NYC NOW - Novemebr 22, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: Federal security agents were the first to confront the man accused of fatally stabbing three people in Manhattan on Monday. WNYC’s Charles Lane reports. Meanwhile, a key City Council committee has approved Mayor Eric Adams’ proposal to overhaul the city’s zoning code, aiming to create tens of thousands of new homes. Also, the Sanitation Department is reminding New Yorkers to compost fallen leaves and yard waste instead of waiting for the city’s annual leaf collection period. Plus, on this week’s transportation segment of “On the Way,” WNYC’s Stephen Nessen, Ramsey Khalifeh, and editor Clayton Guse discuss the MTA’s phased congestion pricing plan, including toll hikes through 2031 and Republican opposition. They also examine plans for temporary connector roads during Cross-Bronx Expressway repairs and answer a listener’s question about outdated Q train models and subway signal upgrades.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, November 22nd. Here's the morning headlines from Tiffany Hanson. Federal security agents, not the NYPD, were the first to confront a man accused of fatally stabbing three people in Manhattan on Monday. That's according to body camera footage and to sources. WNYC's Charles Lane has more. After the attacks, Mayor Adams credited an NYPD officer with stopping suspect Ramon Rivera.

He suggested that the officer's actions prevented more casualties. But officials with the U.S. State Department told WN.C that it was their agents who initially detained Rivera. Body camera footage shows several agents near the suspect before NYPD officers arrived, with at least one holding a drawn weapon. The footage also shows an NYPD officer placing Rivera in handcuffs. An NYPD spokesperson said the officer did place himself in harm's way, but acknowledged the mayor wasn't fully aware of the State Department's role when he spoke. And Mayor Adams' plan to build more housing across the five boroughs cleared a major hurdle yesterday. A key city council committee voted to approve the mayor's proposal to overhaul the city's zoning code to allow for tens of thousands of new homes. Manhattan Council member Shauna Brayu says the proposal will help the city tackle a severe housing shortage.

Addressing our housing crisis has never been more urgent. By passing the city of yes, we will be a better city tomorrow than we were yesterday. Council members approved the plan after Mayor Adams agreed to issue $5 billion for more affordable housing and street and sewer upgrades. The proposal goes next to the full council for a vote. The city's sanitation department is reminding New Yorkers to place fallen leaves and other yard waste into their compost bins rather than wait for the city's yearly leaf collection period. leaves can be placed in a brown compost bin in a paper leaf bag or in a clear plastic bag. The reminder comes after the city expanded its composting program, which requires all residents and buildings to place food scraps, food soiled paper, and yard waste into brown compost bins. Officials say the program is meant to combat the city's rat problem.

Compost can also turn into renewable energy or soil fertilizer. Weather-wise, gusty, showers, likely today and near steady temperatures right around where we are now, which is 39 degrees here in Soho. Very, very chilly wind as you're headed out the door this morning. That's the headline weather-wise. These showers continue today and into tonight as well. 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, WNYC's transportation reporter Stephen Nesson and Ramsey Caliphay and editor Clayton Goosa.

Okay, this week the MCA took one more step towards implementing congestion pricing in Manhattan. Stephen, give us the latest. So you remember the headline last week where Hockel unpaused congestion pricing, announced she wants to charge drivers $9 and not $15, as was originally planned. This week, the MTA board rescheduled their monthly meeting and gathered to quickly approve this new plan. And no surprise, they voted in favor of the governor's congestion pricing program with one loan no vote coming from board member David Mack, who represents Nassau County. During the meeting, he also reportedly, and I saw it, illegally parked his car in a spot designated for accessoryed vehicles while simultaneously complaining at the board meeting about illegal parking in Manhattan. No irony alert.

But we also got this week a little more clarity on how this new version of congestion pricing will work. And the main thing that we learned is that it's going to be a phased-in approach. So that means it will start at $9. And then in three years, it's going to go up to $12. And by the year 2031, we'll be back to that original $15. And the reason the MTA is doing this is they're hoping the federal government's final review of the plan, which is really the very last step toward implementing it, will be swifter since they aren't really changing any details from the last time it was reviewed except for this phased-in approach. Right. And those every three-year increases this phase in will also apply to every other type of vehicle, you know, the bigger the vehicle, the more you pay kind of large trucks from the get-go. We're supposed to pay $21 and $60 now. But by 2031, that price will go up to $36. It's also worth like highlighting a caveat here, Sean, that the MTA approved they had done this before, but they re-approved it again, that they give themselves the option to increase the cost of the tolls by 25% on so- called gridlock alert days. We highlight those on the show all the time. It's when the city

transportation department says traffic is expected to be so bad today. Please avoid Manhattan's busiest areas. There's, I think, 15 of them or so between this week and Christmas. They happen quite often around the UN General Assembly. So on days that the city DOT issues that notice, the MTA could just temporarily raise the toll rate, that base passenger vehicle price from $9 to $11 dollars and 25 cents. And this kind of points to something that's pie in the sky, maybe far down the road. But in 2019, when the legislature first approved this plan, they allowed the MTA to implement a variable rate congestion toll, which, so they do this in Singapore, which would be, which would

say, you know, have a different price depending on how many vehicles are in Manhattan at any given moment. That's a little probably farther and higher tech, but they do have the option to do that down the road. They didn't approve that in this plan, but something to think about. Now, a pretty significant wrinkle in all of this. President-elect Donald Trump is a vocal opponent of the tolls, which means the MTA is now in a time crunch if they want to get this thing done.

