Mayor Holds Press Conference to Make Announcement with MTA
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office.
Passages
A renovation, a modernization that's going to bring this station finally into the 21st century. A huge thank you to Governor Hochul for standing up to Washington on congestion pricing and for delivering the MTA's $68 billion five-year capital program, which is allowing us to fix and upgrade this station finally. And it's not only that, but the MTA is also partnering with the city to study a much more complicated issue, which is extreme heat in our subway stations. I don't have to tell any New Yorker that it is brutal underground in the summertime, especially here in this Chamber Street and municipal building Brooklyn Bridge complex. Brooklyn Bridge City Hall, in fact, where the 456 stops, is one of the sweatiest in our system. It averaged temperatures last summer peaked at 96 degrees, and every year it's actually getting hotter because of climate change. But bringing down temperature is a really complex challenge in a system where the stations are 100 years old and they have open entrances, stairways, vents. As I always say, the subway is not a submarine. It's not an enclosed environment. and air comes in and out. Now the best way to combat the experience of excessive heat is with fast and reliable train service so people get on and off the platforms as quickly as possible into an air conditioned subway car. But at the same time, we are exploring a lot of possible solutions to make the stations more comfortable, starting with the feasibility study we're doing right here at the Chamber Street, Jay-Z, Brooklyn Bridge City Hall complex. Together with the city, we're looking into innovative thermal energy networks. They're called TENs, T-E-N, and the geothermal concepts that will allow us to capture, store, and then transfer the excessive heat in a subway station like this so that it can be used come the winter to heat the buildings upstairs. This technology has never been tested before in a transit system here in this country, but it is being used elsewhere in the city, like at St. Patrick's Cathedral, they're using it, and also at the New York Botanical Garden, and it's also being used in Canada and in Europe. We're excited because it could be a real win-win. Cooler stations for our subway riders, and the city of New York gets to save on energy costs, potentially. Now, it's not clear just how much cooling we're going to be able to deliver or how much money is going to be saved. That's what the study is supposed to figure out. But we look forward to getting that data and sharing the analysis when we have them. I want to thank the mayor, who has elevated transit at City Hall to match Governor Hochul's tremendous five-year energy that we've had in Albany. When we all get on the same page, we can do great things. And we're already seeing it with buses. So with that, let me turn it over to the mayor, and then we'll hear from our controller, from the public advocate, from the DCAS commissioner, and from the CCO of the City of New York as well. Mayor.
SPEAKER_01I don't think you're looking for a second career, but I would say you asked all the right questions. Those are the questions that the study is meant to answer. How much did it cost to do this here, Marcia, where we actually have a network of underground pipes connecting the various City Hall and the other buildings? How much... energy savings, what energy savings for the city, but also what is the benefit in terms of reduced temperature for the subway station. So those are the questions that this is meant to answer. If we get good answers, you know we're going to be looking for other opportunities to deploy it elsewhere in the city.
SPEAKER_01Here's the bottom line. The New York I grew up in, the trains didn't come and they weren't air-conditioned. We have, even with the low level of investment in the MTA, we finally have a fleet which is mostly air-conditioning. We all know that it ain't perfect. And service is a lot better, so you get on an air-conditioned train faster and more predictably. Now we are attacking the third leg of that stool, which is to make the stations more livable. We know that this is no fun for New Yorkers. We're determined to do something about it.
SPEAKER_01Let's be honest. Air conditioning is a big challenge in a system where you have so many openings. We have the vents, we have the stairways, we have all these other exits. It's really hard to create an enclosed environment to air condition. We're still studying it, but this is, in some ways, a more promising approach, which is just capture the waste heat, take it out of the system so temperature goes down, and then use that heat to heat adjacent buildings in the winter. We love this idea, but we gotta study the heck out of it to make sure it works.
SPEAKER_01I'll tell you, when you look at the goals for even modifying temperatures in subway stations, to take it down by a few degrees would be a significant improvement when those temperatures peak in midsummer. So we are... We're not projecting, Stephanos, exactly how much it would deliver, but we want to see if we could get it down a few degrees. That would make the difference between total misery and merely sweltering in some of our worst days, and we want to make sure that we're just improving the environment. We're not going to create an office, an air-conditioned environment, but our goal is to improve it dramatically.
SPEAKER_01I'm pretty sure the cooling system in Grand Central is a very spotty kind of spot air conditioning network that you experience when you're on the platform. So this is a much more systematic and comprehensive approach that captures heat and stores it and transfers it in a way that that Grand Central, as far as I know, that Grand Central initiative did not. I'll look at it, Sam, see if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding.
SPEAKER_01Evan, I'm going to have to give you a bit of an IOU because somebody will get into that level of detail. But the way it's going to work is that they're going to do boring holes for geothermal right below the platform we are on, which is this unused center platform. And we think that that's the most advantageous location relative to both the underground conditions and also the connectivity to the underground piping network that feeds City Hall and the other buildings that are served by this connected network. But for more detail on that, I'll have to ask someone to follow up with you.
SPEAKER_01Mayor and I were talking about this before we came out this morning. We are taking advantage of an existing underground connectivity and network that makes it easy to feed it. But the key is that you're actually capturing the excess heat, storing it, and that is taking place here in this station complex. and seeing how efficient that can be done, how much heat we can store, how that reduces the temperatures in the stations are two of the three big variables. There's obviously the piping network that will allow you to deliver it to adjacent buildings. But there are a lot of places in New York City where there's connectivity below grade. We all know the Con Ed steam network and so on and so on, and there are individual campuses like Rockefeller Center which might be advantageous opportunities.
SPEAKER_01
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office, Mayor Holds Press Conference to Make Announcement with MTA.