Spotlight will be taking a one-issue hiatus. The next issue will be published on July 13th.

In This Issue:

– An Inconvenient Truth Poses an Inconvenient Challenge
– Green Is Infrastructure as Well as Grey
– Making Room in the Streets For Everyone: A Young Woman’s Death.

– Calendar

How To Fix The Road You’re Driving On: An Inconvenient Challenge

The new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, outlined how the planet’s climate has changed and described some of the shorter-term impacts of that change. It was overall a powerful film, and the post-show chatter among the audience showed that most people wanted to stop climate change in its tracks. They were talking about buying hybrid cars, calling their congressmen, boycotting certain products, and turning off the AC. But even if every individual started leading carbon-neutral lives, and if major policy changes were passed and corporations were no longer permitted to actively poison the planet, the film showed that substantial damage has already been done.

Which is a tough nut to swallow. It may be inconvenient to try to change the economy and consumption patterns to make them healthier, but it is a veritable pain in the ass to spend a whole lot of money to cope with the shorter-term inevitability of climate change.

A corollary can be found in the discovery of the ill effects of lead, asbestos, and other environmental hazards. Not only can we not use lead paint and asbestos insulation in new buildings, which raises costs, but we have to spend even more money taking care of all the old buildings full of lead paint and asbestos insulation. The higher standards are inconvenient, especially for older cities that are struggling and need new development, but they are necessary to maintain the long-term viability of our built environment.

And so it looks like it will be with global warming. It may be inconvenient, but it is important to take into consideration the rise in sea levels, increased frequency and strength of storms, and temperature changes that can be expected in this and future generations. The higher standards and remediation efforts will be expensive, especially for older cities, but they are necessary to maintain their long-term viability.

There are many buildings in New York that are 100 years old. Those built today claim to have life expectancies of 50, 100 years, or longer. However they are built under codes and using environmental impact statements that do not consider very evident climate trends. New York City has an opportunity to be realistic about these trends. We should be building a city that will endure and prosper in the next 100 years, even given the climate changes that will occur. If there are no plans to protect the city at large from these trends, then at the very least each new building should be compelled to comply with standards that protect it individually.

Such measures may seem unlikely, but the United States has led the way in the near past with several major environmental initiatives, including the banning of the insecticide DDT, and the limitations on the use of chlorofluorocarbons in air conditioners and aerosol cans.

It’s time once again to raise the bar. Planning for the inevitable impacts of climate change is not giving up on a solution. It is complementary to actively working to stem the trends.

– Alexis Perrotta, Senior Policy Analyst

It’s Not Easy Seeing Green When the World Sees Grey

In the run-up to this year’s budget proposal for New Jersey, the idea of a water tax – a four-cent levy on every 1,000 gallons of water sold in the state – once again surfaced . . . and then sank. A key reason was that environmental groups withdrew some of their support because the bill would have passed much of the revenue from the tax to “grey infrastructure,” that is for pipes, treatment plants and pump stations. Some of the revenue would have also gone “green infrastructure,” that is, the acquisition of open space to protect the watershed, but grey infrastructure took the front seat.

The debate around the bill raises an important question: Why is investing in green infrastructure, those natural open spaces that help insure clean water and flood protection, a perennial also-ran to grey infrastructure?

It’s an important question, because as the region develops in coming decades, how to protect the quantity and quality of its water will be a reoccurring issue. New York City took a big leap in the 1990s under Mayor David Dinkins and Albert Appleton, his Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner, when it invested hundreds of millions from water and sewer fees on conservation methods or to purchase land in upstate New York rather than spending billions on more treatment plants and larger pipes. But it’s also true that the unique status of the City’s water supply system in terms of its size, quality of its water, and avoided costs arguments makes it a qualified example.

At least four reasons for the dominance of grey infrastructure come to mind. One reason is that we fund green infrastructure as taxpayers. In contrast, we fund grey infrastructure as ratepayers. Grey infrastructure gets funded more because paying a bill for services is more palatable to many people than paying a tax.

