No, but you could say that in order to hit 0 by 2050, you need to be at X by 2025 and Y by 2030...then commit to those.
And of course, the article states: "New York will be required to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and shift entirely to carbon-free power a decade later."
I'm surprised to hear someone say that New York City has "copious free and heavily subsidized parking"; how does that manifest itself, exactly? Living in Manhattan, that's not really my experience.
Let's say the number of spaces in an average street is X. Most cars in those spaces are just sitting there all day, so the demand for those spaces is 10x. Okay, not copious.
But the demand for moving down that street is 1000x. Now those spaces are egregious.
Pre-tax transport benefit plans at the federal level have had equivalent transit/parking amounts since 2016; not that the city has much control over that.
NYC's own pre-tax program explicitly doesn't include parking. It's also probably worth mentioning that the city has a tax on off-street parking at 18.375% in Manhattan.
Driving is also heavily subsidized by the fact that much of the cost of driving is externalized. When someone drives the fumes coming out of their car damage the health of everyone around them, that cost is paid for by everyone and not just the person driving so there is very little incentive to stop doing it.
Does your car parking cost as much as renting a flat/sqm? I bet it does not.
Where I live, parking space costs you about 15€/sqm/month on a single floor/no floor since it's 'public space'. A flat is avg. 22€/sqm/month and buildings in general come with 6 floors: we're closer to 6*22€/sqm/month for living space...
I pay $512.84 per month for parking; it's valet parking because they stack multiple cars on elevators in the building basement.
I don't know exactly how you want to characterize the floor space of that, but my gut feel is it's basically a similar cost to rent for an apartment per unit area.
I don’t want to argue for cars, but a square of something you can park on should definitely be cheaper per unit area than something you live in. I don’t think I’ve ever parked anywhere I’d happily live.
You've imagined what it would be like to live in a parking space if it were to remain one of a block or a row of parking spaces. I don't think that's the point being made.
If there are fewer parking spots relative to demand compared to living spaces relative to demand, then parking may very well be more expensive. I don’t see why parking “should” inherently be cheaper, it’s always supply and demand determining price.
Well, there is some metered parking; admittedly not a whole lot. But street parking is not "copious" which implies an abundance relative to demand.
If there were "copious free parking" in Manhattan, there wouldn't be hundreds of parking garages charging up to $70 a day during the week, would there?
Extending lines clearly isn't in the scope of the commenter; the 7 already got an extension to Hudson Yards a few years back and the first phase of the 2nd Ave extension came into operation recently as well.
Speaking from my own selfish perspective, I think fixing the lines we do have is more of a priority than building new ones.
Watching this happen has been one of the most unbelievably frustrating things I’ve ever seen.
I’m in Santa Monica right now, and figures I could park my car away from the beach, in a high density “car” area, then ride a scooter from there down to Venice Beach where my friend lives to say hi to him.
It’s a minefield of seemingly random geofences which shut the scooter off and make you push it a few blocks into the allowed areas, or ordinances that allow skateboarding and bicycling, but not scooters, on what appear to be purpose built bike paths!
The dumbest part is that you can ride a bike, or a scooter, or a skateboard, but none of these things if it has the amazing technology to make it useful beyond recreation (for non-enthusiasts): a motor. Honestly it just seems like neo-puritanical hatred of the idea that the motor makes it too easy.
It makes me just want to say burn the whole then down (metaphorically) and I’ll just drive the biggest comfiest car I can find wherever I need to go.
Have you considered buying your own scooter [1]? You can fold it and keep it in the trunk of your car. I bought a Xiaomi clone for $250 on Los Angeles craigslist and take it from Venice to the climbing gym in Culver City every week. It takes about 45 minutes which is faster than traffic on Venice Blvd or the metro.
The linked one is original Xiaomi. I bought a clone off of Craigslist. The welding is not as nice and it uses MiniRobot app instead of Mi Home, but the battery and motor are holding up well. Here's a good video describing Xiamoi original vs. clone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiXiKr47T8g
Also, scooters (and even e-bikes) have different acceleration curves than road bikes.
If you are doing less than 20-25mph when cruising at speed, you’re impeding bike traffic. Scooters are currently capped at 15mph, so they don’t belong in bike lanes.
(Not saying there shouldn’t be scooter lanes, just that they don’t mix with bikes)
Bikes do not cruise at 20-25 unless you are hauling ass, more like 12mph for most people (and iirc that's the speed google maps bases it's bike estimates on). Most scooters I see pass bikes.
Here in SF, I use my electric skateboard almost everyday to commute.
The infrastructure has not caught up to them yet though. Many roads are in a terrible state. It is ok for cars or bikes, but skates have small wheels so you have to stay vigilant at all times. Even on the same street from one day to the next, some extremely large pothole might have appeared.
