Tag: Infrastructure

Full Steam Under the City

Any visitor or native to the city recognizes the plume of steam trails (often spouting out of orange-white smokestacks in Midtown) escaping from under the city and above the island.  This is the result of a vast steam power and pipe system that crisscrosses Manhattan.

The steam system is operated by Consolidated Edison, the local power company.  Utility customers from Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan have access to the system.  Steam is generated at six small power plants in Manhattan and Queens and is used for heating, cooling, and some industrial processes—including dry cleaning.  It goes through 105 miles of pipes to customers all over the island. The steam is deemed as clean—some Manhattan hospitals use it to sterilize equipment.  The steam is generated as a byproduct of burning oil for power.  Every year, over 20 million pounds of steam is generated for industrial, commercial, and residential use.

The steam system has been in operation since the 1880s.  Although it is constantly being maintained, there have been several notable incidents, such as a major explosion in 2007, which caused a plume of steam to rise higher than the Chrysler Building (meaning it was higher than 1049 feet tall). These incidents are thankfully rare. Steam is used without incidence year round as it helps to alleviate pressure on the city’s power grid.   Natives and visitors to the city often come in contact with this fascinating aspect of Manhattan every day in an indirect manner.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

The George Washington Bridge

The busiest toll crossing in the U.S., the George Washington Bridge sees over 300,000 vehicles and takes in over $1 million in tolls every day.  The bridge forms an important link between New England and the Mid-Atlantic States.   Like our first president, this bridge is stately, unique, and has a firm place in the region’s history.

Designed by Othmar Ammann and Cass Gilbert, the bridge was constructed between 1927 and 1931.  Residents of New York and New Jersey wanted the bridge to be named the “Hudson River Bridge”, but the Port Authority overruled the people and named the bridge after our first president.  At 4,760 feet long, the span was once the largest in the world (until the Golden Gate Bridge was completed).  The bridge was originally supposed to have a stone cladding, but this was cancelled due to the Great Depression making the cladding too expensive.  The bridge originally had six lanes, but this was expanded to eight on the upper deck.  A lower deck carrying six additional lanes was built in 1962.  There is also a bus station that connects Upper Manhattan to nearby locales on the Manhattan side of the bridge.  To keep the bridge in top shape, the Port Authority is beginning a multibillion dollar rehabilitation project in the coming years.

With respect to the George Washington Bridge in popular culture, the bridge is the supporting star of Hildegarde Swift’s beloved children’s book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.  The bridge is also the site of the largest free flying American flag, which is flown from the bridge in the mornings on certain federal holidays.  On random days of the year, the Port Authority also lights up the towers at night with lights (which I personally wish would happen more often).

Not only is the George Washington Bridge an important transportation link, but it also forms a stately entrance into the city.  In time, Sights by Sam hopes to add at least a view of the George Washington Bridge on a tour.  For now, this will be the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Keeping the City Clean

With over eight million people in New York, keeping the city clean is a herculean task.  Every day, 10,500 tons of trash and 1760 tons of recyclables are collected for disposal or reprocessing by the city.   An additional 13,000 tons is collected from businesses or commercial buildings by private waste haulers.  The refuse is mostly exported to Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia, among other states.  With garbage disposal becoming the single largest line-item expense on the municipal budget and legislators in destination states looking to tighten the importation of refuse into their states, the city is seeking to create no landfill waste by 2030.  The results of this initiative remain to be seen.

Like many large cities around the world, New York’s problem with waste has been a constant problem through its entire history.  In the colonial era, citizens allowed pigs to roam free on the streets to help keep refuse at bay.  This did not work well as disease epidemics were rampant during the colonial era as a result of uncollected refuse and unclean conditions.  While commercial and wealthier areas hired private companies to cart garbage away, most of the streets of the city were covered in assorted filth.  Citizens of the city had been resigned to this nasty circumstance as a fact of life—especially in poorer areas like the Lower East Side.  Unified garbage collection was started when the city formed a Department of Sanitation (DSNY, founded as the Department of Street Cleaning) in the 1880s.  In 1894, George Waring was appointed commissioner.  During his tenure, the city really cleaned up as the department was reorganized along military lines and the city given a good cleaning.

