Articles by

jake schabas

Jake Schabas, Writer-New York: Born in Toronto, Canada, Jake is a graduate student of urban planning at Columbia University and holds a B.A. from the University of King’s College in Contemporary Studies and English. He is increasingly entranced by New York City where he currently lives, especially its transportation. Jake is the co-founder of Spacing Atlantic, a contributing editor to Spacing Magazine, and is the editor of URBAN Magazine, Columbia University’s planning program magazine.

 
Architecture
06/25/12 3:47pm

On Data and Cities: New York City, measuring-up

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Welcome back to the Untapped Cities partnership with  Gehl Institute  in Copenhagen, looking at the impact of data, both open and collected, in the design of cities.

Copenhagen isn’t the only city in love with data. I don’t think anyone would call New York the happiest city in the world, but when it comes to innovation, an endless litany of press releases, non-profit reports and studies have for several years honed in on this city’s obsession with innovation. Whether it’s in government policies, infrastructure and programs, policies are usually far reaching and often carry political undertones ”” a key difference from Copenhagen’s more subtle and sensitive approaches.

While we haven’t spotted any specially crafted pizza-box garbage bins here in New York yet, there are plenty of other examples of how data is shaping the way the city’s pavement, parks and policies are designed. From the government’s focus on economic development to citizen interest in potholes, transportation and civil rights, our new access to numbers is transforming how New Yorkers accomplish their city-building goals.

Taking a page from Gehl Architects, the part of Mayor Bloomberg’s administration to most explicitly embrace data-informed design has been the Department of Transportation. Attend any community board meeting where the DOT is presenting a new street design and the first thing to be mentioned is how numbers are driving their work. Whether it’s the startlingly high accident fatalities on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard ”” 13 deaths since 2006 compared to 2 and 3 on neighboring Lenox Avenue and Fredrick Douglas Boulevard ”” where they are implementing new pedestrian islands and reducing thru-lanes, or the huge number of people using mid-block pedestrian walkways in Midtown where the DOT is building a series of cross-walks, data is both a means and an ends to increasing the safety of New York’s streets  through a feedback loop of measuring and testing and measuring and refining.

But it’s not just government agencies taking the lead; citizens are activating new technology to achieve policy changes. In 2006, following Streetsblog’s breaking news story on rampant illegal parking by city employees with government placards allowing them to park for free, OpenPlans and Transportation alternatives launched UncivilServants.org. The site allowed individuals to submit pictures of cars using government placards to illegally park on sidewalks, in bike lanes and other unsafe places, attracting 100,000 visits and the media in its first week. OpenPlans has also helped to start recent trials of real time bus tracking and has developed open source tools to help citizens better analyze 311 data.

The City’s Parks department is also getting onto the data bandwagon. Over the last few years, Parks has created a GIS database that maps every tree in Brooklyn ”” the only Borough to so far have had this done. Together with a team of Columbia University graduate students from the School of International and Public Affairs, Parks is pairing 311 complaints regarding tree pruning with this new data on trees so as to better schedule tree pruning to neighborhoods most at risk. While this might sound like technical tweaking, it holds the promise to save the City millions of dollars in maintenance, accident and property damage claims, and maybe even save a few lives. Not to mention keeping our streets tree-lined and beautiful.

Perhaps the most well-known pioneering use of spatial data to drive urban policy is in policing. CompStat, first tried in New York City in the 1990s under William Bratton, followed in the tradition of Charles Booth by mapping where crime was happening as a way of better deploying law enforcement resources. Today this policy has denigrated to what is known as ‘Stop-and-frisk,’ where certain areas and groups of people are regularly pulled aside or briefly thrown in jail without cause in order to check their criminal records and search their person. In a startling reversal, civic activists are finally turning the tables on this use of data, developing apps to easily film police officers who take part in ‘stop-and-frisk’ to ensure there is just cause for these stops and that individuals are treated respectfully.

It should come as no surprise that these data-oriented approaches to influencing policy have occurred under a Mayor who made his career culling numbers. But its easily forgotten that behind all the math is a clear statement of a vision for a better city ”” PlaNYC 2030 ”” that is driving these government policies and provoking citizen responses. Rather than getting lost in all the data, these documents collectively keep our heads above water so we can design the kind of city we want to live in. And that should make us happy too.

See Gehl’s Institute’s article: “Copenhagen–Governed with People in Mind.”

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Arts & Culture
05/09/12 8:57am

The Tug Pegasus & Waterfront Museum Barge

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Historic photo of No. 79 barge circa 1940s from David Sharps, Waterfront Museum

Untapped Cities is an official blog ambassador for  Partners  in  Preservation  , a community-based initiative by  American Express  and the  National Trust for Historic  Preservation  to raise awareness of the importance of historic places. Stay up-to-date with Untapped’s coverage of all 40 sites by following our  Partners  in  Preservation  category.

