The Buzz

NOW SAY THAT THREE TIMES—“MARKET MECHANISMS”: In the wake of the July 19 announcement of an agreement in Albany to establish a commission to study congestion—though not, God forbid, congestion pricing, according to Speaker Sheldon Silver—Chelsea Now thought we’d call around and see what local transit enthusiasts thought of the agreement. We asked each: What’s to stop this from being just another commission, that “studies” the problem to death but bypasses PlaNYC entirely?

Eric Pugatch, one of Scott Stringer’s transportation aides, had already crafted his office’s statement: “The legislature, Governor Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg have taken a bold and crucial step to address one of the most pressing issues of our time.” To our question he spoke carefully and politically: “It will clearly be a very lengthy process, which will take a lot of hard work and negotiation,” he said. While the feds “have indicated that our plan would qualify” for the $500 million in federal funding, he added that “obviously, all options seem to remain on the table.” Still, he seemed pretty cheery about the prospects for the PlaNYC approach, and we realized why when we talked to our old friend Christine Berthet, co-chair of C.B. 4’s Transportation Planning Committee.

Berthet, who called in from her vacation in the Basque region of France—“a place without traffic!”—told Chelsea Now that any solution to congestion ultimately approved by the fund would have to involve a pricing scheme. “My understanding is that even if they want to be political, the federal funds require the use of ‘market mechanisms’ to control traffic,” she said (“market” meaning money meaning tolls). Intrigued, we asked Richard Shrader, New York legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), to clarify.

Shrader confirmed Berthet’s impression, which he said came from meetings a few weeks ago with federal officials, who told advocates and legislators that such mechanisms were a mandatory condition for the funds. In any event, he said, “It’ll be some kind of toll. There’s no other way to have an impact on congestion.” He told Chelsea Now that the commission was a good idea: It would give legislators “more of a sense of ownership,” now that the July 16 deadline pressure was over. Shrader also quoted Chelsea’s own Assemblyman, Richard Gottfried, who said that “having the gun of the deadline was not really conducive to thinking clearly about a very complicated plan.”

High hopes for High Line access: An article in last week’s Meat Market special section stated that Andre Balazs’s new The Standard hotel will have “direct access” to the High Line, but apparently that’s not a given. Katie Lorah of Friends of the High Line gave us the lowdown: “There will be no private access to the High Line,” she said. “All access points must be public. In some locations, these public access points may be sited within a private building that directly abuts or is underneath the High Line, subject to zoning provisions and negotiations with the city, which seeks to protect the public nature of the High Line and all of its access points. As it relates to The Standard hotel — the developer has made a request to the city related to access, but the city has not yet responded.” High Line access was an issue in another article in our Meat Market section on Novac Noury, the arrow keyboard pioneer, and his quest for a “Stairway to High Line.” Said Lorah: “As for Noury’s request, F.H.L. is aware of his interest in connecting to the High Line. However, his property does not directly abut the High Line, so the only way he could possibly create a public access point from his property would be to obtain an easement across the property [owned by Balazs] that sits between his property and the High Line. That said, when he inquired with Friends of the High Line, we suggested that he contact the city, as we always do with inquiries related to public access points

sited on private property. Following his request, Michael Bradley, the Parks Department’s High Line administrator, sent Noury a list of guidelines for this kind of access point. He also left a voicemail message with Noury.” Noury says he only wishes he’d known about this beforehand, since he simply would have bought the connecting platform from his building to the High Line, which Balazs demolished.