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NYC’s public transit system will raise fares — because what choice does it have?

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 19, 2012

NYC’s public transit system will raise fares — because what choice does it have?

New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority and its director Joe Lhota received broad (and largely deserved) praise for the speed with which the city’s transit system was brought back online after Sandy. One of the things that made that recovery remarkable was how expensive it was, with the agency tallying $5 billion in expenses linked to the storm. That cost came on top of the MTA’s ongoing budget problems.

MTAPhotos

An empty, dry tunnel under the East River.

Unsurprisingly, then, the MTA today announced plans to increase fares. As reported by The New York Times:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted unanimously on Wednesday to raise the base fare on subways and buses by a quarter, to $2.50, and increase the cost of a 30-day MetroCard by $8, to $112. …

The cost of a seven-day subway or bus pass will also rise by $1, to $30. And the bonus on pay-per-ride MetroCards will decrease to 5 percent, from 7 percent, but will be available to anyone who places at least $5 on a card. Currently, the bonus applies only to purchases of at least $10.

Those increases are 11 percent for a single ride, 8 percent for a 30-day card, and 3 percent for a 7-day pass. Sounds steep — particularly when you consider that fares have consistently increased faster than the rate of inflation. Then again, so has the number of bus routes and subway lines.

Wikipedia

Click to embiggen.

Given that we’re talking public transit, it’s tempting to label the hikes regressive, disproportionately affecting lower-income users. But it isn’t that simple. According to the most recent subway and bus rider data, the demographics of public transit users in the region are probably not what you’d expect.

In each of these charts, the data presented is the percentage of ridership meeting a particular criterion, or, in the case of the yellow columns in each, the percentage of all New Yorkers.

While the bus (as one would expect) has more lower-income riders and riders of color, the plurality of riders of both the bus and the subway earn over $75,000 a year. The MTA does have a reduced fare structure, but it is predicated on age and disability, not ability to pay. And what’s not depicted in the graphs above is how much of the riders’ income goes to transit. So, yes, the fare increase is regressive — but perhaps less than it may at first seem.

This is the challenge of an institution that is dependent on flat-rate public financing. At some point, the cost of maintaining or expanding service outpaces the revenue that is coming in. (See also: the federal government.) Hikes are unpopular and often unduly burdensome to lower income levels. But they’re also necessary.

Earlier today, Chair Lhota announced that he was leaving the agency. Many expect that he’ll announce a (doomed) bid for mayor of New York. It’s a weird note to go out on: After receiving praise for handling Sandy, he’ll certainly be remembered for this fare hike, even though it doesn’t go into effect until March.

Then again, championing unpopular causes to preserve public priorities is ideally what politics is all about. The problem for Lhota is that you have to get elected first.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

NYC’s public transit system will raise fares — because what choice does it have?

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NYC Mayor Bloomberg calls for climate preparedness, reviews Sandy recovery

by Myrna Posted on December 6, 2012

NYC Mayor Bloomberg calls for climate preparedness, reviews Sandy recovery

NYC Mayor Bloomberg calls for climate preparedness, reviews Sandy recovery

Mike Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor of New York has been bookended by disaster. The primary election that vaulted him to his position was originally scheduled for Sept. 11. And with just over a year left in his term: Sandy. This morning, in a high-profile speech, Bloomberg made his case for how New York will prepare for the next climate disaster.

The mayor’s first two terms, from 2002 to 2010, were largely defined by 9/11 and how he and the city responded. The massive increase in the reach and power of the NYPD happened under Bloomberg — as did a variety of foiled terror plots of various likelihoods and origins. Bloomberg’s mantra has been safety, how even allowing NYPD to infiltrate out-of-state mosques and run a blatantly discriminatory stop-and-frisk system is worth it because crime dropped and no bombs exploded.

In 2007, just shy of halfway through his second term, Bloomberg announced PlaNYC, a push to prepare the city for a changing climate. “We’re going to seize this opportunity,” Bloomberg said at the time, “to lead the way forward and create the first environmentally sustainable 21st-century city.” The plan moved forward without much fanfare, particularly once a signature element, congestion pricing, was killed. Nonetheless, as Bloomberg noted today (and as we’ve discussed before), the city launched a $2.4 billion green water infrastructure plan, revamped zoning, and restored wetlands.

What Sandy showed was how spotty the city’s preparation actually was, five years down the road. While large portions of New York City woke up the day after the storm, yawned, and went about their business, hundreds of thousands woke up in the dark. Thousands woke up above flooded first floors. Dozens never woke up. Today, five weeks afterward, parts of the largest, richest city in America are still dark; just blocks from the arhythmically beating heart of the world of finance, massive buildings are still not ready to be reentered.

