Tackling Traffic: Options for Reducing Vehicular Traffic & Emissions in NYC

The Guarini Center and the NYU Environmental Law Journal hosted an event entitled, “Tackling Traffic: Options for Reducing Vehicular Traffic and Emissions on New York City Streets.”

As New York City’s subway system continues to be in crisis, many have questioned how transportation can be improved in order to get commuters moving as efficiently as possible. In 2008, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg suggested a congestion pricing scheme, aimed at easing traffic and raising money for the city’s aging infrastructure, which never made it to a vote. In August 2017, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the “time has come” for resurrecting a congestion pricing scheme and creating a proposal substantially different from Bloomberg’s. Locally, Move NY, a grassroots campaign seeking to build support for a master transportation plan for the New York metropolitan area, has released its own proposal — the Move NY Fair Plan, focusing on providing toll equity, reducing congestion, boosting the regional economy, and raising signficant revenues for high-priority road, bridge, and transit projects.

This event facilitated the needed dialogue concerning vehicular traffic and the public health consequences of vehicular emissions, as well as the possible outlets toward reducing them, including congestion pricing and so-called low emission zones. We looked at this issue through many lenses, including: legal, environmental, political and economic.

Moderator:

Katrina Wyman, Sarah Herring Sorin Professor of Law, New York University School of Law

Speakers:

Ashwini Chhabra, Head of Policy Development, Uber

Iyad Kheirbek, Director of Air Quality Program, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Sam Schwartz, President, CEO & Founder, Sam Schwartz Engineering

Elizabeth Stein, Senior Manager of New York Clean Energy Law & Policy Program, Environmental Defense Fund