Monday Bulletin
July 3, 2023
Thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. High 83 degrees.
Notices
The New York City Department of Sanitation announced there will be no trash, recycling or compost collection on Tuesday, July 4, 2023, Independence Day. For questions about sanitation services and holiday schedules contact 311 or visit nyc.gov/sanitation.
News
By Carol Tannenhauser
Congestion pricing passed its final federal hurdle, and New York is poised to become the first city in the nation to implement a congestion pricing program “designed to collect billions of dollars to fund mass transit while discouraging drivers from jamming up Midtown Manhattan,” according to The New York Times. But how will it actually work? What will the tolls cost? Will there be exceptions and accommodations? And what about the question that’s concerning Upper West Siders: “What if people seeking to avoid tolls decide to drive as close as possible to the tolling zone, park their cars and finish their trip via public transit? Could this worsen a parking shortage at the edge of the congestion pricing zone,” namely, the Upper West Side? Answers here.
The hardest restaurant to get into these days, according to Eater food critic Robert Sietsema is…The Restaurant at Gilder. “Not aware of it?” Sietsema asks. “It perches on the second floor of the American Museum of Natural History’s new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. The cave-like entrance to the center (dubbed the ‘exploration atrium’) looks like an ancient cliff-dweller’s apartment complex with yawning windows. The restaurant is only open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., so expect to dine at peak museum hours.” Read his review for more information.
Pickleball is making news again and it’s not good. First, Forbes reported that “Americans will spend between $250 million and $500 million in costs tied to pickleball injuries this year.” Who’s driving the breaks and tears and pulls and sprains? “According to one study….[t]he sport has become ‘an increasingly important cause of injury’ for seniors…” Then, there’s pickleball noise: “The incessant pop-pop-pop of the fast-growing sport has brought on a nationwide scourge of unneighborly clashes, petitions, calls to the police and lawsuits, with no solution in sight,” wrote The New York Times. “Two factors — the high pitch of a hard paddle slamming a plastic ball and the erratic, often frantic rhythm of the smacks — contribute to its uncanny ability to drive [those who live nearby] crazy.”
Finally, this last item from NPR has nothing to do with the Upper West Side, but begged to be shared: “Nassim Haddad was born laughing. ‘Everybody [is] born crying. I was born laughing. I am always laughing,’ he says. He laughed even when his restaurant al-Tannour was destroyed after the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975. He soon began rebuilding and opened Chez Nassim, a shop serving Middle Eastern desserts like baklava, knafeh and more. The store still stands today. NPR contributor Ari Daniel is married to Haddad’s cousin.” Read “How to Laugh in the Face of Calamity” here.
Have a great week!
While I’m sure pickleball has created injuries, I’m hopeful that it increases seniors’ quality of life both physically and socially.
Nice to see a pro-social, not-online ‘craze’.
Congestion pricing will ruin the UWS as New Jersey drivers park here idling their cars etc.
That’s why residential parking permits need to be next.
NJ residents have jobs on the UWS. They have family on the UWS. Commuting via public transit from many areas in NJ isn’t exactly convenient and congestion pricing won’t change that.
Eric Adams specifically told NJ residents if you don’t want to pay the congestion fee or are tired of commuting to NYC, to move to NYC. Riders Alliance doesn’t take kindly to transit services with higher subsidies, which is many transit services outside NYC. Is the UWS willing to re-zone the neighborhood to add housing units so that NJ residents can afford to live on the UWS? Let’s face it, a mortgage on a house in many parts of NJ is cheaper than rent on the UWS or a mortgage on a co-op or condo on the UWS. Let’s also face the fact that UWS elected officials are standing with celebrities to stop new housing being built on the church at 86th and Amsterdam. The reason why UWS can have the historic preservation it has is because people are willing to sacrifice their time commuting to their homes elsewhere. Street parking for area workers, visitors etc. is a small concession because building more housing in Manhattan will be hard, very hard. Just look at the church fight now.
Yes we should build more housing and commuters from NJ should take the many many public transportation options that are available to them.
Sure it’s more convenient for NJ residents to park for free on the UWS but that has costs on NYC residents in terms of space/congestion/pollution & drivers should be made to pay for those costs.
Please, “the church fight now” has next to nothing to do w/ creating affordable housing for newly arriving NJ residents — or existing NYC residents, either. The church fight is about building luxury housing for the city’s nouveau riche — or saving a historically & architecturally significant building that can be repurposed for any number of uses to benefit city residents — & interested NJ residents.
