The Oil Drum

There's so much going on these days in the sustainability movement in New York & beyond, it's hard to keep up. Green Buildings NYC notes that the Borough of Queens is getting in on the action. The Queens botanical garden's new building is looking to get LEED Platnium and draw over 17% of its electrical needs from a small solar panel array. GBNYC also notes some new solar powered trash cans and that there is enough roof space from old former industrial buildings in just Long Island City alone to make green roofs with the same square footage as Prospect Park.

With all the talk about congestion pricing that's going on in New York the last couple of weeks, momentum is building to do something other than continue to talk about it. And from the first reactions of the political establishment, you can break down the reaction to basically Manhattanites favoring the idea and folks from Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island opposing it.

But based on the chart above, 39% of the total number of people and 606,000 people by car entering the Central business district enter through 60th Street from either the Upper East or Upper West Sides. This includes the all the traffic that enters the CBD from Northern Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester/Rockland Counties, Northern New Jersey GW Bridge) and Connecticut.

What if that's where we start with Congestion Pricing? What would the political landscape look like if we just started with all vehicles going over the strip line at 60th street going south in the morning and north in the afternoon / evening?

The report, titled "Growth or Gridlock" estimates the cost of traffic congestion at $13 Billion and states that "Every year, these losses will grow if something is not done to reduce the number of vehicles moving through the region during the peak periods."

We have written alot about congestion pricing here at NYC:TOD and I strongly believe that this is one of the best ways we could tame oil consumption and dependency in the city.

As usual Streetblog is also on the case tracking this and has a nice history of congestion pricing in NYC.

Here's today's coverage: NY Post, NY Times and more NY Times, NY Newsday and NY Daily News.

It probably will become clear over the next few days, but currently I'm proud that once again New York has shown that it can handle disruptions like this without going crazy. See an old classic PO-NYC post comparing the peaceful 2003 city-wide blackout to the more violent and distructive 1977 blackout and my review of James Goodman's book "Blackout"

The photos of the new Mets Stadium are up on the NY Mets website. I have to say that in contrast to the Yankee stadium deal, there are few controversial issues like stealing a public park or adding new parking garages. Instead, they are building it on the adjacent parking lot, which will occupy a significant number of parking spots during the construction phase. While the designs pictured here seem to have a much larger footprint for the stadium and plaza than the current Shea Stadium, but according to the "fast facts" on the Mets website, the number of parking spots will remain the same after construction is completed. Still, until construction is complete, perhaps the city could conduct an experiment to determine how it can most effectively meet the transportation needs of Mets fans through improved mass transit service on game days?