Shulman to the Rescue?

The NY Daily News is reporting that Claire Shulman's ambitious plan to remedy all that she has endeavored to mess up is being stalled by the city. Shulman's phony LDC has outlined a scheme to remedy Flushing traffic-something that will soon be a Herculean task if EDC actually finishes all of its development work.

As the News reports: "A proposal to tackle both transportation and housing issues in downtown Flushing with a single project is stuck in neutral. The Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. pitched a multifaceted plan in the fall of 2009 to upgrade the Long Island Rail Road station off Main St. and add housing units at the same time. The city Department of Transportation and local community board gave a thumbs up for the proposal, dubbed the Flushing Transit Oriented Development Plan. But the project is now on the back burner, city officials said, because of higher-priority developments in the area, such as Flushing Commons, the Macedonia Plaza and Willets Point."

As much as we abhor Claire's handiwork on Willets Point, we have to admit what she is proposing makes a lot of sense-a sensible form of crackpot realism. The Willets Point and Flushing Commons developments will cripple the transportation infrastructure in the community-the combined traffic generated will not be sustainable and Shulman's call for a train remedy is sensible if she hadn't been the main culprit in causing the main source of the impending doom.

Keep in mind that WPU's Brian Ketcham has evaluated the traffic and mass transit impacts of both of these mega projects, and the results are not pretty. There even uglier when we find that in both cases consultants to the devlopment have lowballed car usage and assigned massive numbers of trip generations to mass transit!

That EDC is not picking up on the Shulman suggestion, however, is plain irresponsible for an agency that is a featured player in the Sustainability Administration. And we read in the WSJ that these environmentally conscious folks are embarking in an energy saving plan for the city's businesses-to help making us more sustainable we guess:

"These energy improvements, officials said, will pay for themselves over time and help the city reach its goal of a "30% reduction in 2005 carbon emissions."

Mr. Bragdon said the city is also exploring public-private partnerships to create large-scale solar power plants on municipal landfills. Officials are looking at landfills in Brooklyn, as well as Fresh Kills on Staten Island, he said."

Oh boy! Solar power at Fresh Kills, and gridlock in Willets Point/Flushing. One hand doesn't know what the other is doing, we suppose. Shulman, for her part, knows the disaster she may have wrought, unlike the See No Evil EDC: "Transportation improvements are essential in downtown Flushing and so is affordable housing for all those folks who work in the restaurants and shops along the Main St. corridor," Shulman said, calling the project "essential for the future of Flushing."

Bloomberg plans, and God laughs.