MAYOR BLOOMBERG PRESENTS PLANYC: A GREENER, GREATER NEW YORK

THE MOST SWEEPING PLAN TO ENHANCE NEW YORK'S URBAN ENVIORNMENT IN THE CITY'S MODERN HISTORY

2030

APRIL 22, 2007—Earth Day Event at the Museum of Natural History Unveils Policy Speech with 127 Initiatives to Make New York More Sustainable Including Reducing Carbon Emissions by 30%

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg presented PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York in a sweeping policy speech containing 127 separate initiatives at the American Museum of Natural History.

PlaNYC is the culmination of thousands of hours of work, informed by public meetings and feedback from New Yorkers designed to achieve the sustainability goals that the Mayor laid out in a December 12, 2006 speech at the Queens Museum.

Those goals include:

• housing an additional 1 million New Yorkers affordably;
  
  
• increasing access to parks, playgrounds and open spaces;
  
  
• reclaiming brownfields;
  
  
• developing critical backup systems for our aging water network to ensure reliability;
  
  
• providing additional reliable power sources and upgrading our existing power plants;
  
  
• reducing water pollution so we can open our waterways for recreation; and
  
  
• reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 30%.

In early April 2007, the Mayor released New York’s first ever comprehensive inventory of greenhouse gas emissions which was the first step towards achieving major emissions reductions.

“With historically low unemployment, a low crime rate and better schools, New York is thriving – it’s a place where people want to be.

The time to build on our success is now, and I will not spend my last 984 days in office ignoring the problems that this City will face in the future. We need to start meeting the challenges we’ll face as we grow by nearly 1 million people, and we’ll do it by working to enact these 127 policy initiatives,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

“We need to increase open space, expand housing, deal with our congested roadways, create better mass transit options, increase our energy sources and stabilize our water supply or we simply won’t be able to continue the high quality of life we now enjoy. If we act now we’ll have a better future, a better quality of life, and more importantly, our children and their children will too.

THE PLAN

In December 2006, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg challenged New Yorkers to generate ideas for achieving 10 key goals for the city’s sustainable future. New Yorkers in all five boroughs responded. The result is the most sweeping plan to enhance New York’s urban environment in the city’s modern history. Focusing on the five key dimensions of the city’s environment—land, air, water, energy, and transportation—we have developed a plan that can become a model for cities in the 21st century. The combined impact of this plan will not only help ensure a higher quality of life for generations of New Yorkers to come; it will also contribute to a 30% reduction in global warming emissions.

LAND - HOUSING

“To accommodate nearly a million more New Yorkers we are going to have to create hundreds of thousands of new homes - even on top of our existing affordable housing plan - the largest ever undertaken by any city. To do it, and to build those new homes at lower costs, we have to make more land available for new housing, which will help ease pressure on land prices,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

To meet the needs of a growing population, we’ll need 265,000 more housing units by 2030. We have the capacity to accomodate this growth—but without action our city’s housing stock won’t be as affordable or sustainable as it should be. that’s why we will expand our supply potential to drive down the price of land—while directing growth towards targeted areas served by public transportation. We will pair these actions with targeted affordability strategies like creative financing, inclusionary zoning, and home ownership programs for low-income New Yorkers. By expanding these efforts into the future, we can ensure that new housing production mathces our vision of New York as a city of opportunity for all.

Housing Initiatives

1. Pursue transit-oriented development.
   
   Use upcoming rezonings to direct growth toward areas with strong transit access
   
   
   
2. Reclaim underutilized waterfronts
   
   Continue restoring underused or vacant waterfront land across the city
   
   
   
3. Increase transit options to spur development
   
   Use transit extensions to spark growth as the subways did more than a century ago
   
   
   
4. Expand co-locations with government agencies
   
   Pursue partnerships with City and State agencies throughout the city
   
   
   
5. Adapt outdated buildings to new uses
   
   Seek to adapt unused schools, hospitals, and other outdated municipal sites for productive use as new housing
   
   
   
6. Develop underused areas to knit neighborhoods together
   
   • Continue to identify underutilized areas across the city that are well-served by transit and other infrastructure
   
