Mayor de Blasio Designates $38 Million to Make Better Use of Waterways to Move Goods and People Around NYC

By Yehudit Garmaise

 No New Yorker likes air pollution nor street congestion, however, Mayor de Blasio has a solution that he calls, “The Blue Highway.”

“Go back to the water,” said the mayor, who added $38 million to the city’s budget to activate the ‘Blue Highway’ of our waterways to make more deliveries by rail, by electric vehicles, and by smaller vehicles.

“New York City was one of the great maritime cities of the world for centuries,” the mayor pointed out. “We need to look to the water again.

“We are blessed by all these waterways, but we are not tapping into that blessing. This could be a big solution for our future, and the city is investing to make that happen now on a very big scale.”

Instead of more and more 18-wheeler trucks on the roads, the mayor said, “The water is right there: We can see it, but it is not very crowded at this point.

“There needs to be a lot more activity because we know that so much of what we move around the city could be done on the water.”

With his investment of $38 million, the mayor wants to chart a new course in which the city makes better use of piers, ports, boats, and ferries to move people and goods around the city.

Not only have New Yorkers returned to using their cars more than they were doing before the pandemic, but trucks, are also huge creators of traffic, congestion, and dangerous emissions that can cause asthma and other respiratory illnesses, and currently move approximately 90% of the goods that need to be delivered in New York City.

“That is not healthy: in any sense,” said the mayor, adding, “If we want to make our city healthier and less congested, we should just look to the water because the water is our future, and it was our past, as well.”

Commuters and other New Yorkers can also benefit from the mayor’s investment, as he said NYC Ferry will also be expanded for all five boroughs.

“This used to be a city where there were ferries all over the place, but over the years there have been very, very few,” Mayor de Blasio said. “We are turning that around.

“We want to help people get out of their cars and give them a better and cleaner way to get around.”