Thursday’s Headlines: What a ‘Waste’ Edition

Commercial waste collection reforms passed by the City Council in 2019 have barely begun — with just one zone fully implemented and two more set to launch later this year, city officials said at hearing on Wednesday.

All told, the commercial waste zone reform, which advocates and elected officials hope will condense trash hauler routes to reduce both emissions and car crashes, will wrap up at the end of 2027, Acting Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan told Council members at the hearing.

The first zone launched in "Queens Central" at the end of 2024 and start of 2025. The Bronx's two zones will launch this coming October and November. Lojan said officials hope to speed up the rollout once those first three zones are in effect.

"Once we get closer to finally implementing the Bronx, we'll obviously announce the next zone, six months prior, you know, to actually rolling out. And I think by then, we'll probably have a regular cadence on announcing the zones," Lojan said. "We’re committed to completing it by the end of 2027."

The 2027 deadline was first reported by Crain's on Wednesday. (Gothamist also covered the long timeline.)

Pressed by Council Member Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) on the years-long wait for urgent reforms, Lojan insisted he and his agency "want to move as fast as we can" without risking safety or pricing issues that could result in the program's early demise.

"We just want to be careful to not sacrifice customer issues, pricing and safety," he said.

City officials did not share any data on the impacts of the first zone in Queens, but said crashes involving private carters dropped in 2024 compared to 2023. The industry continues to kill and maim New Yorkers, however — to the tune of about one serious injury per week, as Streetsblog reported in the fall.

In other news:

• We were glad someone did this story because we've been stunned at how rarely Andrew Cuomo responds to our emails, so it was nice to see we're not alone. (NY Times)
• The 1980s band the Police once had a song about not standing too close to someone else. In Nassau County, lawmakers think the song was a How To guide. (NY Post)
• Great minds: Hell Gate and Streetsblog covered the Council's failure on outdoor dining.
• Like Streetsblog, The City covered the latest "Blue Highways" development.
• An unlicensed driver killed a beloved 101-year-old Crown Heights matriarch, amNY reported. A mourning page said she had been displaced by the Holocaust.
• Ferry ridership is up. (amNY)
• Barry Benepe, who fought to get cars out of Central Park, and also sired a future Parks Commissioner, has died. The New York Times obit links to one of our stories on the culmination of his car-free-park battle.
• Delivery workers say DoorDash is engaging in wage theft. (Gothamist)
• Take out the "E" and the "P" from the EPA and all you have is an agency — one that seems to think even solar power is bad. (Politico)
• Speaking of the Trump administration: They are really bad at the whole rule-of-law thing. In its effort to defend its attack on congestion pricing, the U.S. DOT filed a memo in court (apparently mistakenly) from the Department of Justice revealing that, legally speaking, the attack on congestion pricing is going to fail in court. (Streetsblog's story is here.)