The environmental review process was substantially reformed several years ago, leaving only the largest projects — and those that aren’t “as of right” subject to it.

There is a broader dispute between plan-based planning and deal-based “planning.”

Under plan-based planning, the city has real rules in place that apply to everyone, and everyone can just go ahead and build under those rules. Most NYC development is as of right, and there has been some attempt to get reasonable as-of-right rules in place in recent years.

Under deal-based planning, the zoning rules are meaningless but aren’t changed — so influential developers can purchase underzoned properties on the cheap and get individual negotiated approvals just for themselves. Today, such deals require an EIS, because they represent a change in the underlying rules.

What the Manhattan Institute and the NYC Partnership want to do is expedite deal-based planning. I’d rather see it eliminated altogether.

Mr. Oddo is wrong in his statement that the government hasn’t tried to give SI better public transit. The reason why SI doesn’t have better public transit is because SI residents always come out against improvements. SI residents or the ones that vote at least, want to keep SI as suburban as possible. For example when the State/City wanted to connect the SI RailRoad to the rest of the metro system back in the day they refused it. SI also shoots down all forms of greater density every time it is proposed, so they end up having to drive everywhere because they don’t let their borough increase density which would make it more walkable. So contrary to what Mr. Oddo says, SI residents can only blame themselves for the transit mess they are in.

“The reason why SI doesn’t have better public transit is because SI residents always come out against improvements.”

Right, and don’t forget the ferries. They come out and fight road improvements too.

I’m not sure what is refered to by the widening of Rockland Hill Road and Forest Hill Road, but it a major increase in capacity is expected it should be subject to environmental review. On the other hand, modest improvements such as turn lanes at intersections and improvements in highway exit design should not be. And I think that’s how it goes.

Moreover, is Mr. Oddo talking about a widening of those streets through the Greenbelt? Ho boy, don’t those of us off the rock us into THAT major war Mr. Oddo.

Swap Staten Island for Jersey City and a 7 train extension!

NBBL/Iris/Steisel > Gibson Dunn/Randy Mastro > Oddo EIS brain storm.

There’s more to come in this season of Iris’ discontent.

Instead of lying to New Yorkers through and possibly in collusion with Post reporter Sally Goldenberg (whose false report is still uncorrected), why not just ask us what we think about SEQR?

I’m not so hot on it myself. While pausing to reflect on the environmental downsides of responding to knee-jerk demands for a road widening seems like a good idea, blocking it with protracted litigation wastes a lot of time, money, and produces bubbling resentment as a byproduct (see: James Oddo). It would be far better to reject the same project outright because it will be costly and ineffective over the long term, based on empirical data collected before and after widenings of the past 30 years. If that’s possible.

Something I’ve been thinking about this winter, and right now as I listen to snowplows working the 6/8 lane traffic sewer that runs by my home, is how much wide roads contribute to the massive cost of snow removal. Do people realize, as they clamber over mounds of snow to cross the street, that the height of those mounds is a function of the width of the road that must be cleared? That clearing a 6-foot wide bicycle lane or sidewalk is an order of magnitude different from clearing 100-foot wide road? And it doesn’t help that the road is lined by $60k SUVs strewn at odd angles, whose owners that left them there “parked” in the drifts will not hesitate to sue the city if their preciouses are glanced in the process of making the snow go bye-bye.

I don’t know how we can continue to afford this to giant roads people pay nothing to use and for a great number of vehicles that are not even registered in this state. What we should be talking about is road narrowing and scaling back a dead-end transportation system that we can not afford to clear 24-hours a day in a winter-long “snow emergency”.

Coinkydink knoweth of what he speaks. If Oddo is being honest at all about “using” the enviro review issue, he was “using” NBBL and its fellow travelers just as much as he was using us (an equal-opportunity sleazeball!). I think the EQRA lawsuit’s coming soon.

“Moses was so over the top, so insensitive and intolerant of anyone else’s opinions, that he poisoned the planning pot. The rules put in place to prevent another Moses Death Star from being built are perhaps too strong, but they are the result of a legitimate hypersensitive reaction.”

Two rules of public policy around here: the principle of permanent vested interests, who control anything related to money, and the principle of oscillating stupidity, the result of games played about everything else.

With regard to the approval process for land use and infrastructure, I think the last few years have been fairly balanced between the Moses bulldozer and the NIMBY nuts 1980s and 1990s.