New York

Manhattan’s borough president and a former mayoral aide propose a plan to get more New Yorkers their boosters.

Published

2 years ago

March 17, 2022

Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, and Dr. Jay Varma, a high well being adviser to former Mayor Invoice de Blasio, known as on town on Wednesday for a plan to encourage New Yorkers to get their booster pictures and defend residents from any future waves of the coronavirus.

The steered plan is pushed by the potential menace of a brand new variant, which might trigger a contemporary rise in instances and hospitalizations and the necessity for extra “forceful” motion, Dr. Varma mentioned.

The plan additionally comes as Mayor Eric Adams has been aggressively selling efforts to rebuild town’s financial system in latest weeks, eradicating the vaccination mandate for indoor actions and masks mandates for colleges. The mayor has additionally been encouraging vacationers to go to New York, telling folks at a latest information convention in Instances Sq. to come back and “spend cash.”

If the plan had been to be adopted, New Yorkers who’ve acquired at the least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine however have but to get a booster would obtain a textual content, an electronic mail and a postcard with a location and an appointment to get the pictures. The plan additionally suggests reinstating the $100 incentive for receiving the booster shot, a program that was launched by Mr. de Blasio and reintroduced by Mr. Adams in February, though it expired on the finish of the month.

“I’m thrilled on the progress we’ve made previously two months and exhilarated by the growing return to regular life in New York Metropolis,” Mr. Levine mentioned in an interview. “We want this.”

The impact of the Omicron wave over the winter was a serious setback for town’s restoration, he mentioned, one which he doesn’t wish to see once more. “There are steps we will take now to organize ourselves, in order that we will blunt the severity of a future wave.”

Constructive take a look at charges, deaths and hospitalizations in New York Metropolis have all fallen in latest weeks, in response to a New York Instances database. A mean of 662 day by day instances had been being reported as of Tuesday, in contrast with greater than 40,000 a day in the course of the peak of the Omicron wave.

Booster pictures have been proven to be 90 % efficient at stopping hospitalization from the Omicron variant, and had been discovered to be particularly helpful in opposition to an infection and dying for folks ages 50 and older. However new metropolis vaccination information exhibits broad disparities amongst residents who’ve acquired their booster pictures.

Nearly half of Manhattan has been boosted, in contrast with solely 27 % within the Bronx. Citywide, whereas 36 % of town’s residents general had acquired their dose as of Tuesday, solely 24 % of Black residents acquired a booster, in contrast with 57 % of Asian and Pacific Islander residents.

Mr. Levine and Dr. Varma’s plan additionally steered broader Covid security measures, calling for town to supply frontline employees and folks in communities hardest hit by the pandemic with “Covid security baggage,” which might include speedy take a look at kits and masks. It additionally means that authorities companies permit extra flexibility for distant work, in addition to set up a brand new program to enhance information assortment on optimistic coronavirus take a look at charges.

In a press release on Wednesday, Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for town’s well being division, mentioned town’s case monitoring system was “consistently evolving” and that the division was open to all suggestions on easy methods to enhance town’s Covid response.

“Knowledge on race and poverty, in addition to different traits, are thought-about in our information and we particularly recognize their prioritization,” he added. “Fairness has been, and should proceed to be, on the middle of the restoration.”

The velocity at which Mr. Adams has relaxed town’s Covid security precautions has fearful some who’ve argued that the vaccination mandate allowed extra folks to really feel safer going out within the metropolis.

In an interview, Dr. Varma mentioned he believed it could be tough to get residents to adjust to the mandates in the event that they had been reinstated. At this level, he added, town ought to deal with stopping as many deaths as doable via an elevated effort to get its residents boosted.

“We have to deal with the issues that authorities completely can and may do,” Dr. Varma mentioned. “To me, that features very focused, directed outreach for folks to get vaccinated.”

