Air Quality

Two weeks ago Streetsblog reported on the glut of public parking garages being built in Hell's Kitchen, which threatens to worsen traffic conditions in one of New York's most congested neighborhoods. The City Planning Commission could have set a precedent last Friday by denying a developer's request to build a 400-car public garage as part of a mixed-use project at 310-328 West 38th Street. Only 232 parking spaces would have been allowed without the special permit.

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.

This recent constituent e-mail shows that Council Member Jessica Lappin's lukewarm support for congestion pricing seems to have turned into full-fledged support now that the proposal has no chance of being implemented (taking a page out of Assemblywoman Joan Millman's book). In Lappin's defense, she did vote for pricing when it came before the council. But it might have been helpful had she found her voice a few months -- or even weeks -- before the plan went to Albany.

With the fate of congestion pricing likely to be decided over the weekend, we're going to beat this drum some more this afternoon.

Reader Sarah Ferguson reports that Assembly Member Deborah Glick (right), who represents Lower Manhattan, has come up with a novel twist on Richard Brodsky's call for further environmental review of congestion pricing. Read on for the full story, and keep making those phone calls. We want to know what else legislators are telling their constituents today.

Just two of the 17 members of the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, Assemblymen Richard Brodsky and Herman "Denny" Farrell, voted against the revised congestion pricing plan that now awaits approval by the City Council and state legislators, all of which must happen by March 31 if the city is to receive $354 million in federal funds for upfront citywide transit improvements.

Following our post yesterday about a newspaper article in which Andrew Hevesi was quoted as calling congestion pricing "a money grab to pay for mass transit," Streetsblog got a call from the Queens assemblyman's office.

In three different studies presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting in Boston last weekend, researchers "provided mounting evidence that air pollution can both increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in the long-term and induce heart attacks within hours of traffic exposure." While the studies have yet to be released in full, the Guardian reveals some details from the presentations made at AAAS:

I've been accused of "droning on" about congestion pricing here on Streetsblog, and not just by hostile commenters. Even Mark Gorton, our publisher, has mentioned that he's sick of reading about it.