The fatal explosion in East Harlem this month added an exclamation point to a report calling for New York City to deal with its crumbling infrastructure.
The March 12 blast, which killed eight people and reduced two tenements to rubble, came one day after the Center for an Urban Future
While the tragedy focused attention New York's 6,300 miles of gas mains, which average 56 years old, according to the report, it also fueled concern over the potentially dire consequences of delay by city, regional and state agencies in shoring up the area's aging bridges, roads and school buildings.
Mayor Bill de Blasio might get his expanded pre-kindergarten at Albany's expense, but could bridges the kids cross collapse like the I-35 span in Minneapolis seven years ago? Will their classroom roofs cave in?
"It seems like we've started a conversation," said Jonathan Bowles, the center's executive director.
On March 21, engineer and transportation guru Sam Schwartz steered the conversation to transportation, resuming his call for a congestion-easing plan that he said could raise $1.5 billion annually for road and bridge repair. "The federal government isn't going to rescue us. We need some solutions," he said at an infrastructure forum at Baruch College in Manhattan, sponsored by the Regional Plan Association.
A similar proposal by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg died before the state legislature five years ago.
Schwartz's modified "NY Move" plan calls for electronic, non-booth tolls on East River bridge crossings, plus a fee for driving below 60th Street in Manhattan, while sharply cutting tolls on outer-borough bridges such as the Throgs Neck and Verrazano-Narrows.
Schwartz, a former city traffic commissioner, earned the monicker "Gridlock Sam" for having popularized the term gridlock and for his newspaper advice columns for motorists.
"I wouldn't mind the name Transit Sam next," he said.
The Center for an Urban Future report, which research associate Adam Forman wrote, urged city, state and federal officials to refocus capital spending on state-of-good-repair needs, identify new dedicated revenue sources to pay for such projects and cease diverting money from "dedicated" revenue streams, such as a Metropolitan Transportation Authority lockbox account that New York State raided to replenish its general fund.
"The Center for an Urban Future raised some very good points. Much of the content is not really new, but what is new is putting a dollar amount on the funding gap," said Rachel Barkley, an analyst for research firm Morningstar Inc.
New revenue sources, according to the report, could include: a surface water management fee akin to what Philadelphia, Washington and Seattle have imposed to incentivize the capture of rainwater before it enters sewers; maximize value from infrastructure projects such as Hudson River Park, which spawned housing and commercial development; and an infrastructure bank akin to California's I-bank or Chicago's Infrastructure Trust.
The report also called for more public-private partnerships.
About 60% of Consolidated Edison's gas mains consist of cast iron, an outmoded and leak-prone material. That figure is 40% for National Grid.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators discovered a leaky gas main next to one of the collapsed buildings.
"I guess gas lines are not the first thing that people come up with. They're not visible," said Bowles. "It's easy for New Yorkers to notice work done on bridges and they're affected by water-main breaks. All of the energy infrastructure is less visible."
Other below-level problems exist, too. The center also reported that the city's 6,800 miles of water mains are 60 years old, on average. Sewage mains, it said, average 86 years and also use older pipes more susceptible to cracking and blockage.
"Sadly, it's not completely shocking," said Barkley. "New York City's capital plan is already pretty substantial."
And the city's subway system, which the state-chartered MTA operates, sustained salt-water damage from Hurricane Sandy so extensive that MTA officials closed its Montague tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn for 14 months for repair work.
It's one thing to admit to a series of problems. Funding them is another matter.
Cooperation among levels of government can also be a problem. "That is a tough battle, given that we are not getting some of the support that we deserve," de Blasio told reporters last week in a swipe at the federal government.
New York City faces a structural deficit of $1 billion for fiscal 2014 and as high as $1.8 billion the following fiscal year. "Morningstar and other voices have been warning about infrastructure as old as 100 years. This is in addition to continued high capital needs," Barkley said.
The city's general obligation debt rose to $41.6 billion in 2013 from $31.4 billion in 2004, up 32%, while Transitional Finance Authority debt more than doubled in that time, to $29.2 billion from $13.4 billion. The state legislature created the TFA in 1997 to enable the city to circumvent GO debt limits.
Moody's Investors Service rates the GO debt Aa2, while Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's rate them double-A. They rate the TFA debt one notch higher — Aaa from Moody's and triple-A from Fitch and S&P.
Ydanis Rodriguez, who chairs the City Council's transportation committee and represents Manhattan's Washington Heights, Inwood and Marble Hill neighborhoods — all near Harlem — wants to hold a hearing on the Center for an Urban Future report "to see what more we can do as a city to make our future more secure."
Barkley said the city faces a difficult balancing act between spending and tight budgeting. "Structurally deficient bridges and 100 year-old water mains not just impact safety and welfare, but also the economy," he said. "They have to maintain bridges and airports if the city is to maintain its status as an economic center.
"People have to look outside the traditional box," she said, citing as an example the New York State Thruway Authority's rebuilding of the Tappan Zee Bridge between Westchester and Rockland counties.
St. John's University law professor Anthony Sabino said New York should heed warning signs from a bankrupt city several hundred miles west.
"Just as New York City is the nation's financial capital, once Detroit was the epicenter of America's industrial might. Yet it let its infrastructure fall to pieces, and, exacerbated by the decline in the auto industry, it stands poised on the brink of anarchy," said Sabino. "Thankfully, New York is not there yet, but the danger is real."
Tolling East River crossings is the most politically volatile suggestion. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver let it wither five years ago.
But for Schwartz, whose end game is to discourage people from driving into Manhattan and provide tolling equity citywide, the mood for change is different.
"User fees are something that people are accepting," he said Friday while launching a nine-month "listening tour" for the NY Move plan. "We've got a funding problem. Tolls on the outer bridges can't go on forever.
According to Schwartz, the new revenue would be bonded, meaning Albany couldn't redirect it. Bond covenants, he said, could include a "maintenance of effort" provision, which would prevent state government from diverting existing MTA revenues to non-transportation related programs. He also called for a new authority to control and reallocate the new revenue.
Last month the MTA board approved a toll reduction for frequent users of the Verrazano-Narrows, which carries Interstate 278 between Staten Island and Brooklyn. Despite the unanimous vote, which included three abstentions, the matter triggered robust debate among board members over whether a rebate for one part of the city and region was equitable.
"When we give to one component, we are belittling the others," said board member Susan Metzger from upstate Orange County, N.Y. "I oppose piecemealing anything even though I would love to see some of these inequities evened out a bit."
