As the WSJ is reporting today-and it comes as no great surprise to us-there is a thriving black market in food cart permits: "Monawara Sultana says her rent is going up: $14,000 for a two-year permit to run a food cart where she sells $1 hot dogs outside of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. And it's not the city levying the increase or recouping the money. It's the permit holder, who is asking for double what she previously paid, according to Ms. Sultana. "It's not fair," said the Bangladeshi immigrant and mother of three. "Why did it go up so much?"
Can you say black market? WSJ can: "The city's competitive street food culture has created a thriving black market for mobile food vending permits issued by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The city charges a mere $200 for most food-cart permits, which must be paid every two years when they are renewed. But it only issues 3,100 year-round permits plus an additional 1,000 seasonal permits—not enough to satisfy demand. Transferring or renting these permits to another vendor is illegal but everyone, including the city's Health Department, acknowledges, that it happens."
Which is just another indication that the entire food vendor system needs to be overhauled-from licensing and street placement, all the way to an enforcement that is almost nonexistent. Still, even after the IBO's expose on the subject-and the fact that millions of dollars of fines were going uncollected-the Bloomberg administration remains stuck in the mud.
On top of this, all of the cries of legitimate store owners about how veggie peddlers are cannibalizing their produce business has fallen on deaf ears. We have also been pointing out that it appears that certain individuals-contrary to the law-hold multiple permits and illegally rent them out for exorbitant profits. Often for a 24 hour cycle to more than one vendor license holder.
Here's the DOH comments: "Elliott Marcus, an associate health commissioner, said the black market was a source of "big concern." Still, in a statement, the Department of Health noted: "While the Health Department suspects that in some instances permits are being transferred illegally, it is extremely difficult to prove an illegal sale in a particular case because the law does allow a permit holder to employ other licensed vendors to work his or her cart." To help remedy that, the department will soon propose changes requiring that permit holders appear when renewing permits and carts are re-inspected every two years."
How about a total overhaul-with an agency or task force dedicated to just this issue? "Meanwhile, demand for permits and their black-market prices continue to climb as street food's popularity soars with blogs like Midtown Lunch chronicling vendors' moves and some gourmet food trucks developing cult-like followings. Some permits fetch as much as $20,000 for two years, vendors say. In the case of Ms. Sultana, the Bronx food vendor, she says the permit holder told her someone else was willing to pay $15,000 for the permit she previously paid $7,000 for two years ago."
This is an area that is replete with corruption-and it appears that Public Advocate de Blasio is looking to propose some major changes in the vendor system-to both insure fairness and to protect the city's tax paying store owners. When his reforms are proposed, they should be given a fair hearing along with swift action. For too long local communities and neighborhood stores have been victimized by an out of control street vendor system. The chaos has gone on long enough.
Protecting Business
Rabu, 09 Maret 2011
Reckless Lane Change
The law suit that's been brought against the Prospect Park bike lanes-lanes that we have no personal interest in-is still of utmost importance to all New Yorkers. The importance lies with the manner in which NYC DOT, and its ideologically driven commissioner, may be manipulating data to prove that the lanes are good for public safety. As the NY Post reports: "A scathing lawsuit filed against the city this week turns the Department of Transportation's own data against the Bloomberg administration's push for a bicycle lane along Brooklyn's Prospect Park West -- showing crashes and injuries actually increased after the two-way path was installed there last summer. The suit, filed Monday in Brooklyn Supreme Court by a group of well-heeled Park Slope residents, seeks the lanes' immediate removal. "This was a massive effort to distort the facts and force community support," said Norman Steisel, a former deputy mayor in the Dinkins administration."
We'll see how this plays out, but our first instinct is to believe the accusations because we have seen how the city agencies-across the board-from the DOE, and the DOH, all the way to our favorite, EDC, routinely cook the books in their favor to justify often misguided policies. So whether it is teacher bonuses, the evaluation of menu labeling, or the analysis of traffic from the proposed Willets Point development, we see how policy makers proffer corrupted data to make their initiatives look better.