The DSNY works around the clock to keep the city clean with 2230 sanitation vehicles, 450 mechanical brooms used to sweep the streets, and 7,200 workers who keep the city clean.  A deposit law in New York State also encourages people to turn in recyclables (and led to an army of “canners” collecting discarded beverage containers all over the city).  Since no neighborhood wants to exclusively host trash facilities, DSNY garages and transfer stations are interspersed throughout the city, even in more upmarket areas such as the Upper East Side and Chelsea.  As mentioned earlier, there are no landfills in the city, although ones existed at Fresh Kills in Staten Island and Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn (two of the more apt names for landfill locations, even though “kill” is Dutch for creek).  While you will probably only see a garbage truck or two or a sanitation team on a Sights by Sam  tour, it is important to remember where your waste goes while in the city.

An Olympic Performance for New York

The Olympic games occur every four years and are not surprisingly a symbol of great prestige for the host city.  In recent years, the cost of hosting the game has attracted great scrutiny due to corruption scandals in international athletic federations and the willingness of authoritarian regimes to spend money on sporting mega events with little to no public accountability.  In the U.S., Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Lake Placid, NY, and St. Louis have all hosted the games.  Denver turned down the offer of the games after taxpayers in Colorado turned down a tax increase while Chicago failed in its bid to get the 2016 Olympic Games.  New York also failed to get the Olympics in 2012, but the ramifications of the failed bid are still felt in the city today—and not in a negative way.

For the 2012 bid, the initial plan was to have the Olympic Stadium on the West Side over the Penn Station rail yards—to be turned over to the New York Jets NFL team after the games (and to be used as the site for several Super Bowls).  When this failed to get approval, the city decided to move the stadium to Queens—on the site of where Citi Field is now.  The Olympic Village was to be constructed in Queens as well.  Several areas such as Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and the Javits Convention Center were to be used as well.  Bids were submitted in 2003 to the International Olympic Committee.  New York ended up placing third on the list of Olympic finalists—ultimately losing to London in 2005.  Opposition to the original Olympic stadium location was led by the owners of Madison Square Garden, who feared that a new stadium would take away from their venue.  It was argued by opponents of the bid that the games would have brought greater traffic and worries about terrorism in one of the most crowded cities in the world already.

The city reaped several intangible and tangible benefits from its abortive bid to host the games—an extension of the 7 Line, the development of millions of square feet of commercial and retail space in the Hudson Yards complex, and new residential space in Queens.  Additionally, a massive rezoning of the city in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan that was approved at the same time helped to develop derelict areas.  While this is commendable in working to house new residents and help the tax coffers of the city, longtime residents of some of the areas have been priced out of their neighborhoods.  The Olympic games may yet be hosted in New York as there is talk that the state government is exploring a bid for a future games.  Already an international city as the headquarters of the United Nations and with people from every corner of the world, the Olympics may bring even greater prestige to the city—or more traffic depending on the opinions of some.

While hosting an Olympic event can bring great prestige to a city (and also great challenges), it has been argued that New York’s failed bid helped to bring improvements to the city.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Busing Around New York–A Short Guide

Every day, millions of people in New York take to the streets to get from point A to point B to work, play, or sightsee.  Among the well known symbols of the city are its subways that operate every day at all hours and the fleet of over 13,000 yellow taxis that ply the streets looking for fares.  Arguably the unsung heroes of the city’s transportation system are the buses that ferry travelers around the city.  This entry will deal exclusively with the city buses and related transit, not with the large intercity buses that come into Port Authority Bus Terminal or the George Washington Bridge Bus Station.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) manages 307 bus routes that encompass all five boroughs.  Before the consolidation of bus operations by the MTA, independent operators and then the City of New York operated bus lines.  Many of the bus lines cover former streetcar routes, especially in Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Bus routes—with a few exceptions—tend to stay within the city limits and are prefixed by the borough that they primarily serve (B=Brooklyn, Bx=Bronx, M=Manhattan, Q=Queens, and S=Staten Island).  There are also express buses between boroughs (prefixed with X).  Bus fare mirrors subway fare and is payable via a Metrocard or coins (buses do not accept cash because the coins are collected from fareboxes via a vacuum cleaner and this would shred paper money).  In the coming years, MTA is looking to add buses that allow customers to use wifi and have outlets for electronic devices.

