Monday, January 8, 2024
Sunny. High 43 degrees.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
For its “Smart Curbs” pilot program on the UWS, the NYC Department of Transportation will gather feedback on curb-related issues like double parking, truck deliveries, and parking availability, through public workshops held this week: Monday, January 8 – In-Person Workshop, P.S. 9 Sarah Anderson, 100 West 84th Street, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. No advance registration required; and Wednesday, January 10 – Virtual Workshop Zoom, registration required. Participants can register for the workshop at: https://bit.ly/SmartCurbsUWS, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
Snow officially fell in New York City this weekend. Not enough, though.
A wintery storm traveled through the Tri-state area on Saturday and Sunday, and while some parts of the state saw more than a foot of snow, the five boroughs did not.
A total of 0.2 inches of snow fell in Central Park over the weekend as of noon on Sunday. That minuscule number means the city has had less than an inch of snow since February 2022. The one-inch mark has not been broken in Central Park for 693 days, which is the longest snow drought since the statistic has been tracked.
Here are the five nearby areas that saw the most snowfall as of noon on Sunday.
- Plattekill in Ulster County, N.Y., with 14.6″
- Port Jervis in Orange County, N.Y. with 13.1″
- Wantage in Sussex County, N.J., with 13.0″
- Unionville in Orange County, N.Y. with 12.4″
- Blairstown in Warren County, N.J. with 10.5″
If you were able to snap any good photos of the flurries in the neighborhood, please send them to info@westsiderag.com
Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer spoke out last week against the incoming women’s homeless shelter at the former Calhoun School building at 160 West 74th Street.
“Big $ investment to convert historic school into homeless shelter,” Brewer wrote on X. “Should become permanent affordable housing instead. City-funded shelter more profitable to developer? Problematic & many unanswered questions.”
It is not the first time that Brewer has called for an incoming shelter to become permanent affordable housing instead. She has also said a shelter slated to open on West 59th Street in 2025 should be used for affordable housing.
Documents show that Brewer’s office was notified of the incoming West 74th Street shelter on December 14, the same day as Community Board 7, according to Patch.
Brewer’s request to the Department of Social Services for additional information about the deal that took place between Bayrock Capital, the new owner of the West 74th Street building, and the city has not received an answer, the councilmember’s office told West Side Rag.
Additionally, on December 18, the Rag reached out to the Department of Social Services asking for the contract details and the lease between the city and Bayrock Capital for the shelter. We have not received an answer in the 21 days since. At the time of the sale in the summer of 2023 between Bayrock and the Calhoun School, the investment firm said it would be converting the building into apartments.
You can read more on the latest updates regarding the West 74th Street shelter — HERE.
In some important health-related news, Mount Sinai hospitals are no longer in-network for those insured through United Healthcare, including plans offered through its Oxford brand.
That means people with United Healthcare will not receive coverage at neighborhood hospitals Mount Sinai Morningside, at 419 W 114th Street, and at Mount Sinai West, at 1000 Tenth Avenue.
The dropped coverage has to do with a contract dispute between Mount Sinai and United Healthcare. You can read a breakdown of both side’s stances and claims — HERE.
UPDATE:As pointed out by a commenter, thanks Karen, people who have Medicare Advantage through United Health will still receive coverage within the Mount Sinai network, including AARP Medicare Supplement, and United Medicare Advantage plans.
While it is not the most unique of favorites, the window of snow this weekend brought my brain to the famous James Joyce passage.
“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.
“It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
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Regarding the Mt. Sinai-United Health issue, it does not apply to those who have Medicare Supplement through United Health. See the 4th FAQ here: https://keepmountsinai.org/frequently-asked-questions-2/
Go to Presbyterian instead.
Thank you for the link, Karen.
According to your link, it also does NOT affect those with a Medicare Advantage plan through UnitedHealthcare. So nobody who gets Medicare coverage through UnitedHealthcare is affected. The exception is that Medicaid plans (including Medicare/Medicaid) through UnitedHealthcare have not had Mt Sinai coverage since 1/1/23.
Thank you! I was just trying to log in to Mt. Sinai to find that info!
The DOT “workshop” tonight is very important to attend. Our community has been under assault for years by Transportation Alternatives and their pro-bike, anti-car, anti-working class agenda. They have been working hand in hand with DOT and bought off politicians for years without any real input from the community. They have made our neighborhood less safe and it is time for everyone to stand up to these outside astroturfed groups and say ENOUGH!
Do we care about our actual neighbors and families, especially the lower-income ones and their ability to work, visit family, vacation or simply being able to leave the city when something like a pandemic strikes that owning a car enables or is car ownership and its benefits only to be available to those wealthy enough to afford over $1,000 for a garage so that their trips to the Hamptons in their BMWs are easy and convenient? Riding a bike to work is the ultimate in privilege!