The NY Daily News weighs in here: "New Yorkers who've long suspected that when it comes to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan's bike lanes, somehow the numbers just don't add up, may well be right. A lawsuit filed Monday challenging the bicycle path on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn is chockfull of statistics wrested from Sadik-Khan's own agency through Freedom of Information Law requests. Comparing the numbers with those the Department of Transportation has issued publicly makes for a fascinating read. According to court papers, when DOT proposed the lane to Community Board 6 in April 2009, the department reported there had been 58 crashes on Prospect Park West and side streets from 2005-07 - proving a need for so-called traffic calming. That number was inflated; a more honest accounting wouldn't have included 12 accidents that did not occur on the thoroughfare."
What the department has done it appears, is to hide the raw data and dishonestly message what is released: "The plaintiffs allege more shenanigans: At a followup meeting six months after the bike lane was installed last June, transportation officials declared the path a rousing safety success. How? They used a three-year average culled from the second halves of 2007, 2008 and 2009 - purportedly showing a decline in the number of accidents from 29.7 to 25 in the second half of 2010. That was heavy spin - papering over a jump in accidents from 22 in late 2009 to 25 in late 2010. Why didn't DOT present the raw numbers? Because they didn't help make the case for the lane?"
As the Post also points out: "But Steisel's group ran the DOT numbers on a yearly basis and found crashes and injuries had been steadily declining -- but then slightly increased in the second half of 2010 once the lanes were installed."
What all of this underscores is that there is a need for a full and independent environmental review of all of DOT's efforts to radically alter NYC's streetscape-and if it is proven in court that Sadik-Khan consciously doctored the data then she should be jettisoned as fast as possible. New York doesn't need a policy maker who needs to make her case with fraudulent statistics.
While we're at it, though, it is now time for the city council to enter this argument-not in the microcosm of Prospect Park, but in the larger evaluation of the Sadik-Khan schemes. It should demand from the mayor all of the department's raw bike lane data from each and every installation city wide-and throw in the 42nd Street transformation for good measure. Once done, the council should hire an independent traffic expert to see how the department's numbers square with reality.
By doing this, the legislature would be laying the ground for a legislative initiative that would compel the city to conduct environmental reviews of all of these proposed changes-with the council getting the opportunity to vet the consultants' work. The city loves to mark its own exams-never a good idea for the public interest. A system of checks and balances most be instituted so that better policy making can ensue-and dishonest ideologues sent packing.
We'll see how this plays out, but our first instinct is to believe the accusations because we have seen how the city agencies-across the board-from the DOE, and the DOH, all the way to our favorite, EDC, routinely cook the books in their favor to justify often misguided policies. So whether it is teacher bonuses, the evaluation of menu labeling, or the analysis of traffic from the proposed Willets Point development, we see how policy makers proffer corrupted data to make their initiatives look better.
The NY Daily News weighs in here: "New Yorkers who've long suspected that when it comes to Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan's bike lanes, somehow the numbers just don't add up, may well be right. A lawsuit filed Monday challenging the bicycle path on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn is chockfull of statistics wrested from Sadik-Khan's own agency through Freedom of Information Law requests. Comparing the numbers with those the Department of Transportation has issued publicly makes for a fascinating read. According to court papers, when DOT proposed the lane to Community Board 6 in April 2009, the department reported there had been 58 crashes on Prospect Park West and side streets from 2005-07 - proving a need for so-called traffic calming. That number was inflated; a more honest accounting wouldn't have included 12 accidents that did not occur on the thoroughfare."
What the department has done it appears, is to hide the raw data and dishonestly message what is released: "The plaintiffs allege more shenanigans: At a followup meeting six months after the bike lane was installed last June, transportation officials declared the path a rousing safety success. How? They used a three-year average culled from the second halves of 2007, 2008 and 2009 - purportedly showing a decline in the number of accidents from 29.7 to 25 in the second half of 2010. That was heavy spin - papering over a jump in accidents from 22 in late 2009 to 25 in late 2010. Why didn't DOT present the raw numbers? Because they didn't help make the case for the lane?"
As the Post also points out: "But Steisel's group ran the DOT numbers on a yearly basis and found crashes and injuries had been steadily declining -- but then slightly increased in the second half of 2010 once the lanes were installed."