Supplementing the city buses in certain areas of the city are smaller buses that are privately owned but connecting certain communities in the city together.  The most famous of these are the buses that go between the three New York Chinatowns (these are not the intercity Chinatown buses that go up and down the East Coast and beyond).  At terminal points such as under the Manhattan Bridge or near 8th Avenue in Brooklyn, these smaller, white-with-red Chinese lettered van sized vehicles convey mainly Chinese Americans between Flushing in Queens, Manhattan Chinatown, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.  The fare is comparable to the subway and many regular riders feel that it gets them to their destination quicker than the subway.  Similar services exist that connect Latino or West Indian areas together.  In some areas with large Hasidic Jewish populations, there are buses that convey people between neighborhoods with high populations of Hasidic Jews.  In other communities, private operators have taken it upon themselves to ply routes down former bus lines that were cancelled.

While it is not the most romantic form of transportation in the city, the bus systems form a needed link in the city and are especially important if going crosstown in Manhattan or traveling to some areas of the city (such as some sections of the Bronx or Staten Island) where subway service is thin under the ground.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.

Water Water Everywhere

On a hot day, it becomes apparent that water, needed to sustain all life, is essential for any city to function.  New York is no different.  Every day, the city consumes 1.1 billion gallons of water.  For the great city to survive, water is needed.  It should be noted that most of the water is not consumed by people or animals, but used for food preparation, cleaning, industry, or by home appliances (such as washing machines, toilets, and baths/showers).

From Native American settlement to the early antebellum eras, people depended on water from wells, freshwater lakes (the Collect Pond), or freshwater streams (Minetta Creek).  When industries in the city expanded, mills needed water to run turbines and breweries and tanneries needed water for industrial purposes, contaminating the Collect Pond and other freshwater sources.  The development of the city also caused streams such as Minetta Creek to be built over.  With the nearby rivers undrinkable because they are estuarine (salt and freshwater mix) and with the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery, water needed to be found.  Many citizens dug their own wells, paid water vendors who trucked in water from other areas (at an exorbitant cost), or drank beer (which is fermented and cleaner compared to normal water back then).  Something had to be done as the city kept growing.

In 1842, the Croton Reservoir opened at the current location of the New York Public Library’s Main Building in Midtown.  This structure was in use between 1842 and 1899 and held 20 million gallons that entered the city using a gravity-fed aqueduct system from Westchester County, NY.  Access to a reliable water supply also led to Brooklyn joining New York City in 1898 as the City of Brooklyn’s aquifers became contaminated and undrinkable.  With the city still growing, a more permanent solution was found—three water tunnels were completed in 1917, 1936, and the third one (a supporting actor in the 1995 film Die Hard With a Vengeance) is to be completed some time in the 2020s.  The water comes from reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains and is drawn to the city by gravity for hundreds of miles before being disinfected and entering the city’s general water supply.  In order to help maintain the supply of water, a city ordinance mandates that all buildings over six stories have wooden water tanks (so as not to taint the water).  These tanks can often hold 10,000 gallons and are often hidden in skyscrapers and tall buildings (such as the spires on the San Remo residences in the Upper West Side).  Until very recently, the reservoir in Central Park served as a back up water supply in case of an issue with the city’s water.

Water quality is maintained via testing sites at the reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains, the city’s water treatment plants, and along the water pipes themselves (those are the gray/silver boxes that say “NYC WATER” on them).  In order to keep the city hydrated, the city government has invested billions of dollars to upgrade water infrastructure and stop leaky pipes and incentivize more efficient fixtures.  In the meantime, natives and visitors enjoy what is widely considered to be the finest tap water for a major city in the U.S.—if not the world (some people feel this is why the bagels, pizza, and doughnuts taste better in New York when compared to other cities).  The next time you drink a glass of tap water, think of the journey the water has made and the role it has in keeping the city and its people alive.  This is the type of information you will learn on a Sights by Sam tour.