Restler on helicopter noise and stop the chop campaign

On to my topic of choice, maybe my favorite issue to raise with my friends at EDC is stop the chop.

I know you're surprised.

You know, we have a socialist...

Mayor, who has committed his support for stopping the chop.

And we'd love to start to see the elimination of non-essential helicopter travel from the city's helipads.

Last year, the Ryder Cup was in New Jersey, I think, and we had helicopters going, or no, it must have been Long Island.

The Ryder Cup was in Long Island, excuse me, I don't follow golf.

But I did experience it because there were helicopters leaving every five minutes from the city's helipads going over, very low, over our community and making it impossible for people to have a conversation outside on the street, on their stoop, in their backyard.

Are we expecting similar amounts of extremely disruptive helicopter travel for the World Cup?

So the World Cup is eight games here.

We have, EDC runs two heliports in Midtown and then on downtown Skyport.

The Midtown one has special permits so it can be only open for certain hours.

The downtown, we've worked very closely with the community members to reduce those hours.

And so it's a public.

I'm just aware of the changes that have been made, and they have really not helped in my community, where we continue to get an enormous amount of incoming, where people struggle in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

They struggle just to be in their own property because of the extreme noise that's created by helicopters.

So I have— It's a public—it's a public—the downtown Skyport is a public heliport, so—

We cannot.

not allow people to land.

Not allow people to land.

You could regulate the type of travel that's happening from the heliport.

You don't need to allow folks to go to the Hamptons or JFK on helicopter rides.

You don't need to allow tourism trips from there.

I certainly have no problem with people taking a helicopter if they need to, for health reasons or if there's some sort of public benefit like news helicopters or NYPD helicopters.

But the idea that we pollute our environment, it's the equivalent of 40 cars idling on the street, one helicopter above ground, and then create such extreme noise that people can't have conversations.

You know, so that the top one-tenth of one percent can get to the Hamptons faster or get to JFK faster, I find that deeply offensive.

So I strongly support the banning of all non-essential helicopter travel from the heliports that you all control.

And I'm trying to understand, can we do anything to limit the helicopter activity out for the World Cup?

And are there other ways that EDC is looking at limiting these types of really egregious and disruptive helicopter activity from your helipads?

Yeah, this isn't your FAA preview, but I would say that just looking ahead, we hear your concerns.

And just looking ahead, we are looking to EV tolls.

And so we have hopefully the pilot we'll get by the end of this year, and then FAA will approve like EV tolls.

And I don't know if you came to our demonstration, but they're very, very quiet.

I mean, I haven't flown in one, but I saw them on the east side not too long ago with some of my friends, you know, Botcher and Powers and others were out there.

What?

Should I not be?

Were you out there too?

No?

No.

She couldn't make it.

The chair missed it.

But I'm glad to hear that they're quieter and they're better for the environment.

If that all works, God bless.

I don't have any objection.

But what I do have an objection to is the status quo and our insistence on maintaining it and allowing for these incredibly disruptive helicopters to pollute and disrupt our communities all day, every day, I think is really bad policy.

And I think we're favoring the extreme elite at the expense of everybody else.

And I think we should stop it.

I think we should discontinue this helicopter activity immediately.

And once the EV tolls are ready, bring them in and let the rich people travel around that way.

Understood.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Really quickly, a couple follow-ups.