New York

We Counted 22,252 Cars to See How Much Congestion Pricing Might Have Made This Morning

Published

6 days ago

July 1, 2024

Press Room

We Counted 22,252 Cars to See How Much Congestion Pricing Might Have Made This Morning

By Ana Ley, Larry Buchanan and Francesca Paris

Ana Ley spent more than 12 hours at M.T.A. board meetings last week. Larry Buchanan, Francesca Paris and 25 of their colleagues spent the morning counting more than 22,000 cars.

July 1, 2024

Today would have been the first Monday of New York City’s congestion pricing plan. Before it was halted by Gov. Kathy Hochul, the plan was designed to rein in some of the nation’s worst traffic while raising a billion dollars for the subway every year, one toll at a time.

A year’s worth of tolls is hard to picture. But what about a day’s worth? What about an hour’s?

To understand how the plan could have worked, we went to the edges of the tolling zone during the first rush hour that the fees would have kicked in.

Here’s what we saw:

Video by Noah Throop/The New York Times; animation by Ruru Kuo/The New York Times

You probably wouldn’t have seen every one of those cars if the program had been allowed to proceed. That’s because officials said the fees would have discouraged some drivers from crossing into the tolled zone, leading to an estimated 17 percent reduction in traffic. (It’s also Monday on a holiday week.)

The above video was just at one crossing point, on Lexington Avenue. We sent 27 people to count vehicles manually at four bridges, four tunnels and nine streets where cars entered the business district. In total, we counted 22,252 cars, trucks, motorcycles and buses between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Monday.

We wanted to see how the dense flow of traffic into the central business district would have generated money in real time.

Though we can’t know that dollar amount precisely, we can hazard a guess. Congestion pricing was commonly referred to as a $15-per-car toll, but it wasn’t so simple. There were going to be smaller fees for taxi trips, credits for the tunnels, heftier charges for trucks and buses, and a number of exemptions.

To try to account for all that fee variance, we used estimates from the firm Replica, which models traffic data, on who enters the business district, as well as records from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and city agencies. We also made a few assumptions where data wasn’t available. We then came up with a ballpark figure for how much the city might have generated in an hour at those toll points.

The total? About $200,000 in tolls for that hour.

Note: The Trinity Place exit from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which would have been tolled, is closed at this hour.

It’s far from a perfect guess. Our vehicle total is definitely an undercount: We counted only the major entrances — bridges, tunnels and 60th Street — which means we missed all the cars that entered the zone by exiting the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive or the West Side Highway.

And our translation into a dollar number is rough. Among many other choices we had to make, we assumed all drivers had E-ZPass — saving them a big surcharge — and we couldn’t distinguish between transit buses and charter buses, so we gave all buses an exemption.

But it does give you a rough sense of scale: It’s a lot of cars, and a lot of money. Over the course of a typical day, hundreds of thousands of vehicles stream into the Manhattan central business district through various crossings.

Trips into tolling district, per Replica estimates

Queens-Midtown Tunnel	50,600
Lincoln Tunnel	49,200
Williamsburg Bridge	27,900
Manhattan Bridge	24,000
Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel	23,100
Queensboro Bridge	21,700
Brooklyn Bridge	17,100
Holland Tunnel	15,400
All other entrances	118,000
Total	347,000

Note: Data counts estimated entrances on a weekday in spring 2023. Source: Replica.

The tolling infrastructure that was installed for the program cost roughly half a billion dollars.

The M.T.A. had planned to use the congestion pricing revenue estimates to secure $15 billion in financing for subway upgrades. Many of those improvement plans have now been suspended.

Methodology

We stationed as many as five counters at some bridges and tunnels to ensure that we counted only cars that directly entered the tolling zone, not those that would have continued onto non-tolled routes.

Our count also excluded certain exempt vehicles like emergency vehicles.

