The good news is that extremely capable people are working on the impact of climate change on mass transit. The bad news is . . .

Columbia University geophysicist Klaus Jacob ("an expert on urban environmental disasters" is how he was described last year by the Village Voice's Elizabeth Dwoskin, who had profiled him in 2008) is seen here talking about the impact of climate change on the area around Brooklyn's legendarily polluted Gowanus Canal. Jacob was one of the distinguished participants in last night's "Planet Under Pressure: Climate Change and Mass Transit" panel at the New York Transit Museum.

by Ken

It probably was a tiny reflection of the Planet Under Pressure, er, festivities (not the right word, I'm sure) in London, which began Monday and wound up today, but last night the New York Transit Museum pitched in with a gathering of three outstandingly and diversely qualified experts for a "Planet Under Pressure: Climate Change and Mass Transit" panel moderated by journalist Andrea Bernstein, a specialist in transportation issues (she's director of the public radio Transportation Nation project).

For me it was a good news-bad news kind of deal. As I just wrote in a note to Howie: "The problem isn't that the people working on the subject are incompetent or misdirected. On the contrary, the three people on last night's panel seemed fantastically competent, and are actually working on real-world projects. The problem is the resources available to deal with the problem are a tiny fraction of what's needed, and the prospect of significantly augmenting them is roughly zero -- and getting lower every day in the America of Defiantly Resolute Denial of Reality."

But to return to the good news for a moment. The panel members are doing good and important work from their respective vantage points: Klaus Jacob as a research scientist who has spent a lot of years looking closely at the impact of environmental change, including what can be and is being done to adapt to it; Projjal Dutta, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's director of sustainability initiatives, whose job includes applying such financial resources as are available to the task of making the system as prepared as possible for the new climate realities; and David Bragdon, director of the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, which makes him overseer of PlaNYC 2030, created by the Bloomberg administration in 2007 to coordinate the efforts of 25 city agencies "to prepare the city for one million more residents, strengthen our economy, combat climate change, and enhance the quality of life for all New Yorkers."

Four years ago we asked what we want our city to look and feel like in 2030.

A growing population, aging infrastructure, a changing climate, and an evolving economy posed challenges to our city’s success and quality of life. But we recognized that we will determine our own future by how we respond to and shape these changes with our own actions.

We created PlaNYC as a bold agenda to meet these challenges and build a greener, greater New York.

Today, we put forward an updated plan that builds upon the progress and lessons of the past four years.

-- from the PlaNYC 2030 website

The moderator, journalist Andrea Bernstein, has become a specialist in transportation issues (she's director of public radio's Transportation Nation project), and she began the evening by playing her report (broadcast on November 17) on (as she put it in a Transportation Nation post the day of the panel) "the pressure New York and other large transit systems face as sea levels rise and storms become more intense." The posted version, titled "For Transit Agencies, Climate Change Could Cost Billions," includes this audio:



The quote that stuck with me was: "Our '100-year storms' seem to be happening every three years now." We got lucky with Hurricane Irene. As we're informed, if the storm surge had been (if I've got the numbers right) a foot higher, 4.6 instead of 3.6 feet," the scope of the disaster would have been mind-boggling, including the ultimate dread, the flooding of the NYC subway system's East River tunnels. And as Klaus Jacob, who has devoted his energies to assessing the risk from climate change and studying what might be done to lessen that risk, pointed out, we have witnessed a tenfold increase in four-foot storm surges.

Of course it's not just the East River subway tunnels that are at risk. The entire underground system is vulnerable to flooding from watering entering through station entrances and ventilation grates throughout the system. There are things that could be done to counter these risks, but they're extremely difficult, complex, and extensive -- we're talking about things like sealing all those ventilation grates and replacing them with a whole new way of ventilating the system. In both the short and the long term, the things we could do would required funding on a scale wildly out of proportion to anything ever likely to be made available.

Both the MTA's Projjal Dutta and the city's David Bragdon stressed that the crux of their jobs involves doing the most they can with the available resources. Bragdon expressed pride in the real accomplishments of PlaNYC within those limits, and noted that the climate-change section is (again assuming I've got my numbers right) only one of 11 initiatives in the plan, which all have to be funded out of such money as can be pooled for it. Dutta pointed out that the normal way money becomes available for infrastructure spending is when something is broken. After environmental disasters the affected locales can go to FEMA, he noted, but try scaring up funds for planning and preparation.

Dutta (right) explained that the city's relative readiness for Hurricane Irene had a lot to do with lessons learned from what went wrong in the preparation for and response to a severe August 2007 storm, including the importance of quick response and a sensitivity to the parts of the system that are potentially most vulnerable to flooding.

But there just isn't money to undertake the kinds of modifications that might protect the system at large. Modifications of station entrances to lessen their potential to direct storm flow into the stations, Dutta said, can at best be incorporated into the stations as they come due for previously scheduled rehabilitation. In general, he noted, the system simply can't be sustained given the present fare structure, in which I believe he said MetroCard users pay $1.27 per ride. I'm sure he didn't say that the average MetroCard user pays that little, but he also didn't say that MetroCard users may pay as little as $1.27 per ride, a figure (again assuming I heard and remember right) that would be based on 82 rides in the 30-day period, whereas I'm guessing that my average usage (remember, this includes weekends) is more like 60 rides, which would be about $1.73 per ride, which is still well below the full single-ride fare of $2.25.

Still, the crucial part, I would think, is that fare collection, even if everyone were paying $2.25 per ride, can't hope to accomplish more than keeping the present system going, if that. There's certainly no hope that fare collection is going to provide any kind of infusion of new funds to apply to future needs.

Dutta was adamant about the need for some sort of carbon tax, but I expect he knows, just as we do, that while it may be necessary, it isn't going to happen, especially not in the present political climate, where such a large portion of the electorate has barricaded itself behind a wall of rigid, truculent denial of reality. Does anyone see any hope of penetrating all those heavily fortified lines of lies and delusions, backed by the billions of dollars dedicated to the purpose by the predators of the 1%? (It's a low blow, I know, but as a point of immediate reference, do the words "transportation bill" ring any bells? How about "House Republican budget plan"?)

Don't forget that the "lesson" taken away from New York City's aggressive response to the threat from Irene is that it was overkill, that the people who decided to shut the transit system down to protect it from the worse- and worst-case scenarios were just nervous nellies. Imagine how much more difficult it will be next time, and how disastrous it may be if we get that extra foot of storm surge. Then, of course, the people who were whining about overkill will scream bloody murder about the MTA's and the city government's unpreparedness and incompetence.

David Bragdon, while stressing how much PlaNYC 2030 is accomplished over its broad mandate within the limits of fiscal reality, he clearly understands as well as anyone how unsatisfactory a rate of investment in our future it represents. He noted that we today are standing on the shoulders of the previous generations that invested in infrastructure, and suggested wistfully that future generations may not look back favorably on our efforts.

As I suggested, I trudged out feeling pretty impressed by the caliber of people working on these problems -- but depressed beyond measure by the limits we're placing on what they can hope to accomplish.

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