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Seen & Heard: Legislation to Limit Tour Buses
••• From a press release: “Council Member Margaret S. Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer pushed forward legislation to limit the number of sightseeing tour buses clogging crowded city streets, polluting our air, and threatening the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.” Ring a bell? “First introduced in 2015, the reintroduced legislation, Intro 725, would require the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs to provide reasonable limits to the number of sightseeing tour buses operating on increasingly crowded city streets. Over the past few years, the number of sightseeing tour buses—often traveling empty of passengers—has vacillated greatly from a high of 237 in 2016 to 197 today. Unlike almost every other type of license issued by the Department of Consumer Affairs, there currently is no limit to the number of licenses issued to sightseeing bus companies.” While we’re at it, perhaps we could encourage the NYPD to enforce regulations on Chinatown buses, which seem to do whatever they like.
••• The other morning, I spotted Raymond from West Broadway Cleaners (at Warren) putting a plastic bag in the garbage can on the corner. He said it’s a DSNY program: They ask businesses if they’d be willing to take on the chore, just to help make the sidewalks cleaner. Gold star for anyone who participates!
••• I hadn’t been to the Saturday Tribeca Greenmarket in a while, so I didn’t realize that there was a new vegetable vendor: Solid Ground Farm of Kingston, N.Y. The guy said that he’s there every other week in winter (so his next visit would be March 31). He had root vegetables and, more exciting, pea shoots and arugula.
••• There’s a new event space in town, rentable for short periods or long ones: Tribeca Spaceship on Lispenard. The layout can be customized to your needs, and the space isn’t as blue as it looks here. (My camera didn’t react well to the LED light.)
••• Press release: Paul Nicklen Gallery on W. Broadway, in Soho, “will host an adoption event on March 25 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. with Best Friends Animal Society and Social Tees Animal Rescue. This event will offer the adoption of cats and dogs from the two organizations, with the backdrop of an animal and conservation-focused fine art gallery (with a portion of proceeds from Paul Nicklen Gallery fine art sales going to SeaLegacy).”
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The greens from Solid Ground Farm are pretty good. The spinach, in particular, was delicious.
Does anyone remember when the WTC tour bus garage was supposed to open? Not that I believe it will help the situation at all, but it seems past due. This morning there were two humongous tour buses from Wisconsin double-parked and unloading on South End Avenue, with enough people to completely block the sidewalk. The key words are “reasonable limits.” At one time they were supposed to be parking in NJ and taking the train in, which sounds reasonable to me.
The bus parking at WTC is only for those that have tickets to the memorial museum and pay for it. It will not help the neighborhood for buses that drop off for a look at the memorial fountains or walk arounds. It is a drop in the bucket.
I may be wrong, but I thought that a bus depot was rejected as part of the development of the site. Instead, we have 2 spots available for bus parking on West Street that are by reservation. Obviously, this was stupid and short-sighted and no one in their right mind thought this was going to work. What does that mean for residents? We get to inhale fumes of idling buses parked illegally or just circling our neighborhood. Also that “The Ride” bus is absurd. It always has less than 20 people on it. If we enforced the rules, residents might get some relief, but it doesn’t seem to be on any one’s radar. The bill Brewer and Chin hope to pass is not anywhere near what the neighborhood needs. So many other cities just created “no bus zones” to manage traffic and pollution, but it seems in NYC, bus operators have deepish pockets.
Unless things changed after I threw up my hands in disgust at the process and stopped paying attention, it wasn’t rejected, but downsized to the point where it will merely be useless, which is why I said “not that I believe it will help the situation.” I have sent pix of the aforementioned Wisconsinites to CB1 and will send them to Chin and Brewer (the pix, not the Wisconsinites).
I find that tour bus photo deeply disturbing. I must be watching too many zombie movies/shows.