Streetbeat, Vol. XX
The urban flooding problem, an equitable approach to e-scooters, and what we win with secure bike parking.
مرحبًا!
And welcome back to Streetbeat.
Hard to believe this is the twentieth edition. I started writing a monthly newsletter in January 2020, which, yes, was somehow twenty months ago. Originally, the idea was in response to family and friends who would ask me how could they keep up with my work without following me on, like, four different platforms? This was tough, especially as I cut cords from Facebook. Maybe it was time to start a newsletter, like all the cool kids were doing.
Concurrently, I was getting the sense that journalists should have a place where we can openly discuss the reporting and research we do on a daily basis. A question I get all the time is, “Okay, but what do you think?” About combatting the climate crisis. About public transit recovering post-pandemic. About remote work. About America passing an infrastructure bill. Not the story angles or ‘getting all sides’ we, as journalists, obsess over, but rather my own opinion on what it is I’m belaboring to explain in a nice narrative.
Our duty is to inform in the hope that the public will make smarter decisions, so we shouldn’t act surprised when we’re looked to for unvarnished takes on the Big Questions We Face Today. In fact, I think we, as journalists and researchers, should embrace it at a time when the price tag of truth seems higher than ever.
Hopefully Streetbeat has been that: an open lobotomy of my mind on everything that I see going on right now in cities at what feels like an era-defining moment for them. In writing twenty of these, I’ve heard from dozens of you about what you like, and what you’d like to see more of. And with the next twenty, hopefully, I’ll hear even more. It’s been a pleasure.
Now, onto this month’s edition:
Roll Call
Sweater weather is here, and so I’m back in the classroom yet again at NYU’s journalism school, my alma mater. And this time, for the first semester since March 2020, quite literally. We’re about a month into Journalistic Inquiry, a foundational reporting class that I last taught before COVID. While teaching IRL hasn’t been without its challenges thus far, I’ve been humbled with a great group of students who are eager to report on all the shape-shifting happening in our brave new world. If you’d like to follow their work, check out our Instagram here.
And on that note: I’d like to give a brief shout-out to my classmates at University College London (UCL), who I joined virtually this month (very early my time) to graduate from our master’s programme*. I miss you all dearly, and one day, we’ll do it for real on the Thames.
The Great Flood
If there was ever a reminder that the pandemic was merely a test run, it was this past summer. Wildfires raged. Heat waves scorched. Droughts starved. And storms destroyed.
Before this month, I can’t remember a more damning moment for New York’s climate future since my roommate and I led a handful of friends across the Williamsburg Bridge in the wake of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy—towards power, food, and shelter. But my god, Ida was terrifying on a different scale; an absolutely colossal hit to the region from a place we haven’t really prepped for: the sky. Three inches of rain fell in an hour. Dozens dead in my home borough, found drowned in basement apartments. I was out the night of the storm, down on the platform when the subway tunnels cracked in half like it was brittle.
And the scariest part was its apparent mediocrity. It wasn’t a superstorm, nor was it a hurricane. It was a tropical storm, the one that NYC typically handles with ease each year. But rainfalls like this are now the norm, and the turn-of-the-century urban systems we rely upon—our housing, our sewage, our transit—were not built for them. Adapting them to a level that always seems worse than what we expect can feel like collecting water in a bucket with a hole in it. Yet that is the challenge every city now faces.
Tried to put that all into words the day after the storm in this feature for Bloomberg CityLab. I also called in live from my apartment to Bloomberg Quicktake to discuss what keeps going wrong for New York City’s subway.
Ideas for the Recovery
On a lighter note: Center for an Urban Future, where I’m currently researching public libraries’ role post-pandemic as well as other potential policies, held its first in-person event in over a year and half this month. It was also one of the first held on the terrace of the stunning Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, the New York Public Library’s newest renovated branch (seen above). It was refreshing to see people get together again to talk New York’s recovery.
The event was inspired by RE:NEW YORK CITY, an anthology of 250 ideas from leading thinkers on how Gotham can gets back on its feet. A few of my favorites:
Launch a WPA-style program to create jobs and upgrade aging infrastructure in city parks.
Transform every tenth street across NYC into “people streets”
Create a Department of Care to strengthen local capacity to reimagine, maintain, and care for public spaces.
Read the full report here.