   • Examine the potential of major infrastructure expansions to spur new growth in neighborhoods
   
   
   
7. Deck over rail yards, rail lines and highways
   
   Explore opportunities to create new land by constructing decks over transportation infrastructure
   
   
   
8. Develop new financing strategies
   
   Continue to pursue creative financing strategies to reach new income brackets
   
   
   
9. Expand inclusionary zoning
   
   Seek opportunities to expand the use of inclusionary zoning, harnessing the private market to create economically integrated communities
   
   
   
10. Encourage home ownership
    
    Continue to develop programs to encourage home ownership, emphasizing affordable apartments over single-family homes
    
    
    
11. Preserve the existing stock of affordable housing throughout New York City
    
    Continue to develop programs to preserve affordable housing that so many New Yorkers depend upon today

LAND - OPEN SPACE

“Some of our brownfields may also become open space and parkland, which bind communities together. In the past five years alone we’ve added more than 300 acres to the biggest and best parks system in the nation. But still, nearly 2 million New Yorkers live too far from parks and playing fields,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

Although we’ve added more than 300 acres of parks in the last five years, more than two million New Yorkers live more than ten minutes from a park. This shortage of open space threatens our environment, our health, and our quality of life. That’s why we will invest in new recreational facilities across every borough, opening hundreds of schoolyards as local playgrounds, reclaiming undeveloped sites that were designated as parks but never finished, and expanding useable hours at existing fields by installing lights and turf fields. We will re-imagine our streets and sidewalks by adding new greenstreets and public plazas in every community as part of our strategy to create a more inviting public realm.

Open space initiatives

1. Open schoolyards across the city as public playgrounds
   
   Open schoolyards as playgrounds in every neighborhood
   
   
   
2. Increasing options for competitive athletes
   
   Make high-quality competition fields available to teams across the city
   
   
   
3. Complete underdeveloped destination parks
   
   Fulfill the potential of at least one major undeveloped park site in every borough
   
   
   
4. Provide more multi-purpose fields
   
   Convert asphalt into multi-use fields
   
   
   
5. Install new lighting
   
   Maximize time on our existing turf fields by installing lights for nighttime use
   
   
   
6. Create a public plaza in every community
   
   Create a new or enhance an existing public plaza in every community
   
   
   
7. Green our underutilized street and sidewalk space
   
   • Fill every available street tree opportunity in New York City
   
   • Expand Greenstreets program

LAND - BROWNFIELDS

Our need to maximize the efficiency of every piece of land means that we must foster the reuse of brownfields, or sites where previous uses have left behind contamination. In order to promote the redevelopment of these sites, we will make existing brownfield cleanup programs faster and more efficient. We will enroll more sites in remediation programs, and ensure that those sites are redeveloped with even greater community involvement. Across New York, our approach to brownfields will be more proactive, more comprehensive, and more inclusive than ever before, as we work to ensure that the remnants od our industrial past contribute to a more sustainable future.

Brownfield inititatives

1. Adopt on-site testing to streamline the cleanup process
   
   Pilot the “Triad” program on two sites
   
   
   
2. Create remediation guidelines for New York City cleanups
   
   Analyze New York City’s soil and develop a set of standard cleanup remedies appropriate to the city
   
   
   
3. Establish a city office to promote brownfield planning and redevelopment
   
   Create a new City office to increase resources dedicated to brownfield planning, testing and cleanups
   
   
   
4. Expand participation in the current State Brownfield Clean-up Program (BCP)
   
   Ask State to redistribute BCP tax credits to relieve budgetary pressures, and begin covering New York City-specific contamination
   
   
   
5. Create a city program to oversee all additional clean ups
   
   Create a City-sponsored program to provide oversight of cleanups for any sites not enrolled in other programs
   
   
   
6. Provide incentives to lower costs of remediation
   
   Dedicate $15 million to capitalize a fund to support brownfield redevelopment
   
   
   
7. Encourage State to release community-based redevelopment grants
   
   Advocate for State to reform the Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) program and release planning grant funds to community groups
   
   
   
8. Incentivize developers to participate in Brownfields Opportunity Area (BOA) planning
   
   Advocate for financial incentives for developments constructed in coordination with a BOA
   
