Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we will take a look into the prices of congestion, now that it takes the four months. We will also look at a lawsuit that challenges rental properties in a hotel that offered rooms at locations such as Airbnb.
And later today, this week’s edition of our Limited-Run newsletter about the Race for Mayor You will be away from members of our political team. They will watch the 30-second television commercial that cost the campaign of former government Andrew Cuomo $ 622,000, and they will demystify the ranking.
It is difficult to change habits, but congestie prices have done it.
My colleagues looked at all the ways of Measuring the difference prices of the difference has been made What they could think of. They concluded that the charging of drivers $ 9 to enter Manhattan, have achieved the two main objectives of the program: reducing congestion and generating the income for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
There are fewer cars. There are less car accidents and fewer injuries. There are more passengers on massive transit, in taxis and on Citi Bikes. There was $ 45 million in net turnover in March, which put the program on pace to generate around $ 500 million in the first year.
There is still some grumbling, but congeste prizes have become part of life in New York, even while the Trump government continues its efforts to kill it.
The traffic moves faster in Manhattan, just like buses. House from New Jersey are also faster. And there are other plus points: traffic has not risen in the South Bronx, where community groups had worried that Tol-Aarse drivers would displace the roads. Traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway had fallen slightly from January to April, compared to last year, according to the New York State Department of Transportation. Speeds rose by around 2 to 3 percent during working hours on weekdays.
But enough of the macro perspective. What about the microSpective? Three of my colleagues decided Discover it through the streets – specifically one street.
They chose Bleecker Street because it is in the heart of the congestion price zone, which starts at 60th Street and runs to the battery, the southernmost point in Manhattan. “Bleecker also seemed a good place to ask because it is a very busy corridor where people walk, cycle and drive – and it is close to metro lines,” said Winnie Hu, one of the three reporters, me. “It is also a destination for the locals and visitors. People come to Bleecker Street because they know John’s Pizzeria, they know Murray’s Cheese, they know Pasticceria Rocco.” But there is more in Bleecker Street than pizza plates and markets. Filling in the photo is a charter school, a church, a small park and expensive boutiques that help make the backbone of a neighborhood.
Their informal survey found complaints about higher delivery costs, but most companies said they did it. Of the 40 companies with which the reporters recorded contact, 25 said that congestie prices had not had a significant impact. Ten said they were injured by congestie prizes. Four said it had helped. One would not say.
“I was surprised that there were no more arguments about congestie prizes,” Winnie told me. “People still don’t like it, but they started accepting it because they have no choice. And there are so many things to worry about now – rates, inflation, food prices. Congi -prizes are still one thing.”
Or, like Kevin Jackson, the manager of John’s Pizzeria, said, the conversation went on. He said that congestie prices remained ‘a bitter pill’ and that he was still against it. He said it had increased the delivery costs, but less than he expected and not enough to increase the prices. An example: A beer distributor has added congestion costs of $ 5 per barrel. That amounts to an extra $ 65 a week.
A little more than 100 feet away, an owner of O. Ottomanelli & Sons, a meat market, said that congeste prizes this year were behind a decrease in customers of 20 percent. He said his customer base now included fewer drivers from New Jersey. They called in advance and picked up their orders.
But congestie prices have stimulated a store that sells folding bikes that can be worn on trains and can be stored under agencies, so that cyclists can prevent the problem from finding places to lock bicycles of conventional size during the working day. The bikes that are sold by the store, Brompton Junction, are not cheap: they sell for more than $ 1,100. Crystal Aguilar, a sales technician there, said that more people came in to view the inventory.
Weather
Expect cloudy skies and showers with a high around 70 degrees. In the evening rain will continue with a low point around 60.
Alternative
In fact until 26 May (Memorial Day).
The last metro news
City focuses on short -term rental in a new lawsuit
A hotel in Greenwich Village with various safety violations that rooms offered at locations such as Airbnb has become the first test of a new law that is in the short term rental.
City officials said in A lawsuit tightened on Monday That the hotel, in -centra Village House, was actually an illegally converted apartment building that was not approved as a hotel. The city said that in -centra did not have the right alarms and sprinklers, including fire safety violations.
My colleague Mihir Zaveri writes that the lawsuit was the first to have been filed by the city since a statute known as Local Law 18 In essence, forbidden short -term rental of less than 30 days, unless the host is present. Companies such as Airbnb powerful fought The law. The number of mentions posted on such platforms dived after it came into force in 2023.
Incentra is a boutique hotel with rooms mentioned on its website for as high as $ 617 on Monday, excluding city and state tax and the hotel room tax tax. According to the court case, it has fought the city to remain open in recent years.
One room, the Stonewall room called in a nod to the Stonewall Inn, was an “illegally created unsafe basement room,” said the court case. The Stonewall room was only accessible via a rickety staircase, and a guest said that it “had no way of escaping, if something could happen.” The city wants to close the hotel and force the owner to repair the violations.
The hotel did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Before the law came into force, the city estimated that there were around 10,800 Airbnb offers that were illegal short-term rental. City officials said on Monday that since the law came into force, the city had approved more than 3,000 registrations for legal short -term rental. But some homeowners complain that the city is too hard by forbidding them to do what they want with their houses.
Best diary:
He pushed the oval bowl to us, a perfectly clean column with cream that waited on the edge of the board, an arrow made from Ladyfingers and Mascarpone immediately pointed to our hearts.
Assumed, we looked at him, then at the face of the bartender, who evolved from confusion to worship.
“Here,” said the stranger with whom I had been shoulder shoulder when we ate an Italian supper on a Saturday night in Carroll Gardens. He gestured to his plate Tiramisu (well, our record from Tiramisu). “You try it.”
Only a few minutes earlier I had gestured with my eyes to the plate while I longed for my friend in my breath.
We two had shared a regrettable, long -lasting look: we should have had a dessert. Now we were offered the last bite of someone else’s.
I was almost afraid of asking the bartender for a spoon. Was this kind of parts allowed?
Before I could think too hard, shiny silver spoons rested on the counter and then stroked in our hands, and then zinc in the custard with the grace of an Olympic diver, and then satisfactorily, in our open mouth.
It turned out to be the father of the owner every morning and made the tiramisu by hand.
– Jordana Hope Bornstein
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here And Read more Great Diary here.
Glad we can come here together. See you tomorrow. – JB
Ps here is today Mini -cross word silly And Game match. You can find all our puzzles here.
Natasha Cornelissen and Ed Shanahan today contributed to New York. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
- Advertisement -
