PLANES ON THE HUDSON RIVER

Watching yet another plane crash on the Hudson River this year is a nerve wracking experience.  On August 8, as the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Tugboats and NYPD helicopters cordonned off the West Side Highway south of Fourteenth Street, many of us watching yet another disaster scenario of salvage efforts were disconcerted by the frequency of planes falling around us.  Planes falling out of the sky seems to be one ecological hazard of living in New York City.  However, this time, there is no happy story with a Hollywood ending and a physical aircraft docked at Battery Park.  Instead: it is a grim call to radically revamp Federal Aviation requirements for aircraft flying below 1, 100 feet.

The 2006 plane crash on the East Side of Manhattan alerted the FAA to the dangers of low flying small aircraft over the East River.  It is time New York and New Jersey took a closer look at the heavily trafficked and unmonitored flight corridor over the Hudson River that is shared by both states.  According to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, over 25, 000 helicopter trips are made a year without oversight of air space regulations.  For a resident of Manhattan and the Jersey shoreline, this should be a chilling piece of information.  We are in a shared air space and waterway system that requires rigorous overhauling as air traffic increases, the airline industry is deregulated, air traffic controllers are scaled back even further, and more leisure flyers take to the skies.

What New York City has learned from this terrible tragedy is that the shores of New Jersey facing Manhattan is our sixth borough.  We need to think about the other side of our beloved Hudson River as part of our lifeline, a critical aspect of our ecosystem and our imagined future.  To that effect, a more engaged conversation with the other side of the Hudson River's magisterial shoreline needs to be incorporated into a more sustained and local conversation regarding air and water safety measures, water rights, pollution and industrial run off.  The January 15, 2009 U.S. Airways forced landing highlighted this interdependency when early reports about the extraordinary landing mentioned survivors possibly landing on either the Jersey side or the Manhattan side of the shoreline.  Saturday's catastrophe was a literal collision between the Manhattan and New Jersey air spaces.  Both Manhattan and Hoboken transportation, waterway and commuter networks were disrupted by this travesty.  We must take away important lessons to be implemented immediately with an eye to the safety of neighborhoods and cities, and remedy the unconscionable laxity geared towards the interests of big business and the after effects of de-regulation in the aviation and helicopter industries.