As two of the region's most esteemed civic groups on urban planning and design issues, we are calling on leaders of our city and region to seize a unique opportunity this year to envision substantial changes to Penn Station, where overcrowded and grim public areas have plagued hundreds of thousands of daily commuters for nearly five decades.

Madison Square Garden's special land-use permit, granted in 1963 for 50 years, expired in January and is being reviewed this spring by city officials. Under standard practice, a new permit would give the owners of the Garden rights to the site on top of Penn Station in perpetuity. This could permanently block any attempt to improve the transit hub, saddling future generations with a failed Penn Station.

Penn Station can't be moved because it is linked to a vast network of tracks and other infrastructure that run below the station. Yet its location beneath Madison Square Garden means it would be nearly impossible to bring substantial light, air and space into the existing facility.

RPA and MAS also believe that New York deserves a world-class sports and entertainment arena. Madison Square Garden is among the country's oldest professional basketball or hockey stadium currently in operation. The building's façade, architecture and freight-loading facilities are severely dated. The arena, which has moved twice since its inception on Madison Avenue in 1879, today faces growing competition from two other modern sports and events venues in the New York area.

"As New Yorkers have learned over the past 50 years, a major transportation gateway and a major sports and music venue can't provide their customers with a high-quality experience while sharing the same site," said Robert D. Yaro, president of Regional Plan Association. "That is why neither facility meets the needs of our great city."

We recommend granting the Garden a permit for 10 years, rather than a permanent right to the site. This would give the metropolitan region sufficient time to consider the best options for both Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, including a number of potential alternative locations for the arena within Manhattan.

Last week, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer recommended just as RPA and MAS did that MSG's permit to operate above Penn Station be limited to a 10-year term. The matter now heads to the City Planning Commission, which is holding a hearing on the permit application on April 10, with a final decision rendered by the City Council in June or July.

On April 19, Regional Plan Association will have a panel discussion at the organization's annual Assembly in New York that will explore in greater detail options for both Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

Email us at newpennstation@rpa.org to find out how to get more involved.
--Wendy Pollack

Hurricane Sandy shed light on the vulnerability of our region's infrastructure systems, including power generation, transmission, distribution and storage. After the storm, rescue and recovery teams worked to restore power and heat to more than 8.5 million customers across the region. Still, some areas of New Jersey, Long Island and Staten Island experienced prolonged power outages. Many generation facilities and transmission pipelines were shut down or operated at reduced capacity for weeks. With little storage capacity and only a small number of fuel sources, New York and New Jersey instituted gasoline rationing until supplies returned to normal levels.

Hurricane Sandy was a pivot point for our region. Well before the storm, we knew that we needed to modernize our energy infrastructure to meet growing demand while reducing carbon emissions to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate. The region has in place aggressive emissions targets and pioneers some of the most innovative programs for alternative infrastructure financing, land use and building specifications and guidelines. But Hurricane Sandy illustrated that we need an energy infrastructure that is reliable, efficient, affordable and resilient to external shocks, such as extreme weather events.

At RPA's annual Assembly on April 19, energy, government and environmental experts will debate these issues at a panel discussion on the power grid. (To learn more and to register, please visit: http://www.rpa.org/assembly/2013/)

What's clear is that to insure that our energy infrastructure can meet these challenges, we will need to make some changes.

Expand our generation capacity. We will need more power generation facilities to meet growing demand for power. Adding new power plants can be costly for utilities, consumers and our environment. An alternative to the existing approach is distributed generation, which sites small-scale electric generation facilities throughout the utility network or at the site where the power is consumed. This can add new generation capacity in a way that minimizes damaging environmental effects.

Diversify our fuel sources. Much of our fuel comes from coal and natural gas. Capitalizing on offshore wind, solar and other renewable power sources available in our region will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, lower our carbon emissions, stabilize or reduce energy costs for consumers and create a system that is more resilient to external shocks such as natural disasters and geopolitical conflict.

Build more transmission lines to connect power to places that need it. Bottlenecks in transmission lines aren't uncommon, and we will require more transmission capacity to meet energy demands. Recent regulatory changes at the federal level ( will open the grid to more competitive development of transmission lines. This will help bring renewables to market while adding redundancy in the transmission system; together, these will improve overall grid reliability and resilience.

Become more efficient in our use of energy. Utilities, public authorities and green building programs have made great strides to enable and incentivize energy efficiency over the past decade. But to meet demand now and in the future, we will need to do more. Advances in demand-response technology, distribution and transmission will help meet this goal. Improving energy efficiency will reduce peak demand, lower carbon emissions, support energy affordability and enhance overall reliability of the grid.

Today's investments will lay the foundation for a power system that is both resilient and affordable.. The energy grid is a largely invisible but crucial foundation to our region's $1.3 trillion economy. These changes won't happen overnight, but will require sustained effort on behalf of many parties who own, operate, regulate and use the grid.

Longtime Park Slope resident Charles Sibirsky remembers that when his kids were growing up in the 1980s, he would tell them to ride their bikes "up on 10th" Street and "down on 8th" Street. They were to avoid 9th Street, the busy, traffic-filled artery clogged with trucks either passing through or making deliveries.

As a resident of the neighborhood, I see a lot of children on bikes these days, usually on the back of parents' bikes but sometimes on their own, heading up and down 9th Street, as trucks and cars swarm around them. I suspect this is because 9th Street now has a bike lane, and so to parents it seems better to use it before a street without one.

Is this is a good idea, though?

Brooklyn's 9th Street bike lane highlights the challenges densely populated cities face when deciding where and how to install dedicated corridors for cyclists. Space, safety and travel demand all play a role, yet sometimes one of those elements winds up getting lower priority.

In the last decade, New York under the leadership of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has put in hundreds of miles of new bike lanes, which are an essential component of their campaign to integrate biking into the city's transportation system. The bike lanes have been a boon to creating not only a more bike-friendly city, but a calmer, more pedestrian-oriented one.

But there is still the question of where to put bike lanes, and what type. In recent years, options for bike-lane design have expanded and they continue to do so.

There are lanes consisting of simple lines marking off a route between parked cars and moving cars, such as on 9th Street. There are completely separate ones that put bikes between curb and a row of parked cars, such as the ones on Second Avenue or Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. There are two-way bike lanes along one side of a major street, such as the one along Prospect Park West or Kent Avenue in Brooklyn. There are minimalist ones, such as on parts of 5th Avenue in Brooklyn, that are simply a picture of a bicyclist painted on the pavement, indicating that bicycles are mixing with regular traffic. There are bike boxes, which allow bicyclists to get in front of traffic at a light. The Netherlands, as usual, has done some excellent work in this area, particularly in experimenting how bikes and cars can make turns without risking collisions.

In New York, bike lanes often are placed on busier, wider central avenues and streets. This means cyclists have more room, but also mix with denser, heavier vehicular traffic.
One idea is that the city could keep the bike lanes as now configured on 9th Street, a central thoroughfare, but designate smaller streets like 8th and 10th as bike streets. This would not necessarily mean formal lanes, but simply signs that alert people to these as options. Or the city could redesign the lanes on 9th Street to segregate the cyclists more from the moving cars. These are many options.

One complicating factor is that the city has fewer through streets than it did 50 or 75 years ago. This is because during the middle of the 20th century, big builder Robert Moses and others plopped housing and other projects into the middle of street grids, creating a blockage in the transportation blood flow. Because of this, often the bigger avenues are the only long through streets, which narrows the options of where to put bike lanes.

Could the city open up some of these smaller streets again?

Whatever the path taken, it's clear that the process of integrating bikes and bikers into the heavy rush of New York City traffic is an iterative one, which will require persistence and experimenting over many years. What's important is that the city and the public stay committed to the process. A healthier and more livable city will be the result.

The city is scheduled to launch bike sharing in May, and this will provide more chances to experiment with that essential medium, the bike lane.

It's hard to see a pattern in the swirl of bills under consideration at Connecticut's Capitol. Legislators are rushing to get placeholder bills in before deadline while assessing the governor's budget proposal, which cuts $1.8 billion in spending over the next two years to deal with the budget deficit. Many bills will die, merge, or transform over the next few weeks as details are worked out.

But it's clear that legislative work will once again address two related issues: improving the transportation system, and finding a way to pay for it. Unfortunately, these efforts are still for the most part disconnected from one another, with the project wishlist far outstripping available funds.

Here is what the legislature is considering:

Many proposed bills are dreaming big about the potential of improvements to the transit system. Several bills require the Department of Transportation to electrify, expand or otherwise improve service along the Metro-North branch lines to Danbury and Waterbury. Currently trains on these lines run only every two to three hours; a frequency too low to support any kind of related economic development near stations. But improvements to both lines already have been studied by state officials. What's needed now are practical solutions to funding the work.

Toward this end, the legislature is once again asking the Department of Transportation to study revenue options for transportation, including re-establishing tolling or implementing congestion pricing. The legislature also recently held an informational hearing on revenue options. (For the record, RPA has testified in support of congestion pricing, which prevents congestion on roadways while raising funds and encouraging the use of transit).

It will take real leadership from both the governor and the legislature to turn these proposals into real programs. Constituents are still concerned that additional revenue slated for transportation will be raided to fill budget gaps elsewhere. Two bills have been introduced that would restrict the revenue of any future increases in transit fares for use only for operating or improving the transit system. There are also bills that ask the Department of Transportation to study the supply of parking at rail stations (again) and to add New Haven-Springfield rail riders to the state's Commuter Council.

As far as improving travel and conditions for those on foot or bike, the "vulnerable user" bill that died in last session's 11th hour will be up for consideration once again. The original version required that drivers who seriously injure or kill pedestrians, cyclists or highway workers attend driving safety classes and community service. Unfortunately it's now at risk of being watered down to only require payment of a fine. The legislature is showing some creativity on how to fund sidewalk improvements, with one bill that will allow towns to pool developer contributions to build sidewalks in key locations instead of piecemeal

While hungry for better transportation, cities, towns and other localities continue to look for more revenue options for a range of needs. Hamden Democrat Brendan Sharkey has taken over as House speaker, and with his leadership should come a continued focus on reducing municipalities' reliance on property taxes, as well regionalizing local services for efficiency and better outcomes. Sharkey comes with a background in planning and urban development. Since he joined the legislature in 2000, he has served as House majority leader and chair of the Planning & Development Committee. He led the smart growth working group back in 2009 that got the ball rolling on these issues. So far, bills have proposed that municipalities be allowed to raise sales, hotel or restaurant taxes or even convert to a land-value taxation system to encourage redevelopment. Unfortunately, Gov. Dan Malloy's proposed phase-out of car taxes will make towns even more dependent on property taxes for income.

It's a different story in Massachusetts, where Gov. Deval Patrick has recently proposed a massive statewide transportation investment plan, committing all sales tax revenues to transportation and other infrastructure while raising income tax by 1% for education needs. The resulting $1 billion per year would allow the state to proceed on rail expansions between Boston, Cape Cod and western Massachusetts, develop a second rail link between western Massachusetts and New York City, rebuild aging highway interchanges and expand Boston's South Station. Whatever the final verdict on Patrick's income tax proposal, he has put together a serious proposal to make progress on modernizing their transportation system. That's more than can be said right now for Connecticut.

Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath have underscored the vulnerability of the region to extreme weather events such as hurricanes and coastal storms. As the region recovers and rebuilds, understanding the costs, benefits and implications of our alternatives to responding to this disaster is imperative.

There are many coastal adaptation strategies that reduce damage and the risk of damage from large storms. These strategies can be site-specific, local or regional in scale. For the most part these tools — such as levees, bulkheads, constructed wetlands and zoning and site plan review powers — are familiar to planners and policy makers. But consensus among governments, planning agencies and the private sector can be difficult to achieve.

The wake of Sandy's devastation has brought attention and political will among these parties. There are many questions and tough decisions ahead: Will the region rebuild in place, and armor its coastline with a combination of "hard" and "soft" infrastructure, or retreat from coastal areas? How can local government best support homeowners and businesses facing decisions about needed improvements and higher insurance premiums?

To help frame and answer those questions, Regional Plan Association recently led a scenario planning exercise that looks at regional resilience to extreme coastal storm events — tropical storms and nor'easters — across four alternative futures. Scenario planning is technique often used by planners in situations — as with coastal storms and climate change - where uncertainty is a critical factor

Our goal is to illustrate the implications of alternative policies and investments in a way that will help decision makers create more resilient coastal communities in the face of an uncertain future. The result will be a framework that will help local and regional planners select the most appropriate coastal adaptation strategies.

Working with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Consensus Building Institute and Bio-Era, RPA convened our partner organizations from the HUD Sustainable Communities Initiatives from New York-Connecticut and North Jersey to participate in this exercise. RPA had established draft parameters based on the frequency and severity of storm events; the degree of activity from local, state and federal government; and possible responses from the marketplace. At the workshop, SCI partners fleshed out these factors and help ensure the scenarios to reflect the situation in their own communities.

Building on coastal adaptation strategies identified by the New York City Department of City Planning, one of our SCI partners, RPA will now identify risk exposures based on coastal geomorphology, land use and critical infrastructure systems. We will test the site-specific, local and regional coastal adaptation strategies across a sample of these exposures under each of four scenarios as to the resulting opportunities and constraints, costs, and co-benefits. The work will be presented at the annual RPA Assembly on April 19.

In many ways, the future of the region has never been more uncertain. The return rate of such severe weather is unclear. The ability of the public sector to undertake long-term improvements and maintenance is in question. The response of the private real estate market to these risks is unknown. As we start down the path of framing a coherent policy and investment response to Sandy, it is critical that this uncertainty be addressed from the start.

Food is to cities what tech was in the 90s: a large, disparate, confusing universe of entrepreneurs and creative types ranging from the tiny DIY young manufacturers at Brooklyn's Smorgasburg to Manhattan's renowned high-end restaurants. And just as Apple was often viewed in the early 90s as quirky and precious, so are many food innovators today.

But like the tech sector, restaurants, markets and food products have often ended up defining neighborhoods and sustaining them. The Smith Street restaurants alerted New Yorkers of a resurgence in Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens long before the rest of the world had heard of Brooklandia. Harlem's restaurants, like Amy Ruth's, helped bolster the neighborhood through the very bad days of the 70s and 80s. The High Line's wild success both built on and now supports the excellent restaurants nearby.

And it's not just restaurants. When the Brooklyn Brewery recently served its beers--to wild applause — in Paris, a French wine exporter told the New York Times, "Parisians adore Brooklyn — they can't get enough of it. It's a brand on its own. It's America. It's New York." Brooklyn's food manufacturers, which generated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2011, sold a quarter of their output outside the borough — and $134 million outside the country, notes a report from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

But despite the importance of food employment (40% of New York's new jobs in the last two years have been in food) and the $30 billion spent annually on food by New Yorkers, New York has been late in officially recognizing food's importance, as London's Mayor Boris Johnson pointed out to Mayor Bloomberg in 2009. London not only had the jump on New York with its extraordinary markets — after all, some go back to medieval times — it was also promoting innovations then virtually unknown in New York, such as urban farming to shorten the food-to-table journey for restaurants.

If New York and the region's food resurgence is to continue, both from a culinary and an industrial point of view, the city, state and region should replicate their food-oriented brethren elsewhere and adapt a number of useful plans.

One is to have some sort of central agency for food plans and policies, whether that's restaurant regulations or wholesale markets. Vancouver and Toronto have set up food policy councils to address industry issues, while Seattle, Portland and London have high-level mayoral offices. Such central offices can help the food industry respond rapidly to problems in land-use planning, zoning, parking restrictions, health regulations, and bridge tolls (98% of food in the region is shipped by truck). Hey, maybe with a little attention, food will be considered a "sector," just like real estate, finance and now, tech.

Another missing component is a wholesale distribution market for regional food, something every other flourishing food region has. Even as the city tries to figure out how to upgrade Hunts Point, it knows the market is fundamentally inadequate. Only 2% of Hunts Point produce is local, according to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and all attempts to modify this have ended in failure. Quinn urges New York to look to Paris and Toronto, and give regional producers a permanent home.

The new upscale chains that have moved into New York — Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, to name two — have bypassed Hunts Point altogether, shipping in their own superior and often local produce. Just five years ago, city residents wanting New Jersey peaches or New York apples bought them mainly at the greenmarkets. Now they are available in good grocery stores — and from suppliers like Fresh Direct. Even Wal-Mart, the nation's largest food seller that is anathema to some community activists, has a corporate policy of reaching out to small and medium-size farmers, says Nevin Cohen, assistant professor of environmental studies at the New School. These suppliers have structured a very efficient distribution system that ignores Hunt's Point, except when they run low on supplies.

Karen Karp, an influential food consultant whose company motto is "good food is good business," argues that "in the last 25 years New York has made itself into a world-class food city, yet it retains an infrastructure from the Dark Ages — decrepit rail, poor roads, outdated water policies." Gov. Cuomo threw down a gauntlet to the region when he announced a $1 million federal grant to support New York's specialty crops and its wine, beer, and spirits industry. Long-term success will require regional cooperation because we are all dependent on a healthy food shed — and food sheds do not recognize state borders.

One asset the city does have is the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which has become New York's most important landlord for food manufacturers. It has some 3.6 million square feet of space in 40 buildings scattered over 300 acres. The yard charges market rents, but its city-owned status exempts tenants from paying property tax, which can be a significant savings. The New York Economic Development Corporation set up the entrepreneurial incubators, creating more than 135,000 square feet of affordable work room for food. The incubators in turn have generated over $20 million in venture capital investment.

It's also true that New York State herbs, Long Island potatoes, Jersey boxwood, Connecticut berries and hundreds of other regional products are among the world's finest, and that New York and the region have made great strides over the last few years in promoting, processing, and distributing regional food. All in all, food is the one subject in which we all have a cultural and economic interest. As historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto comments, "Food has a claim to be considered the world's most important subject. It is what matters most to most people for most of the time."