If bikes and skates had reserved lanes with :
- a barrier ! So cars can't park there and crazy drivers can't try to kill you (sadly it happens)
- good smooth pavement.
it would be way safer and could encourage many more people not to use a car.
Especially since SF does not have a good public transport system (that would be another thing to improve drastically)
Barriers for bike lanes are often counterproductive. There’s no way for street sweepers to clean them, so leaves and garbage accumulate, making them dangerous for bikes (and presumably impassible for skateboards).
hmm, I would rather have street sweepers adapt to bike lanes than removing them
You really don't want to share a road with cars. I did not have someone swerve at me to hurt me yet, but I see that regularly on social networks (just a local bay area user group too .. not something national).
I already had cars accelerate until they are caught up with me, and then do something dumb like klaxon loudly or yell to hope to make me trip.
And of course multiple occurences of cars that think it is ok to cut up right in front of you and brake, or that want to overtake you when there is no space and there are literally less than 10 cms between you and the car.
So I would definitely rather have a secure lane .. even if it means that we must adapt cleaning equipment.
> I would rather have street sweepers adapt to bike lanes
That's what's done in the Netherlands, and I can confirm: it's far safer and comfortable to cycle in separate bicycle lanes, and it greatly encourages people to cycle.
If car drivers don't respect you I don't think the solution is to let them have all the road for themselves and put you away from their view. Fighting for the rights of cyclits by segregating them is like trying to fight sexism by having women wear a burka so that they do not provoke men!
Dedicated bike lanes exist in Europe, so I assume this is a solved problem and US cities could just buy whatever European municipalities use to clean bike lanes.
I ate it on a JUMP bike going down Rose. It was out of zone and the only explanation that I can come up with is that it locked up the back tire. I ride bikes a lot and have no clue why I went down on that thing. I lost a ton of skin on my knee. I'm never touching one of those again. Geofencing transportation devices is crazy business. I need to trust the thing I'm riding.
There's nothing on a jump bike that can lock the rear wheel while in motion. The motor is in the front, and the brakes are operated by hand.
I have ate it on one while crossing train tracks while at max power, as that combination of circumstances can cause the front wheel to break traction, since there isn't traction control (yet).
When you say "scooter" images of traffic in Mumbai pop into the minds of the upscale folks who write the rules so of course they ban anything that has two wheels and doesn't cost too much for the blue collar crowd.
That's a misoptimization. New York City's subway and roads may be terribly inefficient relative to what they could be. They're still vastly more so than the rural transportation in the rest of the state.
Pick the low hanging fruit before trying to squeeze out the last few percent.
And in any case the existence of bad transportation policy isn't a reason not to celebrate a climate bill, so I don't get your point.
Not sure if sarcasm. In fact the whole point of Drawdown is to enumerate all the possible fruit, both high and low hanging, and come up with numbers justifying their picking in parallel. So yeah, refrigerant management is part of the solution, and you can check their numbers for how much it would save and how much it would cost, and that is done deliberately to avoid nonsense like "why are you bothering with air conditioners?!".
In contrast, the upthread comment seemed to be arguing that a blanket bill trying to establish a regulation framework for climate change is insincere because of minutiae about NYC's mismanaged transportation infrastructure.
Going back to your snark: it's the equivalent of "Throw the whole Drawdown plan in the trash because China has too many air conditioners." See the problem with that logic?
What a stupid law. I feel sad for poor people in New York who will pay a lot more to heat their homes. All for a law that will not change the global climate at all. So sad.
Also remember all of the nuclear plants bleed cash and now require direct subsidy to operate. New York has lots of challenges ahead as the environmentalists hate gas and the NIMBY types and farmers hate solar/wind.
Money isn't green paper rectangles, it is a store of value. It represents tradeoffs. It represents man-hours, other investments into our future that we could make, etc.
Pretending money isn't that important is just an ignorant thing to do.
Gas is way cheaper to operate and nuclear plants cannot compete profitably.
I'm too lazy to Google right now, but IIRC, NY committed something like $9B over 12 years to keep various plants open. New Jersey and Illinois either are doing or will be doing the same thing.
If the article is correct, that's a 10% move (60% to 70%) from fossil to green over a 10-year period. That's hardly a breakneck speed (though NY managed only 8% between 1990 and 2015).
Nonetheless, demanding that all carbon producers get serious is a no-BS approach. Too bad that the cost of doing nothing had to become so obvious.
```When an option is chosen from two mutually exclusive alternatives, the opportunity cost is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit associated with the alternative choice.```
Marvellous. Is the ball actually starting to roll?
Oh, wait, it's a plan to form a committee that issues recommendations of how to do it in two years. Erm. So more aspiration than plan then.
