It's nice that Mayor Mamdani wants to create a lot of affordable housing, but it takes a lot of money (and sometimes Albany support for that. Fortunately, the Center for an Urban Future is out with a new report that offers five ways to generate the needed revenue without having to go to Gov. Hochul with his hand out like some ne'er-do-well brother of some people we know.
Some of the ideas are outside our ken — like raising $15 million a year by siting battery-storage facilities on city property or raising up to $40 million a year by adding "destination concessions" and sponsorships inside parks — but three ideas really caught our eye.
The greatest idea: Make drivers pay a tiny bit more to store their private property in the public right of way — and not even on all of the city's three million free parking spaces. According to the Center, metering roughly one-quarter of those currently free spaces would generate $1.3 billion annually while improving turnover for local businesses and reducing congestion.
The second best idea? The city could raise $55 million per year just by developing housing on parking lots at CUNY campuses, which are home to more than 80 acres of surface parking. (The housing-on-parking-lots proposal got some ink in the Post over the weekend; the metering idea early this morning)
And the last idea is one we'll take a we'll-believe-it-when-we-see-it attitude about: The Center says the city could eventually raise $237 million annually by creating an autonomous vehicle "impact fee" of $2 per trip — and it must be done before the market for these robo-taxis grows.
Metered parking, of course, would be the greatest driver for change, especially the change that Mamdani says he wants. But I guess we'll see.
In other news:
- Hat tip to our own Sophia Lebowitz who schooled Brian Lehrer on the city's new 15-mile-per-hour bike speed limit in Central Park. Where Lehrer wanted to whine about the supposed danger of bikes, Lebowitz consistently reminded him that car drivers remain the clear and present danger in our city and that the ongoing Adams-Mamdani criminal crackdown on cyclists is a failure. Perhaps Lebowitz's professionalism will lead to more appearances by Streetsblog reporters and editors on the city's most-important, yet most perplexingly car-centric, morning show? Asking for a friend. (WNYC)
- There's still some coverage to be squeezed out of Friday's announcement of some bike and bus projects by the Mamdani administration:
- amNY followed our coverage from Friday of the disappointment/snub by Riders Alliance.
- And our own David Meyer tossed in a column on how Mamdani needs to do better.
- That said, the Mamdani-O-Meter (right) has risen to 16 days (a new record!) on the strength of the mayor's quick efforts to carry out the Streets Master Plan so scorned by his predecessor.
- The scourge of selfish drivers who block fire hydrants continues. (NY Post)
- In a thoughtful piece, Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns argues that livable streets activists should revamp their arguments so that policymakers will finally realize that the era of highway construction has ended.
- We're huge fans of actor Robert Duvall and documentary director Frederick Wiseman, the two giants of cinema who died over the holiday weekend. Both men expanded our understandings of the human condition and offered a glimpse, in mere flickering images on a screen, of our shared humanity and added to the world's cultural treasury with quiet humility. That said, we can't get our heads around one of the ways in which Duvall's family hopes America will honor his legacy (see if you can guess which):