   
   
9. Launch outreach efforts to educate communities about brownfield redevelopment
   
   Educate, outreach, and provide technical assistance to communities, private developers, and City agencies to promote brownfield redevelopment
   
   
   
10. Create a database of historic uses across New York City to identify potential brownfields
    
    Conduct a historic use assessment for all city sites in order to measure long-term progress towards goal
    
    
    
11. Limit liability of property owners who seek to redevelop brownfields
    
    Create an insurance program and legal protections to |limit the liability of developers willing to clean up land they did not pollute
    
    
    
12. Launch outreach effort to educate communities about brownfield redevelopment
    
    We will educate, reach out, and provide technical assistance to communities, private developers, and city agencies to promote brownfield redevelopment

WATER - WATER QUALITY

“New York is fortunate to have not only a vast supply of fresh water, but also a wealth of rivers, creeks and coastal waters. From time immemorial, they nurtured an incredible diversity of marine life. However, for too long, the city polluted these waters and as our population grew, that contamination increased. We can change that,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

Waterfront revitalization has been a guiding principle of the last five years, with 60 miles of development underway. Now it is time to accelerate the reclamation of the waterways themselves, particularly our most polluted tributaries. We will upgrade our wastewater treatment infrastructure, while implementing proven strategies such as greening our streets, planting trees and expanding our bluebelt network. We will also explore more natural solutions for cleansing our water bodies through a range of pilot programs that will be coordinated by a new inter-agency Best Management Practices Task Force. These strategies will include new tree-pit designs, water-cleansing mollusks, and green roofs. Through these initiatives, we can restore oour city’s natural ecology and recreational use of our waterways.

Waterways initiatives

1. Develop and implement Long Term Control Plans
   
   Complete Long Term Control Plans for all 14 New York City Watersheds, as required by law
   
   
   
2. Expand wet weather capacity at treatment plants
   
   Reduce Combined Sewage Overflow (CSO) discharges by more than 185 mgd during rainstorms
   
   
   
3. Increase use of High Level Storm Sewers (HLSS)
   
   Initiate Capital HLSS projects where feasible in combined sewer areas citywide and integrate HLSS into major new developments, where appropriate
   
   
   
4. Capture the benefits of our public realm plan
   
   
   
5. Expand Blue Belt Program
   
   Expand Bluebelt in Staten Island and other boroughs, where possible
   
   
   
6. Form interagency BMP task
   
   Make the reduction of CSO volumes and other environmental issues a priority for all relevant City agencies
   
   
   
7. Pilot promising Best Management Practices (BMPs)
   
   • Reintroduce 20 cubic meters of ribbed mussel beds
   
   • Design five expanded tree pits and monitor impacts
   
   • Pilot one swale to collect rainwater from roadways
   
   • Pilot additional BMPs
   
   
   
8. Require greening of parking lots
   
   Modify the zoning resolution to include design guidelines for off-street parking lots for commercial and community facilities
   
   
   
9. Provide incentives for the installation of green roofs
   Encourage the installation of green roofs through a new incentive program
   
   
   
10. Protect wetlands
    
    Assess the vulnerability of existing wetlands and identify additional policies to protect them

WATER - WATER NETWORK

We have the luxury of a stong water supply, but our supply system faces serious challenges. In order to continue providing reliable water to 8.2 million New York City residents and an additional one million people upstate, we must ensure the quality of our water at its source by building a new filtration plant forr the Croton system and continuing our aggresive protection program for the Catskill and Delaware watersheds. We will create redundancy for the aqueducts that carry the water to the city throough a combination of water conservation measures, maximizing the use of our existing facilities through new infrastructure, and evaluating new potential water sources. Finally, we must be able to repair and modernize oour in-city distribution, which means finishing the Water Tunnel No. 3 and accelerating repairs to water mains.