Wouldn’t residential parking permits make life harder for the majority of UWSers who don’t own cars but do have people who drive to visit them? Why should my neighbor who owns a car to visit their parents get free parking when my parents would have to pay to use the same spot to visit me?
The proper way to manage permits would be to make them available to all residents, whether or not they own cars. That way you could use yours for a visitor’s car if you didn’t use it for your own.
Ed, one of the benefits of a residential parking permit is that many people who are currently registering their cars elsewhere while residing here will have to change their registration to get a permit. This will help cut down on fake plates and fraudulent registrations. However, the way to get around Josh P’s conundrum is that RPP programs typically come with guest passes. So Josh P would be able to get a certain number of guest parking passes for his parents to visit. Also, more importantly, RPP regulations are usually not in effect during the work day, so parents coming to visit during the day have no issue – just those that want to stay overnight.
We should lobby to add the UWS to the congestion pricing zone. The London congestion zone has expanded several times since they first implemented it. Less traffic, faster commuters, less pollution, faster emergency vehicle response times, fewer deaths and injuries from dangerous drivers.
The congestion pricing zone under the Bloomberg plan was originally going to be south of 86th street. UES and UWS residents fought that. The Bloomberg also had immediate service improvements for those outside Manhattan and also only charged a fee weekdays 6 AM to 6 PM. Bloomberg had to execute this plan right because he was the politician behind it and most of his margin of victory in 2001 and 2005 came from the outer boros, he had to deliver for the outer boros because he wanted a controversial third term (which he barely won without congestion pricing). Bloomberg’s reputation was on the line, his feet was held to the fire. This current plan was enacted in the 2019 budget in the dead of night in a “big ugly” bill with bail reform among other controversial measures that wouldn’t pass otherwise. Also many legislators were exhausted during budget season and wanted to go home. Hochul has the dirty job of implementing it. A lot can go wrong.
Agreed! We must get Residential Parking Permits!
how will this hurt non-driver UWSers?
I enjoy pickleball – it is a great alternative to tennis and it is nice to see many previously sedentary people moving around.
That being said, someone needs to adapt the equipment so that it doesn’t make so much noise. It really shouldn’t be hard.
Orthopedists love pickleball. Tai Chi is safe and quiet for your next door neighbors, and almost as much fun to watch.
I love Tai Chi but can’t find a full-year place to learn/practice. Does that exist on the UWS?
sundays 8 am soldiers monument at 89th -sponsored by nyc parks and rec-thru 8/20
I do not like congestion pricing at all. Many people already pay a fee to get onto Manhattan when paying bridge and tunnel tolls. Perhaps they could be more equitable and add tolls to the East River crossings that currently do not have one, with some sort of a discount for NYC residents. We already are facing high inflation and this will just make the cost of goods and services go up further.
Also, I don’t know the planned mechanics of the congestion pricing, but hopefully the charge changes based on timing and type of vehicle. A lot of our problems would go away if trucks had an incentive to make deliveries at night rather than during the day. So make the tolls for delivery trucks much higher during the day than at night.
Finally, have a nominal fee ($150 a year?) for street parking on the UWS and limit it to residents and those who can document that they work here. Many other cities have something similar. It would not be a huge financial burden but it would make sure that residents and employees get priority for spots. Plus those who register cars at second homes would be forced to register in NYC, which would increase revenues.
Truck delivery at night is a wonderful idea for people who never need to sleep. Please remember that people actually live in this city, including many elderly and those with impaired mobility who cannot get around on public transport. Prices will go up, the economy will be hurt, particularly all the major midtown hospitals who depend on patient volumes from outside Manhattan and employ huge numbers of workers who also might be vulnerable to these fees.
I am primarily referring to deliveries into the congestion pricing zone, which is largely commercial. Though I really don’t think truck deliveries are that loud anyway so I still think this would be a good idea for all parts of the city.
If I understand the zone properly, here aren’t that many hospitals in the congestion zone, so I’m not sure why you brought that up.
The bottom line is that the devil is in the details on this. I think there will be a ton of negotiating on all the carve outs and everyone will be looking out for themselves.
I’m a fan of congestion pricing, it has worked well in London and will give incentive for Long Island/NJ commuters to use the many public transportation options available to them instead of clogging the streets with their personal vehicles.
