Harlem Suffers High Pollution & Flood Risk, Slow Buses, New Maps Show

HARLEM, NY — Harlemites have much to be proud of about their neighborhood, but uptown has its issues — namely, slow buses, clogged traffic, polluted air and flood-prone streets.

That's according to "Spatial Equity NYC," a new online tool released this week by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives and the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The website is designed to reveal the environmental, public health and mobility disparities in different New York neighborhoods, using public data from the city and the U.S. Census.

Broken down by Community Board and City Council district, the tool lets users view the "notable indicators" for each neighborhood — in other words, the local trends that are especially worrisome. Here are the notable takeaways for each of Harlem's three community districts.

Community District 9 (West Harlem, Hamilton Heights)

Among District 9's lowest-ranked categories was surface permeability: a flood-risk measurement that looks at the prevalence of asphalt and concrete surfaces, which are unable to absorb stormwater flooding.

District 9 has just 15.7 square feet of permeable surfaces per block, ranking it 51st out of the city's 59 districts, the data shows. The lack of permeable surfaces poses risks for "the spread of disease, wastewater, and pollution runoff infiltrating waterways, and death from drowning," the report notes.

The neighborhood recorded an equally negative ranking in traffic volume: District 9 sees 46.5 million vehicle miles traveled per square kilometer each year, the ninth-highest of any district. That high rate of traffic "amplifies the harm caused by traffic, such as air pollution, noise pollution, asthma, excess heat, injury, and death," the report says.

Community District 10 (Central Harlem)

District 10's worst showing is bus speeds, ranking 50th-slowest out of 59 community districts with an average speed of just 5 miles per hour.

Such slow buses can pose a severe hardship for passengers, and bus riders are more likely than the typical New Yorker to be low-income and people of color, the report notes.

Central Harlem's second-worst score was for air pollution, ranking 24th-highest out of 59 districts with an average of 6.4 micrograms of PM 2.5 — a harmful air pollutant — per cubic meter. (The most polluted area of all is central Midtown, which records 9.2 micrograms of PM 2.5, while the cleanest air can be found on the south end of Staten Island, at just 5.3 micrograms, the data shows.)

Community District 11 (East Harlem)

East Harlem's worst indicator was traffic volume, ranking second-highest in the city at 62.2 million vehicle miles traveled per square kilometer each year. No doubt that is due in part to major roadways like the FDR Drive and the RFK Bridge, which run through the neighborhood.

District 11's second-worst indicator is bus speeds, ranking 53rd out of 59 districts with an average of 4.8 miles per hour.

The data itself is not new — much of it is already available through the city's Open Data portal — but the Spatial Equity tool combines it in map form for the first time.

"Spatial inequity impacts the way we move, breathe, and survive in our city," said City Comptroller Brad Lander in a statement accompanying the website's release.

"This data shows how critical it is to expand our protected bike lanes, grow our tree canopies, and extend our dedicated bus ways to ensure our city’s built environment is more just and equitable," he added.

Transportation Alternatives also used the website's release to renew attention to its infrastructure plan, NYC 25x25.

The plan — endorsed in 2021 by then-Mayor-elect Eric Adams — calls on the city to move away from car-focused designs of New York streets.

Coral Murphy contributed reporting.