A relic of New York’s industrial heritage is parked near Manhattan’s most modern neighborhood. Framed by shining Battery Park City condos and Freedom Tower cranes, the wooden Lehigh Valley Railroad Barge No. 79 and Tug Pegasus docked at Pier 25 on the Hudson River present a striking contrast to today’s  city. Now operating as the Waterfront Museum, the No. 79 and Tug Pegasus are an anachronism, reflective of the Lighterage Era (1860-1960) – before metal shipping containers, when goods were transported in wooden barges from large ships to rail terminals on shore – that transformed New York City from merely the largest New World port to a 20th  century global metropolis.

Probably the last remaining all-wooden Hudson River railroad barge still afloat, the No. 79 was once one of over 5000 similar barges filling the New York Harbor in the 1930s and 1940s with life. Tugboats like the Pegasus escorted these barges from ships moored in the harbor to the shore as they transported coffee, sugar, rice, dates – “anything you could put in a burlap bag,” according to its owner – to the hundreds of waiting Stevedores ready to unload the cargo onto rail cars. In the case of the No. 79, bags would be loaded onto Lehigh Valley cars, one of thirteen private railroad companies operating in the harbor, and sent through northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania into upstate New York.

The No. 89, a barge built slightly after the No. 79, traveling up the Gowanus Canal,with the Culver Viaduct G and F Subway line in the background circa. 1940s (from David Sharps, Waterfront Museum

During the early 19th century, barges like the No. 79 were the lifeblood of New York’s economy, facilitating trade and providing job opportunities for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants arriving on its shores. As a result, Manhattan’s shorelines were ringed with wooden piers from the Upper West Side around to the Upper East Side, as were the shorelines of Brooklyn and New Jersey.

Today, the 98-year-old barge is the lifeblood of a different sort. Rescued and rehabilitated by David Sharps, a former circus performer who discovered   a mud-caked No. 79, today the barge has been restored and operates as a museum and performance space. His spider-veined cheeks speak of a life lived on the water, from commercial cruise ships to house boats on the Seine to the No. 79, which he discovered in the mud flats near Jersey City among the ruins of hundreds of wooden barges. Normally parked in Red Hook, for another week both the No. 79 and Tug Pegasus Waterfront Museum will be parked at Pier 25 on the Hudson River, just north of Battery Park City.

The Lehigh Valley No. 79 and Tug Pegasus docked on the Hudson River

In terms of the revitalization of New York’s waterfront, David was way ahead of the curb. As in the early 1900s, the barge is a live-work space for David and his family who live below the main deck and in a cozy back room with piano, kitchen, Macbook and all. Meanwhile, since its opening in 1986 the museum has attracted over a million New Yorkers to the water’s edge. Much has changed since then, particularly the water quality. Once called the “Clean Harbor” by captains for the polluted harbor’s ability to clean all living things from the hull of their boats, today better water has meant the return of woodworms that eat through the barge’s side, making preservation no easy task.

The kitchen and exhibition space inside the no. 79

The Tug Pegasus has held up better, operating continuously from 1907 to 1997, moving barges and other ships through the harbor. Now retired, Captain Pamela Hepburn – probably the first woman to be a licensed New York harbor captain, she thinks – tugs only the No. 79, taking it from Red Hook to Hudson River Park as well as on occasional tours as far as Jersey City.   With a 600 horsepower General Motors engine from the 1950s below deck and nautical charts above, the Pegasus still remains functional and seaworthy despite being over a century old.

The underside of the Tug Pegasus with Captain Pamela Hepburn

Showing me around, both David and Captain Pam quickly made their respective beds as they took me through each ship’s living quarters. A portico used to sit atop the No. 79 where the barge operator and family would live. These were removed when hydraulic lifts replaced Stevedores, requiring the large beams in the middle of the deck that supported the room to be removed. As a result, the No. 79’s open dimensions today provide a great performance space where David hosts book launches, concerts, art exhibits and kids workshops. The Pegasus is more utilitarian, mostly filled with motor-related equipment except for a beautiful dining table, number-tiled kitchen and four galley beds stacked against the wall below deck.

The Pegasus Kitchen

A bedroom in the No. 79

The main area inside the No. 79

As New York City’s first-ever citywide grassroots  preservation  effort, the call-to-action program will enlist the aid of all New Yorkers, and anyone who loves New York, to  vote online  to allocate $3 million dollars to the  preservation  projects most important to them. Make the Tug Pegasus and Waterfront Museum Barge one of these projects.

Click  here  to vote for the Tug Pegasus and Waterfront Museum Barge, and find out more about the Museum @MuseumBarge  and  Facebook.  Follow Untapped Cities on  Twitter  and  Facebook. Get  in  touch with the author @jakeschabas.