Still, the broad aim is roughly in line with what the nations who've committed recently have signed up to, with actual plans. Different dates for net zero: Finland(2035), Ireland(2050), Norway(2030).
Oh and the UK(2050) who did so comically badly via soundbite only from Theresa but then immediately disagreed with what the committee on climate change plan had recommended, and the Chancellor who essentially said was too expensive to bother fixing anyway.
Where's the follow up to the UN Paris Climate Summit? London, 2020. Bloody typical.
2050 is more than 30 years from now. The politicians that voted for this will be long gone many years before this fantasy needs to be completed, at which time perhaps we'll be out of fossil fuels and it will be moot.
> If the state manages to hit those targets, it would effectively create a so-called net-zero economy, the ultimate goal of environmentalists
It's gonna be a zero economy in more than one way, all right.
This is both sad and laughable at the same time. Deadbeat states are already suffering from an exodus of taxpayers. How these clowns think this is going to work?
Why on earth would anyone stay on in NY when they can take a short car ride or flight and get more value for their money?
The ultimate goal of environmental fanatics is to realize a government-controlled environment in which private sector works with and for the government (fascism)
Virtual-signaling, small-scale nonsense to claim they're "helping."
CCS (and SRM) at scale (tens of trillion$, on the order of the pointless MIC cash-grabs in the Middle East) need to be expended to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels (280-300 ppm). Cities and states cannot and shouldn't handle this.. international- and national-level collaboration to standardize, strategize and deploy solutions are the most appropriate avenues.
> There are also numerous questions about whether the energy, real estate and business communities can adapt by 2050, and how much it would cost to do so. Business groups in the state had derided the bill as impractical and potentially disastrous for companies forced to move to green energy sources.
If you are old enough to remember what the economy looked like 30 years ago, in 1989, think about how much it has transformed since then. Quite impressive, isn't it. If "business communities" and "business groups" think they can't adapt by 2050 (30 years from now) they show the complete lack of imagination. Sigh.
82 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] threadAnd of course, the article states: "New York will be required to get 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and shift entirely to carbon-free power a decade later."
This is also the same city that provides copious free and heavily subsidized parking while banning or severely limited 30-pound, highly efficient electric vehicles: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/opinion/electric-scooters....
I wonder how we should interpret the city's stated desires versus its actual policies.
There is free street parking in Manhattan, but nobody would describe it as copious.
Let's say the number of spaces in an average street is X. Most cars in those spaces are just sitting there all day, so the demand for those spaces is 10x. Okay, not copious.
But the demand for moving down that street is 1000x. Now those spaces are egregious.
You can also argue that huge amounts of free street parking are subsidies, but limited areas to chain bikes.
There is more, but those are the obvious ones to me.
NYC's own pre-tax program explicitly doesn't include parking. It's also probably worth mentioning that the city has a tax on off-street parking at 18.375% in Manhattan.
I'd put up with a hell of a lot of air pollution if it made the trains timely and not crowded and I'm not the only one who'd make that tradeoff.
Riding my bike to work was one of the best things I ever did for my mental and physical health.
Where I live, parking space costs you about 15€/sqm/month on a single floor/no floor since it's 'public space'. A flat is avg. 22€/sqm/month and buildings in general come with 6 floors: we're closer to 6*22€/sqm/month for living space...
I don't know exactly how you want to characterize the floor space of that, but my gut feel is it's basically a similar cost to rent for an apartment per unit area.
If there were "copious free parking" in Manhattan, there wouldn't be hundreds of parking garages charging up to $70 a day during the week, would there?
We could definitely use more. Extending the 7 to NJ would also be great. We jam all those buses through the Lincoln Tunnel every weekday.
Found this on Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_expansion_of_the_Ne...
Speaking from my own selfish perspective, I think fixing the lines we do have is more of a priority than building new ones.
You’re doing that thing where you think we can only do one or the other.
It takes a long time to fix existing subways. You can’t simply close them down. Look at the L train.
There’s no reason we can’t also expand the subway. Depending on where you build, it could go a lot faster.
Watching this happen has been one of the most unbelievably frustrating things I’ve ever seen.
I’m in Santa Monica right now, and figures I could park my car away from the beach, in a high density “car” area, then ride a scooter from there down to Venice Beach where my friend lives to say hi to him.
It’s a minefield of seemingly random geofences which shut the scooter off and make you push it a few blocks into the allowed areas, or ordinances that allow skateboarding and bicycling, but not scooters, on what appear to be purpose built bike paths!
The dumbest part is that you can ride a bike, or a scooter, or a skateboard, but none of these things if it has the amazing technology to make it useful beyond recreation (for non-enthusiasts): a motor. Honestly it just seems like neo-puritanical hatred of the idea that the motor makes it too easy.
It makes me just want to say burn the whole then down (metaphorically) and I’ll just drive the biggest comfiest car I can find wherever I need to go.
