Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll look at air quality in the South Bronx since congestion pricing took effect in Manhattan. And we’ll get details on an important first vote on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to freeze the rent for nearly one million rent-stabilized tenants.
The dirtiest air in the South Bronx is outside Mychal Johnson’s office window. Johnson, a founding board member of South Bronx Unite, a community group, knows this because one of the 19 sensors that measured air quality for a Columbia University study was placed on the fire escape outside his window a couple of years ago. The sensor has checked for fine particulate matter — toxic particles that are smaller than a human hair and are produced by fossil-fuel combustion — ever since. The timing coincided with the introduction of congestion pricing in Manhattan. In the South Bronx, which already had some of the highest asthma rates in the United States, residents worried that air quality would deteriorate as drivers found detours to skirt Manhattan and avoid paying the new toll ($9 for cars during the day, and as much as $21.60 for trucks). The study found that there was a 2 percent jump in particulate matter in the South Bronx from 2024 to 2025, the first year of congestion pricing. Putting the findings another way, Alexander De Jesus, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia and an author of the study, said there had been an increase in levels of fine particulate matter of 0.22 parts per million parts of air. But he said that the levels outside Johnson’s window had jumped 1.29 parts per million parts of air. An abstract of the South Bronx study, which is not yet available in its entirety, noted that the increases had varied across the 19 monitoring sites, but called the overall rise in fine particulate matter statistically significant. Johnson said the figures were “definitely concerning for all the people who live right here,” especially the charter school across the street. An Instagram post from South Bronx Unite added that “a fixation on the central business district” — the part of Manhattan covered by congestion pricing — “must not obscure harm in surrounding neighborhoods.” Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees congestion pricing, said on Tuesday that “reducing air pollution has always been one of the core goals” of congestion pricing. Lieber’s comment came in a statement released from City Hall, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that the transit agency had dedicated $20 million to address asthma in the South Bronx. City Hall said that the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, working with the M.T.A. and the city’s Department of Transportation, would spend the $20 million on two major programs. One would add 15 schools to an asthma case-management program. It would also make the process of submitting asthma medication forms paperless with a new online system. A spokesman for the M.T.A. questioned the Columbia study, saying that it had yet to be peer reviewed, and officials and many environmental activists have hailed congestion pricing as a success for reducing the number of cars entering Manhattan below 60th Street. Some studies have concluded that air quality there improved. Others said air quality was about the same as it always was. ‘Pretty central to high-traffic roads’Johnson said the situation is different outside his window. The building is at the corner of Bruckner Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue. The Major Deegan Expressway is a block and a half away. Heavily traveled Third Avenue is at the other end of the block. The Bruckner Expressway, a link from the Robert F. Kennedy Triboro Bridge to I-95, is less than a mile away. The location “is pretty central to high-traffic roads,” De Jesus said, and is close to high-traffic waste transfer stations and industrial warehouses, including Hunts Point, one of the largest food distribution centers in the United States, with almost 13,000 trucks coming and going daily. “We have three air purifiers in our office,” Johnson said as a garbage truck went by — a truck he said had come from the North Bronx and was probably on the way to a nearby transfer station. “They come here spewing diesel exhaust.” “We’re paying for air purifiers that we’re deploying in people’s homes on our own,” he said. “If we could put air purifiers in every classroom, especially those that are in close proximity to the highways, that could alter outcomes.” WEATHER Look for cloudy skies in the morning that will gradually clear. Today’s high will near 66 before temperatures drop to around 49 and clouds return at night. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until May 14 (Solemnity of the Ascension). QUOTE OF THE DAY “This is part and parcel of the rising antisemitism that we are facing. Whatever your politics, whatever your views, this is not the New York way.” — Assemblyman Micah Lasher, who is running in the Democratic primary in the congressional district where pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied outside a pro-Israel event at a synagogue. Pro-Israel counterdemonstrators also gathered outside the synagogue, on the Upper East Side. The latest Metro news
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The city panel that regulates rents will weigh in tonight on potential increases for the first time since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office. The big question is whether it will vote for no increase on one- and two-year leases. The panel, the Rent Guidelines Board, is scheduled to hold a preliminary vote on a range of potential increases. If the board is open to a rent freeze, the range could include a zero. The board won’t approve a final number until a meeting late next month. Mamdani appointed a majority of the members of the board, making it more likely that the board — which is supposed to be independent of City Hall — could back a freeze. My colleague Mihir Zaveri writes that the annual votes are always contentious, but the board’s meetings have been even tenser than usual since Mamdani made freezing the rent a central promise of his campaign. Even before the war in Iran drove up the price of oil, a significant expense for building owners, landlords complained about increasing costs. Ann Korchak, the board president of the Small Property Owners of New York, a landlord advocacy group, said in a statement on Wednesday that if the board members “concede to the politics of a rent freeze or insignificant rent increase, they will be following a path of defunding rent-stabilized housing.” But the Rent Justice Coalition, which is made up of dozens of tenant groups, said in a letter to the board that “when landlords raise our rent, that money goes to line their pockets and buy new buildings, not fixing our homes.” METROPOLITAN DIARY Brooklyn warehouse
Dear Diary: I woke up to my alarm at 2:45 on a Saturday morning, then maneuvered trains and city blocks through darkness to an unremarkable warehouse in Brooklyn. Inside was a cathedral of music. Hips gyrated, and arms exalted rhythm. Fog embraced kissers, dancers, exhilaration, prayer, meditation, community. I found my intention and connected with my spirit and the energy of bodies around me, alone and together, holding friends as family and strangers as friends. I departed at 8:45 a.m. to a cold, golden morning, feeling lighter, freer, learned and loved. A shopkeeper opening up for the day called out from behind me, his question nearly drowned out by the morning traffic. “Hey, what’s happening over there?” he asked. “Just a little dance party,” I replied. “Nothing crazy.” — Carlie Cattelona Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