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New York
10/05/11 8:00am

Building Transit Today: The #7 Line Extension

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This is the second feature in a series on the MTA’s three largest megaprojects: the Second Avenue Subway, #7 Line Extension and East Side Access construction projects.
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The 7 Line extension is notable for many things. For one, the project is the foundation for one of the largest redevelopment projects in New York City’s history, known as the Hudson Yards Redevelopment. Secondly, the MTA isn’t paying a cent for its construction: all funds are coming through the City via the future property tax revenues that the Hudson Yards Redevelopment projects are expected to generate, a financing method known as tax increment financing (TIF). Thirdly, since New Jersey Governor Christie canceled the Access to the Region’s Core project (ARC), the #7 Line extension might one day evolve into the first underwater trans-Hudson connection between Manhattan and New Jersey to be built since the opening of the Lincoln Tunnel in 1937.

I was taken on a tour of this quickly progressing project, which is much closer to completion than either the Second Ave Subway or East Side Access projects. To see the construction, we were lowered about 100 feet down the main access shaft in a metal cage to the front of the new station being built at 34th Street and 11th Ave.

The new station will be unlike any other in the entire system due to its size and style. For starters, the new station will be far deeper than most stations since the extension needs to avoid the Lincoln Tunnel which passes over a portion of the line. The 34th Street stop will also have a concourse level above the platform with triple width staircases accessing extra-wide station platforms below. With all the development planned for the Hudson Yards project, including a 100-story skyscraper directly east of the station, MTA estimates the new #7 line terminus will be the busiest station in the entire system by 2025.

The 1.5 mile tunnel from Times Square connects to the almost completed station platforms directly below the concourse. To bore the tunnel, a different method was used than the cast-in-place technique used on the Second Ave Subway where construction workers follow the tunnel boring machine (TBM) installing metal ribs. There the engineers think the rock needs reinforcing before sealing it with a waterproof PVC membrane and concrete coating. The #7 Line extension is using a pre-cast concrete and rubber gasket method where interlocking pre-cast concrete pieces are fitted together like a jig-saw puzzle and tightened into place to create waterproof ‘pipe’ inside the rock tunnel.

Originally, a second station had been planned further up the line at 10th Ave and 41st Street but it was canceled due to a lack of funds. Other shortcomings such as the fact that the 34th Street station will only have two entrance/exit points, both of which emerge significantly east of 11th Ave rather than near to the Javits Convention Center or Hudson Ferries also have to do with funding. While convenient for the developers building east of 11th, this is a major blow for the many new residents who will one day live further north in West Midtown, for commuters who use the ferry service, and for anyone ever visiting the Javits Convention Center.

With construction almost eleven months ahead of schedule, there’s the possibility that the extension will begin fare service by the end of 2013, just in time for Mayor Bloomberg to cut the ribbon before his term, and supposedly his time as Mayor ends. The price tag for the entire project is just over $2 billion.

Check out the previous article in this series inside the 2nd Ave Subway construction. Next up: the East Side Access project.

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New York
10/04/11 8:00am

Building Transit Today: The Second Avenue Subway

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Over the next week, Untapped New York will be publishing a series on the MTA’s three megaprojects: the Second Avenue Subway, 7 Line Extension and East Side Access construction projects.
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Few subway lines have a mythology to them like the 2nd  Avenue Subway. The A Train has a jazz standard, the 7 Line has the ‘International Express’ nickname for passing through so many ethnic communities, but no subway line has so storied a history before even going into service.

First proposed in 1929, the line was meant to replace the 2nd  Avenue and 3rd  Avenue Elevated lines that were eventually torn down in 1942 and 1956. First delayed by the Great Depression and World War Two, construction actually began in 1972 at 103rd  Street and 2nd  Avennue only to be stopped again by the city’s fiscal crisis 1975.

With the 2nd  and 3rd  Ave Els gone, this left the Lexington 4/5/6 line as the only subway serving Manhattan’s upper east side, which had been upzoned in the 1960s in anticipation of a second subway serving the area. Today, the line carries 1.3 million riders a day, the daily ridership of of the subway systems in Boston, Chicago and San Francisco combined.

In April 2007, MTA restarted construction on “Phase One” of the  2nd Ave Subway: between 96th  Street and 63rd  Street. With all tunnel work for Phase One wrapping up just last week, I got a chance to go down inside the 96th  street station site and adjacent tunnels to the south. Currently, the 2nd Ave Subway is one of only three subway projects under construction in the United States and Canada (not counting light rail), the other two being the #7 Line Extension in West Midtown and the Spadina Subway Extension in Toronto.

As we walked over to the entrance, our MTA Capital Construction guide pointed out the 100 foot rebar that was being lowered into the station. Once set in place, concrete would be poured in to make up the station walls, displacing a ‘slurry mixture’ that is a technique used to help ensure the concrete sets right.