Water network initiatives

1. Continue the Watershed Protection Program
   
   Aggressively protect our watersheds as we seek to maintain a Filtration Avoidance Determination for the Catskill and Delaware Water Supplies
   
   
   
2. Construct an ultraviolet disinfection plant for the Catskill/Delaware systems
   
   Construct an ultraviolet disinfection facility to destroy disease-causing organisms in our upstate watershed
   
   
   
3. Build the Croton Filtration plant
   
   Construct a water filtration plant to protect the Croton supply
   
   
   
4. Launch a major new water conservation effort
   
   Implement a water conservation program to reduce citywide consumption by 60 million gallons a day
   
   
   
5. Maximize existing facilities
   
   Add 245 mgd to our supply potential through increased efficiency
   
   
   
6. Evaluate new water sources
   
   Evaluate 39 projects to meet the shortfall needs of the city during a prolonged shutdown of the Delaware Aqueduct
   
   
   
7. Complete Water Tunnel No. 3
   
   • Complete construction of stage 2 and begin repairing Water Tunnel No. 1
   
   • Complete stage 3 and 4 of Water Tunnel No. 3
   
   
   
8. Complete a backup tunnel to Staten Island
   
   Replace pipelines connecting Staten Island to Tunnel No. 2
   
   
   
9. Accelerate upgrades to water main infrastructure
   
   Increase replacement rate to over 80 miles annually
   

TRANSPORTATION

“In analyzing congestion pricing, we studied commuting patterns across the city, and we arrived at an astounding finding. Of the New Yorkers who work in Manhattan but live outside it only five percent commute by car,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

For the last 50 years, New York has underinvested in its transportation network. We are now proposing a sweeping, regional transportation plan that will enable us to improve travel times and achieve the funding necessary to meet the city’s and the region’s transit needs through 2030 and beyond. That includes strategies to improve our transit network and reduce growing gridlock on our roads thrrough better road management and congestion pricing. We will seek to create a new regional financing entity, the SMART Financing Authority, that would provide one-time grants to achive a state of good repair and filll the existing funding gap for critical transit expansions, enabling our region to achieve a new standard of mobility.

Transportation initiatives

1. Increase capacity on key congested routes
   
   Seek to fund five projects that eliminate capacity constraints
   
   
   
2. Provide new commuter rail access to Manhattan
   
   Seek to expand options for rail commuters
   
   
   
3. Expand transit access to underserved areas
   
   Seek to provide transit to new neighborhoods
   
   
   
4. Improve and expand bus service
   
   • Initiate and expand Bus Rapid Transit
   
   • Dedicate Bus/High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes on the East River Bridges
   
   • Explore other improvements to bus service
   
   
   
5. Improve local commuter rail service
   
   Seek to make better local use of Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) stations
   
   
   
6. Improve access to existing transit
   
   Facilitate access to subways and bus stops citywide
   
   
   
7. Address congested areas around the city
   
   Develop congestion management plans for outer-borough growth corridors
   
   
   
8. Expand ferry service
   
   Seek to expand service and better integrate it with the city's existing mass transit system
   
   
   
9. Promote Cycling
   
   • Complete the City's 1,800-mile bike master plan
   
   • Facilitate cycling
   
   
   
10. Pilot congestion pricing
    
    Seek to use pricing to manage traffic in the Central Business District (CBD)
    
    
    
11. Manage roads more efficiently
    
    • Expand the use of Muni Meters
    
    • Create an integrated traffic management system
    
    
    
12. Strengthen enforcement of traffic violations
    
    • Expand the force of Traffic Enforcement Agents (TEAs)
    
    • Enable all TEAs to issue blocking-the-box tickets
    
    • Expand the use of traffic enforcement cameras
    
    
    
13. Facilitate freight movements
    
    • Improve access to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)
    
    • Explore High Occupancy Truck Toll (HOTT) Lanes
    
    
    
14. Close the Metropolitan Transit Authority's State of Good Repair gap
    
    Seek a grant from the SMART Authority to cover the MTA's funding gap
    
    
    
15. Close the City's road and bridge state of good repair ga
    
    • Seek a grant from the SMART authority to cover the City Department of Transportation funding gap
    
    • Invest in bridge and tunnel upgrades
    
    
    
16. Establish a new regional transit financing authority
    
    Seek to create a Sustainable Mobility and Regional Transportation (SMART) Financing Authority to advance new projects and achieve a state of good repair

ENERGY

“As we grow, and if summers continue to get warmer, the strain will increase resulting in more breakdowns, more polluted air, and rising energy bills. In fact, if we do nothing, the city’s total energy bill will increase by $3 billion by 2015.

