City Council Survey (District 22): Jerry Kann

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Political Party:

http://www.tacandidatesurvey.org/None

Candidate Submitted Biography:

Jerry Kann, 48, is a native of the Cleveland (Ohio) area, and a graduate of Cleveland State University with a B.A. in Literature. He moved to New York City in 1987 and has worked in publishing, advertising, and child welfare. He is currently a freelance proofreader/editor.

An active member of the Labor Party in the 1990s, Kann joined the Green Party in 2000.

Kann was an active volunteer for the presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2008 and was a paid employee of the Nader/Camejo campaign in 2004. He was secretary and later treasurer of the Green Party Office in Manhattan from Nov. 2002 to Nov. 2006, serving on a committee that raised almost $80,000 during four years of operation. Kann has run for City Council in Astoria, Queens, as the Green Party candidate three times this decade, winning 20 percent of the vote in 2003. He is a candidate for the same office in 2009, running now as a Populist.

City Council Survey (District 22): Jerry Kann

Question 1:
What is the most important transportation need in your district? As a Council Member, how would you work to address this need?

In District 22, and in every Council district in the city, the most important problem is preventing future fare increases and even rolling fares back. One way to do this would be for the City and the State to adopt TA's Kheel-Komanoff congestion pricing plan.

Kheel-Komanoff provides funding for transit by putting tolls in place for Manhattan-bound motorists--nominal tolls ($2.00) at lowest-traffic hours and the highest tolls at rush hours. This, combined with a payroll tax and a surcharge borne by the relatively wealthy class of people who live in Manhattan and regularly take cabs, is fair and sensible. According to TA, the plan could provide the city with free local bus service and reduced subway fares.

As a member of Council, I would energetically lobby my colleagues to adopt Kheel-Komanoff and set an example for the State legislature to follow.


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Question 2:
The intersection of 33 Street and Newton Ave is one of the most dangerous in your district, where 0 people died and 31 people were injured between 1995-2005 (NYS DOT). As a City Council member, what traffic enforcement policies or physical changes to the intersection infrastructure would you support to make this intersection safer for everyone who uses it (pedestrians, cyclists and drivers)?

The City should close off Newtown Ave. between 31st and 33rd Streets and make it into a pedestrian mall. The Key Food supermarket at Newtown & 33rd St. does not have a lot of vehicles pulling up to load groceries at the exit doors that front on Newtown, so not that many motorists would be inconvenienced. (Most of the customers are pedestrians, people who live in the immediate neighborhood. After all, this is the city, not the suburbs.) Also, the Key Food's loading dock fronts on 33rd St., and access for trucks would go on as usual.

The few motorists that do want to pull up close to the exit doors probably have enough room in that little triangle of roadway between the current (and later, the extended) barrier on the 33rd St. end of Newtown. Key Food management would have to help coordinating that.

Westbound motorists on 30th Ave. could access Newtown by way of 28th St., a few blocks down. But both those motorists and the northbound motorists on 33rd St. rushing to get to the Grand Central are generally going too fast at this intersection. The two-block stretch of Newtown is just too much of a temptation, and they tend to speed. Closing off this section of Newtown would cause some inconvenience for motorists but would certainly enhance safety for everyone.


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Question 3:
According to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles' most currently available data, in 2007 speeding was a contributing factor in over 3,000 motor vehicle crashes in New York City. Furthermore, the same data showed that the top human contributing factor to the 264 fatal crashes in New York City during 2007 was also speeding. Given these figures, what measures, if any, do you support to redress this problem? Finally, do you believe that New York City’s current speed limits are safe?

The NYPD should simply be devoting more resources to policing motorists who speed. There doesn't really seem to be any enforcement of the speed limits to speak of in this city, and that has to change.


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Question 4:
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's website reports: "In New York City, obesity is epidemic: more than half of adult New Yorkers are overweight (34%) or obese (22%). Data show that obesity begins early in life: nearly half of all elementary school children and Head Start children are not a healthy weight. In New York City, 1 in 5 kindergarten students, and 1 in 4 Head Start children, is obese." Do you believe that increasing walking and biking in New York City would improve public health? If yes, how would you work to increase walking and biking in your district?

Obviously it would help general health in this city if more biking and walking were encouraged and facilitated.

But I think obesity will continue to be a problem so long as adults and children are obsessed with TV, Internet, cell phones, and I-Pods. The I-Pod even makes walking down the street a more solitary kind of experience, with people probably regarding their walk to the train or to the supermarket as a necessary evil that they're going to do only as much as absolutely necessary. They may feel more "protected" by having those earphones in, but in an important sense I think they're more vulnerable when they have music continually pumped into their heads, because they're that much less aware of what's going on around them.

These electronic devices generally encourage people to spend more time just sitting around. People nowadays are more cut off from each other, and more alienated, than they were in the past. That makes them more like robots and less like human beings.

It would be nice if I saw evidence of people trying to break away from these electronic crutches, but actually it seems like people are getting more and more dependent on them as time goes on.


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Question 5:
Road pricing, including such measures as non-stop tolling, fees based on vehicle miles travelled or entry into a highly congested zone, has been the source of much discussion in New York City and other major metropolitan areas. London famously uses a congestion charge to fund its transit system, Oregon recently piloted a program to replace the gas tax with a fee for miles driven and Seattle recently studied how road pricing could be introduced on a regional basis. Seattle's study, “Traffic Choices Study" (http://psrc.org/projects/trafficchoices/index.htm), found that introducing new tolls on major corridors during peak traffic hours influenced drivers’ behavior and projected that a region-wide road pricing scheme could significantly reduce vehicular traffic congestion. Do you think that introducing a road pricing strategy would change New Yorkers’ travel choices? Do you think that this would be an effective way for the City to reduce backups on high-traffic roadways like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Gowanus Expressway or the Long Island Expressway? Finally, do you believe there are additional benefits in the surrounding neighborhoods which could be realized from the reduction of vehicular congestion on these routes?

Selective tolling on the BQE, the LIE, and other roadways--so long as the cost to motorists is not ridiculously high--would certainly encourage people to find other ways to get around town and reduce congestion on those expressways.


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Question 6:
Do you believe that reducing residential parking requirements as set forth within NYC zoning regulations would affect neighborhood traffic congestion, and if so, in what way?

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Question 7:
The NYC Department of Transportation's Public Plaza Program, Pedestrian Street Program and Summer Streets events are intended to diversify the use of public space and provide more places for New Yorkers to recreate and socialize. Do you support the temporary or permanent repurposing of street space for pedestrians and cyclists?

I certainly support the creation of more pedestrian malls, both full-time and part-time (such as Nassau St. in Lower Manhattan). While I have heard some folks complain that traffic on Second Ave. and Ninth Ave. is worse since the Broadway malls have been introduced, I would have to see direct evidence that the congestion on the "fast avenues" toward the east and west edges of Manhattan is really any worse than it was before.


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Question 8:
The City recently released plans for Bus Rapid Transit and expressed interest in bringing a bike share program to New York City. Do you think these new projects would enhance the city's transportation network? Please explain.

I really don't think Bus Rapid Transit will help much in the long run. We should simply concentrate on building more rail over the long term.

A bicycle share program, however, would be a very positive step. I believe it would get more New Yorkers in the habit of biking and probably even encourage current non-bikers (like myself) to buy our own bikes and integrate them into our means of getting around town.


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Submitted by JerryKann on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 12:53.
Submitted by JerryKann on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 00:04.
Submitted by JerryKann on Sun, 08/09/2009 - 12:53.