The Scooters Are Here
Within the continental U.S., at least, New York is typically on the cutting edge of transit innovation. We have the largest subway, bus and commuter rail systems, by a long shot. Our bikeshare network (Citi Bike) is now the most extensive in the world. We were the first to roll out shared e-mopeds, and an early adopter of Vision Zero, the policy strategy to get traffic-related fatalities down to zero. (Although this certainly hasn’t been a banner year for that.) And now, we’ll be the first U.S. city to roll out congestion pricing. More on that next month.
But with e-scooters, that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t until this last August that the shared e-scooters (Birds, Limes, etc.)—which I’m sure many readers have seen before—actually arrived in the Big Apple, after a state law legalized them in 2020 and the city called for a pilot program soon after. And in true New York fashion, it was done differently than most: the city has targeted a pilot zone in the East Bronx where they’re allowed to operate, and is focusing on addressing some of the inherent inequities there that could hinder usage, from pricing and parking space to disability and dedicated infrastructure.
They come at a massive moment for micro-mobility in the city, with two-wheeled modes faring much better in the recovery than public transit. So will the scooters work in New York? In my latest feature for Bloomberg CityLab, I took a few trips to the Boogie Down to find out.
Solutions Corner: Secure Bike Parking for All
Four score and a few Streetbeats ago, I lent some space to talk about Oonee, the secure bike parking startup making waves in the Tristate area. Being unable to safely lock up your bike at your origin or destination is often cited as one of the biggest hindrances to cycling’s uptake (and also a huge driver of bikeshare’s popularity). Following leads from places like the Netherlands and the U.K., which are building out real infrastructure for this sort of thing—I mean, once you see Utrecht Centraal, you can’t forget it—Oonee got the go-ahead to set up some bespoke hubs at several locations in New York City and Jersey City. But clearly, with the continued bike boom, the market potential was only just being tapped.
This last winter, along with their team, I helped write the (successful) proposal for what can now be shared publicly: Oonee will oversee the first major citywide secure bike parking system in Jersey City, a city whose Vision Zero efforts I wrote about some time ago. But that’s only the beginning of the news they shared this month. This month’s Solutions Corner is dedicated to some other plugs in urban landscapes that, I think, secure bike parking like theirs can offer.
Connecting with transit hubs
Yes, I blabbered about the ‘last mile’ problem a lot, where folks are either turned off from using public transit due to a variety of factors affecting the ‘last mile’ trip to or from the nearest station, or use their car instead of a more sustainable mode. (Sorry, this was my dissertation topic!) But one thing that is so clear is how de-prioritized bikes are there.
It was great to see the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) get rid of the permit this month to bring a bike on their trains; I took advantage shortly after, and with new elevators at both ends of my journey, it made for a nice multi-modal (bike + train + bike) experience. (Aside from the lack of space aboard.) But for the average rider, being able to leave your bike at the station without worrying that it’s not going to be there when you return is still critical. So having just a normal exposed bike rack to lock up at, as so many stations do, isn’t really going to cut it.
The existing Oonee hubs are located, naturally, at transit hubs: Atlantic Terminal (in Brooklyn), and Journal Square (in Jersey City). So, for the reasons above, I was glad to hear that hubs will come to Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, and Queens’ Woodside-61st Street Station, which is my local LIRR stop.
Bike parking is an equity issue
When we crunched the numbers, I remember vividly learning about the disproportionate impact of bike theft. Someone living in a poorer community of color is much more susceptible to it than a neighbor in a wealthier white community, due in no small part to the access one has to safely lock up inside of their home. Space is socioeconomic in so many ways, and this is one of them.
Of course, that theft is felt way harder in low-income areas, where residents rely more on bikes for their livelihood, and yet have less resources to replace them should they go missing. We also know that once a bike is stolen, lots of folks stop riding. Another reason to solve this problem.
To respond to this, Oonee is teaming up with a number of partners (including NYU!) to bring 14 of their new curbside ‘Minis’ to the South Bronx. That would, in turn, create 100 spaces for secure bike parking storage in America’s poorest Congressional district. A big leap forward.
Building out a cycling ecosystem
One statistic I think about often is that people who walk or cycle ultimately spend more at local shops than their car-driving companions do. It may be hard to believe—and yes, I’ve had to explain this to business owners—but let’s think about that one: a metered parking spot sees maybe ten (likely single occupancy) vehicles a day, tops, and on Sunday, even less. And that’s just spots where cars actually have to pay; outside of that, cars are parked 95% of the time, which isn’t good news for businesses, who need circulation. Meanwhile, the average Citi Bike dock, which is maybe two or three parking spaces in size, could see anywhere between 50 and 100 users pass by a day. And studies have shown that while car drivers make bigger bulk purchases, people on two feet or wheels make more sustained purchases all month long.
So there is an economic argument to building out better bike parking: give people a more secure place to drop off, and they’ll be more likely to spend at your shop. The numbers bore this out as well. But Oonee would take this cycling activation to the next level with their proposed app. Users will be able to find nearby pods, and have a nearby bike shop or vendor come work on their bike, or install an accessory, while they’re gone.
This, to me, is just the beginning of what’s possible there.
Bright Side: Read & Ride
One of the earlier editions of this newsletter featured the Edible Bus Stop, a nonprofit in London looking to rethink the local station through green space and gardening. (They do such neat work.) I think so much of the post-pandemic return—and, hopefully, resurgence—of public transit will be about making the experience as enjoyable and comfortable as possible, so I’m always on the lookout for new ways to do just that. And recently, this one from Next City came across my desk.
RideKC, the transit agency that oversees Kansas City, Missouri, gave their new East Village Transit Center all the usual 2020s trimmings when it opened—WiFi, good lighting, charging outlets, water foundations, etc. But they took it a step further with a rotation of ‘pop-ups’ where residents can access resources before they make their bus journey. That means grabbing a free magazine or finding out about classes from the local library. Or conducting a quick job search with a local employment organization. There’s even space for local food or coffee carts to post up. All at the transit stop.
City in Spotlight: The City of London
So, first, it’s worth clarifying that the City of London doesn’t mean the city of London. This is a common misconception: the City of London is the designated name for the Square Mile, the geographical centre* of the city where the Bank of England and other corporate entities lie. (Parliament is to the west of there.) It is overseen by the City of London Corporation, and the whole story of how it came about dates back to the Romans. Read about it sometime.
So yes, it might not be a ‘city-city’ but rather, a city within a city. But Streetbeat isn’t one for technicalities. And the work the City has done over the years to flip this mile-by-mile area into a more livable place has always impressed me.
First, let’s start with congestion pricing, which New York is currently modeling its efforts on. (Again, more on that next month.) Congestion in the City was a mess in the early 2000s, when London was beginning to reassert itself on the global stage. So the City joined then-Mayor Ken Livingstone in backing a congestion charge to garner revenue for the newly formed Transport for London, which was slowly clawing their way back from decades of decline. The result, years later, is an area saturated with remarkably reliable public transit.
Then, fast forward to COVID. The City took the opportunity of reduced traffic to start to reprioritize pedestrians and cyclists on its major thoroughfares, expanding pavement on notoriously narrow sidewalks and banning private cars from half of its roads. (Taxis, trucks and buses are still allowed.) The work at Bank Junction (seen above), which preceded the pandemic, is probably the most emblematic of this transformation.
On top of the CC (congestion charge) is the ULEZ (Ultra-Low Emission Zone), which charges old, polluting vehicles from entering the central parts of the city. That’s about to expand to cover most of the city in late October. But the City took it a step further with banning all petrol and diesel cars on Beech Street, a main corridor. If effective in bringing down air pollution there, the pilot will also be extended to other streets.
And then finally, the City just announced it’s reducing the speed limit in the city centre to 15mph, one-upping Paris who just lowered theirs to 20mph. This comes off of recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO), which say say that lower speed limits could not only save countless lives, but also, make walking and cycling much more comfortable.
Parklet of the Month: September 2021
The business: Café Salmagundi, in Gramercy, Manhattan. (New York City)
FKA: Three parking spots, seeing maybe 10 to 30 people a day.
Now: A gelato, cold brew and beer bar, with a working tap!
Do the angry folks popping up at New York’s much maligned community board meetings to make Open Restaurants permanent really think this is just a sidewalk shed?
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Got a parklet you want to give a shout-out to? Submit it here.
Streetbeat Gig Board
A timely posting sent by reader (and compadre) Stela Xhiku:
The FloodNet project is a smart cities initiative focused on developing and deploying a sensor network for the monitoring, analysis and understanding of street-level, urban flooding. The project team includes researchers at New York University (NYU), the City University of New York (CUNY), the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency, and the NYC Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with community partners. We are seeking a part-time, hourly project manager to manage the design and implementation of a publicly-available data dashboard and portal for the flood sensor data.
Application and more information available here.