Federal regulations are a second reason for the dominance of grey infrastructure. The Safe Drinking Water Act mandates filtration of water in almost all cases, and the Clean Water Act mandates best available technology in most situations. The EPA has been pushing the idea of source water protection for almost a decade now, but, as part of a “multiple barriers of protection” approach, it is generally not as high a priority as grey infrastructure.

A third reason for the dominance of grey infrastructure is institutional bias, which can only be corrected by quantifying the benefits of source protection. Most engineers, the primary decision makers at water utilities, still have trouble with the idea of letting trees and wetlands do the work of pipes and filters. In response to this bias, The Trust for Public Land and the American Water Works Association have an on-going study that shows protection of forested watersheds is correlated with lower water treatment costs. Also, we have barely begun to consider the risk posed by the residual amounts of pharmaceuticals that enter our water systems through septic and sewer discharges. Of course, the drought watch currently underway reminds us that water quality isn’t the only issue; source protection can also deliver more reliable water supplies as well as habitat protection and outdoor recreation.

A fourth reason is that self-interested water utilities will probably get a free ride from state taxpayers and state regulations when it comes to source water protection. If voters approve funds for general open space protection and if some of those funds protect watersheds affecting drinking water, then water utilities lose a strong incentive to protect the watersheds on their own. A water tax (or better direct investment by utilities) could begin to correct this. While water bills shouldn’t be expected to bear the full burden of the cost of protecting our watersheds, they should be taking some of the burden off of the general open space funds.

In New Jersey, the debate over the water tax was largely about words, not big pots of money. As proposed this year, the water tax would have generated only about $1.5 million per year for land acquisition and environmental projects. That small amount is nowhere near the expressed needs and pales in comparison to revenues raised by other general funding mechanisms. If revenue generation is the primary goal, then either the water tax proposal needs to be much bigger next time or some other source should be sought.

Next time the water tax is proposed, hopefully the values and issues surrounding such a tax will become clearer. The next debate about the water tax could also be a chance to reeducate the engineers, regulators and financiers who build the grey infrastructure. The next debate could be about putting green infrastructure on the same footing as grey infrastructure, permanently.

– Steven Wallander, Intern, RPA


Making Room in the Streets For Everyone: A Young Woman’s Death
It’s a truism. But it’s a true truism. A million deaths are a statistic, but one death is a tragedy.

For me lately, that one death has been that of Liz Padilla, a 28 year old lawyer who was hit by a truck while bicycling to work as a pro bono attorney at the offices of the Family Center in Brooklyn.

I didn’t know all those details until a few days ago, after I did some checking. All I knew previously came from walking by the intersection where she was killed, at 5th Avenue and Prospect Place in Brooklyn, and seeing a “ghost bicycle,” a woman’s bicycle spray-painted white and chained to a street sign. Attached there also was a small hand-lettered plaque that said Liz Padilla, age 28, was killed here by a truck on June 9, 2005. Just one year ago. This month is the anniversary of Padilla’s death.

It turns out the bicycle was donated by Visual Resistance, a group that commemorates cycling deaths by putting up ghost bicycles. It’s an effective device. I walk by there probably once a week, and never do I not at least mentally pause and wonder about the circumstances of her death, and whether more could have been done to prevent it. Finally I looked into the circumstances of her death more closely.

Of course, as someone who has written about bicycling safety, Padilla’s death had special resonance to me. Was she wearing a helmet, I wondered? I have written about how wearing helmets, while certainly a good idea, is not the best path to making cycling safer in general, particularly from a policy point of view. See HYPERLINK "http://www.governing.com/articles/10trans.htm" http://www.governing.com/articles/10trans.htm. As I say in that column, to make cycling safer, you need to focus more on the actions of those around a cyclist, and less on whether he or she is wearing a helmet.

It turns out Padilla was wearing a helmet. It did not do her any good against a truck.