We used estimates of the traffic into the district to make a best guess at how many of each kind of vehicle entered the zone. Most of our estimates came from the traffic data firm Replica, which uses a variety of data sources, including phone location, credit card and census data, to model transportation patterns. Replica estimated that around 58 percent of trips into the central business district on a weekday in spring 2023 were made by private vehicles, 35 percent by taxis or other for-hire vehicles (Uber and Lyft) and the remainder by commercial vehicles.

We also used data on trucks, buses, for-hire vehicles and motorcycles from the M.T.A., the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Department of Transportation.

For simplicity, we assumed all vehicles would be equally likely to enter the zone from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. as they would be in any other hour. We could not account for the other trips that a for-hire vehicle might make once within the tolled zone, only the initial crossing. And we did not include the discount to drivers who make under $50,000, because it would kick in only after 10 trips in a calendar month.

New York

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 30, 2024

Published

1 month ago

June 3, 2024

Press Room

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 30, 2024

-
Jury Deliberation Re-charge
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK CRIMINAL TERM
-
-
PART: 59
Χ
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
-against-
DONALD J. TRUMP,
DEFENDANT.
BEFORE:
Indict. No.
71543-2023
CHARGE
4909
FALSIFYING BUSINESS
RECORDS 1ST DEGREE
JURY TRIAL
100 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
May 30, 2024
HONORABLE JUAN M. MERCHAN
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
APPEARANCES:
FOR THE PEOPLE:
ALVIN BRAGG, JR., ESQ.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW YORK COUNTY
One Hogan Place
New York, New York 10013
BY:
JOSHUA STEINGLASS, ESQ.
MATTHEW COLANGELO,
ESQ.
SUSAN HOFFINGER, ESQ.
CHRISTOPHER CONROY, ESQ.
BECKY MANGOLD, ESQ.
KATHERINE ELLIS, ESQ.
Assistant District Attorneys
BLANCHE LAW
BY:
TODD BLANCHE, ESQ.
EMIL BOVE, ESQ.
KENDRA WHARTON, ESQ.
NECHELES LAW, LLP
BY: SUSAN NECHELES, ESQ.
GEDALIA STERN, ESQ.
Attorneys for the Defendant
SUSAN PEARCE-BATES, RPR, CSR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter
LAURIE EISENBERG, RPR, CSR
LISA KRAMSKY
THERESA MAGNICCARI
Senior Court Reporters
Susan Pearce-Bates, RPR, CCR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter

New York

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 29, 2024

Published

1 month ago

May 31, 2024

Press Room

Transcript of Trump Manhattan Trial, May 29, 2024

SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
COUNTY OF NEW YORK CRIMINAL TERM
-
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
PART: 59
Indict. No.
71543-2023
CHARGE
-against-
DONALD J. TRUMP,
DEFENDANT.
BEFORE:
4815
FALSIFYING BUSINESS
RECORDS 1ST DEGREE
JURY TRIAL
X
100 Centre Street
New York, New York 10013
May 29, 2024
HONORABLE JUAN M. MERCHAN
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
APPEARANCES:
FOR THE
PEOPLE:
ALVIN BRAGG, JR.,
ESQ.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW YORK COUNTY
One Hogan Place
New York, New York 10013
BY:
JOSHUA STEINGLASS, ESQ.
MATTHEW COLANGELO,
ESQ.
SUSAN HOFFINGER, ESQ.
CHRISTOPHER CONROY, ESQ.
BECKY MANGOLD, ESQ.
KATHERINE ELLIS, ESQ.
Assistant District Attorneys
BLANCHE LAW
BY:
TODD BLANCHE, ESQ.
EMIL BOVE, ESQ.
KENDRA WHARTON, ESQ.
NECHELES LAW, LLP
BY: SUSAN NECHELES, ESQ.
Attorneys for the Defendant
SUSAN PEARCE-BATES, RPR, CSR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter
LAURIE EISENBERG, RPR, CSR
LISA KRAMSKY
THERESA MAGNICCARI
Senior Court Reporters
Susan Pearce-Bates,
RPR, CCR, RSA
Principal Court Reporter