What all of this underscores is that there is a need for a full and independent environmental review of all of DOT's efforts to radically alter NYC's streetscape-and if it is proven in court that Sadik-Khan consciously doctored the data then she should be jettisoned as fast as possible. New York doesn't need a policy maker who needs to make her case with fraudulent statistics.
While we're at it, though, it is now time for the city council to enter this argument-not in the microcosm of Prospect Park, but in the larger evaluation of the Sadik-Khan schemes. It should demand from the mayor all of the department's raw bike lane data from each and every installation city wide-and throw in the 42nd Street transformation for good measure. Once done, the council should hire an independent traffic expert to see how the department's numbers square with reality.
By doing this, the legislature would be laying the ground for a legislative initiative that would compel the city to conduct environmental reviews of all of these proposed changes-with the council getting the opportunity to vet the consultants' work. The city loves to mark its own exams-never a good idea for the public interest. A system of checks and balances most be instituted so that better policy making can ensue-and dishonest ideologues sent packing.
Selasa, 08 Maret 2011
Van Wicked
For those of you who have been downplaying our concerns about the traffic impact of the Willets Point development, today's NY Daily News article on NYC traffic should be a real eye opener-the city traffic is so bad that we are rapidly approaching Los Angelos levels, and may soon pass smog city. Even more interesting to us, of course, is the role that the Van Wyck plays in this traffic nightmare-two of the five worst hot spots are on this one expressway.
As the News reports: "New York City is on a highway from hell, poised to creep past Los Angeles for a dubious honor: the country's gridlock capital. The New York-New Jersey metro area has been deemed the second most congested in the U.S. - and the slow-speed gap with smogged-and-clogged L.A. is narrowing, a new report on highway travel reveals. "The level of congestion in New York is worsening at a faster rate than L.A.," said traffic expert Sam Schwartz, who writes the Daily News' Gridlock Sam column. "If this continues, within one year we very well may be the most congested city in America."
How could this possibly happen with the Bicycle Queen in charge of NYC transportation? You know, Ms. Carbon Footprint Reduction herself, good old pedestrian mall Sadik-Khan: "The data come from the 2010 National Traffic Scorecard compiled by INRIX, a technology and traffic information company based in Washington State. It calculates travel times using anonymous Global Positioning System devices.The New York region's congestion was equal to 86% of that experienced by L.A. drivers in 2009, but rose to 99% last year, the report shows. Schwartz said that may be the downside of an improving economy."
Gridlock Sam is onto something, but is, at the same time, missing the crucial variable-it isn't only a generic improvement in the city's economy that pushing folks into their cars to shop. The X factor is the number of suburban style malls that EDC has been successfully promoting-and the bogus traffic studies used to justify their zoning applications. As Schwartz hints: "I think more people are working, more people are spending money and more people are traveling," Schwartz said."
But just take a look at the Van Wyck gridlock that is pictured in the story-and Willets Point United's Brian Ketcham has documented how that roadway is simply unable to accommodate the 80,000 car trips a day that the Willets Point project will bequeath to it. But is precisely this reality that NYC EDC and DOT are trying to avoid-making an end run of the review process for the construction of ramps to and from the development from off of the Van Wyck.
Unable to justify the ramps to state and federal regulators, the EDC bait and switchers are moving to condemn and construct without the ramp approvals that the agency-and the former deputy mayor-had said were prerequisites to doing just that. And this is without considering-as Brian Ketcham has done-the building of Flushing Commons and 20 million sq.ft. of additional development for in and around Willets Point.
One other important point. It is quite likely that the traffic estimates for Willets Point and Flushing Commons-as large as they are-may in fact be low balled numbers. That's because Ketcham has identified in the official traffic studies, an inordinate estimate of the number of mass transit trips that both projects will generate-underestimating car ownership and usage to get these numbers.
There are two possible scenarios we can deduce from this-neither of them pretty. In the first instance, the low car estimate and high mass transit numbers are righteous-which means that there will be thousands of additional daily bus and subway riders that simply can't be accommodated by the infrastructure (think Train). The other scenario is, of course, that car ridership is considerably higher than the official numbers would have us believe-meaning that the highway gridlock will be almost exponentially greater.
