Red, Green and Blue: Bloomberg’s PlaNYC
Editor's note: In today's Red, Green and Blue, our political commentators Jimmy Hogan and Shirley Siluk Gregory weigh in on New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's PlaNYC for the city's long-term sustainability.
Our format has changed just slightly. Each writer will alternate starting the discussion with a post; the other one will join the discussion in the comments. Remember — you're always welcome to join in!
Shirley: It's hard to not be impressed by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's PlaNYC for future sustainability: it lays out an ambitious (and costly) set of initiatives for heading off the city's potential challenges with the coming two decades' expected increases in population, energy demands, transit needs and climate threats. Bloomberg, a Republican, has got all the right things in there, from an $8 charge to discourage cars driving into the city at peak traffic hours to a plan to encourage green roofs to, yikes, even backing for a carbon tax to put the kibosh on greenhouse gas emissions. The plan is so comprehensive and bold, even green progressives have been hard-pressed to find quibbling points (the strongest I could find so far is from someone who was irked by the traffic fee exemption for livery vehicles and taxis).
Even by the standards of other Republican leaders who get environmental religion (often because their domains fall in fragile, coastal regions where the reality of nature is hard to ignore), Bloomberg's plan is lofty and admirable. My only caveat is that it's just that — a plan — and Bloomberg doesn't have nearly enough time left in office (just over 2 1/2 years) to even scratch the surface of its goals. Here's hoping he remains a staunch and vocal champion of PlaNYC long after his term ends, keeps lots of friends in high places who share his goals, and is ready to become the GOP's Al Gore for a worthy cause.
Tags: energy efficiency, New York City, population growth, Red, Green and Blue, sustainability, Transportation
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May 1st, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Good Morning Shirley!
Seems Bloomberg has fallen asleep beside one of Gore’s notorious global warming pods. Never the less, his plan has merits. Hopefully his heart is in the right place here and he’s not just trying to derive political benefit from the recent surge in green popularity.
A few points really strike me from the beginning here. The $8 fee to curb traffic… I like that one a lot. Getting rid of all that congestion will make it nice when I want to visit and do a little sight-seeing through the roof of the convertible. $8 is a small price to pay to get rid of that nuisance.
Green roofs are gaining in popularity and will be a welcome addition in NYC. Hopefully they will be incentivized rather than mandated and enforced with a NYPD Garden Patrol.
I don’t really like the idea of a carbon tax. I’d rather look for common ground and go for an oil tax because it overlaps the goals of the environmental movement with some very important geopolitical needs for energy independence.
Overall my main question of the plan would be cost. In order for an economic system to be sustainable to the point of supporting necessary charity and government services the workers must first earn enough to make working worth their while… and second they must have the flexibility to spend their earning on what they choose. Otherwise workers and businesses will opt out of the system and the tax base collapses. It’s a delicate balance. This radical plan would tend to limit both effective net earnings because of higher taxation and the inflationary effect of the additional cost to businesses; and it also would limit choices on how that money is spent – with government determining more of what we can and cannot buy.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:58 pm
The traffic congestion tax is a good idea - for the southern part of manhattan. It may have some negative effects in the northern part of manhattan however, where lower income communities are already battling air quality problems from industry and transport hubs.
May 1st, 2007 at 10:27 pm
No, Bloomberg hasn't been possessed by a pod. Looks instead like he's come to realize that, unless some drastic action is taken starting now, New York could end up starring in a different sci-fi flick: one of those Kurt Russell "Escape from …" films.
Sure, it's "in" to be green right now, but it sounds as if Bloomberg's seeking more than hipness. I doubt he'd be suggesting something as eye-popping to many as an $8 car entry fee for the city if he weren't at least sincere on paper. And I think what he said in unveiling the plan is also true: "We're doing what's best for our city — and when we reap the benefits, perhaps others will again follow."
The cost of the whole plan is as much a concern for me as it is for you, Jimmy, but for different reasons. There are a lot of assumptions built into the program — that the state will come through with some of the necessary funding, that sufficient private funding will cover other expenses, that ever-rising tourism will help foot part of the bill and that efficiency measures will result in costs savings that allow city funds to be spent elsewhere. If Bloomberg's determined to really get this all going, he's going to have to pull a LOT of strings and, like I said, he's only got 2 1/2 years left as mayor. (Though his lame-duck status might help overcome the typical politico's fear of voter backlash.)
I haven't found any onerous mandates in the plan, either: the proposal to increase building code efficiency requirements by 20 percent is not only a no-brainer, it could be even more stringent as far as I'm concerned. The benefits to homeowners will more than pay for it with long-term electric and heating/cooling costs. Of course, to be effective, these codes will have to be enforced …
Re: the potential impact of entry fees on the lower-income part of Manhattan, Amy, the plan does stress the importance of improving transit access for all residents (of course, that's a long-term issue, so there's no immediate relief). It also puts a lot of emphasis on working to improve air quality throughout the city: PlaNYC acknowledges that current congestion, vehicle idling and low-quality fuels contribute to the city's high rates of asthma and other breathing problems. Again, if all the pieces can be pulled together, even long-suffering, low-income areas should see improvement, especially if all those trees the plan talks about get planted in every neighborhood, and all those asphalt-covered schoolyards are transformed into green play areas.
