Tyler Taba of Waterfront Alliance supports ferry expansion bills

Waterfront Alliance.

Oh, I forgot to give my name.

I don't know if I need to put that for my testimony.

Oh, Diane Park, P-A-R-K.

Thank you, Chair Maloney, Majority Leader Abreu, Councilmember Farias, Councilmember Thomas Henry, and all the other councilmembers who are here for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Tyler Taba.

I'm the Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the Waterfront Alliance.

Before the establishment of the NYC Ferry in 2017, Waterfront Alliance organized a series of events and white papers on how to bring back the Five Borough Ferry Service.

We are a big supporter of the New York City Ferry and continue to encourage the city to envision the ferry as part of its climate, transportation, and economic development goals.

Our testimony today builds on our longstanding advocacy and support of the New York City Ferry, particularly also on our 2024 Oversight Hearing Testimony, which we refer to as the five E's of NYC Ferry, expansion, economics, electrification, emergency services, and equity.

Our full testimony will be submitted shortly after this hearing and touches on all of those things, but for our verbal testimony today, Waterfront Alliance would like to focus on expansion.

We envision several new routes that would serve New Yorkers with newer, greener, and faster transit options and would reshape transportation in the region.

We support the bills discussed today, which look to expand ferry service to neighborhoods that would greatly benefit from waterborne transportation.

Starting with Councilmember Farias'intro 1032, we've long supported city islanders in their advocacy for a ferry landing.

It's great to see many community residents and partners and leaders here today.

As has been stated, transportation to and from the island is an ongoing challenge and public transportation options are limited.

We support and encourage the council to support this legislation and pass it swiftly.

so the one-year study can commence.

We also support Councilmember Narciso's Intro 704.

We've supported local organizers on establishing a Canarsie Ferry going back to 2017, and also glad to see resident leaders in the community here support that as well.

We also support Councilmember Thomas Henry's Intro 846.

As has been discussed, Willits Point has seen tremendous transfer...

transformation, excuse me, and all of this new development alongside existing rich and cultural entertainment opportunities nearby.

We generally support ferry service here, but also seek clarity on why DOT rather than EDC, and would be happy to chat more about that.

Of course, didn't make it in time, so I'll just conclude by saying thank you again for the opportunity to testify.

We'll submit our full testimony into the record and look forward to working with the council.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

I want to acknowledge that Councilmember Dinowitz joined us.

And I do have some questions for this panel who has experienced a lot of the concerns that we were addressing before about noise, flight takeoffs that are closer to the shoreline.

We heard that Doc NYC is responsible for enforcing the SOP and contract.

But have you seen examples of these violations living right there at Waterside Plaza?

And if anyone would be able to elaborate a bit more.

One thing I wanted to point out is I foiled the SOP from EDC, and the one that they provided to me was from 2013.

I don't even know if they've evaluated their own processes in more than a decade.

But we all have observed significant violations of seaplanes.

We have repeatedly contacted NYC.

In fact, we've been trying to have another meeting with them, and they just keep pushing us off.

We've seen seaplanes fly dangerously close, as I said in my testimony, to boats.

There was the annual jet ski invasion that they have on the East River, where there are hundreds of jet skis.

A seaplane landed literally right next to the jet ski.

And as I said in my testimony, with the mechanical turbulence, buildings are blocking the wind.

So these planes cannot necessarily land precisely where they want to land.

And one of the photos shows the seaplane landing right next to these jet skis.

We've seen seaplanes fly over the 59th Street Bridge.

EDC said, oh, they fly in from the south.

That is absolutely not true.

They generally fly in from the north.

What they've been doing lately is they fly in from the north, and then they turn around over Manhattan or Brooklyn and Queens, and then they land in the river.

Now they're trying to land more towards the Brooklyn and Queens side.

But there are multiple violations.

I don't know if you want to add to this, Janet.

Okay, turn it on.

The point that I wanted to...

make that, and I just want to show you this video.

This is showing a seaplane that landed right by the ferry, very close, and then there it is coming up against the jet ski invasion.

I mean, that is like...

How is that safe?

And if you can see the photo of the actual, there's a photo that follows of where the plane actually landed, and it will show you that it's unreal.

Yeah, and I guess this raises the question that we have, and I would just say we have found this out.

So this plane is in the wake of that ferry.

