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tagged article citation environmental justice planning policy public sustainability transportation by dkarp ...on 25-AUG-09
September 9, 2008, 4:19 pm
Fleet Owners Sue City on Hybrid Cab Rules
By William Neuman
A taxi industry group filed a lawsuit [pdf] in federal court on Monday seeking to block a city requirement that all new taxis meet stringent fuel efficiency standards that would make most cabs hybrid vehicles, a key part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s push to cut pollution and make city policies more sensitive to environmental concerns.
The city’s new taxi rule, which is set to go into effect on October 1, requires that all new taxis have a fuel efficiency rating of at least 25 miles per gallon for city driving, a standard that is currently met mostly by hybrid vehicles.
In the lawsuit, lawyers for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents large fleet owners, charge that the rule violates federal laws that say only the federal government can set rules on fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. (The lawsuit was also filed on behalf of a driver and companies that own and lease cabs.)
The lawsuit also claims that hybrid taxis are unsafe, in part because they are smaller and lighter than the Ford Crown Victoria, the standard taxi cab for many years, making passengers and drivers inside the hybrids more susceptible to injury in an accident.
A spokeswoman for the city legal department declined to comment on the suit, saying that city lawyers had not yet received the legal papers. The Taxi and Limousine Commission has previously said that it is confident that the hybrid cabs are safe.
For 10 years, South Bronx residents have been fighting to get the state to tear down an old expressway so that a greener and more sustainable mixed-use neighborhood can take its place. The community's vision fits nicely with the goals of the city's long-term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030. But will the city embrace this precocious community-based effort?
The sustainable mobility paradigm
David Banister
Transport Policy
Volume 15, Issue 2, March 2008, Pages 73-80
New Developments in Urban Transportation Planning
Abstract
This paper has two main parts. The first questions two of the underlying principles of conventional transport planning on travel as a derived demand and on travel cost minimisation. It suggests that the existing paradigm ought to be more flexible, particularly if the sustainable mobility agenda is to become a reality. The second part argues that policy measures are available to improve urban sustainability in transport terms but that the main challenges relate to the necessary conditions for change. These conditions are dependent upon high-quality implementation of innovative schemes, and the need to gain public confidence and acceptability to support these measures through active involvement and action. Seven key elements of sustainable mobility are outlined, so that public acceptability can be more effectively promoted.
Hoping to repair its tarnished reputation, Mexico City finds new ways to go green. CNN's Harris Whitbeck reports
Comparative Indicators for Policy Reform
University of Michigan and University of Maryland
A project of the Collaborative Science and Technology Network for Sustainability of the Environmental Protection Agency
and the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute
Transportation policies, infrastructure, and operation have enormous impacts on New York's economy, and upon the quality of life of every New Yorker. Our transportation network plays a major role in determining where we can live and work, and is a key driver of land use and value. Transportation infrastructure itself can be a boon, or a burden. Transit nodes can leverage density and create vibrant neighborhood hubs; greenways provide not only mobility options, but green open space in areas where parkland is scarce. But highways, bus depots, and railyards can also fragment and blight neighborhoods, creating large local costs, and little local benefit.
The Pratt Center's Transportation Equity project will examine ways that New York's transportation systems can help to create a city that offers opportunity and a high quality of life to all of its residents. During the next two years, Pratt Center staff will work with community and civic organizations to analyze our transportation systems from an equity perspective, and to develop proposals and strategies for maximizing their benefits to all New Yorkers. The project is timely; transportation initiatives now being debated will shape our city and region for the next century. But the voices of communities with the most at stake are rarely heard in the discussion. Grassroots organizations may advocate for or against individual projects, but are less often involved in the technical and political processes that shape transportation infrastructure and policy priorities overall. The Transportation Equity project will develop tools to enable social and environmental justice advocates to participate effectively in decisions that will have far-reaching impacts on the communities that they represent.
The project is funded by a federal grant authorized under the August 2005 federal surface transportation reauthorization bill- the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU)- and administered by the New York State Department of Transportation.
Since 1978, the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) has worked to show urban communities locally and all across the country how to develop more sustainably. With smarts, creativity and innovation, and before the term sustainable development was even widely used, CNT has been demonstrating its unique brand of sustainable development: development that is good for the economy and the environment; makes better use of existing resources and community assets; and improves the health of natural systems and the wealth of people-today and in the future.
CNT's organizational model is part think tank, part incubator. While the organization carries out complex research and analysis, it's the application of that research for the benefit of real neighborhoods and real people, especially those most in need, that really drives the organization to excel. Sometimes this application is about changing markets, and other times public policies. Sometimes it requires changing both.
Over the years, CNT's work, especially in the areas of energy, transportation, materials conservation and housing preservation, has paid off by fueling a generation of community development institutions and learning, garnering CNT a reputation as an economic innovator and leader in the field of creative sustainable development.