Mike Bloomberg makes his speech.

At this morning’s event in lower Manhattan, Bloomberg joined Al Gore and Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, to outline how the city would recover from Sandy and work to prevent similar damage from happening again in the future. Held at a hotel that had been flooded during the storm by the Hudson River, which lies just across the street, the event felt like a scene from the end of a disaster movie — the celebrity mayor describing how the city would rebuild, but smarter; would again plan for the future, but wiser. “Remember: There are no panaceas or magic bullets,” Bloomberg noted, in perhaps the most elegant summary of the speech. In a city as diverse and distributed as New York, the problems and points of failure are innumerable.

Bloomberg first detailed the recovery efforts. “In our city’s long history, we’ve never had a storm like Sandy,” he said. The surge at the Battery exceeded 14 feet — something that FEMA gave a less than 1 percent chance of happening. After 2011′s Hurricane Irene, the city remapped Zone A, the area most likely to flood in a big storm. Flooded areas again far exceeded Zone A — and extended far past the areas designated as a 500-year flood zone in FEMA’s most recent map of possible flooding. It is from 1983.

In the weeks since Sandy, the Department of Sanitation removed some 350,000 tons of debris and wreckage from flooded areas. The city has provided loans to nonprofits and small businesses. A sewage treatment plant in the Rockaways was brought back online in two days, Bloomberg noted, comparing it obliquely to the facility in New Jersey that’s still not working properly. The city is assisting homeowners in finding contractors to assess and repair gas and electrical systems — all on FEMA’s tab.

Jenna Pope

But the heart of Bloomberg’s presentation was on moving forward. “We live next to the ocean, and the ocean comes with risks that we just cannot eliminate,” the mayor said. He disparaged the much-discussed idea of a seawall, but suggested that other systems — dunes and levees, for example — could be effective in lessening damage. People will be allowed to rebuild by the shore, but with flood mitigation measures in place and with revamped height restrictions to prevent buildings from being flooded. Throughout the city, cell towers will need to have backup systems that last for more than eight hours. ConEdison, the largest regional power provider, will invest $250 million in upgrades to prevent the sort of widespread blackout that is still ongoing in parts of the city.

As the push begins in earnest for funding from Washington — earlier today, the president suggested he’d seek $50 billion in relief, far less than regional leaders have sought — the mayor was deliberate in thanking the federal government for its efforts. He did, however, note that it was at times slow: The city will move ahead with its own assessment of better preparing for flooding while the Army Corps of Engineers undertakes a three-to-five-year study process.

One of the more striking aspects of this morning’s event was the tonal difference between Bloomberg and the man who introduced him, Al Gore. Gore railed against government inaction. “What will it take for the national government to wake up?” he asked.

Our democracy has been hacked. It no longer functions as it is intended to, to serve the public interests. And when the large carbon polluters and their ideological allies tell the members of Congress, they do say: how high? …

This country is the only nation that can provide global leadership. And the dysfunctional governance globally is directly related to the dysfunction of the government here, in our own country.

Perhaps because of the need for votes from those members of Congress, Bloomberg demurred from similar exhortations, even saying that “you can argue about what caused the weather to change,” but it is changing.

At one point, Bloomberg almost wistfully noted the resilience of New Yorkers and the city’s long tradition of recovery from disaster — including 9/11. Quoting former Mayor Ed Koch, “New York City is where the future comes to audition.” The mayor regularly and proudly notes how the city passed the audition posed by 9/11. But that was unforeseen, unexpected, an improv. Climate change has been a shadow approaching on the horizon that many people, including Bloomberg, have seen coming.

“We may or may not see another storm like Sandy in our lifetimes, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that we should leave it to our children to prepare for the possibility,” Bloomberg said this morning. The mayor’s legacy may very well be not how the NYPD and the FBI set up and knocked down a few Muslim men, but how he laid the groundwork for a New York that is truly prepared for climate disaster. No doubt to Bloomberg’s consternation, he only has one year left to do so.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Shell VP: Yeah, we’re gonna spill some oil in the arctic

by Myrna Posted on November 30, 2012

Shell VP: Yeah, we’re gonna spill some oil in the arctic

Your quote of the day comes from the BBC.

There’s no sugar-coating this, I imagine there would be spills, and no spill is OK. But will there be a spill large enough to impact people’s subsistence? My view is no, I don’t believe that would happen.

That’s Shell’s Alaska vice president, Pete Slaiby, discussing the company’s new, fraught drilling operations off the North Slope of Alaska. During the summer, the company had a near–daily series of screw–ups that did little to inspire confidence in its ability to successfully extract oil from the ocean floor without spilling it all over themselves and the ocean and the animals in the ocean and probably you, too, somehow. So I’m not sure if Slaiby’s admission is a refreshing demonstration of realism or a heart-attack-inducing statement of indifference.

artic pj

The Arctic Ocean, where drilling is probs no big deal.