Do we care about emergency vehicles having access to our homes and for the elderly to be able to be supported? We live between two world-famous parks. We do not need our streets to be a playgrounds as well. The policies of DOT in collusion with TA has resulted in more traffic and more pollution causing far more harm to all of us while they have not reduced traffic accidents or fatalities at all!
Why does DOT and TA think that multi-billion dollar companies needs should be placed ahead of residents? These are the same companies that keep delivery workers as independent workers avoiding the associated taxes and liabilities of employees. These companies should be restricted to the existing commercial avenues. Clearing curb space for them is not necessary.
There should not be a single new initiative or “test” regarding the use of curb space in our area until Residential Parking, a system in place in virtually every major US city is implemented and evaluated.
Attend the meeting!
Bill. Please join NYC- EVSA. We are 500 people, including 60 plus victims of e vehicle crashes. We are making a difference. We have had major legislation written. I’d love to discuss.
NYC-EVSA@outlook.com is my email.
Janet Schroeder
NYC-EVSA
Co-founder
Just reading the comments on the DOT feedback map, its clear that residents are overwhelmingly against the “clean slate” approach (in other words, losing many parking spaces) to this pilot program. Sadly, I am worried that the fix is in and DOT is going to go ahead with this anyways.
Remember that any time you hear the buzzwords “PRIVATE CAR STORAGE”, you are being fed propaganda from the anti-car lobby (i.e. Transportation Alternatives, Open Plans).
To anyone who is concerned about losing vital residential parking spaces., it is important that you show up to this in-person workshop (tonight at 6:30pm at PS9 on West 84th Street) to let your voices be heard.
Residential parking is a Transportation Alternatives wet dream. First they’ll push permits to charge for whatever parking spaces are left. They’ll take away more and more parking while raising permit fees, then after they’re through with that, they’ll argue that people who own cars should garage them and those who have curbside parking are rich and privileged and shouldn’t park on the street at all. The bike lobby is great at incrementalism and those who support any form of residential permits are playing right into their hands.
I am not a Transportation Alternatives radical. But the response of car owners to congestion pricing and these curb pilots has convinced me that we need to radically change our city’s relationship with cars.
Storing cars on sidewalks for nothing or next-to-nothing is not always the best use of public space. Street parking only started in the late 1940s. There are other ways to configure streets.
Only 20% of Manhattanites own a car, and only about 5% are considered working class or low income. This was the finding based on years of environmental review. But the mentality that this small group of people is entitled to store their machinery on public space for a very low per-square-foot rate is really turning me off.
Strip city employees of their parking privileges! Why should they be treated better than those who pay their wages?
72RDS:
Some do not realize how many building workers such as supers, maintenance staff etc live far away and not near transit – and must drive in.
Plus long hours.
For example, there is a super who covers several small West Side buildings.
The new trash rules have also lengthened his day.
I never really understood this argument. Everyone gets to choose where they live and we all make tradeoffs when we do so. We would all love to have more space, pay less money, and have a better commute. People who live here in the neighborhood have chosen to pay more and have less space in order to have access to a short commute on public transportation. If you live further out you are definitely paying less per square foot and the trade off is that you have a longer commute. You can’t choose to live in a neighborhood where you get more for your money and then complain that you don’t have an easy commute too. Everyone makes the choices that they make.
That argument is nonsense. There is only so much sacrifice you can expect out of people. Using transit is a sacrifice, people are weary of sacrifices, especially after COVID. At the end of the day the UWS needs people who make a longer commute. Do you want to pay workers in the neighborhood enough money to live comfortably on the UWS? Are you willing to pay more in goods and services to be able to have workers be more amenable to living here? Are you willing to accept politics on the UWS shifting to the right because people who live farther out now finally are willing to buy a condo in this neighborhood/
Building workers shouldn’t be more entitled than others to a parking spot.
Boris
I personally don’t know how to drive.
But I am completely OK with having parking for hard-working people like building workers, teachers….
A lot of people work hard, not just building workers and teachers. Once you start making carve-outs, the system is broken.
This is true. One staff member in my building drives in daily from Pennsylvania. In addition to gas and upkeep on his car, is he also supposed to pay to park in a garage or for hourly street metered parking somewhere that’s nowhere near the building?
If he’s that essential to you and your building, why don’t y’all pay for his spot in a garage. His reason for parking is not superior to anyone else’s.
Correction: storing cars on *streets* next to sidewalks for next to nothing. Hopefully no one is suggesting storing cars on sidewalks! 🙂
Storing cars on streets is fine. It facilitates commerce, it is a subsidy for transit that would otherwise cost more money for the government to subsidize. NJ already loses a lot of money from residents who commute to work in NY (who not only get a higher commuter rail subsidy per ride, but don’t pay NJ income taxes because of the credits given to NJ residents working in NY). Already advocates like Riders Alliance already hate on those that don’t live near a subway or gentrifying neighborhoods.
Also concerned that the bicycle lobby has worked against MTA bus mass transit.
It is unbelievable that DOT has allowed “open streets” on avenues with bus routes thereby forcing bus rerouting.
