NYC NOW - October 17, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and a coalition of business groups have a new plan to redesign a stretch of Fifth Avenue between Bryant Park and Central Park. Plus, the New York Liberty face the Minnesota Lynx in the Twin Cities for Game 4 of the WNBA championship series. If the Libs win, they’ll be crowned champions for the first time in their history. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson breaks down this week’s transit news with transportation reporters Stephen Nessen, Ramsey Khalifeh and editor Clayton Guse

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, October 18th. Here's the midday news from Alec Hamilton. Mayor Adams and a coalition of business groups have a new plan to redesign a stretch of Fifth Avenue between Bryant Park and Central Park. It would double the width of the sidewalk, but eliminate one of the two bus lanes that are currently on the street. Danny Pearlstein is with the Advocacy Group Riders Alliance. He says that might be good for shoppers, but it's going to slow commuters down. Instead, he's in favor of a plan put forth by former mayor Bill de Blasio

back in 2020. It would have banned most passenger vehicles on the street to speed up bus service. There's plenty of room for better buses and better possessional facilities to coexist, but not if there's through car traffic on the street. That's why the de Blasio administration designed a busway in the first place. The new plan is expected to cost $350 million. That price doesn't include work to relocate underground utilities. New York Liberty fans, tonight could be the night. If the Liberty defeat the Minnesota Lynx in the Twin Cities,

they'll be crowned WNBA champions for the first time in their history. The Liberty played in the very first WNBA game ever back in 1997, and they've been to the finals six times, but they've never won the championship. They currently have a two-games-to-one lead against Minnesota. If they lose tonight, they'll face the links one more time on Sunday in Brooklyn for a final deciding game five. Tonight's game starts at 8.

Sunny today and cool with a high near 69. Tonight, clear with a low around 53, more sunshine ahead this weekend as well. Saturday looks a lot like today, and then Sunday the high is expected to be in the low 70s. Stay close. There's more. after the break. This is NYC now. For WNYC, I'm Jene Pierre.

And it's time for On the Way, our weekly segment breaking down the week's transit news. Here's my colleague, Sean Carlson, in conversation with WMYC transportation reporters, Stephen Nesson, Ramsey Kalee, and editor Clayton Gusa. Okay, Stephen, this week you dipped your toe into the presidential election. You looked at what a Trump or Harris win might mean for transportation in our region? What did you learn? Well, as we know, Sean, as we hear on the radio all the time, both candidates are in a tight race trying to win over those crucial swing states that could decide the outcome of the election. The thing is, public transit is not really a top issue in those places. So it's not like Trump or Harris are saying much about public transportation on the campaign trail or even in their platforms online. But we took a look at what they've said and done in the recent past as sort of a window into their thinking on the issue. So let's start with Trump. Most experts agree and experience from his first term in the white. House shows us that his administration would likely be an obstacle for transit funding in New York and New Jersey. And let's let's look at one top issue for the city, one that we've talked about many times on this segment, congestion pricing. Trump has said, one thing he has said clearly is that

he will kill the program the first day in office. You know, that plan does still require some approvals from the federal government. So if Trump wins, the MTA would need his help, which doesn't look like he would be very forthcoming with it. All right. Well, while we're on the topic, Clayton remind us what the status of congestion pricing is? Yeah, in case our listeners have somehow missed it, Governor Hokel put the program, the tolls south of 60th Street in Manhattan to fund the MTA, on pause in June. It was a few weeks before they were supposed to launch, and her pause came just a couple weeks after Trump said he would kill the program, which requires federal approval on his

first day in office. She said that she might bring it back at some point this fall after the election or next year, maybe with a slightly reduced price from the $15 base toll that the MTA approved. but you know, but she doesn't have much time to do it at this point. And I spoke with experts like Nicole Jelineas, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, who tells me it's basically dead if Trump wins. And Hockel would be the one to blame. I don't think we can blame Trump for delaying congestion pricing the second time around.

I mean, if O'KL doesn't want that to happen, she could start congestion pricing tomorrow. So that's something to keep in mind. When you hear her potentially blaming Trump next year for congestion pricing, we have no one to blame at this point but ourselves. Just a quick reminder, the MTA still blames Trump for delaying congestion pricing from getting its federal approvals in the first place. But Jelineas also tells me she blames former Governor Cuomo, who maybe could have done more during his time as well to get it up and running faster. Yeah, and also the other side of this coin kind of thinking about what a vice president, Harris presidency could mean for transit funding in New York. Now, she hasn't taken a public position on congestion pricing.

I guess why would she? Kind of getting back to the thing, people in Pennsylvania don't. Well, some might, but people in Arizona certainly don't. But for that matter, her position on most transportation issues is mostly nebulous. You look at the policy book that she released last month, you know, kind of a couple months after Biden dropped out of the race. It hardly references transit and transportation. None of this kind of Amtrak Joe proposals to add all this funding and build high speed rail and all that kind of stuff. She talks about space travel.