What could have done some good? The answer is to do what big cycling countries like Holland and Denmark have done, which is to legally put pedestrians and cyclists first, and cars, trucks and other vehicles last. What this means is that whenever there is any contact between a vehicle and a cyclist (or pedestrian), the driver is at fault. Period. Even if a cyclist has run a red light or a stop sign, for example, the driver of the vehicle who hits the cyclist would get severe penalties, both legally and in fines. While this may seem unfair to drivers, what it acknowledges is that there can be no meeting of equals between two objects so unequally sized. It also acknowledges a less appealing side of human nature. Although no driver wants to hurt or kill a cyclist or pedestrian, they will on average be much less likely to if they know that severe penalties will be incurred if they do.

Such laws are probably the main reason why cycling deaths per capita are so much lower in Scandinavian countries. Even though few people wear helmets there. Although the comparisons aren’t exact because of differences in the way statistics are kept, it appears that you are about ten times more likely to die in a cycling accident when you venture out on a bicycle in the United States, than in Holland.

I cycled in rush-hour traffic one morning in Amsterdam. Hordes of cyclists streamed amid hordes of cars. A Dutch friend assured me that I was perfectly safe. The drivers, he said, knew that they came last.

Transportation Alternatives, a group in New York City that promotes cycling and other means of getting around as alternatives to cars, held a bicycle ride last week to commemorate Padilla’s death. On Monday, June 27th at 6 pm, a film sponsored by Transportation Alternatives called Contested Streets: Breaking the New York City Gridlock, will premiere at the IFC Film Center at 323 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village. On the anniversary of Elizabeth Kasulis Padilla’s death, it is appropriate to continue a conversation about the best use of our city streets.

– Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region

Questions Or Comments On What’s In This Issue? Send Them To The Editor Of Spotlight On The Region, Alex Marshall At alex@rpa.org

June 15, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Designing Our Future: The Ninth N.J. Mayors' Institute on Community Design Keynote program, featuring Stefanos Polyzoides of Moule & Polyzoides. Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton. The N.J. Mayors' Institute on Community Design promotes better planning and development in communities throughout New Jersey. Keynote speaker Stefanos Polyzoides is a co-founder of the Congress for New Urbanism and a strong proponent of new urbanism, transit-oriented and mixed-use developments, housing and sustainability. The program will begin with a reception at 5:00pm, followed by the start of the keynote at 6:00pm. For more information, please call 732 828-9945 or email symposium@rpa.org.

June 16, 5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
The Water Underground: Free Friday at the South Street Seaport Museum. Over the past semester, people from City-as-School, CUP, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and RECYouth have been exploring the Water Underground. Hundreds of miles of pipes bring us water to drink, wash our clothes, put out fires, and this same water carries away our dirt, our soapy water, and the waste of eight million New Yorkers. Where does this water come from? Where does it go? What happens to it along the way? Who stays clean and who gets dirty? Now, we've made a video and a model to spread what we have learned. Share our discoveries at South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street between South and Front Streets in Manhattan, Space is limited. Please RSVP to (718) 596Ð7721 or info@anothercupdevelopment.org.

June 21, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Creating a Coordinated Retail Strategy for Lower Manhattan. Sponsored by The Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York. This forum will discuss how new retail projects in Lower Manhattan will interact with each other, what markets will they serve, and how retail quality, diversity, design excellence and job quality can be promoted by public agencies, community organizations and property owners. Find more information at http://www.civic-alliance.org/. Free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Wednesday, June 21. St John’s University, 101 Murray St. at Greenwich St., Lower Manhattan. RSVP to HYPERLINK "mailto:jen@rpa.org" jen@rpa.org or 212 253 2727 x309.

June 27, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Contested Streets: Breaking NYC Gridlock. The premiere of a new movie exploring how New York City streets should be used. IFC Film Center, 323 6th Avenue at W. 3rd St. in Greenwich Village. Info: www.transalt.org