Local Law 97, the Dirty Buildings bill, requires emissions reductions and other improvements such as energy efficiency, clean heating and cooling, and green roofs on large buildings. It will create tens of thousands of good jobs in design, renovation, and construction. We must not only support this law, opposing any carve-outs and roll backs and ensuring it is properly implemented, funded, and enforced, we must also expand it to bring efficiency improvements to small and medium size buildings not covered.
Public sidewalks are poorly maintained by property owners even during good conditions when sweeping is missed, and during inclement conditions when shoveling and de-icing is neglected. Sidewalks are a public good and their maintenance should not be left to private responsibility. An interagency sidewalk maintenance and improvement corps spanning DSNY, Parks, and DOT will create new union jobs to make sidewalks ADA compliant, and improve their resilience. We need a green new deal for sidewalks.
Transform New York City’s six urban ports into community-led hubs of sustainability that can host new manufacturing centers for wind turbines and create green jobs. Place restrictions on ship emissions and idling, and invest in port electrification and ship plug-ins, especially at the Brooklyn and Manhattan cruise ship terminals.
Limit non-essential helicopter flights over NYC, which cause emissions, noise, and safety risks that outweigh the benefit to the very small number of New Yorkers who use them. Instead, provide alternate City-owned sightseeing options such as electric gondolas, buses, and boats.
Support a Green New Deal, the best and only solution to the climate crisis and historic job inequality which would mean sustainable infrastructure improvements for the city like better public transit, replacing racist systems with just transitions, and creating good paying green jobs.
Support a Green New Deal for NYCHA, prioritizing and fully funding upgrades and building new public housing. NYCHA is crumbling and needs extensive retrofits to guarantee safe housing without leaks, drafts, lead, asbestos, mold, pests, and with consistent heat, clean and hot water, electricity, internet. All retrofit and repair jobs should prioritize hiring NYCHA residents, and a unionized hiring hall should be developed to train them. Public housing should be preserved and expanded.
To make our schools truly safe, especially during COVID-19, they need extensive cleaning and retrofits to replace and improve ventilation systems, fix windows and plumbing, and remediate lead, asbestos, and mold.
Fight for DSA’s Public Power bills, which would take utilities into public ownership and democratic control, enable the New York Power Authority to develop renewable generation and sell it to New Yorkers, and ban predatory Energy Service Companies (ESCOs).
All NYC parks and public plazas should be fully and equitably funded, not just the ones with access and proximity to wealth. End outsourcing of municipal responsibilities to private foundations and businesses.
All privately operated public spaces must be upgraded to serve the public good. Add requirements for 24-7 accessible and free public bathrooms, water fountains, green space, permeable surfaces, and other sustainable features like pollinator gardens.
Central Business Districts (CBD) serve to concentrate wealth and propagate movement injustices. Urban environments should include community planning that ensures we can live near where we work and work near where we live. We should focus on frameworks like the 15-minute city that seek to restore justice, inclusivity, and access[9].
Mass transit is the lifeblood of NYC; it should be free for everyone and run democratically. Until then, we must implement progressive fare models under city purview, such as expanding Fair Fares, making some or all buses free, and exploring new programs similar to the Atlantic Ticket.
Cops don’t belong in our subways, where they’re under no obligation to actually serve or protect the public interest[10] and do not create an environment of safety. Remove NYPD from the MTA and replace them with healthcare and social service specialists where needed.
Traffic enforcement must be moved to an unarmed agency whose mission is improving street safety, not carceral punishment. We must do so while re-evaluating how it’s done and what the end goals are. We must build a new model focused on education, restorative justice, and ensuring all costs are progressively defined by income or wealth. The responsible agents must follow a mission of community education. The agency must use data collection to improve our systems and minimize enforcement.
End the parking placard program. Replace it with commuter benefits for municipal employees, accessible transportation for the disabled, and loading and parking zones for municipal work vehicles. Create street design focused deterrents to illegal parking (e.g., additional bike racks, planters, waste containers, street art, benches, etc.)
Immediately end the practice of providing agency vehicles to employees for personal use.
Work toward public operation of the NYC Ferry and end EDC subsidies[13].
Deny all public funding and bond issuing for the BQX project, which prioritizes real estate value over the transit needs of New Yorkers. Instead redirect city light rail planning efforts to build fast and frequent light rail lines to replace crowded crosstown bus routes like the Bx12, B46, and Q44.
Prioritizing roads and highways for cars is climate change denial. Requiring equal or greater funding for more efficient and sustainable transportation isn’t merely just, it’s imperative for a liveable environment.
Initiate a massive expansion of protected busways throughout the city and especially outside of the central business districts. Buses are the unsung hero of the transit system. They efficiently move people of all abilities safely. And, because a busway allows each bus and operator to move more quickly, they allow us to increase service, adding more frequency without more drivers or buses.
Begin the process of tearing down or covering highways and offer restorative justice to communities who were most harmed by them.
Implement physical solutions to divert oversize vehicles including non-permitted 53-foot tractor trailers on city roads and weight-restricted vehicles on the Brooklyn Bridge and BQE. These vehicles are more likely to be involved in destructive crashes, they release a disproportionate amount of emissions, and they physically damage infrastructure.
Support the development of Barcelona-style superblocks, an urban planning design which restricts cars to certain streets, frees up streets for public spaces, and promotes equitable access to green spaces.
