NEW YORK CITY’S CAPITAL PROGRAM MUST BALANCE FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, HOLISTIC PLANNING, EQUITY, AND COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES TO GUIDE INVESTMENTS.
Our growing economy and population require forward-thinking planning that anticipates the needs of each neighborhood. Although the City plans for what it believes each neighborhood might need, residents are often best positioned to inform that determination. These community perspectives are therefore considered in the planning process. As New York City strives to become the fairest big city in the nation, we are committed to evaluating and addressing historical inequities in investment across neighborhoods.
PLAN FOR CAPITAL INVESTMENTS HOLISTICALLY AND COLLABORATIVELY
Capital planning is an integral part of the City’s delivery of services to residents, ensuring infrastructure meets the needs of both today and the future. With the population increasing across the five boroughs, City agencies must use up-to-date, localized population projections to better understand where development will occur in order to better plan for infrastructure needs. For example, new housing development will lead to future school-seat demand, which the School Construction Authority (SCA) must take into account in order to build out necessary capacity.
This insight informed new funding needs that were included in the Preliminary Ten Year Capital Strategy and SCA’s FY20–24 Capital Plan, which will deliver 57,000 new school seats. City agencies must continue to work collaboratively, using triplebottom-line criteria to maximize economic, environmental, and social benefits of capital investments, facilitate holistic planning, and work together with utilities to plan and deliver modern infrastructure projects that meet the needs of all New Yorkers.
EXPAND USE OF TRIPLE-BOTTOM-LINE PLANNING WITH A FOCUS ON INTERAGENCY COLLABORATION
Since 2015, City agencies have continued to adopt triplebottom-line principles that aim to maximize the economic, environmental, and social benefits of capital investments. The Department of Transportation (DOT) uses these criteria in a way that provides a model for all City agencies. DOT prioritizes its street reconstruction projects by assessing their anticipated contribution to each of the agency’s strategic goals.
Projects that improve safety and advance Vision Zero receive greater emphasis, although mobility, livability, environmental sustainability, state of good repair, resiliency, equity, and growth are also considered. DOT applies this standard assessment to hundreds of proposed projects each year, and prioritizes those that score highest.
Recently, DOT and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) collaborated to prioritize projects that fulfill the strategic plans of both agencies. With facilitation from DDC’s Infrastructure Front End Planning Unit, DOT’s prioritization schema considered input from DEP, which was able to indicate which proposed DOT projects overlapped with water and sewer assets that should be replaced. By adding
scope to DOT projects before they are funded, the City can advance its comprehensive, strategic goals and improve capital project delivery through more accurate project scoping.
The City, through DOT is also developing a standardized triple-bottom-line or benefit-cost framework to help prioritize the most cost-effective projects. This framework will weigh each project’s costs against estimates of the social, environmental, and economic benefits it would provide. DOT’s routine use of benefit-cost analysis is already driving a more rigorous evaluation of projects against City and agency goals.
