask a question over your own. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter at gotfamist.com slash on the way. Stephen Clayton, as always, thanks so much. Thank you, Sean.

Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.