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Introduction:
Last Sunday, on Earth Day, Mayor Bloomberg launched PlaNYC (PLAN Y.C.) a new policy to make New York more sustainable by reducing energy and improving mass transit. Congestion pricing--an attempt to reduce gridlock by charging drivers during peak hours--received a lot of attention this week as critics argued against the policy. I spoke to the director of the Mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, Rohit (ROH-Hit) Aggarwala (Ager-wall), who said that congestion pricing is only a small portion of a much broader environmental plan.
A: Congestion pricing is in fact one of 127 separate initiatives that are in the plan. What's really the core of the transportation plan, much more than congestion pricing, is creating the smart financing authority, that would facilitate investment of 30 billion dollars over the next 20 years in necessary transit infrastructure such as finishing the 2nd avenue subway, all the way down to relatively much cheaper projects, like finishing the city's 18 hundred mile bike lane system.
Q: Is this going to change the face of NY? Will all the lights be turned off in Times Square, by 1 a.m. because to conserve energy?
A: I think it's not so much about changing the face of NY but ensuring that the New York we know and love can be sustainable over the long term.
The lights in Times Square I hope will always stay on, however what I also hope they use ever more efficient bulbs and lighting techniques. If every New Yorker changed a light bulb from a regular incandescent bulb to a compact flourescent, just one bulb, that would create enough energy savings to light the Empire State building three times over. So there's an awful lot we can do that doesn't require massive changes to the way we live or change the face of the city but our city much more efficient.
Q: How does Mayor Bloomberg impose this?
A: Well I think government has three measures at its disposal. Government can incentivize, it can mandate and enforce, or it can urge. In some cases we are creating incentives to do the right thing. For example the tax breaks that are proposed to support the use of solar power and the creation green roofs.
In some cases we believe that mandates are necessary and some aspects of the new building code will make mandates for greener buildings some aspects of the housing code and water quality will mandate certain things that will protect the environment.
Q: There's an incentive here for any person buying a hybrid car, the city will remove the sales tax. When can we expect to see that to be implemented?
A: Well that will require a city home rule message from the city council and then a state law because the city's sale tax is really imposed by the state government it's delegated to the city. So it could be this year it could be next year, we are going to push things like that as quickly as we can.
Q: What happens if these are excellent dreams then they hit a brick wall when it comes to the councils?
A: The plan has the full force of the Bloomberg administration behind it. And as the mayor has said and I quote: "We are going to fight like heck to make these ideas reality." The fact is that the city does not have unilateral power and doesn't have unilateral power at all over some of the most important aspects of the plan particularly with respect to transportation and energy. So in that case it is a political process if we don't have public support for these difficult and in some case controversial ideas, so yes, we are going to fail and there is nothing we can do, but if New Yorkers speak out and tell their leaders that they are willing to take the risk of supporting these initiatives. Then I think the leadership will listen.
Tania: Rohit Agarwala Thank you very much for sitting with us.
Rohit: Thank you.
Back Announce:
Rohit T. Aggarwala is the director of the Mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.