Whatever the scenario, however, the efforts of EDC to avoid oversight and regulatory review have profound implications for all those folks who are suffering on both the Van Wyck and the Grand Central. It is exactly why SDOT has been strongly resisting giving the ramp application the green light that Sadik-Khan has been pressuring it to do.
EDC and NYC DOT need to be reined in-just as the locals in Park Slope are trying, on a smaller scale, to do with their bike lanes. The Bloomberg malling of the city has had a disastrous impact on NYC small business-and now we find that it may be having a similar impact on the overly congested roads. Willets Point United shouldn't be alone in the effort to put brakes on this wrong headed policy that is exemplified by the plan for the Iron Triangle-it should be everyone's concern, especially those who pretend to worry about Global Warming and the city's carbon footprint.
As the News reports: "New York City is on a highway from hell, poised to creep past Los Angeles for a dubious honor: the country's gridlock capital. The New York-New Jersey metro area has been deemed the second most congested in the U.S. - and the slow-speed gap with smogged-and-clogged L.A. is narrowing, a new report on highway travel reveals. "The level of congestion in New York is worsening at a faster rate than L.A.," said traffic expert Sam Schwartz, who writes the Daily News' Gridlock Sam column. "If this continues, within one year we very well may be the most congested city in America."
How could this possibly happen with the Bicycle Queen in charge of NYC transportation? You know, Ms. Carbon Footprint Reduction herself, good old pedestrian mall Sadik-Khan: "The data come from the 2010 National Traffic Scorecard compiled by INRIX, a technology and traffic information company based in Washington State. It calculates travel times using anonymous Global Positioning System devices.The New York region's congestion was equal to 86% of that experienced by L.A. drivers in 2009, but rose to 99% last year, the report shows. Schwartz said that may be the downside of an improving economy."
Gridlock Sam is onto something, but is, at the same time, missing the crucial variable-it isn't only a generic improvement in the city's economy that pushing folks into their cars to shop. The X factor is the number of suburban style malls that EDC has been successfully promoting-and the bogus traffic studies used to justify their zoning applications. As Schwartz hints: "I think more people are working, more people are spending money and more people are traveling," Schwartz said."
But just take a look at the Van Wyck gridlock that is pictured in the story-and Willets Point United's Brian Ketcham has documented how that roadway is simply unable to accommodate the 80,000 car trips a day that the Willets Point project will bequeath to it. But is precisely this reality that NYC EDC and DOT are trying to avoid-making an end run of the review process for the construction of ramps to and from the development from off of the Van Wyck.
Unable to justify the ramps to state and federal regulators, the EDC bait and switchers are moving to condemn and construct without the ramp approvals that the agency-and the former deputy mayor-had said were prerequisites to doing just that. And this is without considering-as Brian Ketcham has done-the building of Flushing Commons and 20 million sq.ft. of additional development for in and around Willets Point.
One other important point. It is quite likely that the traffic estimates for Willets Point and Flushing Commons-as large as they are-may in fact be low balled numbers. That's because Ketcham has identified in the official traffic studies, an inordinate estimate of the number of mass transit trips that both projects will generate-underestimating car ownership and usage to get these numbers.
There are two possible scenarios we can deduce from this-neither of them pretty. In the first instance, the low car estimate and high mass transit numbers are righteous-which means that there will be thousands of additional daily bus and subway riders that simply can't be accommodated by the infrastructure (think Train). The other scenario is, of course, that car ridership is considerably higher than the official numbers would have us believe-meaning that the highway gridlock will be almost exponentially greater.
Whatever the scenario, however, the efforts of EDC to avoid oversight and regulatory review have profound implications for all those folks who are suffering on both the Van Wyck and the Grand Central. It is exactly why SDOT has been strongly resisting giving the ramp application the green light that Sadik-Khan has been pressuring it to do.
EDC and NYC DOT need to be reined in-just as the locals in Park Slope are trying, on a smaller scale, to do with their bike lanes. The Bloomberg malling of the city has had a disastrous impact on NYC small business-and now we find that it may be having a similar impact on the overly congested roads. Willets Point United shouldn't be alone in the effort to put brakes on this wrong headed policy that is exemplified by the plan for the Iron Triangle-it should be everyone's concern, especially those who pretend to worry about Global Warming and the city's carbon footprint.
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