New Yorkers face rapidly-rising energy costs and carbon emission from an ineffective market, aging energy infrastructure, and growth. Addressing our energy challenge will require a two-pronged strategy of increasing our sources of clean supply and lowering our demand. We will encourage the addition of new, clean power plants, promote repowerings of our most inefficient plants, and buil;d a market for renewable energies. To reduce demand, we will target our largest energy consumers and accelerate energy efficiency upgrades. Together, these strategies will produce a reliable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable energy network for New York City. But there is currently no entity capable of executing these initiatives. That’s why we will work with the State to create a New York City Energy Planning Board that will help us shape our energy future.

Energy initiatives

1. Establish a New York City Energy Planning Board
   
   Work with the State and utilities to centralize planning for the city's supply and demand initiatives
   
   
   
2. Reduce energy consumption by City government
   
   Commit 10% of the City's annual energy bill to fund energy-saving investments in City operations
   
   
   
3. Strengthen energy codes in New York City
   
   Strengthen our energy and building codes to support our energy efficiency strategies and other environmental goals
   
   
   
4. Create an energy efficiency authority for New York City
   
   Create the New York City Efficiency Authority (NYCEEA) responsible for reaching the city's demand reduction targets
   
   
   
5. Prioritize five key areas for targeted incentives
   
   Use a series of mandates, challenges, and incentives to reduce demand among the city's largest energy consumers
   
   
   
6. Expand Promote Peak Load Management
   
   • Expand participation in Peak Load Management Programs through smart meters
   
   • Support expansion of real-time pricing across the city
   
   
   
7. Launch an energy awareness and training campaign
   
   Increase the impact of our energy efficiency efforts through a coordinated energy education, awareness, and training campaign
   
   
   
8. Facilitate repowering and construction of power plants
   
   Facilitate the construction of 2,000 to 3,000 MW of supply capacity by repowering old plants, constructing new ones, and building dedicated transmission lines
   
   
   
9. Expand Clean Distributed Generation ("Clean DG")
   
   • Increase the amount of Clean DG by 800 MW
   
   • Promote opportunities to develop district energy at appropriate sites in New York City
   
   
   
10. Support expansion of gas infrastructure
    
    Support critical expansions to the city’s natural gas infrastructure
    
    
    
11. Foster the market for renewable energy
    
    • Create a property tax abatement for solar panel installations
    
    • Study the cost-effectiveness of solar electricity when evaluated on a Real Time Pricing scenario
    
    • Support the construction of the city's first carbon neutral building, primarily powered by solar electricity
    
    • Increase use of solar energy in City buildings through creative financing
    
    • Work with the State to eliminate barriers to increasing the use of solar energy in the city
    
    • Pilot one or more technologies for producing energy from solid waste
    
    • End methane emissions from sewage treatment plants and expand the productive use of digester gas
    
    • Study the expansion of gas capture and energy production from existing landfills
    
    
    
12. Accelerate reliability improvements to the city's grid
    
    Advocate for Con Edison to implement recommendations from the City's report on the northwest Queens power outages
    
    
    
13. Facilitate grid repairs through improved coordination and joint bidding
    
    • Pursue the passage of joint bidding legislation
    
    • Ensure adequate pier facilities are available to Con Edison to offload transformers and other equipment
    
    
    
14. Support Con Edison's efforts to modernize the grid
    
    Support Con Edison’s 3G System of the Future Initiative

AIR

“In parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem, children are hospitalized for asthma at nearly four times the national average. We cannot turn a blind eye to this outrage. All of our children deserve a healthy start in life. Many people call that environmental justice; I simply call it the right thing to do,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

Despite recent improvements, New York City still falls short of meeting federal air quality standards. That’s why we will continue pressuring the State and Federal governments to reduce harmful emissions—while aggresively targeting the sources we can control. Transportation is responsible for more than 50% of our local air pollution; as a result, we will focus on reducing emissions from on and off-road vehicles. We will also address our other major sources of emissions—buildings and power plants— by switching to cleaner fuels for heating and retiring old, polluting plants. Natural solutions such as planting one million trees will bring us the rest of the way towards the cleanest air of any big city in the country. To track our progress and target our solutions more effectively we will launch the largest local air quality study in the United States.

