Off with their sheds
The ubiquitous New York City sidewalk shed is a necessary evil. New construction is a healthy thing that, like it or not, kicks up dust. And ours is a nearly 400-year-old metropolitan area where countless aging buildings need routine inspection and repair to stay safe and legal. Workers need places above street level to do their jobs, and pedestrians down below must be protected from falling tools, bolts, beams, plywood and debris.
But let the scaffolds — which are unpleasant to traverse — stay there too long, and they become an unseemly blight that plunge entire blocks into darkness.
Which is exactly what has happened. Last year, the city’s Independent Budget Office reported that the scaffolding on city streets has tripled over the past two decades, with 57% of those installed for façade repairs staying up more than one year. A new report by Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine puts a finer point on it: Scaffolds are on city streets for 498 days on average, and more than 230 have been in place for more than five years.
Infuriating.
Levine lays out five strategies for shedding sheds more quickly, including aiding buildings to get work done more swiftly; resolving disputes that often set projects back months or years; holding building owners — including city government itself, which is one of the biggest offenders — to account when they take forever; and adjusting the local law that prescribes regular inspections. In some cases, he smartly says, we ought to let drones take the place of humans to check the outside of buildings; and certain structures should get a slightly longer inspection timetable rather than the every-five-year mandate.
When then-Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster sat down with this Editorial Board back in 2007, she admitted that because of the risk of falling debris, “I cross the street, thank you very much,” rather than walk under the insufficient protection of rickety sidewalk sheds. Today, the more significant plague is scaffolding that goes up and never comes down. Tackle it.