A couple of weeks ago my sister visited from Germany to attend a workshop for traffic planners in New York City.
She is the owner of a traffic planning office in Germany and works with municipalities to develop mobility solutions that optimize traffic flow by favoring low carbon alternatives like walking, biking and using public transportation.
So why was she attending a workshop in New York City. I was surprised and intrigued. When it comes to optimizing traffic patterns, I would have expected the U.S. to look at European countries like Germany and the Netherlands for guidance, not the other way around. But here she was and with her 55 other traffic planners, each attending a five-day workshop to study a world metropolis in mobility change.
The workshop agenda included a visit of the Fulton Street transportation hub, biking all over Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Greenway, as well as education about rooftop farming, urban gardening and gentrification.
Site visits brought the agenda to life and walking the High Line was of course mandatory. Participants had the chance to meet with local officials to hear about transportation planning, including a presentation by the New York City Economic Development Corporation led and arranged by Port Washington’s own Jen Rimmer, about the new ferry system, which by the way does not include the Staten Island ferry.
I joined the group for one of the ferry presentations and was impressed to learn about yet another side of New York City: The New York City Ferry system launched in 2017 to provide an affordable and convenient transit option to residents in otherwise transit-isolated neighborhoods and to connect these residents to employment opportunities in the city’s commercial districts.
As required by the City Environmental Quality Review process, EDC drafted an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to identify both the effects of the ferries on the environment and the effects of the changing climate on the ferries and their landings.
As expected, emissions impacts from construction of ferry landings and operation of the new ferry routes are less emission-intensive as other forms of public transportation. This means that each additional ferry route for commuters and recreational users allows NYC to lower citywide on-road emissions while enhancing the City’s existing transit systems. Lowering on-road emissions is a goal of OneNYC’s strategy for reducing citywide greenhouse gas emissions and consistent with the City’s sustainable land use planning and smart growth strategies to reduce NYC’s carbon footprint.
The NYC Ferry extends one of the city’s most flexible and resilient transit alternatives in support of emergency preparedness and ability to respond to storm and flooding events as well as transit service disruptions.
Ferry service plays a vital role in the region’s resiliency planning as it can resume operations as soon as flood levels recede, typically within hours following a storm event that interrupts another transit service.
The New York City Panel on Climate Change describes Resilience in its 2019 report as a core concept throughout the infrastructure and climate change theme.
Resilience generally refers to the ability of a system to return to its original state after experiencing a disturbance as well as processes that promote those readjustments. On a more individual level, it has been described as our ability to bounce back after something has knocked us off our stride.
The idea of our community’s resilience becomes an increasingly important topic that we all need to think about, especially given our proximity to the water and our dependence on the infrastructure and services outside our peninsula.
When exploring our community’s resilience to climate change, we need to take three factors into consideration: first, the ability to self-organize to direct decisions; second, the presence of and ability to acquire the necessary skills; and third, a collectively designed project plan.
Together these three factors should address and improve our community’s capacity to absorb stresses and maintain function in the face of climate change. They will help us adapt, reorganize, and evolve into more desirable configurations that improve the sustainability of our peninsula, leaving it better prepared for future climate change impacts. A very worthwhile topic to explore further and way too extensive to give justice in a short column.
Besides including aspects of resiliency during future weather events in specific planning for specific projects, I don’t believe the Town of North Hempstead has thus far worked on a plan similar to the one published by the New York City Panel on Climate Change which I referred to at the beginning of this column.
So, I encourage you to do your own research and engage your local politicians in conversations on the topic. We need to address climate resilience as a community.
Juliane Saary-Littman
Port Washington
