What a week we have had in New York politics! On Monday the Mayor went to Albany to try to forge a deal with the state's power brokers to get approval on his congestion pricing plan (as well as many other environmental initiatives). With neither legislative branch even holding a vote on the matter and a Federal deadline for $500 million passing by, it seemed that the whole ambitious plan may have crumbled under the weight of Albany's inertia and political wrangling.

But lo and behold, there is some sort of deal that is shaping up to let the Mayor's congestion pricing initiative live to fight another day. Streetsblog has a good summary of where the politics stand:

As part of my continuing video series on "things I could barely imagine just a few few months ago", is Mayor Bloomberg's overnight conversion on Councilmember David Yassky's hybrid taxi proposal. Last Summer I handed out flyers at LaGuardia airport trying to convince taxi drivers to buy the Prius or Camry hybrid models that get 60 and 40 mpg respectively, compared to the 13-17 mpg that the current Crown Victoria model gets. Many of them were interested and agreed that they needed to save money on gas since it was their #1 variable cost of $30-50/shift. But they feared taking the plunge alone. That all changed with Bloomberg's announcement that all new taxis will be required to get over 30mpg by 2012.

Hybrid taxis in Urban areas make tremendous sense. Hybrids get their best mileage differential in Urban areas and taxis are a perfect off hour / odd trip complement to dense areas with good mass transit and walking. See Mayor Bloomberg announce this on the Today show with CM Yassky who went on to support the Mayor's congestion pricing plan a few days later in a great "I'll support your green proposal if you support mine" deal. I hope more City Council and State legislators ask for similar quid pro quos...

All hail the green taxi...sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Mayor Bloomber formally unveiled his proposed legislation that needs to be passed by the NY State legislature and signed by the Governor to take effect. It is rare that the stars align for many grand proposals of this magnitude, nor that they align so fast. In just 6 weeks since the Mayor announced his PlaNYC initiatives, he has gained the support of all the city's environmental groups as well as many civic and business organizations.

It also now seems that the Mayor has 2 of the 3 pieces he needs at the state level - State Sen. Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R) and today, Governor Elliot Spitzer (D). The missing piece at this point in Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver. Silver has scheduled hearings for tomorrow at the NYC Bar Association HQ at 42 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan. Stay tuned for the latest on how congestion pricing progresses. It is one of the more controversial pieces of the Mayor's plan, but it is also one of the most important and symbolic pieces. There is generally broad agreement on the other pieces about cleaning up water & land, creating more parks and green buildings.

Go below the fold if you are local.

I've now had time to sift through more of Mayor Bloomberg's sustainability plan. I highly recommend the speech reading through the whole report if you get a chance or you can focus on a few of the different sections on Land, Water, Transportation, Energy and Air. I could probably spend a post or two on each of these in the future.

The Good
Everything in the plan itself is pretty much all good stuff for creating a more environmentally friendly and sustainable city. Most of these are administrative no-brainers, it's just a matter of changing the way procurement is done by the city and how incentives are arranged for individuals and businesses to do the right thing. There is too much to digest completely here, but the important part is that this Mayor has committed to sustainability as a major part of his agenda for the rest of his administration:

I make this promise to you: I will not spend my last 984 days in office pretending that all is fine and leaving these challenges to the next mayor, who may well pass them off to his or her successor. And we – the residents of a city that is a beacon to the world – will not abdicate our responsibility to that world. That’s not leadership. Leadership is about recognizing challenges and seizing opportunities. And we are going to seize this opportunity – to lead the way forward and create the first environmentally sustainable 21st century city.

What's the bad and ugly? The Bad is all the stuff that somehow got left out of the plan. And the Ugly is the risk that major pieces of this may get bogged down in getting approval at different levels of government before the next Mayor takes over.