New York City residents deserve to democratically control their largest piece of transportation infrastructure.
Public transit is a public good and facilitating our right to movement is in all of our interests. We must advocate at the state and national level to Tax the Rich for the full funding necessary to ensure a completely free New York City Transit system then take the concrete steps at the city and state level to bring the MTA under local[15], democratic control. Fare Free Transit also allows less expensive elevator plans.
Advocate for full MTA service including overnight service and investment in needed capital improvements. Advocate for full accessibility and compliance with all ADA laws including expanding elevators, free public bathrooms, and water fountains in subway stations. Support TWU workers in their contract fights to prevent cuts.
Advocate at the state level to decriminalize: inability to pay (fare evasion), public urination, public defecation, open containers, jaywalking, loitering.
Point community/neighborhood groups, churches, and residential cooperatives to resources and programs that advance cooperative car ownership models[16] and car sharing[17]. Advocate for subsidies, grants, and law changes to allow expansion of these models.
The AirTrain, for example, has a backwards design that would force the majority of passengers to go out of their way east before doubling back to their destination and would overburden an already overcapacity 7 subway line. Better alternatives include connecting the AirTrain to existing subway lines that have capacity, extending the N/W to LaGuardia, improving the frequency, reach and priority of bus service, and even foregoing changes to LaGuardia service when more just, impactful transit infrastructure projects can be prioritized[18].
Implement consolidated street container collection[19], ending the practice of door-to-door pickups for most households and businesses and reducing the prevalence of rodents. Require DSNY choose an existing system with proven hardware and matching vehicles instead of designing its own.
Fully fund composting and require it citywide while investing in borough-based composting sites to minimize unnecessary transfers.
Require all waste to be sorted at the point of collection, separating organics, recyclable materials like glass, steel, paper, and aluminum.
Commercial waste management has consistently been dangerous, polluting, and corrupt. It’s a public service that should be brought back under public control, consolidated with non-commercial operations, localized with hubs, and transitioned to light vehicles and micro-haulers where possible.
Where possible, mandate that agencies procure reusable or compostable materials, properly recycle, resell, or donate old materials, and use their purchasing power to buy reusable or compostable materials such as paper bags and compostable takeout containers in bulk to sell to small businesses to help them comply with the plastic bag ban and the City’s Zero Waste goals.
Expand and strengthen the social fabric and public good with zero-carbon community centers and municipal organizing jobs. New green public infrastructure and projects should serve as potent displays of public/municipal presence marked through visible signage/didactics stating amount of public investment, jobs created, and using public works projects as an opportunity for political education.
Require all decarbonization measures to be carried out with project labor agreements and prevailing wage. Offer wages that empower the working class economically and politically. Aggressive workforce development programs and hiring requirements should target the broad multiracial working class especially sectors that have been historically subjected to environmental sacrifice zones and disinvestment. Fund these measures, in part, by redistributing funding from the police and carceral systems to environmental justice.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/05/31/how-long-will-nyc-let-parking-mandates-stand-in-the-way-of-affordability/ ↩︎
https://atlantic2.sierraclub.org/content/canadian-hydropower-—-wrong-direction-future ↩︎
https://www.nycgovparks.org/greening/natural-resources-group/wetlands-transfer-task-force ↩︎
https://www.wired.com/story/sanfrancisco-smaller-firetrucks/ ↩︎
https://www.dataforprogress.org/green-new-deal-public-housing-nycha ↩︎
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/02/13/update-citys-stipulated-fine-program-costing-taxpayers-tens-of-millions-more/ ↩︎
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfUI_hETy0
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/no-special-duty ↩︎
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/12/27/streetsies-2019-placard-abuse-of-the-year/ ↩︎
https://nypost.com/2019/03/31/number-of-city-workers-with-take-home-government-cars-jumps/ ↩︎
http://secondavenuesagas.com/2019/10/06/its-time-to-stop-subsidizing-the-nyc-ferry-fares/ https://ny.curbed.com/2018/8/29/17795438/nyc-ferry-expansion-new-york-transportation-crisis ↩︎
https://rpa.org/work/reports/the-five-borough-bikeway
https://alignny.org/resource/an-equitable-recovery-creating-100000-climate-jobs-for-frontline-communities-of-color/ ↩︎
https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/Does-sharing-cars-really-reduce-car-use-June 2017.pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.515.5698&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2011/impact-carsharing-household-vehicle-ownership/
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2010/02/01/car-sharing-instead-of-more-parking-les-co-op-says-fantastic/ ↩︎
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/09/22/opinion-the-laguardia-airtrain-makes-even-less-sense-after-covid/ ↩︎
https://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/living/community/how-to-recycle-in-barcelona/ ↩︎
https://comptroller.nyc.gov/wp-content/uploads/documents/Commercial-Waste.pdf https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/05/dirty-hands-the-unseen-world-of-new-yorks-private-waste-industry-102989 https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/10/29/nypd-says-it-will-finally-crack-down-on-rogue-carting-companies/
https://nylpi.org/waste-report-new-yorks-poorer-neighborhoods-are-getting-dumped-on/ https://features.propublica.org/sanitation-salvage/sanitation-salvage-accidents-new-york-city-commercial-carting-garbage/ ↩︎