Upper Green Side

A Dose of Decongestant for Our Neighborhoods

The Upper East and Upper West Sides of Manhattan are some of the most densely populated and most traffic congested areas of our city. But the two are not necessarily linked. While we have a lot of people living very closely together, very few in fact own cars and even greater rarity are local residents that use their car daily. So where do all the cars come from? Not here!

In our Transportation Survey we found that about a quarter of local residents own cars and most use them less than 5 times a week. I’ve looked through quite of bit of traffic data about our neighborhood and during the average workday, there are hundreds of thousands trips made by automobiles through our neighborhood, but as best I can measure less than 10% (and probably closer to 5%) of all automobile trips in our neighborhoods are made by local residents.

Local residents report walking and mass transit (buses, subways) as their primary means of getting around. This is actually a function of our density and mixed-use zoning. Because of our density, mass transit is feasible. Because of our zoning, you can walk to a nearby restaurants, grocery & pharmacy stores and many other types of venues to satisfy everyday needs.

Think of many low density suburbs where mass transit is infrequent or non-existant and you can walk for miles (where there is even a sidewalk) and only find residential housing. If you don’t have a car out there, you can’t really get around.

With the advent of the Congestion Pricing plan approved by a vote of 13-2 by the State Commission on Traffic Congestion, our neighborhoods have a chance to breathe easier and reap the benefits of our walking, mass transit riding and our general low use of automobiles. By charging more for automobile users from other areas to drive through our neighborhoods, less of them will drive here and create traffic congestion. The money collected from those willing to pay the charge will go to transit improvements which can take even more people. In that way, changing automobiles more can not only act like a powerful decongestant, but it can dramatically improve our quality of life over the long term.

Putting Rodents on the Run

This week, Community Board is having a forum on how the Upper East Side can better prevent infestations of rodents in the neighborhood. On January 24, 2008 at the NY Blood Center, 310 East 67th Street, (First-Second), Auditorium they will have a forum entitled “Rodents on the Run: What You Can Do To Combat Rats and Other Vermin”.

The proliferation of rats and other vermin can be linked to a lot of different sources, but perhaps the most obvious cause is right in front of us everyday - large piles of trash bags on our sidewalks, overflowing public trash cans on streets and in parks that can be easily be torn or chewed through by rodents. About a third of our trash is “organic matter” - in other words, “food” to rodents. One way to reduce the amount of organic matter in our trash available to rodents would be to compost as much as possible in sturdy anaerobic compost bins that could be placed on rooftops, backyards or even in city parks. This would help reduce the overall waste-load considerably as much of the weight in our organic waste is just moisture trapped inside. It would also provide our parks, gardens and other green spaces with local supply of high quality soil.

Another way to reduce rodent access to our food waste would be to place as much of that waste into hard containers, like the Big Belly Solar bins that can hold over 10 times the amount of trash as a regular trash can on the street.

Or what about just plain old trash cans and other hard shelled containers that could store trash - maybe even on the street instead of the sidewalk. For the price of a couple of parking spots per block, we could unclog our sidewalks from stinky piles of trash that block pedestrians, elderly with walkers and baby carriages from passage on our sidewalks.

Come with your ideas to the forum on Thursday and help our neighborhood put Rodents on the Run!!

Upper Green Side Now Official 501c3 Non-Profit

Upper Green Side received some good news today as we received our confirmation from the IRS that we are now an official 501c3 non-profit. This means that we can receive tax deductible donations from individuals, foundations and other organizations. It also means that we have a responsibility to manage our activites and budget closer. Upper Green Side’s board of directors will be meeting soon to discuss plans for the rest of this year and next.

Our primary mission is to educate local residents on the Upper East and Upper West Sides of Manhattan on how they can become more environmentally friendly, addressing sustainable local & organic food, clean transportation, energy efficiency, and waste reduction.

We need your tax deductible donations to help put us on sound financial footing for the future. If you would like to donate to our cause, please send a check to

Upper Green Side
PO BOX 656
New York, NY 10028

Thanks in advance for your support!

Understanding PlaNYC 2030 at the Community Level

Upper Green Side applauds the Bloomberg Administration’s focus and leadership on environmental issues through it’s PlaNYC 2030 initiatives. On May 7th the Upper Green Side board unanimously voted to support the Mayor’s PlaNYC 2030 initiatives including congestion pricing.

The entire plan is staggering both in the array of issues and the time scale involved. It is expected that much of this will probably be modified over time as different stakeholders provide more specific input at their community level. That is why it is so important for local community members to make sure that when these initiatives are implemented in our community that they not only achieve the desired environmental and sustainability goals, but also fit the needs of the community to improve quality of life.

Upper Green Side is committed to making sure that local environmental voices are heard as the PlaNYC initiatives are rolled out at the community. This month, instead of having our regular monthly meeting, we are inviting all our members to attend a information session on PlaNYC hosted by Citizen’s Committee for NYC.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 6:30 PM
Citizen’s for NYC offices
305 Seventh Avenue, between 27th and 28th 15th Floor
New York, NY 10001

We hope everyone concerned about environmental issues at the community level can come out to learn more and see how we can make a difference in shaping PlaNYC in the Upper East and West Sides - in making them both Upper Green Sides!