I do however love his statement that, yeah, there’ll be spills, but, don’t worry: minor ones. How … does that work? The entire context for the BBC article is that Native populations in Alaska are nervous about the prospect of drilling and a spill.

“We are the oldest continuous inhabitants of North America,” says Point Hope’s Mayor Steve Oomituk. “We’ve been here thousands of years.”

Oomituk shares the fear of many in the small community — population 800 — that offshore drilling by Shell could destroy the food chain that they rely on for survival. Over 80% of the food eaten in Point Hope is caught by the people themselves. …

“If an oil rig spilled and made a mess of the ocean, how am I ever going to eat a whale that’s not contaminated? Crude oil stays on the bottom of the ocean,” [local resident Patrick Jobstone] says.

To which Shell responds, in essence: Don’t worry your pretty little heads.

The brashness of the dismissal is ridiculous for several reasons. First, this is one of the most remote, unforgiving parts of the world. It took months to stop a spill 100 miles from one of the busiest regions in the United States during warm weather. How long would it take to get spill-response equipment and material in place off the Alaskan coast?

And, second, Shell’s clownish failures over the summer included its inability to demonstrate that its containment system worked. Earlier today, details of that failure were released. From KUOW.org:

Before Shell can drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean, it needs to prove to federal officials that it can clean up a massive oil spill there. That proof hinges on a barge being built in Bellingham, [Wash.,] called the Arctic Challenger. …

According to [Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement] internal emails obtained by KUOW, the containment dome test was supposed to take about a day. That estimate proved to be wildly optimistic.

Day 1: The Arctic Challenger’s massive steel dome comes unhooked from some of the winches used to maneuver it underwater. The crew has to recover it and repair it.
Day 2: A remote-controlled submarine gets tangled in some anchor lines. It takes divers about 24 hours to rescue the submarine.
Day 5: The test has its worst accident. On that dead-calm Friday night, Mark Fesmire, the head of BSEE’s Alaska office, is on board the Challenger. He’s watching the underwater video feed from the remote-control submarine when, a little after midnight, the video screen suddenly fills with bubbles. The 20-foot-tall containment dome then shoots to the surface. The massive white dome “breached like a whale,” Fesmire e-mails a colleague at BSEE headquarters.
Then the dome sinks more than 120 feet. A safety buoy, basically a giant balloon, catches it before it hits bottom. About 12 hours later, the crew of the Challenger manages to get the dome back to the surface. “As bad as I thought,” Fesmire writes his BSEE colleague. “Basically the top half is crushed like a beer can.”

But don’t worry, Native people. A spill will be nothing to worry about. Like Shell’s massive 2011 spill in the North Sea, labeled the worst spill in the region in a decade. No bigs.

Here’s a thought, Shell/Slaiby. If “no spill is OK,” don’t fucking drill.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Shell VP: Yeah, we’re gonna spill some oil in the arctic

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While we dither on spending to prevent disaster, Big Oil doubles down on causing it

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2012

While we dither on spending to prevent disaster, Big Oil doubles down on causing it

Earlier today, the office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the anticipated economic impact of superstorm Sandy.

Disaster cleanup is a lousy way to spend $19 billion, even if it creates thousands of temporary jobs. A much better way is to spend money to prevent the worst effects from happening at all. So far, Americans have shown little interest in such foresight. From The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki:

[F]or the most part, the U.S. has shown a marked bias toward relieving victims of disaster, while underinvesting in prevention. A study by the economist Andrew Healy and the political scientist Neil Malhotra showed that, between 1985 and 2004, the government spent annually, on average, fifteen times as much on disaster relief as on preparedness.

Politically speaking, it’s always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future. Healy and Malhotra found that voters reward politicians for spending money on post-disaster cleanup, but not for investing in disaster prevention, and it’s only natural that politicians respond to this incentive.

Surowiecki notes another political roadblock: the federal government’s ongoing indifference to broad infrastructure spending. Combine the two, and the prospect of preventative investment seems daunting.

Map of post-Sandy flooding.

The problem isn’t only in New York City. Yesterday, The New York Times shared a series of maps outlining how rising sea levels threaten millions of Americans on both coasts.

New York Times

Expected inundation for three cities with a five-foot sea level rise.

The same question applies for each of these cities: Can and will investment be made to protect them from higher seas? The Times had an op-ed accompanying the maps that addressed the question.

This past summer, a disconcerting new scientific study by the climate scientist Michiel Schaeffer and colleagues — published in the journal Nature Climate Change — suggested that no matter how quickly we cut this pollution, we are unlikely to keep the seas from climbing less than five feet.

