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Flatbush cyclists get ready to ride to Summer Streets! (photo courtesy of innocent bystander)

Okay, now I can speak from first-hand experience: Summer Streets, New York City’s experiment with creating a car-free haven for pedestrians and cyclists, is truly fantastic! A group of us departed from Vox Pop Cafe in Flatbush to ride our bikes through Prospect Park and across the Brooklyn Bridge for this historic event. I must say I never thought I’d have the opportunity to cycle through Manhattan - with no fear of cars - from City Hall to 72nd Street; riding through the streets of Soho, around Union Square, under the Met-Life building and up Park Avenue to 72nd Street… it’s just a beautiful thing.

The weather couldn’t have been better (apparently whoever handles such things is a supporter), and the streets were filled with folks enjoying themselves. The question I kept hearing was “Why is it only until 1pm??”

For your viewing pleasure!

This is history in the making, folks. As Gil Peñalosa says in the film, Mayor Bloomberg and (especially!) Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan deserve credit for having the guts to try something new. And as Noah Budnick from Transportation Alternatives points out, traffic is not something that “just happens”… we CAN do something about it. Last Saturday was a BIG moment for New York City!

Summer Streets will be back this Saturday the 16th, and we will host a “feeder” ride from Flatbush. The ride leaves from Vox Pop Cafe (1022 Cortelyou Road at Stratford), and they are offering a Dollar Coffee Special to get your day started!

Due to a MOST unfortunate prior commitment I was unable to attend the historic kickoff of NYC Summer Streets on Saturday… but I did manage to grab a photo (camera phone, sorry!) of the last few precious car-free moments.

Union Square, car-free!

Words cannot describe the excitement of seeing Park Avenue populated with pedestrians and bikes on a beautiful summer day. It may not look like much here (this was literally five minutes before the event’s end), but I’m sure Streetfilms will have plenty of front-line footage up tomorrow! For now, check out coverage from:

- Associated Press
- WCBS
- Gothamist
- NY1

Livable Streets advocates in New York City have dreamed of this for years, and now it’s all happening very fast…

Last week I attended a special hearing of the New York City Council’s Infrastructure Task Force, on the topic of Distributed Energy Generation in NYC - essentially, how to encourage it. Let’s begin by defining Distributed Generation: “Small, modular, decentralized energy systems for heat or power production that are located in or near the place where energy is used” (from Solar One’s event handout). Such systems - solar panels on apartment buildings and factories, wind turbines, fuel cells, co-generation (which captures waste heat from generation of electricity and uses it for heating or cooling) - could be hugely beneficial to New York City, especially by reducing demand on our strained power grid during peak electricity demand in the summertime. Yet there is currently less than 2 megawatts of distributed power in New York City, a micro-drop in the proverbial bucket (our peak demand is 11-12,000 megawatts!). Why is this, what are the potential benefits we are missing out on, and what can we do to encourage more distributed generation? These were the topics addressed at the forum.

Solar One has a great summary of the day’s events, as does the NY Times. Both focus on what for me was perhaps the most meaningful topic raised: the possibility of creating Solar Empowerment Zones in New York City. These would be “designed to scale up solar capacity in the city at an exponential, rather than incremental rate”, by expediting the permit process, assessing the local grid’s capability to have power flow in both directions rather than just one, and encouraging neighbors to plan solar projects together to take advantage of bulk pricing. Members of the panel seemed to agree that the outer boroughs represent great untapped solar potential, with thousands of square feet of flat open roof space on apartments and industrial buildings. I began to envision Flatbush as a Solar Empowerment Zone, with photovoltaic panels springing up on roofs throughout the neighborhood. I can see it! Can you?

City Councilman Simcha Felder (right) with Sustainable Flatbush’s Mark Levy (photo: Flickr)

Mark Levy represented Sustainable Flatbush at Sunday’s Lawn Litter Law press conference, and here’s his report from the event:

It isn’t very often that the steps of City Hall look like my Ditmas Park front porch; but covered with mounds of advertising fliers, menus and other “lawn litter”, there were certain similarities. The lawn litter were props, collected by City Council staff to dramatize Saturday’s start of enforcement of the Unwanted Materials (AKA Lawn Litter) Law, and I was there to participate in a press conference.