Off the street, we descended about 85 feet on a scaffold staircase to a depth slightly below where the tracks would rest. From that vantage point, all the utilities used by the buildings above–gas pipes, water mains, electrical wiring, sewers, substations, all of which had to be rebuilt during the construction–jutted across the cavern just below street level.

With the tunneling only just finished, Manhattan’s famous schist was on full display, at times braced by massive iron ribs. Ventilation tubes were still snaking their way into both tunnels where they extended right to the 63rd  Street Station where the tunnel boring machine nicknamed ‘ADI’ emerged out of the east tunnel right into the station just last week.

96th Street Station on the  2nd Ave line is expected to be used by an estimated 213,000 riders every day. The Q train will run up from 63rd Street Station, stopping at 72nd, 86th and 96th stations with the new T line will begin service upon completion of phase two. While originally planned to have four tracks, the T line is now only being constructed with two. However, with fewer, more spaced apart stations, an express track isn’t quite as necessary as it is on lines with more closely spaced stations.

Phase one is on pace to be completed in December 2016 and has a total price tag of $4.45 billion. Phase two will extend the line north to 125th  Street where it will link up with the Lexington line. Phase three will extend the line south to Houston Street, with phase for taking it to its final destination point at Hanover Square for a total of 8.5 route miles and 16 new stations.

All photos taken by Jake Schabas, with historical information from Second Ave. Sagas. Stay tuned for exclusive photos of the  7 Line Extension and East Side Access construction projects coming this week.  

Architecture
08/11/11 7:57am

Into the wild: Paddling Jamaica Bay

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The Brooklyn waterfront isn’t always the first borough that comes to mind when one thinks of paddling in New York City.  Kayaking and canoeing seem disproportionately concentrated in Manhattan aside from a few well-known outer-borough exceptions like the “Paddle the Bronx River” event.

Instead, Brooklyn’s most polluted post-industrial waterways like Newtown Creek or the recently ‘awarded’ superfund site around the Gowanus canal usually grab all the headlines. The free kayaking offered by Brooklyn Bridge Park last year aimed to change that perception by reconnecting the borough to its 30-mile waterfront.

Overshadowed has been the long-time efforts of the Sebago Canoe Club, a 78-year-old boating club in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Tucked away on a quiet piece of shoreline along the Paerdegat Basin (pronounced Pa-da-gat), on first glance the volunteer run 501c(3) nonprofit has the weathered-look of a long closed down container yard. Faded signs, overgrown grass and a chain-locked main gate comprise the view from the street, with freight containers and a long driveway about all that can be seen from outside.


Sebago Canoe Club front gate

But walk through the driveway gate to a small clubhouse on a Saturday morning, as we did last weekend for one of their bi-weekly “open paddles,” and the scene is far different. The containers are jam packed with boats, mostly one-man kayaks, and the clubhouse has a well-used kitchen and locker room. By 9am, the place is crawling with paddlers, both experienced and new.


Freight containers filled with kayaks

Unlike the East and Hudson rivers, Jamaica Bay is wild. At 16,000 acres, it holds the title of being New York City’s largest open space–19 times larger than Central Park–and is the only national park in the country accessible by subway via Broad Channel on the A train. Over 9000 acres of the bay is an established wildlife refuge where salt marshes, beaches and brackish water ponds are home to over 300 birds, including osprey.

On our paddle, the group leaders took us around Paerdegat Basin, under the Belt Parkway and out to a sandy point about a mile away on the Mill Basin. There were plenty of birds to see, although the only ones I could name were the 747s constantly cruising over us on the way to nearby JFK Airport. Engines and the highway’s drone aside, the city feels very far away.


Paerdegat Basin


Passing under the Belt Parkway into Jamaica Bay


Oyster shells on the beach in Mill Basin


Airplane on its way to JFK

While the club is private, it is actively taking on new members and pushing its guided paddles, which happen Saturday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Although most members seem to drive, Sebago Canoe Club is easily accessible by transit via the 2 or 5 train to Flatbush Ave/Brooklyn College and a short ride on the B103 limited. Alternatively, you can take the B6 bus either from Canarsie Rockaway Parkway station at the end of the L or from Ave J on the Q.

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Architecture
08/08/11 11:27am

The most powerful block in NYC that you’ve never heard of

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It’s the most powerful address in New York City you’ve never heard of.   One false move and the entire city stops dead in its tracks. Not East 88th  and East End Avenue, the traditional home of New York’s mayor, or 11 Wall Street where profit-driven twenty and thirty-somethings play games with the world’s economy. Not even a certain stretch of Prospect Park West, where a vindictive former DOT commissioner and her Senator husband plot the destruction of one of the City’s most popular bike lanes.

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