More than six million Americans live on land less than five feet above the local high tide. (Searchable maps and analyses are available at SurgingSeas.org for every low-lying coastal community in the contiguous United States.) Worse, rising seas raise the launching pad for storm surge, the thick wall of water that the wind can drive ahead of a storm. In a world with oceans that are five feet higher, our calculations show that New York City would average one flood as high as Hurricane Sandy’s about every 15 years, even without accounting for the stronger storms and bigger surges that are likely to result from warming. …

We hope that with enough time, most of our great coastal cities and regions will be able to prepare for a five-foot increase. Some will not. Barriers that might work in Manhattan would be futile in South Florida, where water would pass underneath them by pushing through porous bedrock.

According to Dr. Schaeffer’s study, immediate and extreme pollution cuts — measures well beyond any discussion now under way — could limit sea level rise to five feet over 300 years. If we stay on our current path, the oceans could rise five feet by the first half of next century, then continue rising even faster.

The conclusion of the piece: “There are two basic ways to protect ourselves from sea level rise: reduce it by cutting pollution, or prepare for it by defense and retreat. To do the job, we must do both.”

Increasingly, it seems as though we’re willing to do neither. Part of the reason for that was made very clear in at least some editions of the Times.

Shell made $31 billion in profits last year, meaning it could pay for the entirety of the damage New York City took from megastorm Sandy and still be able to spend $380 a second. Shell spends money freely — as with that Times ad, as with its $10.8 million in lobbying this year — for its own protection. And part of protecting itself means opposing efforts to reduce carbon dioxide pollution. It means, in effect, protecting itself at our collective expense.

As our unwillingness to support the tough politics of prevention show, we may be our own worst enemies. But hyper-rich fossil fuel companies aren’t exactly our allies.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Paris to ban older cars, ruining all of your chase scenes

by Myrna Posted on November 26, 2012

Paris to ban older cars, ruining all of your chase scenes

If you know Paris, you know that it is primarily populated by men with pencil-thin mustaches who wear berets and carry around baguettes in paper bags. A lot of them wear shirts with thick horizontal stripes. These men don’t talk much, they mostly loiter around in the background speaking a language comprised mostly of sniffs and grumbles. (There are also women in Paris; they are uniformly stunning.)

roger4336

This is exactly what Paris looks like today.

The protagonists of the city are the superspies, the well-coiffed American and British men who use Paris as a rendezvous point with clumsy, heavyset agents from Russia or Bulgaria. Invariably, these meetings end poorly, and the superspies — though heavily outnumbered — manage to effect an escape by driving vintage cars along the banks of the Seine. Depending on the day, the Bulgarians either end up in the river, emerging with a spluttering curse, a fish draped across their heads, or they vanish from the scene in some sort of horrific explosion.

But all of that is likely to change, ruining the Paris that we know so well. The mayor of the city is going to ban vintage cars.

From the Times:

[T]he ban would include many of the most recognizably French cars, including the Citroën 2CV, known as the Deux Chevaux; the Citroën DS, celebrated for its clean, distinctive design; the Renault 4L, a practical Everyman’s car of the 1960s and ’70s; and many classic Peugeots. …

The ban would apply to private and commercial vehicles that would be older than 17 years in 2014 and therefore do not comply with existing European standards for the tailpipe emissions that cause smog.

A spokesman for the city estimated that 367,000 cars would be affected. Also targeted are heavy trucks older than 18 years and motorcycles older than 10.

Oh la la, etc.!

The primary motivation for Mayor Delanoë’s decision (an umlaut! How European!) is a set of regulations issued by the E.U. aimed at cutting pollution from automobiles. But Delanoë has been on an anti-car jeremiad for some time. Over the past decade, one expert notes, car traffic in the city dropped by 25 percent.

The plan would extend the mayor’s efforts to make the city more pedestrian-friendly by reducing the number of cars. These efforts include introducing the Vélib’ bicycle rental program, establishing the Autolib’ electric-car rental system and cutting vehicle traffic along the banks of the Seine.

We share this story primarily because it will have a ripple effect. Not in the sense that other cities will soon ban their signature vehicles, but because the next time you travel to Paris for a bit of skulduggery, your adrenaline-drenched chase will be an exhausting one, taking place on a bike. Or, worse, you’ll be zipping along the Champs Élysées in a silent electric car, suddenly able to hear all of the various tut-tuts of those striped-shirt gentleman and the guttural curses of the fruit stand vendors who shake their fists as you unnecessarily plough through their wares.

Source

Premature Retirement? Old-Car Owners Bristle at Proposed Ban, New York Times

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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