As press conferences go, it didn’t look like much of a success. Just City Council Member Simcha Felder (D-Bklyn), playing the ambitious politician and me, playing the colorful neighborhood activist, along with a few of Felder’s staff and a Russian language film crew from Radio Free Europe and two reporters, one from a Brooklyn-based Chinese language news service, one from AM New York.

Felder, a candidate for City Comptroller, first got involved with the fight against unwanted menus and advertising materials when his mother was fined by the Department of Sanitation for lawn litter on her property in Borough Park. He sponsored this law and it finally went into effect on August 2nd. He explained the process to file an affidavit against the distributors.

I explained that as a representative of Sustainable Flatbush, reduction of waste materials is one of our primary goals of promoting sustainability (along with community gardening, livable streets and energy efficiency). I noted that this law is “Good for business, Good for the environment and Good for our neighborhoods” and displayed the affidavit I will file against Kohl’s Department Store for the mounds of junk litter their distributor dumps on my property. This will be the very first one filed.

As a Gothamist commenter noted, at least Mark was dressed for the occasion!

Sustainable Flatbush No Litter Sign

You may have already heard about NYC Summer Streets, the car-free celebration coming up in August. On the 16th we will be hosting a “feeder” ride from Flatbush to join the party, stay tuned for details! For now, enjoy this promo video courtesy of our friends at Streetfilms:

More wisdom from my favorite Soho street vendor:

Barrel of Oil vs. Bubble Gun

Yes folks, the bubble is about to burst!

Barrel of Oil = $142
Bubble Gun = $5

On a hot summer day, which sounds like more fun??

Check out last winter’s version, with oil at $90/barrel…

For those of you who are interested in following New York State environmental politics, a great online resource is Environmental Advocates of New York. I also receive their email alerts, and was pleased to learn that my State Senator, Kevin Parker, supported all four Environmental Super Bills that were being considered in the state legislature this year:

Dear Anne,

Your New York State Senator is one of 18 legislators who showed exceptional leadership when it came to protecting the health of the environment this year by supporting all four of the environmental community’s priority Super Bills.

The Super Bills include:

*The Wetlands Protection Act

*The Bigger Better Bottle Bill

*The Global Warming Pollution Cap/Greenhouse Gas Pollution Control Act

*Net Metering Reforms

Please thank your New York State Senators for supporting these critical measures. Without his or her leadership, these bills may never have gotten as far as they did in the Senate. By taking the time to recognize your Senator’s support of the Super Bills, you’re telling our lawmakers that the environment is an important issue to you and to thousands of New Yorkers across the state. Click here to thank your Senator.

I believe I will! It is important to note that only one of these four Super Bills actually became law (the Net Metering Reforms) so we have a long way to go. More details on the bills, including their Assembly supporters, are available here.

“America must commit to producing 100% of our electricity from cheap, clean renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, within 10 years.”

If you are onboard with Al Gore’s challenge, let Obama, McCain, and your elected officials know by signing the MoveOn petition here. Let’s do this!!

Our Sustainable Flatbush Neighborhood Solar Forum on Wednesday was a great success. This was the first of what I plan to be a series of forums on energy-related topics, and the timing is clearly right: the very next day Al Gore made his speech urging the United States to Repower America – convert our entire electricity grid to carbon-free sources in 10 years. If you haven’t checked this speech out yet, do it now! He minces no words about the urgency of the situation:

…our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges — the economic, environmental and national security crises,” Mr. Gore said. “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that has to change.”

He also points out that the more oil we use the higher the price goes, while the more solar we use the lower the price goes. The goal of our neighborhood solar forums is to inform homeowners interested in solar about the new tax credits and higher net metering limits just passed in New York, and encourage networking so they can share best practices and potentially approach installers as a group to negotiate costs. Stay tuned, we will definitely be doing more of this neighborhood-oriented energy education.