What are the stakes here? Yeah, so like Stephen said, we're waiting on the feds. And as of today, there are 45 days left for the Federal Highway Administration to approve the new congestion pricing plan. That's with this phasing amendment. On the first go-round, it took federal officials 79 days to issue their first approval. But now Hockel is set on this January 5th date. That's the date that she wants.

for these things to go live. But of course, there's renewed opposition for the plan from several Republican lawmakers. Representative Mike Loller. He's begun a public campaign against congestion pricing and also against the governor for bringing this program back. Lola represents Rockland County, Putnam County,

these counties outside of this central business district where the tolls would be charged. He told me he's considering legislative action in Congress to penalize federal funding to the MTA. That's something he's actually done before, at least introduced in the House last year. He's also told me that he's been texting with the president-elect on this issue, keeping it on his radar. Now Representative Nicole Maliatakis, she represents Staten Island and parts of southern Brooklyn.

She's considering her own actions. She says if the program doesn't, if it does go through, she plans on finding every angle to scrutinize the MTA, to audit the MTA. She's very upset about it. And while they're definitely loud opponents of the plan and admittedly the polling on congestion pricing wasn't great, the MTA would also argue that there are a lot of supporters who just, just aren't as vocal. And they base that on the fact that 90%, 90% of the people who enter the tolling zone get there on mass transit. And the MTA is really banking on the fact that they're going to use this money to make the transit system better for all those riders. And just to back up

some of their claims with data, you know, take Staten Island, for example, where Malatakis lives. There's about 31,000 people that commute to the zone for work. And only 22% of them actually drive there. The rest get there by mass transit. Another example we can look at is where Democratic New Jersey Congress member Josh Gottheimer, his district that he represents, also gubernatorial candidates, who's maybe the most vocal opponent of congestion pricing, at least in New Jersey for sure. He represents three counties in northern and eastern Jersey. And if we combine all those districts, the number of people who actually are driving into the tolling zone that would be affected is about 15,000 people. Pretty simple.

small number when you consider millions of people ride the subway every day. And in the zone itself, you know, overall there's about 900,000 vehicles, but more than half of those are just taxis and four higher vehicles. Okay. Pivoting a little bit, we have more news for drivers in the form of the cross Bronx expressway. The state is planning to repair parts of the highway and wants to add new roadways while the work is done. But that plan is getting some pretty serious pushback from two of the Bronx's most notable politicians. What's going on there, Ramsey? So the DOT has proposed this new plan to revitalize the cross Bronx expressway. Part of that plan is to build these what they call connector roads, kind of like temporary roads, to divert traffic while they're

trying to get this construction work done. House representatives have come out this week and question parts of the plan. That's Richie Torres and Alexandria Ocasia Cortez. They both represent the Bronx. They say the whole point of this project to do a few things, want to have less roads, better accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists, and to improve the quality of life in several neighborhoods in the Bronx that were historically cut up because of the expressway. They argue that these connector roads will actually throw a wrench in those goals. Yeah, and, you know, this kind of reminds me of some of the Michigas around the BQE six years ago. If you remember, Sean, they plan, they need that triple candle lever in Brooklyn Heights. They need to fix it. They plan to

accomplish that work by building a temporary highway on top of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which is very nice. But they, it got a lot of pushback. Everyone the community said, hey, do not do that. And they didn't do that. And they still need to come up with a permanent plan to fix a BQE. But it gets to the point that a lot of these highways were built a long time ago in the mid-20th century. They cut up neighborhoods. A lot of it was done under Robert Moses. Now these structures are getting old enough to need repairs. And a lot of people say, hey, we don't want new roadways in our neighborhoods while those repairs are done. And just to get back to the plan briefly, a big component of it is that the DOT wants to add

what they're calling highway caps along several locations of the expressway. We've talked about it before. Those are either vertical or horizontal barriers that can block sound and pollution to the neighboring areas. And on top of these barriers, they would plan to seek public green space, pedestrian crossings, between those neighborhoods that have been disconnected because of this expressway and bike lanes as well. As always, really interesting stuff. Thanks to W&YT editor Clayton Goose and Transportation Reporters Stephen Nesson and Ramsey-Kulife. You can stay in the know in all things transit or ask a question of your own.

Signing up for our weekly newsletter. That is at gothamis.com slash on the way transit team. As always, thanks so much. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. 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.