A lot of ifs, I'll admit, but I give Bloomberg credit for laying out something bold.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 am
I’ll admit, I was impressed by how comprehensive PlaNYC turned out to be. Bloomberg and his team have come up with a plan that cuts both wide and deep, calling for big changes across many of the city’s operations.
Like many people, I was especially excited to hear the mayor finally come out in favor of congestion charging, something he said he wouldn’t even consider just a year ago. Compared to other cities’ schemes, though, the congestion charge PlaNYC proposes is super skimpy: about half the price, in effect from 9 to 6 on weekdays only, no taxis, and no trucks. Similarly, New York’s new Bus Rapid Transit lines lack many of the features of successful systems in places like Bogota or Paris. As a result, they’re only predicted to run 20-30% faster than the buses they’ll be replacing - certainly an improvement, but it hardly makes taking public transit from the edge of the Boroughs any more appealing.
In New York, it’s quite a feat to move contentious proposals like BRT and congestion pricing forward at all. But if the versions that see the light of day are too watered down, there’s a chance that taxpayers will be spending tens of millions of dollars for projects that don’t make much of a difference - and that will only hurt the crusade for a clean, green Big Apple.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:20 pm
I guess it’s all a matter of how the plan is implemented, Shirley. Like any other plan it can be positive or negative. There are some lofty goals here though. Although some of the things in the plan would be just natural progress of the city others will cut into the economic pie in a city where the cost of living is already ridiculous.
Do you agree that there is a point of balance in cost here? The city, like every other entity has to deal with scarce resources. Should we sacrifice needed teachers to pay for trees?
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Jimmy, of course the city shouldn't sacrifice other needed services to implement the plan: if it lopped funding for teachers, for example, it wouldn't be likely to see the population increases it expects in coming decades, which would mean the tax base wouldn't grow as much as projected, which would mean less money for future programs of any kind, teachers or trees. Same with, say, police funding: cut the budget for cops, crime goes up, tourism goes down, revenues go down. It's all interconnected.
A similar logic can be applied to critical spending — i.e., PlaNYC — with no apparent short-term benefits, but many long-term perks. Don't invest to improve air quality, and you pay long-term in higher emergency-room and hospital costs and workdays lost to respiratory illness. Don't pay for trees, parks and natural beautification projects, and watch your recreation revenues drop. Don't set aside the necessary dollars to protect the city's low-lying infrastructure (which includes the airports) from rising sea levels and the resulting potential stormwater damage, and you'll pay billions more in repair and rebuilding down the road. It's the same logic that argues it's smarter to prevent an illness than to treat it once it develops.
Adam, you're right: if the plans are watered down to "please" everyone to make funding more palatable, there is a danger of spending millions on little more than window-dressing. This is going to require some steely political will (as well as a determination to enrorce any new standards, rather than just letting them exist on paper) to see the plan through if it's going to be effective.
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:01 pm
But my point stands… scarce resources dictate that if, for example, you build a park that wasn’t there before then funding for, say, public health will be sacrificed. You can try to tax your way out of the problem but increasing tax rates often lowers tax revenues. Unless you compensate with greater efficiency or somehow grow the pie otherwise then competing priorities will suffer. I agree that having the green plan is a good idea but simply as it unfolds into the larger budget as a whole.
Since I’m not yet convinced about anthropologic global warming being substantially related to CO2 then I don’t think it’s good public policy to give CO2 mediation priority over known problems like under-funded defined-benefit pension/medical plans, etc…
May 7th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Several assertions made here are incorrect.
Jimmy: “Increasing tax rates often lowers tax revenues.” The implication is that taxes inherently suppress growth. This is conventional wisdom on the right. In fact, the economics of taxation are far more complex. Tax rates are only half of the equation: the other is what is done with the revenue. Smart public sector investment in areas plagued with rates of market failure (ie the environment) can yield significant dividends.
Congestion pricing is a case example. Roads are a public good. Individuals decide to use them without including the cost of that use to other people (in the form of asthma-inducing air pollution, the opportunity costs of stalled traffic, etc). Thus individuals each make a private choice to use the road and the road becomes congested. Economists call this “the tragedy of the commons.” The solution is to internalize the external costs of using the road, so that when an individual uses the road he is doing so having calculated the total cost of driving.
Congestion pricing is thus not a tax, but an economic strategy to correct an existing market failure.
It also happens to provide a new revenue stream for the city. These funds will in turn be used for the investments PlaNYC calls for, both in terms of direct payments and as collateral for municipal bonds.
(By the way, NYC’s bond rating is at an all time high and the city government has had multi-billion dollar surpluses for several consecutive years. NYC’s population and economy are booming. Now is an appropriate time for shrewd longterm investments.)
Bloomberg is a very market friendly mayor. He conceives of PlaNYC as a way to ensure NYC’s longterm viability and competitiveness with other world cities. As technology makes it possible to work and live anywhere, a city’s environment and quality of life gains importance equal to the traditional goods a competitive city must offer, low crime and good schools. (It so happens those are the other two priorities of the Bloomberg administration.)
Adam: “congestion pricing will be good for lower Manhattan and hurt upper Manhattan.”
You couldn’t be more wrong. The rates of car ownership in the poorer neighborhoods of upper Manhattan are very low, while the percent who use transit is extremely high (over 90%). Congestion pricing does not represent a new burden on these communities.
It does, however, mean two major benefits: new investment in the transit infrastructure heavily used by residents of upper Manhattan, and a major cut in the air pollution that disproportionately hurts that area.