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....December 14, 6:19 PM |
| Queens Reacts To Mayor’s 2030 Plan
By MATT HAMPTON and THERESA JUVA Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood before a block of community activists, city leaders and press at the Queens Museum of Art on Tuesday and laid out his vision for the next 25 years in New York City, which took the form of a massive-scale citywide planning initiative known as PlaNYC.
The event, hosted by the League of Conservation Voters, served to announce the formation of the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability. In the next three months, according to the Mayor, an important part of the process will be registering ideas from the private sector on how to enact and achieve the goals laid out by PlaNYC. He encouraged residents to go to www.nyc.gov/planyc2030. Congestion Increase The City may literally come to a grinding halt by 2030, according to numbers released by the Mayor’s Office, which predicts that rush hour traffic could last 12 hours a day and push congestion to colossal levels. It already contributes to $5 billion in lost time each year, a figure that will only swell when another 100,000 vehicles are added to the roads in 25 years. For those who deal with current transportation problems in Queens, ballooning population and an extra strain on already limited services are their greatest concerns. Pat Dolan of the Forest Hills Community House works on securing better transportation options for seniors in Queens. As the huge generation of Baby Boomers gets older, she said it’s important to remember not only public transportation needs, but services like Access-A-Ride that chauffer seniors to doctor’s appointments and supermarkets. Dolan also said that there are many parts of Queens, particularly in eastern and southern Queens, where public transportation is nearly impossible for the elderly. “We need more of it. We need more accessible transportation, more safe, more frequently running for seniors,” she said. “Most of the problem in Queens with public transportation is there aren’t enough buses. People have to wait a long time. When it gets to be a half hour or more it gets to be a hardship.” Councilman Joe Addabbo (D-Howard Beach) has been involved with bus availability in Southern Queens and the recent problems residents have been experiencing with catching one. He said in areas with population explosion, like the Rockaways, the City needs to remember the places where there is a bad mixture of scarce public transportation and an overabundance of people. “Our current problems will only get worse if they are not paid attention to,” he said. “Just in Rockaway, it is a snapshot of the future problems of the City.” Dolan said she hopes the sustainability plan will finally focus on the forgotten parts of Queens. “Public transportation in this borough has been the stepchild for 50 years,” she said. “They haven’t been changed and adjusted. That’s our biggest problem.” Energy Efficiency In Queens Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC program set out some lofty goals for energy use and efficiency in Queens and New York City at large. According to a study by the newly formed Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, 70 percent of New York City power plants will be 50 years old by 2030. Power plants in Queens provide well over half of the power for the entire city, and as they age, they require a greater degree of upkeep, and operate less efficiently. “Older plants use more than 50 percent more fossil fuels than new ones,” the study said. “By 2030, demand could increase by more than 25 percent, and our century-old distribution system will be even more strained.” One of the goals of Bloomberg’s PlaNYC program set out to upgrade the energy infrastructure, making it both energy-efficient and environmentally sound. “We’re a city that runs on electricity, yet some of our power grid dates from the 1920s, and our power plants rely heavily on outmoded, heavily-polluting technology,” Bloomberg said. “Once, infrastructure solutions were pioneered in New York. Now it’s time for us to rise to the challenge again.” In a move that echoes the need for renewable, clean energy, the New York Power Authority recently announced that it was using the Charles Poletti Power Project in Astoria as a testing ground for soybean-based biofuels. For two days this past October, the power plant burned biofuel mixed with regular fuel, in amounts varying from 5 up to 20 percent soybean-based fuel. During these tests, the plant recorded an increase in energy efficiency, while showing a decrease in emissions. Tests like this one in Astoria work on several levels of Bloomberg’s plan, including reducing global warming emissions, and moving towards making New York City the clean-air leader among major cities nationwide. |
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