Agree residential parking permits would be great, most other big cities have them; on my block I constantly see cars with NJ, Texas or FL plates when they clearly live in NYC.
UWS Dad,
The vast majority of vehicles in midtown are commercial – service, delivery, construction, Uber etc.
In fact there are many ecommerce gig delivery workers who use own vehicles – Instacart, Hello Fresh and more.
As for reducing congestion – getting rid of Uber would be a huge help.
And folks could reduce ordering from Amazon.
I’m in midtown daily, while there are plenty of commercial vehicles there’s plenty of personal cars as well,
And you as a UWS resident have the privilege of walking, riding a citibike or a relatively lower priced Uber ride to midtown if you wish to avoid the transit system for one reason or another. Someone in NJ or outside Manhattan, especially outside gentrified neighborhoods like LIC or Williamsburg don’t have that option. It’s either drive a personal vehicle or use transit that’s about to become even more limited in some cases, or make one or multiple transfers. People in general don’t like transferring, they also don’t like crowds, and not nearly all of them can afford the UWS like you can.
The whole point is to encourage people to take the subway, so I don’t see the problem here.
No but the congestion pricing proponents want to have THEIR Ubers and Lyfts on regular, they want to ride their citibikes and get their Amazon/Doordash/Instacart deliveries, while telling those who aren’t wealthy enough to afford the UWS to go pound sand and use public transit where the mainstream riders advocates aren’t even representative of all transit riders while the media wrongfully anoints them to speak for ALL transit riders. Let’s also face the fact that congestion pricing only helps MTA take out more debt, and that debt service will take up an increasing portion of the operating budget, meaning someone’s service has to be cut. MTA already tells prospective bond buyers that MTA may have to cut service if necessary. This is a giveaway to Wall Street.
Most of these commuters are already paying to cross a bridge or tunnel – why double charge them? Put tolls on the bridges that currently are not tolled. London does not double toll anyone.
Great, even more incentive to take the train.
I didn’t wake up today thinking WSR would be in the pocket of Big Anti Pickleball, and yet
The NYT article is covering Pickleball in Arlington, VA and other suburban areas with courts ‘in their back yards.’ I’ve never seen or heard anyone playing Pickleball, but people get injured in all kinds of sports, and I can’t imagine that noise is an issue on a court in the park in NYC.
Yup. If you play pickleball in Riverside Park during rush hour, the thwock-thwock is barely audible above honk-honk, vroom-vroom and expletive-expletive.
Fixed! Thank you.
Congestion pricing….exemptions will no doubt heavily favor corporate interests and leave residents picking up the tab as usual. Has anyone seen a list of the proposed exemptions? You’d think that would be something we should all be able to see before this massive tax is charged.
The list of proposed exemptions is very long. Hopefully there are basically none – the more exemptions there are the more everyone else has to pay.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/05/12/get-a-load-of-the-congestion-pricing-exemptions-that-some-people-want
You can’t push a congestion pricing plan while service is worse and no one wants to make hard decisions.
As an area worker, there’s people that don’t want me to drive here, don’t care about improving my transit commute to here, do you want to have a discussion about affordably housing me here? Would CB7 vote in favor of a UWS rezoning? Would they vote in favor of a UWS rezoning that specifically sets aside housing for those who work on the UWS or in select other parts of Manhattan? Would they vote in favor of a UWS rezoning that takes part of the UWS out of historic district protection? If the answer is no to ANY of these questions, then you all have no business doing congestion pricing and you all have no business making it harder for me to drive to the UWS for work.
Eugene, it’s not about zoning. It’s the fact that real estate developers don’t want to build lower income residences. They want to build luxury residences that sell in the millions. It’s a profit thing. It’s not a zoning thing.
My neighbor (not rich) uses his car to go out of NYC for work and to help elderly relatives and also to help support/bring supplies to a homeless shelter for families which located in midtown.
Those of us who contribute/volunteer are very grateful to him.
It is never easy driving in midtown.
With CP, I think he will no longer be delivering supplies to the homeless shelter.
Congestion pricing is meant to be an impediment not completely bar access. Surely all those who contribute can cough up a combined total of $20 a day to defray his costs. With fewer cars in the area he might even get around faster.
When transit service doesn’t improve or gets worse outside Manhattan, it becomes more of a bar rather than an impediment.
The point of congestion pricing isn’t even to encourage more transit usage. A congestion pricing proponent even said that privately. It’s to reduce “costly congestion” (in my opinion, aka “unwanted” people) and have a new revenue stream for capital projects. The problem is that the congestion pricing revenue is going to be used to take out more bonds while debt service for those bonds take up an increasing portion of MTA’s budget. MTA already told bond holders that service cuts might be necessary. MTA cannot legally declare bankruptcy on its bonds and they are triple tax (federal, state, local) exempted which makes a good rate of return for Wall Street.
If MTA can’t handle the service it has now, what makes me think MTA will handle the service down the road when all these “improvements” came to fruition (if they do and the money isn’t just used to maintain what we have or less than what we have today)? MTA just spent $11 billion on a new LIRR terminal and commutes today on the LIRR are longer than before and the service is worse. Get this, some LI towns that have dense walkable centers like Great Neck have less service now than they did before.
What I would like to see are large parking lots close to the entry to the bridges and tunnels in N.J., the Bronx and Brooklyn leading to Manhattan, and with shuttle buses bringing the occupants of these cars into Manhattan. People would be dropped off in Manhattan close to hubs for public transportation.
Those are called Park and Ride lots. They also already exist.
The problem with that is sometimes people have things, people have others with them with disabilities among other reasons. I bet this suggestion is being made while Manhattan residents will have whatever street parking remains to themselves. Public transit usage is a sacrifice, there’s only so much sacrifice that the public will tolerate. We saw this with COVID restrictions. Also most people only tolerate subways, they don’t love them. Manhattan residents opposed express buses from the outer boros when crime was much higher in the 1970s and 1980s, there’s Manhattan residents that don’t want Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown. A lot of what’s going on now is to make Manhattan a de facto gated community. This is about Manhattan wanting their cake and eating it too. Manhattan cannot have it both ways while there’s greater inequality in society.
Wondering if they’ll allow drivers heading south on 2nd Avenue to enter the 59th Street Bridge between 60th and 58th Streets without paying the congestion toll.
Congestion pricing will raise the cost of virtually everything sold in NYC and will hurt local retail hugely. It’s just another tax that will make living in NYC less attractive and fuel an exodus of tax-paying citizens.
I don’t see how it will hurt local retail hugely. It will have no effect outside the congestion zone, and within the zone only by those who drive in. If you already drive in and park in a garage, the additional cost will be negligible. Those who enter via rapid transit will find a section of the city easier to get around in.
The cost of the toll will be paid back in less time stuck in traffic. Could actually be a net financial benefit for delivery companies.
But this is not what happened in London. And the point of this is not that it is a tax for purposes of getting money; it is to discourage more people from driving in a town where there is often gridlock. It will make NYC more attractive because there will be less pollution from autos. We cannot reduce pollution from forest fires burning elsewhere but we can certainly reduce pollution from automobile exhausts.
Make Manhattan more attractive to the kind of people who are like Carrie Bradshaw and Samantha from Sex and the City, while other people are pushed out from the same socioeconomic opportunities given to gentrifiers. Bloomberg in 2003 said he wanted NYC to be a luxury product, this current plan and the changes that have happened in NYC over the years are helping to fulfill this vision.
Counterpoint: the cost of the congestion charge spread out among a whole truckload of goods will be minuscule
Travel to other boroughs for work.
At some subway stations, fare-beating is routine.
Someone holds the door open as the train approaches – and people swarm in.
At one station a few weeks ago, I counted more than 25 people entering this way, not paying the fare.
There’s people who want transit to be free. More and more of the MTA operating budget is being taken up by debt service. Debt service which will actually take up more of the MTA operating budget with congestion pricing. At one point, the situation with transit will be whether you fund schools or hospitals or libraries or do you fund transit to the extent it needs funding? Ultimately there will be the need for a massive federal bailout of the MTA, what will the conditions of that be?
“Congestion pricing” is just a fancy term for TOLL, or TAX.
The midtown fees are extremely high, and will ultimately be Bourne by riders who need taxis or Ubers to get to doctor’s appointments, etc.
I vote that all stories about congestion pricing and/or parking be their own article.
Lost in all of this is the new restaurant at AMNH.
I’m looking forward to trying it. Has anyone here eaten there?
It’s nothing special. I used to take the ‘kids’ to the original restaurant once a week when they were younger, and it was much more elegant and had outdoor views. They now have kids of their own, and while they all enjoyed the museum, the new restaurant was a bit of a disappointment.