Brooklyn's Progress
June/July 2007

BY JILL SHEEHY

Ambitious is probably too mild a word for the recently announced PlaNYC, a 127-point initiative to help cut the City’s greenhouse emissions by 30% by the year 2030. Luckily, that also goes for how bent New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is on making it work.

The plan, which also warns New Yorkers to expect the pressure of an additional one million residents by the year 2030, will be a wide-reaching one that promises to affect all New Yorkers, not the least of which who own businesses in the City.

Transportation
One of the major tenets of PlaNYC hinges on the study and successive overhaul of how we move about this city. The pilot congestion pricing initiative (see the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s survey announcement on the cover) aside, there are many ideas on the table that will affect how business is done.

According to its December 2006 survey, the Chamber found that traffic and transportation problems are now the fourth-biggest obstacle to Members. PlaNYC looks to address some of those issues, including the overreaching goal of expanding the City’s transportation infrastructure. This could include the development of neighborhoods that surround transit hubs and planning new ones.

The plan talks about the creation of HOV lanes on the East River bridges. With three heavily-used bridges in the borough, it would undoubtedly affect transportation between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Plans for additional ferry service throughout the City are being considered by the Bloomberg Administration, including proposals for a ferry from the Rockaways to Manhattan. This could include stops along Brooklyn’s southernmost areas, giving commuters another choice in getting to work.

Also on the table is the possibility of a rail link from Downtown Manhattan to JFK airport in Queens. The Chamber is fighting to make sure this transit link will include at least two stops in Downtown Brooklyn, making it a viable option for job growth and better local transportation.

In Your Neighborhood
PlaNYC’s affects will also be felt on a more local scale. The brownfield remediation effort will leave more land available for development, as it is a goal of the plan to transform all brownfields by 2030. Developers will get special incentives to build on neglected areas, especially in neighborhoods where the development has been slow.

It is also recommended that studies continue to observe high-traffic corridors within the boroughs (such as at bridge crossings), and business owners can expect Muni-Meters to be installed in local commercial areas with an aplomb that was formerly reserved for Manhattan and only the busiest hubs of Brooklyn.

Green Incentives
Since it was the state of the environment that spurred the plan to begin with, it only makes sense that there will be incentives to use green building methods and other ecologically sound systems.