Each day, as he steps out of his apartment a few blocks from the Hunts Point Produce Market, Manuel Vazquez packs a mask to use as a shield against smoke spewed by trucks rumbling through his Bronx neighborhood.
Vazquez, 64, suffers from asthma, like many others in the borough, where rates of the respiratory ailment are among the highest in the country, according to the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He also has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“The air we breathe, just look at it, all that black smoke coming out of the trucks,” Vazquez told THE CITY while waiting at a Bx6 bus stop along Hunts Points Avenue. “That’s going to affect a lot of people here who have asthma, like me.”
Bronx residents like Vazquez who suffer from the lung condition are hoping for relief from toxic truck fumes, but that relief may take years to arrive.
A little more than two weeks since the start of congestion pricing — the vehicle-tolling initiative designed to cut congestion and reduce vehicle emissions in central Manhattan — South Bronx residents and advocates say they are cautiously optimistic that promised mitigation measures accompanying the plan can also deliver environmental benefits to communities historically impacted by air pollution.
Several Bronx neighborhoods, such as Hunts Point, Mott Haven, High Bridge and Morrisania, are among those promised a share of $100 million in “place-based mitigation” due to potential increases in highway traffic from drivers looking to dodge new congestion pricing tolls placed on motorists driving south of 60th Street in Manhattan.
Another $230 million in mitigation steps is committed for measures that include establishing a Bronx asthma center, renovating parks and greenspace and expanding the NYC Clean Trucks Program. According to the city Department of Transportation, since 2012, the clean trucks program has replaced 672 vehicles with lighter, cleaner trucks.
According to state Department of Health data, The Bronx had 61,980 asthma-related emergency department visits from 2019 to 2021, the highest of any borough and more than one third of the city total. In contrast, Staten Island had 6,121.
“Asthmatics are in need of a lot of medical services,” Mychal Johnson, co-founder of South Bronx Unite, which advocates for social and environmental causes, told THE CITY. “That’s really costly to our social safety net.”
In Hunts Point, the planned improvements center around replacing up to 1,000 diesel-burning transport refrigeration units (TRUs) at the produce market with electric-hybrid or newer diesel models in hopes of significantly reducing harmful emissions from the sprawling facility that’s spread across 113 acres and four main warehouses.
“They’re horrendous for air quality and getting rid of them is one of the principal investments that is being made to make sure that, as we go through this congestion pricing process, there is no negative, in fact, a positive air quality impact to The Bronx,” Janno Lieber, MTA chairperson and CEO, said last week in response to a question from THE CITY. “There’s a ton of other investments going on, but that is one that everyone who goes by an area that is covered with diesel fumes because of these diesel refrigeration units is really going to appreciate.”
‘Sounds Like a Great Idea…’
According to the MTA, the DOT will procure a company in the second quarter of 2025 to run the transport refrigeration unit program. The city agency must also gauge interest among tenants that operate in the market.
But advocates are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“Our only apprehension is we’ve received promises of these kinds of conversions before,” Johnson said. “So there’s not a lot of good history around these kinds of promises actually materializing into reality as much as we want that to happen.”
The planned measures attached to congestion pricing also include planting “approximately 4,000 trees and 40,000 shrubs” to improve air quality around schools, daycares and senior centers and installing air-filtration units in schools near highways.
The exact locations for that work, however, have yet to be identified.
“It sounds like a great idea,” said Elizabeth Rivera, 49, a Hunts Point resident who uses a walker. “Let’s just hope it comes true.”
The so-called environmental justice communities, which also include East Harlem, Downtown Brooklyn-Fort Greene and Newark, N.J., made the list based on pre-existing high rates of pollution and chronic disease, even as the impacts of traffic reflows outside of the congestion zone are not yet clear.
Manuel Vazquez waits for bus on Hunts Point Avenue, Jan. 17, 2025. Credit: Jose Martinez/THE CITY
The MTA estimates that converting just 100 of the refrigeration units, which operate around the clock, will eliminate three times the amount of particulate pollution and five times more the pollution from nitrogen oxides than any additional tailpipe emissions from drivers trying to avoid congestion pricing tolls.
The work is part of a larger redevelopment planned for the nearly 60-year-old Hunts Point Produce Market, which annually distributes more than 2.5 billion pounds of produce from New York State farms in the city and elsewhere.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation, which operates the market, is seeking to redesign it so that the 1,000 idling diesel-powered refrigeration units that make up for a shortage of cold storage can be phased out and cut emissions.
“One of NYCEDC’s top priorities is the redevelopment of the Produce Market that will ensure New Yorkers have access to quality food and secured food infrastructure, create jobs for Bronxites and New Yorkers and remove 1,000+ TRU’s that significantly impact local air quality in Hunts Point,” an EDC spokesperson said in a statement.
As he stood outside on Hunts Point Avenue, Vazquez said he hopes to live long enough to breathe cleaner air.
“It’s the best thing they could do for this neighborhood, it’s nonstop trucks,” he said. “It’s not easy living here.”
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