Is Mayor Bloomberg an Environmentalist?

For his Sunday, April 25, 2010 weekly radio address, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg promoted the value of “creating a greener, greater New York” by planting a million trees. The Mayor admitted that so far, the City has only planted one-third of that number, but that’s still an impressive achievement. So is his record of creating new parks and bikeways. Less impressive is his recent decision to support the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s decision to cut 250 bus runs, including shutting down some lines entirely. That’s not green at all.

New York City is home to the nation’s largest public transportation system. Why would the Mayor want to curtail transit operations, forcing at least some New Yorkers into cars? As the just-released book about the auto industry, “Carjacked,” makes clear, “The public transit system we already have supports 2 million jobs, saves 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline, and prevented 37 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2008 alone.”

If the amount invested in public transportation increased enough to create just 10 percent more annual ridership,” the book continues, “those benefits would rise: by 2020, public transport could support 8.9 million jobs and we could nearly eliminate our oil imports from the Persian Gulf and drastically cut carbon emissions.”

Those are numbers which New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg should consider. If he is truly an environmentalist, he would tell his four appointees to the MTA Board – John H. Banks III, Jeffrey A. Kay,  Mark D. Lebow, and Mark Page – to vote against the service cuts.