[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Xiaomi-Mi-Electric-Scooter-18-6-M...
More likely people are tired of clutter and blocked sidewalks. And riders who act like idiots.
If you are doing less than 20-25mph when cruising at speed, you’re impeding bike traffic. Scooters are currently capped at 15mph, so they don’t belong in bike lanes.
(Not saying there shouldn’t be scooter lanes, just that they don’t mix with bikes)
The infrastructure has not caught up to them yet though. Many roads are in a terrible state. It is ok for cars or bikes, but skates have small wheels so you have to stay vigilant at all times. Even on the same street from one day to the next, some extremely large pothole might have appeared.
If bikes and skates had reserved lanes with :
- a barrier ! So cars can't park there and crazy drivers can't try to kill you (sadly it happens)
- good smooth pavement.
it would be way safer and could encourage many more people not to use a car.
Especially since SF does not have a good public transport system (that would be another thing to improve drastically)
hmm, I would rather have street sweepers adapt to bike lanes than removing them
You really don't want to share a road with cars. I did not have someone swerve at me to hurt me yet, but I see that regularly on social networks (just a local bay area user group too .. not something national).
I already had cars accelerate until they are caught up with me, and then do something dumb like klaxon loudly or yell to hope to make me trip.
And of course multiple occurences of cars that think it is ok to cut up right in front of you and brake, or that want to overtake you when there is no space and there are literally less than 10 cms between you and the car.
So I would definitely rather have a secure lane .. even if it means that we must adapt cleaning equipment.
That's what's done in the Netherlands, and I can confirm: it's far safer and comfortable to cycle in separate bicycle lanes, and it greatly encourages people to cycle.
I have ate it on one while crossing train tracks while at max power, as that combination of circumstances can cause the front wheel to break traction, since there isn't traction control (yet).
When you say "scooter" images of traffic in Mumbai pop into the minds of the upscale folks who write the rules so of course they ban anything that has two wheels and doesn't cost too much for the blue collar crowd.
Pick the low hanging fruit before trying to squeeze out the last few percent.
And in any case the existence of bad transportation policy isn't a reason not to celebrate a climate bill, so I don't get your point.
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/materials/refrigerant-man...
In contrast, the upthread comment seemed to be arguing that a blanket bill trying to establish a regulation framework for climate change is insincere because of minutiae about NYC's mismanaged transportation infrastructure.
Going back to your snark: it's the equivalent of "Throw the whole Drawdown plan in the trash because China has too many air conditioners." See the problem with that logic?
https://www.nyiso.com/real-time-dashboard
Right now, we're over 50% nuclear + hydro, though I suspect this goal will be harder to achieve when Indian Point shuts down.
Pretending money isn't that important is just an ignorant thing to do.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-nuclear-plant-closes-fears-s...
I'm too lazy to Google right now, but IIRC, NY committed something like $9B over 12 years to keep various plants open. New Jersey and Illinois either are doing or will be doing the same thing.
That's a fantastic dashboard. Thanks.
Nonetheless, demanding that all carbon producers get serious is a no-BS approach. Too bad that the cost of doing nothing had to become so obvious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
Oh, wait, it's a plan to form a committee that issues recommendations of how to do it in two years. Erm. So more aspiration than plan then.
Still, the broad aim is roughly in line with what the nations who've committed recently have signed up to, with actual plans. Different dates for net zero: Finland(2035), Ireland(2050), Norway(2030).
Oh and the UK(2050) who did so comically badly via soundbite only from Theresa but then immediately disagreed with what the committee on climate change plan had recommended, and the Chancellor who essentially said was too expensive to bother fixing anyway.
Where's the follow up to the UN Paris Climate Summit? London, 2020. Bloody typical.
Yup.
> If the state manages to hit those targets, it would effectively create a so-called net-zero economy, the ultimate goal of environmentalists
It's gonna be a zero economy in more than one way, all right.
This is both sad and laughable at the same time. Deadbeat states are already suffering from an exodus of taxpayers. How these clowns think this is going to work?
Why on earth would anyone stay on in NY when they can take a short car ride or flight and get more value for their money?
The ultimate goal of environmental fanatics is to realize a government-controlled environment in which private sector works with and for the government (fascism)
CCS (and SRM) at scale (tens of trillion$, on the order of the pointless MIC cash-grabs in the Middle East) need to be expended to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels (280-300 ppm). Cities and states cannot and shouldn't handle this.. international- and national-level collaboration to standardize, strategize and deploy solutions are the most appropriate avenues.
If you are old enough to remember what the economy looked like 30 years ago, in 1989, think about how much it has transformed since then. Quite impressive, isn't it. If "business communities" and "business groups" think they can't adapt by 2050 (30 years from now) they show the complete lack of imagination. Sigh.