Air Quality

Critics of congestion pricing often claim that small businesses will bear an unfair burden if the Mayor is successful in implementing his plan. But yesterday, a diverse group of small business leaders from throughout the five boroughs gathered on the steps of City Hall yesterday to voice their support for the Mayor's PlaNYC initiative. From The Campiagn for New York Future's press release:

Every week, KCRW radio's Marc Porter Zasada sets out to fathom Los Angeles on his show The Urban Man. This week he talks about neighborhoods, how fragile they are and how easily they can be lost to bad traffic engineering:

City Council Member David Yassky has come out in favor of congestion pricing, with the caveat that "many features of the Mayor's proposal will need to be reworked." Yassky's Brooklyn district, it's worth noting, encompasses three East River bridges, the Battery Tunnel and a seemingly endless number of of honking, spewing, frustrated motorists. Until last week, Yassky had been a long-time fence-sitter on the congestion pricing issue. Why did he finally commit? Last week Mayor Bloomberg announced that New York City's taxi fleet would be converted to all-hybrid vehicles by 2012. The Mayor was notably generous in crediting Yassky (twice, on national television, in the presence of Al Roker, no less) for conceiving of and fighting for the hybrid taxi initiative in City Council. Here's what Yassky wrote in an e-mail announcement to constituents:

The Today Show cast, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Yahoo! executive and Council Member David Yassky stand with a gas-electric hybrid Ford Escape SUV taxi this morning.

"People are addicted to their cars," said John Street, the Mayor of Philadelphia, at a panel on transport yesterday during the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit. He was identifying what he saw as the major challenge for cities striving to make their transport systems more environmentally sustainable.

A delegation of approximately 30 members of the Campaign for New York's Future are traveling to Albany today to meet with more than two dozen state legislators and other public officials. Today's trip follows a series of meetings on Monday in which key coalition leaders joined Mayor Bloomberg to call for urgent State action on the Mayor's key PlaNYC initiatives. Today's press release (care of Howard Rubenstein) lays out some of Bloomberg's key legislative goals up in Albany:

The Bloomberg Administration is aiming to push its PlaNYC congestion pricing proposal through this session of the state legislature. That means the entire debate will take place within the next 36 days or so.

From a press release that just came across the Streetsblog transom: