We’re not ready for the next Sandy.
Ten years ago on Oct. 29, the superstorm with the beachy name made landfall in New York City, destroying hundreds of homes, killing dozens and grinding the city’s economy to a halt. The storm also upended the city’s transportation landscape, with subway flooding so severe that the system needed days to recover. The superstorm’s path of destruction and the resulting gridlock and transportation problems meant that the city and state also needed to think about how to prepare for the next storm, and think they did in the form of series of reports, one each from researchers at NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
The reports came from different areas of civil society, but all three touched on some of the same conclusions on how to be prepared for the next superstorm and future flooding: flood prevention in and around the subway system, bus and bike priority infrastructure to help pick up the slack for a disabled subway system, improved subway access and technology, and, more ferries. But 10 years after the storm, how have the city and state fared in actually taking the advice of Cuomo’s “NYS2100 Commission,” Bloomberg’s “A Stronger, More Resilient New York” and the Rudin Center’s “Transportation During and After Sandy“?
Cuomo and Bloomberg’s reports didn’t only encompass transportation issues, but did spend plenty of time talking about how to ensure people could get around during an emergency, while the Rudin Center report, as per its title, focused on transportation issues only.
How well did the reports do in staking out territory? Quite well. How well did our leaders to in implementing the recommendations? Well, our system doesn’t make long-term accomplishments very easy. As such, we’re not there yet.
“There’s a lot more that needs to happen on the long-term commitments and improvements to infrastructure,” said Regional Plan Association Senior Researcher Marcel Negret. “That’s that’s where the real difference will happen. You can only get so far with the short-term things.”
Our short political cycles have hindered us from creating a long-term plan to deal with the reality of climate change, and the pressure is on. ?? https://t.co/yLpQOWJpMi
— Antonio Reynoso (@BKBPReynoso) October 25, 2022
The city’s and state’s failures to follow the report recommendations also meant the region is fighting a two-front war against flooding related to climate change.
“In our Ten Years After Sandy report, our office demonstrated that nearly 80% of our transportation and utility land lies in the 100-year floodplain,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “While these decade old reports only did risk assessments on coastal storm surges, our subway and street networks are extremely vulnerable to heavy rains and flash flooding as Hurricane Ida demonstrated,” The climate crisis is moving faster than we are and our transportation network needs to be shored up against increasingly intense storms,”
So here’s a report card of how well we’re doing:
Bus Rapid Transit
Cuomo’s panel of experts wrote that the then-new Select Bus Service was a good start for both high-speed buses and public transit redundancy, but the state needed to upgrade the SBS system into a “true” bus rapid transit system that would be as effective as “a train on rubber wheels.” SBS did expand in New York, but the big idea of a bus rapid transit system with physically separate bus lanes has never managed to take root.
For Cuomo, the NYS2100 report was the last time he ever put his name on an idea for SBS or BRT service as opposed to aesthetically pleasing buses.
The Rudin Center and Mayor Bloomberg also…