Bloomberg Prepares for a 25-Year Boom in the City

Mayor Bloomberg outlined a sweeping set of energy and infrastructure goals yesterday designed to prepare the city for population growth expected in the next 25 years.Some of the initiatives, such as improvements to the water and electrical supply systems, will be hard for the average New Yorker to detect but will prevent catastrophes, in the same way that a new roof or a new boiler in a home would. Others, such as new parks, tunnels, and subway lines, will be clearly visible on the landscape of this city for generations. There was no price tag put on the combination of projects, but given the magnitude the costs will be many billions of dollars.“It would be easy to sit back now and enjoy what we’ve done,” Mr. Bloomberg told a group of city commissioners and civic leaders during a speech at the Queens Museum of Art. “But we must not become complacent. That’s not how New York became great. And it’s not how I plan to spend the last 1,115 days of my term as mayor.”The outline, which comes almost a year after the mayor convened a task force to study the city’s growing needs, found that by 2030 the city’s roads, bridges, tunnels, subways, energy supply, housing, and water delivery system will all be at capacity if nothing is done.The bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic that already chokes the city’s highways could, for example, last up to 12 hours a day in 2030 if transportation upgrades are not made. The city’s aging power plants will not be able to keep up with energy demands — in fact, energy demand could outpace supply by as early as 2012. And subway lines where commuters are already squeezed will be “crammed beyond capacity,” according to the city. The population, now at 8.2 million in the five boroughs, is expected to exceed 9 million by 2030.“By 2030 virtually every major infrastructure in our city will be more than a century old and pushed to its limits,” Mr. Bloomberg said, adding, “It doesn’t have to come to if we act.”The mayor’s 10 goals include: reducing the city’s pollution emission by 30%, cleaning up all of the city’s brownfields, developing backup systems for the city’s water delivery system, upgrading energy infrastructure, investing in subways and highways, and creating enough parkland so that all city residents live within 10 minutes of a park.The goals are ambitious and could meet intense community resistance and funding opposition in Albany and Washington once they are more specifically defined. But they come as the city is awash in higher-than-expected tax revenues and at a competitive crossroads, with cities such as London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai gaining economic ground.Yesterday’s speech — which was splashed with video footage of city construction projects and even included pictures of Mr. Bloomberg in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers using energy for basic tasks like talking on the phone and making toast — was a first pass. The mayor said in three months the city would present specific proposals and outline costs and legislation that will be needed to turn the goals into realities.Mr. Bloomberg, who will turn 88 in the year 2030, billed the event as a beginning of a public conversation that will include a campaign to solicit ideas and get feedback from New Yorkers.The one idea floated by civic leaders immediately was charging drivers to get into Midtown Manhattan — the concept known as congestion pricing. The president of the Regional Plan Association, Robert Yaro, and the head of the Citizens Budget Commission, Diana Fortuna, both said it should be explored.Within hours of the speech, Environmental Defense, a non-profit group, released a statement calling on the mayor to consider congestion pricing for New York. As recently as last week Mr. Bloomberg said it was not politically realistic to get congestion pricing passed in Albany, but yesterday he said all ideas would be considered.“With our administration not beholden to special interests or big campaign contributors, we now have the freedom to take on the obstacles looming in the city’s future,” Mr. Bloomberg said against a backdrop with the slogan “New York City 2030: Accepting the Challenge.”The mayor, who is often peppered with questions about his presidential ambitions, also used the speech to tout the infrastructure commitments he’s already made to the city: A new plan for garbage removal that will reduce truck traffic and $4 billion to finish a new water tunnel that has been under construction for decades, to name a few.The study, which was led by deputy mayor Daniel Doctoroff, was supposed to be completed in April 2006, but ended up expanding its scope and delving into almost every facet of development and infrastructure in the city. It is just as much a political test for Mr. Doctoroff, the architect of the city’s failed Olympic bid, as it is for the mayor.City Council Member David Weprin, the chairman of the finance committee, called it a “bold vision”but said the city would have to look at the projects in the context of the budget. “There’s no question that we’ll have to prioritize because we can’t do everything at once.”Mr. Yaro, the head of the Regional Plan Association, noted that the challenges are not unique to New York. He noted that the entire metropolitan area is expecting huge population bursts and that competitors like London, which already has a similar plan in place, are too.He called the mayor’s plan “every bit as ambitious” as the plan London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, has laid out. “We’re just getting started,” Mr. Yaro said.

Bloomberg Prepares for a 25-Year Boom in the City

Bloomberg Prepares for a 25-Year Boom in the City

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