Bon matin*
And welcome to this newsletter.
It's where I (John Surico) talk each month about cities & all their discontents: streets, environment, energy, cultures, people, food, form, etc. This month, we cover:
- The eve of congestion pricing;
- A shift to e-cargo bikes;
- The next chapter for 31st Ave;
& much, much more.
Editor’s note: There are now over 900 of you reading Streetbeat. And I’m feeling all of the things! Thanks for being here, friends.
Decongestant
This June marks a milestone: it will be the first time ever that a U.S. city—its biggest one, in fact—will charge cars for the sheer act of driving. ‘Congestion pricing’ is often casted as yet another toll, and it is that, sure: it will use toll cameras; it will follow a toll structure; and it will end with a bill that will come to your house the same way any other toll arrives. But tolls, as we know them, are put in place to pay for some sort of public good: a road; an HOV lane; a bridge; a tunnel. They really don’t ask much more than that.
Congestion pricing is something much more than that. What cars are being charged to access here is perhaps the most prime piece of real estate in the world: Manhattan, from 60th St down to the Battery. It’s asking drivers to pay up after decades’ worth of environmental harm, traffic violence, late arrivals to work, delayed packages, noise, gridlock, and all the other negative externalities that come with letting over 700,000 cars enter the central business district of Manhattan—so many, for free—every single day. And it’s then also saying that, in return, public transit should come first.
Congestion pricing is a toll, yes, but when it goes into effect at midnight on June 30th, barring any surprises from the courts, it will be the most significant and existential reckoning to American car culture since the invention of the Model T. Hence why it’s such a ticking time bomb, warranting posts from the former president, lawsuits from the entire state of New Jersey (and even one of New York City’s five boroughs), years of rallies and counter-rallies, and a ever-shifting jigsaw puzzle of politicians in outspoken support of or voraciously against. If there is a cultural ‘war on cars,’ then the implementation of congestion pricing is its Archduke Ferdinand: this powder keg moment that has the potential to provoke deeply uncomfortable (but, I believe, ultimately fruitful) conversations about our collective addiction to the automobile. And we’re only just beginning.
I wrote a little bit about how we arrived at this charged, transformative moment, after years and years of trying, for Vital City’s special issue. And this month, I’ll be traveling to Boston for a panel at the Boston Public Library to talk all about it alongside folks from The Boston Globe, Transportation For Massachusetts, and StreetsblogMASS, who’s hosting. (RSVP and Zoom details here.) And I’m sure there will be a lot more to say next month, when it’s live. Stay tuned.
Grad alley
The last few weeks on American college campuses has been a dark, twisted rollercoaster ride, much like everything since October 7th. As a former student journalist, I watched the Columbia Daily Spectator staff in awe, as they reported out a campus in crisis—their campus—with remarkable precision and care. (If you haven’t read their takeover of New York Magazine yet, you’re missing out.) As a former student, I remember the deep frustration I had with an administration who didn’t appear sympathetic to my livelihood, especially as I (and my family) descended further into debt. And as an educator now at said institution, who teaches how to report out these exact types of situations, it’s been a jarring learning experience. And that’s someone on the sidelines of it all.
But still, throughout it all, the 13 students who made up the capstone course that I teach every spring—13 on the brink of a graduation they (and all of us) won’t forget for some time—produced some of the most ambitious and impressive work I’ve seen in my five years on the job. They showed up to class angry but energized, somehow making time in what is already such a blurry part of one’s life to create 3,000-word opuses on all sorts of issues in the city, from the rise of AI and the climate crisis in city schools to accessibility on Broadway and in fashion. You can read them all here. And after this last month, I’m especially proud to hype them up and shout them out. Congrats, grads.
Now it’s off to a first-ever summer course alongside the great Whitney Dangerfield, which we’ll have plenty to (hopefully) show for next month.
Precious cargo
For most of their history, cities received their goods by ship. It’s part of the reason why so many of them parked themselves along the waterfront—to be able to receive and send off goods to others. Boats would arrive with cargo, which would then be transferred to rickshaws or simply walked. (Cities were much smaller then.) As a result, the waterways—and who controlled them—were a source of power. But that all changed with the 19th century’s Industrial Age, which gradually moved our products onto trains, and then planes, and then trucks. What we see today, as an Amazon van barrels down the road with a day-of delivery, is the end product of a logistical process centuries in the making.
And that’s where cargo bikes come in. Given that history, they’re not necessarily anything new—in fact, cargo bikes are really just the rickshaws of today. But with lithium-ion batteries, they’re a whole lot easier to operate. Hence why they’re sprouting up in cities everywhere: they’re a quick, cheap way for companies to deliver their packages, easily capable of weaving through congestion, freed of delay and the gas pump.
The problem is the streets themselves. Cargo bikes offer immense potential—for emission reduction, job creation, traffic safety, and more. But they’re coming up against the byproducts of that evolution I mentioned: roads retrofitted to handle 18-wheelers, and a supply chain built around the big and slow, not fast and tiny. So now, cities will have to figure out how to tap into what e-cargo bikes can offer us all, as the technology leaps ahead of the actual built environment.