The bicycle lobby has backed this street closure even though it harms bus riders and the bus system in general.
I work on the UWS and live in Whitestone and ride the QM2 express bus to the UWS every day. The bike lobby has made it worse for express bus riders. In the name of vision zero they rerouted our bus back to Queens in 2015 adding 30 minutes to the commute. They also changed the traffic light order on Northern Boulevard in Queens making it slower, even with the new bus lane, the 34th Avenue open streets is displacing traffic onto other roads which has added an additional hour at times to my commute from before Vision Zero. Honestly driving is faster than taking the express bus or taking two trains and a bus to reach the UWS from Whitestone.
Gale, you have flooded the UWS with homeless and immigrant and drug shelters. Enough is enough. Please convert to regular market rate housing.
I have friends on the UES who laugh at us, how our reps allow, if not encourage, the City to pack the neighborhood with these social service initiative. Councilwoman Julie Menin would be screaming and effectively organizing to protect her area from oversaturation…and in the end, it would not happen on the UES.
Unfortunately we don’t have a representative like Julie Menin for the UWS. I don’t understand how Gale was re-elected. I have been living here for a few years and see how the neighborhood has changed and the make up of people walking around. I do feel unsafe walking around.
Her constituents donate to Gale’s causes so that the shelters come to this side!
She is the first to raise her hand to bring new ones in and then she can do nothing to stop the ones that the city places despite her letters. Maybe she could be less inviting to the voluntary ones knowing that there will likely be ones that get dumped on us. Luxury housing OR Homeless Shelters. Talk about Tale Of Two Cities. Mid-income housing takes more than a letter.
Menin’s Chief of Staff Jonathan Szott used to work for both Peter Vallone and Paul Vallone, two Queens Councilmembers who would NEVER allow what goes on in Manhattan.
And thank you, Gus, for the quote from Joyce’s “The Dead.”
Time for universal healthcare y’all!
James Joyce passage on snow: Thank you for that.
The ending of James Joyce’s great short story “The Dead” is well known but not so well known is its source. Joyce appropriated (not plagiarized quite) the language and prose rhythms from the opening of an 1876 Brete Harte novel. But Joyce wasn’t trying to disguise the fact–Harte’s novel is titled “Gabriel Conroy,” the same name Joyce gave to his main character in the story. Appropriation can sometimes get you far.
“Riding a bike to work is the ultimate privilege.” That’s very funny! True, but maybe not in the way you intended.
Thank you for your James Joyce quote from The Dead. It is one of my favorite Joyce passages in one of his best stories. May it send readers to the original.
Thinking about this more……
Really disturbing that West Side bus service keeps getting worse due to both State MTA funding and City DOT traffic decisions.
For example, splitting the M5 into the M5 and M55; reduced bus frequency; separating the M5 and M104 bus stop at 72nd St to accommodate TJ’s and other examples.
City DOT (City contributes to the MTA) keeps spending on expanding the bike infrastructure – and making traffic decisions that worsen bus transit.
Or what about how the M104 was cut back along 42nd Street.
As an FYI for parking costs at NYCHA housing.
The pricing for NYCHA parking in Manhattan for NYCHA residents is $75 for non-reserved, $340 for reserved outdoor and $538 for reserved indoor (there are further discounts on top of that).
The above prices are annual.
The question of free curbside parking then maybe all parking should be revisited that is subsidized.
What’s the rationale for subsidizing the parking costs for residents of subsidized housing?
I pointed this out when the congestion pricing experts were stating that people really could not afford the real price of a curbside parking permit. A curbside parking permit would be $1,000s of dollars.
I said what about these off street parking spaces. So are we stating that NYCHA residents have more of a right to parking? They are paying as low as $75/yr (and as much as half with further discounts applied) for unreserved parking that is still better then curbside parking). They are guaranteed a space and they do not need to alternate side park. So why would you penalize street parkers by charging more than $75/yr.
It has been stated that no one has a right to have parking, so if that is the case then these spaces should be at market or the cost of a curbside permit should be less than $75 not $1,000s as stated.
I couldn’t have a reasonable conversation about parking costs. I tried to point out that a parking permit for curbside parking should t be more than garage parking costs, There is a known upper bound and the upper bound is not as high as claimed.
Everyone in NYC/Manhattan should pay the same for parking, so if it is subsidized for some it shouldn’t be severely discounted for others.
As stated no one has the right to have a car in Manhattan the space it takes up is too valuable.
So make it all the same (except private garages).
FYI NYCHA has 21,000 parking spaces across the city
Thanks so much for the James Joyce “The Dead”
According to Google, the address of Mount Sinai Morningside is 419 W 114th S.
111 Amsterdam is the address of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Thank you, fixed.
Things are tough all over…
Cigna is about to drop Sloan Kettering from their network.
https://nypost.com/2024/01/07/metro/sloan-kettering-cancer-patients-sick-over-threat-of-losing-medical-coverage-under-insurer-cigna/