The plane that the July 5th accident happened because of the NTSB final ruling said it was a hard hit of a wake, and that hard hit caused the thing to collapse.

So what is the seaplane doing in the wake of a ferry?

And to think that you're going to be able to land in the East River without wakes with the amount of ferry traffic and the commercial barges that are going up and down, it's a very, very complex environment.

And that leads us again to this issue when we look at it.

The FAA regulation has three components.

Two of them have to do with ceilings and so forth and daytime operations.

The third component is subsumed into the FAA regulation, but it is not an FAA-issued regulation.

That is the part that has to do with...

Our Skyport 6NR, that is locally generated.

It's the same, you know, for every city that has an airport.

The city says, we're the local area and we lay out the rules for our city.

That's where the thousand foot rule is.

And that's where also the rule is that the seaplane operators must

be vetted by the Northeast Seaplane Pilots Association, which nobody can find.

Maybe it existed once upon a time.

It does not exist today.

We don't know that there's anybody, any vetting going on of these seaplane pilots other than

whatever the FAA does for seaplane pilots in general, but nothing about the East River exclusion zone so that they have skilled landing in the East River.

And what really brought this to mind is we recently, over the last summer, we saw a new operator that we had not seen before that has, their tail is blue.

And they seem to be more, that have more of the bad operations, landing closer to our buildings, not observing the rules.

And that makes me question, you know, do they, you know, they haven't operated here before, maybe they're inexperienced, but, you know,

We live there.

You know, we're very mindful of the crash where Corey Little crashed his plane into the Bel Air on the Upper East Side.

I mean, when we are, I've been in Diane's apartment and I see the seaplanes coming down.

It looks like it is coming right at you.

And then it turns off.

It's unnerving.

And we see no evidence that Doc NYC is monitoring anything, whether it's safety, whether it's noise.

This is all talk that they're doing, but there is no evidence of that.

And it would be great if you could push them on that, their measurements and how they're monitoring, because we don't see anything like that.

It would be interesting to see what the incident reports are, or what are the operating reports that they submit.

What do they require if somebody, you know, a Joe seaplane operator decides he wants to open up a business and start landing there, you know, what do they require of them?

We don't know any of that.

There's one photo in this carousel, which is kids playing at school and the seaplanes landing right next to where these kids are in school.

I mean, we know they're dangerous.

We've seen many, many dangerous maneuvers.

I've seen planes taking off right next to the schools.

I mean, this is crazy.

And then the noise from these planes, you know, affecting instruction for these children.

Thank you for so clearly articulating some of the violations that you've seen and for submitting the visual testimony, which really brings it to life here.

What is the mechanism for reporting these incidents?

And how do you report them when you see these violations?

I mean, we've tried to communicate with EDC, you know, and DOC NYC, but they're very off-putting.

It's not that they're open to accepting what we're trying to explain to them.

We tried to schedule meetings.

We have had a couple of meetings with elected officials and EDC and DOC NYC.

But usually they try and say, we want to, you know, we're gathering information.

We want to have the meeting at a later time.

And we forced the meeting in May to happen.

We said the summer season is coming on.

These safety matters are too critical.

So, you know, we asked the question about the vetting agency.

We have to look into that, you know.

And has anybody gotten back to us?

No.

And it is something that is on, you know, our to-do list is to schedule the next meeting with them, which maybe they'll be more responsive at this point.

The other thing is that...

Miriam, did you have a comment?

Since I'm really bothered by the noise, and they're not supposed to even start flying till eight o'clock, and there's been occasions, usually the bad guys who don't care,

like 7.15 in the morning, and like when my husband was sick, trying to recuperate from something, he sleeps in beyond 7.15, but it wakes him up, it wakes up people who might be up all night long.

You know, it's just, they,

I just don't care.

And, you know, I know Janet has sent, like, I've taken photographs of them being right beneath my apartment.

Or, you know, at 7.15 in the morning, she sent it on to Donald at the Skyport.

And no response.

Is there a way to force them to follow some rules?

That is the focus of today's hearing.

So thank you for your testimony.

And I wanted to commend our intrepid high school student and entrepreneur here, Mateo.

If you can't measure it, you can't improve it.

So thank you for your work to measure helicopter noise and for partnering with the Waterside Association to take your technology and apply it to seaplanes.

Thank you.

All right.

And we're now going to move to the next panel.

Thank you so much for your testimony.