New York City is out front on this. With new rules, the city is poised to see e-cargo bikes become a staple. But are our streets ready for them? I tried to figure this out for New York Magazine’s Curbed—and, in the process, got to ride the city’s first-ever e-cargo bike. (It was good Instagram fodder.) Read about it here.
OSA: Level Up
In the early days of the 31st Ave Open Street, Harry Ioannidis, the co-owner of Zenon Taverna, a popular Greek-Cypriot restaurant on the block, started calling what we were doing the “31st Ave Plateîa.” It was an homage to the Greek word that plaza derives from: a central gathering space where community can come together to just be, common in Greek villages and cities. Harry was one of the first to see what was possible when a street is used for non-vehicular activities—each weekend, he’d extend his outdoor dining out and host live bouzouki music alongside it. So when he and his wife, Elena, decided to close Zenon, exhausted by the pandemic, like so many others, it was a sad day for us (and everyone who loved their mezze). But his idea stuck: what if these two blocks actually did become a plaza—not just on weekends, from 12pm-8pm, but 24/7, 365?
This month, we inched a bit closer to that reality: at a second workshop put on the city’s Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) and our local elected officials, a detailed plan to transform 31st Ave went public for the first time. It was already known that a 20-block stretch of the corridor, from the waterfront inward, was slated to receive the ‘bike boulevard’ treatment, where two-way streets turn one-way, preserving parking but creating enough space for a protected bike lane, and made calmer through traffic diverters, which flip the flow of cars every few blocks. But most prevalent to this conversation is what’s now being proposed for the two blocks that we shut to traffic and open to everyone else on Saturdays and Sundays: a fully pedestrian plaza and shared street; or two shared streets—each with outdoor seating and space, seven days a week.
Participants at the workshop, which drew a healthy turnout with fairly muted opposition, sent a clear message to the city that the most ambitious plan is their preferred. And from our group’s vantage, we’re more than happy to get behind what the community wants. But one thing is for sure: whatever we ultimately land on is light years better than the status quo. Even if it’s shared, where most of the street is carved out for people but cars can still enter, just one way and at slower speeds, that’s still a net plus for readily available public space.
This is the next step for tactical urbanism projects. We’ve had the pilot for four years now; that’s the Open Street, a seasonal pop-up meant to present an alternative reality. This proposal, which found itself in the city’s congestion pricing plan this month, moves us into the interim phase, where a pilot gets physically cemented into the streetscape. And ideally, the permanent vision—the final stage of a public space project—is the plateîa Harry always wanted.
Now, the fight begins to get this into the ground. More soon.
Bright Side: Back by Popular AI
I’m fairly green on AI, and frankly, sort of an amateur—I don’t use ChatGPT (even though I get it; it’s cool), and what I come across on social media and search engines seems more of a nuisance than aide, like Alexa. But I do follow a ton of visual generative AI on Instagram, like this account that imagines cyberpunk Carnival spectacles in Rio. (The algorithm is good.) And I’m in awe of its potential. This month, I started a research project on what AI can offer New York City (which I’ll talk more about soon!) and I find myself slowly warming up to the fact that, hey, maybe this technology is onto something.
In late 2022, I discussed DALL-E, OpenAI’s generative AI imagery machine, which was being used then to reimagine streets. In short: DALL-E can show us corridors we know well, but if they were made more wild, green, and livable than what exists. And as it turns out, that can have an impact: this month, Bloomberg CityLab reported on a new MIT study that found that when shown AI-generated images, public support for pedestrian- or bike-friendly projects shoots up. And a demographic particularly prone to shift in opinion? Republicans.
Okay, maybe AI isn’t all too bad.
On the Radar
Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders
I am delighted that the first film to be featured in this section is this one. Perfect Days is such a moving ode to the countless lives lived in urban spaces: it follows the life of Hirayama, a toilet cleaner in Tokyo played by Koji Yakusho, as he finds beauty in the granular and grandiose. It is a shockingly mundane movie—plot-less to some extent, very much in the way that Licorice Pizza (another personal fave) was; there is no major climax, but rather, a steady stream of emotions and encounters that develops a warm rhythm and pattern to Hirayama’s world. So by the end, we’re seeing what he sees—laughing, crying, and experiencing it all alongside him. You know him, even if he lacks a last name and many lines.
Last year’s Oscar nominee for Best International Feature also features a greatest-hits reel of public restrooms in the Japanese capital, which you don’t realize you need until you see it. Enjoy, folks.
Streetbeat Gig Board
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If you’re early in your career, consider the City Service Corps, which proves to be an impressive spring board for public service work. (New York, NY)
Riders Alliance, one of the leading advocacy organizations for public transit riders in New York, is hiring a full-time fundraiser and part-time canvassers. (New York, NY)
I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again: I would take any role at something called the Office of New Urban Mechanics. (Boston, MA)
Imperial College’s Transport Strategy Centre, which sounds like the Pentagon of public transit (but also produces real cool work), is looking for a new analyst. (London, UK)
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