UGS Makes Team Effort for Streetfair Success

Today, Upper Green Side was given a booth at the Church of the Holy Trinity’s MayFair street festival. They had live music, good food, lots of interesting vendors and an all around wonderful atmosphere.

This day was truly a team effort by Upper Green Side volunteers. Jane made all the phone calls to reserve the place at the streetfair. Sarah arranged for the brochures to be printed in time. She brought them to Alex, who delivered us her table for us to use for the day along with the brochures. I manned the booth from 9-12.

Then Emily and Jodi joined me at from noon until 2pm. We talked to Frank, who is a super at a nearby building about all the energy efficiency changes he’s made in his buildling. Then Michelle helped out from 2-4pm. Finally, Dave and Karen (with her dog Brisztow) covered us through the home stretch until we cleaned up at 5pm.

Upper Green Side gave out all of our 120 copies of our new color brochure, a hot commodity. We also distributed over 50 bike maps, 100 Bike Month Calendars and 100 of the Sierra Club’s energy efficiency pledge cards.

Even more important than the numbers of flyers we distributed was all the interesting conversation we had with local people about everyday environmentalism. Many people proudly announced the changes they had made in their lives to be more environmentally friendly, like replacing their old incandescents with cool and efficient compact fluorescents.

Thanks to everyone for making today such a great success.

Pedestrian and Bike Safety Forum - May 1st 7pm

Community Board 8 will be sponsoring a forum to discuss ways to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety. They will have a panel of experts presenting their ideas on this topic. Upper Green Side will present some of the results of our transportation survey which showed strong support for reducing the number of cars, installing bike lanes and increasing pedestrian safety at intersections and elsewhere.

When:
Tuesday, May 1, 2007, 7:00 PM
Where:
NY Blood Center
310 East 67th Street (Bet. 1st & 2nd)
New York , NY 10028

Please come to support walking and biking as pollution free alternative transportation modes.

UGS Joins Sierra Club’s Cool Neighborhoods Effort on West Side

Upper Green Side will be hosting it’s first meeting on the Upper West Side to help the New York City Sierra Club Chapter kick-off it’s “Cool Neighborhoods” campaign to encourage local residents to reduce their personal energy consumption and greenhouse gases and form the nucleus of volunteers for an Upper Green Side chapter on the Upper West Side.

Monday May 7th at 7pm
Cosi - 2160 Broadway corner of 76th Street
Downstairs Eating Area
Continue reading UGS Joins Sierra Club’s Cool Neighborhoods Effort on West Side…

Mayor Bloomberg’s Sustainability Plan

Mayor Bloomberg has announced a new sustainability plan to make NYC more environmentally friendly in a bold initiative that will define his last two hundred days in office.

I make this promise to you: I will not spend my last 984 days in office pretending that all is fine and leaving these challenges to the next mayor, who may well pass them off to his or her successor. And we – the residents of a city that is a beacon to the world – will not abdicate our responsibility to that world. That’s not leadership. Leadership is about recognizing challenges and seizing opportunities. And we are going to seize this opportunity – to lead the way forward and create the first environmentally sustainable 21st century city.

I highly recommend reading through the speech or the whole report if you get a chance or you can focus on a few of the different sections on Land, Water, Transportation, Energy and Air.

There are many innovative ideas from congestion pricing, to planting a million new trees to cleaning up contaminated land, significantly reducing sewage output into our rivers and harbor and making a goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 30% by the year 2030, all while the city adds another million people.

It’s an ambitious plan that deserves thoughtful study by all levels of government to bring to fruition. For the rest of us, this is yet another reason to believe that all our hard work in raising awareness of the issues is making a difference. But the Mayor or any government agency cannot build a sustainable society through law and administrative procedures alone. It will take a dedicated public effort to make sure that we achieve the goals of this initiative.

Help Us Find Homes for Trees

How can you place a price on something as beautiful and majestic as a tree in the midst of our urban environment? “Priceless” many would say about the trees out their doors and windows that have been constant companions over the years.

The Parks Department has a more precise answer as reported in the NY Times:

$122 million in annual benefits from the 592,130 of NYC’s street trees from higher real estate values to lower Summer cooling costs and of course the carbon that they sequester from the atmosphere. That’s over $200k per tree.

Another way that the Parks Department has calculated the value to the city is the Return On Investment of tree planting and maintance on city streets. The ROI is $5.60 per dollar spent on street trees.
Continue reading Help Us Find Homes for Trees…

Roosevelt Island Queensboro Bridge Access?

Roosevelt Island’s Old Connection to the Queensboro Bridge (Elevator Building 1916)

Last night, representatives from the Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA)and the Roosevelt Island Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) made a presentation to Community Board 8 to physically connect Roosevelt Island to the Queensboro Bridge pedestrian and bike path. This is not a new concept. There used to be electric trolleys going over the Queensboro bridge and there was a stop at Roosevelt Island halfway across the bridge. People would then walk across to a building that had a number of elevators. These elevators were so big that they could fit trucks and automobiles that supplied the island.

The Transportation Committee unanimously approved the recommendation of the RIRA to recommend that the city conduct a feasibility study of pedestrian access to the Queensboro bridge and determine how evacuation of the island could be enhanced by this.

Below is the speech that was given by Ellen Polivy, President of the RIRA and a new member of Community Board 8.
Continue reading Roosevelt Island Queensboro Bridge Access?…