Air initiatives

1. Capture the air quality benefits of transportation plan
   
   
   
2. Improve fuel efficiency of private cars
   
   • Waive New York City's sales tax on the cleanest, most efficient vehicles
   
   • Work with the MTA, the Port Authority, and the State DOT to promote hybrid and other clean vehicles
   
   • Pilot new technologies and fuels, including hydrogen and plug-in hybrid vehicles
   
   
   
3. Reduce emissions from taxis, black cars, and for-hire vehicles
   
   • Reduce taxi and limousine idling
   
   • Work with the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) and the taxicab industry to double the taxi fleet’s efficiency
   
   • Work with stakeholders to double the fuel efficiency of black cars and for-hire vehicles
   
   
   
4. Replace, retrofit, and refuel diesel trucks
   
   • Introduce biodiesel into the City’s truck fleet, go beyond compliance with local laws, and further reduce emissions
   
   • Accelerate emissions reductions of private fleets
   through existing Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) programs
   
   • Work with stakeholders and the State to create
   incentives for the adoption of vehicle emission control and efficiency strategies
   
   • Improve compliance of existing anti-idling laws through targeted educational campaign
   
   
   
5. Decrease school bus emissions
   
   Retrofit both large and small school buses and reduce their required retirement age
   
   
   
6. Retrofit ferries and mandate use cleaner fuels
   
   • Retrofit the Staten Island Ferry fleet to reduce emissions
   
   • Work with private ferries to reduce their emissions
   
   
   
7. Partner with the Port Authority to reduce emissions from port facilities
   
   Seek to work with the Port Authority to reduce emissions from the Ports marine vehicles, port facilities and airports
   
   
   
8. Implement more efficient construction management practices
   
   Accelerate adoption of technologies to reduce construction related emissions
   
   
   
9. Capture the air quality benefits of our energy strategy
   
   
   
10. Promote the use of cleaner burning heating fuels
    
    • Lower the maximum sulfur content in heating fuel from 2000 ppm to 500 ppm
    
    • Reduce emissions from boilers in 100 city public schools
    
    
    
11. Capture the benefits of our public realm plan
    
    
    
12. Reforest targeted areas of our parkland
    
    Reforest 2,000 acres of parkland
    
    
    
13. Increase tree plantings on lots
    
    Partner with stakeholders to help plant one million trees by 2017
    
    
    
14. Launch collaborative local air quality study
    
    Monitor and model neighborhood-level air quality across New York City
    

CLIMATE CHANGE

“Climate change is a national challenge, and meeting it requires strong and united national leadership. The fact is the emerging consensus among scientists is that, to avoid serious harm, we must reduce our emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

Scientists have predicted that unless greenhouse gas emissions are substantially stemmed by the end of the century, climate change will become irreversible. Almost every action we take has an impact on the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. As a result, our climate change strategy is the sum of all of the initiatives in this plan. All of PLANYC’s strategies—from reducing the number of cars to building cleaner, more efficient power plants to addressing the inefficiencies of our buildings—will contribute to achieving our emissions reductions target. In addition we will embark on a long-term effort to develop a comprehensive climate change adaptation strategy, to prepare New York for the climate shifts that are already unavoidable.

Climate change initiatives

1. Create an interagency task force to protect our city’s vital infrastructure
   
   Expand our adaptation strategies beyond the protection of our water supply, sewer, and wastewater treatment systems to include all essential city infrastructure
   
   
   
2. Work with vulnerable neighborhoods to develop site-specific protection strategies
   
   Create a community planning process and "toolkit" to engage all stakeholders in community-specific climate adaptation strategies
   
   
   
3. Launch a citywide strategic planning process for climate change adaptation
   
   • Create a strategic planning process to adapt to climate change impacts
   
   • Ensure that New York's Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) 100-year floodplain maps are updated
   
   • Document the City's floodplain management strategies to secure discounted flood insurance for New Yorkers
   
   • Amend the building code to address the impacts of
   climate change

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