She talks about space travel and airlines and electric cars quite a bit, nothing by way of mass transit and the things that make our city run. But, you know, experts and advocates are saying nonetheless, transit New York would certainly be better off with her than Trump in office. And you have some indications of what that might look like under Trump through Project 2025, obviously the infamous conservative document that's circulating. by written by a lot of Trump allies and former aides. And it pitches, you know, gutting the U.S. DOT, which would strangle federal funds for big transit projects in New York. You've seen them come in for big projects like the Gateway Tunnel or the Second Avenue subway in the East Harlem.

And they give billions of dollars a year to the region for these kind of projects. So, but still, kind of going back to the M-Track Joe point, everyone's kind of saying, even if Harris wins, we're not likely to see this kind of big flooding of transportation funding coming from Congress or the White House simply because that was a historic move by President Biden. He put a lot of his political capital through to get it done. Not a lot of indications that Harris would kind of push forward a similar measure as a bipartisan infrastructure bill a few years ago. Okay, moving on. It feels like recently we've gotten a lot of proposals or ideas for big projects in our region. Last week, it was the Brooklyn Queens Expressway,

the BQE. This week we heard more about the Cross Bronx Expressway. Ramsey, what is the latest for that roadway? Yeah, I want to turn back the clock. So the urban planner Robert Moses initiated the work on the Cross Bronx Expressway in 1948, and that took over 20 years to build out. What they did was run a highway through the Bronx, destroying the homes of approximately 40,000 residents. That expressway by many people is widely regarded as a physical manifestation of structural racism. So what does that mean? Well, it tore apart a bunch of neighborhoods, and it also created existing environmental impacts for black and brown people who live in those neighborhoods. So researchers at Fordham University say that the Bronx is some of the worst

rates of asthma in the country, and much of that has to do with exposure to carbon emissions from car traffic on that expressway. So the city, what they're trying to do is, you know, they're idealizing it, but they'd like to write some of those wrongs from the past. The Department of Transportation released a report this week that would re-envision the expressway. So they found 13 possible locations to add covers. Those would be stretches of covers across the width of the road, and that practice is called capping. We've seen it in other instances. What they want to do is pick out a few locations to actually develop this, and they're going to base it off of the needs of Bronx residents through

this public outreach program. What it could actually look like? Well, for one, we could see parkland developed over the capping. It connects streets on opposite ends of the expressways that you couldn't get across from before. We could also add bike lanes and even connect existing parks. So that looks like Walter Gladwin Park and Crittona Parks across Arthur Avenue. Sam Schwartz, a.k.a. Gridlock, Sam, he's the former city traffic commission. He says that capping is the right way to move forward for the city's highways. It can be done.

It's, you know, it's been done. New York Presbyterian Hospital and Hospital for Special Surgery over the FDI drive. We have a number of examples battering park itself. There's a highway that goes right underneath it. But to be clear, these are just

proposals, like we mentioned, a lot of proposals. So it's unclear if they'll ever become a reality. And one roadblock that could Keep them from becoming a reality is the cost that they're estimating, which is bananas. Every section of this roadway, they're saying that of the BQ or cross Bronx that they want a cap would cost two, blah, blah, billion dollars. That's an incredible amount of money, and it could be prohibitive from them moving forward with some of this. And look, for comparison, Schwartz said a capping project that he worked on over the FDR Drive to build out the Rockefeller Center. So that includes buildings, parks, and the cap itself.

That costs $500 million. So not as much, obviously a lot of money, but not as much. And also in 2021, he pointed to the city of Pittsburgh that built out an entire park over Interstate 579. You wonder how much that cost, Sean? That was just $30 million. So a lot smaller. Oh, yeah, totally.

Okay, we just have a little bit of time left, but I want to get in this pop quiz hot shots every week in our on the way newsletter. We answer a question from a curious commuter. Max in Manhattan writes, how does the city own the subway? But the MTA runs it while the MTA is state-owned. Yeah, well, we need to give a... bit of history here to answer Max's question. You've got to think about the era of post-war New York when the sub people were turning away from the subways going to cars. Meanwhile,

Robert Moses, who Ramsey just mentioned, ran the tri-borrow bridge and tunnel authority. That made money because they collected tolls hand over fist. The city wanted to get that money to subsidize the subways, which were losing fares. John Lindsay tried to do that, take control of that, failed his first day in office, big transit strike. Very embarrassing in 1966. If anyone remembers that, give me a call. I don't. I wasn't alive. Nelson Rockefeller outmaneuverism takes it over. Now the subway is owned by the city, lease to the MTA. That's a brief history lesson from X. That's WNYC Transportation Reporters, Ramsey Caliphate, Stephen Nesson, and editor Clayton Gusa, talking with my colleague, Sean Cawson.

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 podcasts. We'll be back this evening.