NYC – Things Are Good

Real Time Street Level Vehicle Exhaust Emission Monitoring

small car

A team of researchers have used the NYC traffic congestion charge as a place to test out some of their hypothesis. Spoiler: the city got better and air quality improved. The research team were able to figure out how to monitor pollutants on individual streets instead of neighbourhood or city-wide levels. They used cameras and phone data to track traffic (removing personally identifiable information). Their method has increased monitoring accuracy and showed that previous pollutant monitoring solutions could vary widely by up to almost 50%

It also helps with better modelling by figuring out which transit options will reduce pollutants the most.

For one, they modeled what would happen to emissions if a certain percentage of travel demand shifted from private vehicles to buses. In another scenario, they looked at what would happen if morning and evening rush hour times were spread out a bit longer, leaving fewer vehicles on the road at once. They also modeled the effects of replacing fine-grained emissions inputs with citywide averages — finding that the rougher emissions estimates could vary widely, from ?49 percent to 25 percent of the more fine-tuned results. That underscores how seemingly small simplifications can introduce large errors into emission estimates.
…
To study that, the researchers looked at what happened to vehicle traffic at intervals of two, four, six, and eight weeks after the program began. Overall, congestion pricing lowered traffic volume by about 10 percent — but there was a corresponding drop in emissions of 16-22 percent.

Mobile Pollution Boxes Need to Pay to Enter Manhattan

small car

Cars take up a lot of space in urban centres and deprive non-car owners of previous real estate and a clean environment. Yet, for years we have let car drivers occupy our cities with their large metal boxes which impeded the freedom and mobility of others. Back in 2003 London put in place the first congestion charge for their downtown and since then many cities around the world have followed. However, in car brain North America the idea never took off. Until now. New York City will be implementing a congestion charge for Manhattan starting this spring.

Experts see the measure as a first step in the right direction. They believe the toll will help fund the city’s ailing subways and buses, and make the streets of Manhattan a friendlier place. It is also seen as an opportunity to put an end to the car culture in a city — perhaps the only one in the United States — that is perfectly accessible by public transportation, with the exception of isolated peripheral areas. Indeed, for this reason, some have said that the measure is not ambitious enough, arguing that it should apply to the five counties of New York.

“You have to start somewhere, and this is a great start,” says Howard Yarus, of the District 7 transportation committee. The group he represents proposed a plan in 2019 to eliminate free street parking, an unthinkable change for the urban landscape. “Until now, if I took my car, which pollutes the environment, to go downtown I didn’t pay anything, not even when parking. But if I went by public transportation, it cost me $2.90 [for a subway or bus ticket]. As a public policy, that seems terrible to me.”

New York City Bans New Gas Connections

New buildings constructed in New York City are not permitted to connect to natural gas for any reason. This makes NYC the largest city in the USA to do so and likely marks a shift in the country for even more cities to adopt a ban on new uses of the fossil fuel. To avoid catastrophic climate change we need to keep fossil fuel in the ground and with NYC banning new buildings from using the world-destroying product it will force the construction industry to adapt.

The measure already has support from Con Edison, a utility that provides both electricity and gas to New Yorkers. The grid “is well-poised to support the transition to heating electrification,” it said in a November testimony to city council. That’s because the grid usually sees peak demand during the summer when residents blast their air conditioning, it says, and electricity use is typically lower in the winter.

“New York City is taking a massive step off fossil fuels, paving the way for the rest of the state and country to follow,” Food & Water Watch northeast region director Alex Beauchamp said in a statement today.

NYC Delivery Workers Help Each Other

Delivery apps make ordering food easier and cheaper for consumers, but it costs the workers. By offloading the costs of actually delivering food onto labour the app companies like Uber have few expenses they need to cover, thus the appeal to investors. For the first wave of food delivery apps the companies used venture capital to pay delivery workers, but that money ran out and the rates workers were paid decreased.

Now, around the world, delivery workers are fighting back and organizing. In New York City there’s been a massive effort by delivery workers to help each other in more ways than campaigning against the app companies.

Workers developed the whole system â€” the bikes, repair networks, shelters, charging stations â€” because they had to. To the apps, they are independent contractors; to restaurants, they are emissaries of the apps; to customers, they represent the restaurants. In reality, the workers are on their own, often without even the minimum in government support. As contractors and, often, undocumented immigrants, they have few protections and virtually no safety net. The few times city authorities noted the delivery workerâ€™s changing role, it was typically with confused hostility. Until recently, throttle-powered electric bikes like the Arrow were illegal to ride, though not to own. Mayor de Blasio heightened enforcement in 2017, calling the bikes â€œa real dangerâ€ after an Upper West Side investment banker clocked workers with a speed gun and complained to him on The Brian Lehrer Show.

New York’s Increased Minimum Wage Increased Revenue for Businesses and People

Interview

With inequality increasing throughout the world she jurisdictions are fighting back by raising the minimum wage. Business owners must pay employees at least the minimum wage set by the government, no matter how little they want to actually pay people. Minimum wage increases were rare for the first years of this century so it’s good to see places like New York raise theirs. An added bonus of the recent wage increase is that business have seen revenue gains similar to that of the workers.

The focus on single restaurants also ignores the larger economic impact of raising the minimum wage. According to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, if low-wage workers have more money in their pockets, they will have more money to spend, potentially expanding the number of consumers who can afford to eat out.

In fact, some people â€” including those from the Economic Policy Institute â€” have posited that a minimum-wage increase will actually lead to an increase in employment because of the effects of giving low-wage workers a raise. Other advantages to restaurants may include lower turnover rates and better job performance.