English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in New York City, NY

ALBANY — After months of negotiations and public hearings, National Grid has reached a settlement with state regulators to raise gas and electric rates for its upstate customers.

The average residential gas and electric customer will end up paying $600 more than they currently pay over a period of three years if the rate plan is approved by the state Public Service Commission.

Under what is known as a “joint proposal,” the new, higher rates would begin in September, adding roughly $14.32 to an average customer’s monthly electric bill and $7.66 to the customer’s monthly gas bill.

That’s a combined monthly increase of $21.98 at a time when inflation and the Trump administration’s global trade and tariff policies are expected to increase costs for consumers even more.

Rates would also go up in the second and third years of the plan, which technically started April 1.

The bill increases are based on a typical residential bill for a customer using 625 kilowatt hours of electricity a month and 78 therms of natural gas per month.

National Grid filed its rate proposal in May 2024 as a one-year rate plan that would have increased gas and electric delivery rates by $673 million in one year, leading to a monthly increase of $37 for gas and electric customers. National Grid has a total of 1.7 million customers across upstate New York.

The PSC rate approval process is designed to take 11 months. Typically, utilities and regulators prefer longer-range deals, usually three to five years, so the parties do not have to keep coming back every year to set rates.

Phil DeCicco, National Grid’s general counsel who led the utility’s rate case and negotiations, said the company took a hard look at the capital projects it had proposed in its original rate request in order to limit increases.

“We took a billion dollars worth of capital out of the case from what we had proposed,” DeCicco said in a video interview on Friday. “These were projects that we thought we could defer without compromising safety or reliability, which is obviously paramount.”

Under the joint proposal, National Grid will spend $1.75 billion on upgrading gas and electric infrastructure in the first year. It would also return $290 million to low-income and “vulnerable” customers through bill discounts, including $72 million in the first year.

And 480 new jobs would be created at National Grid. The utility currently has 5,400 workers.

The state’s climate law, one of the toughest in the U.S., has also been driving up delivery rates. (National Grid does not control the cost of the actual electricity or gas supply — the physical fuel. Those rates are set by the wholesale market and take up about half of a typical bill.) So that was also a consideration, according to DeCicco.

“On one hand, everything we are doing in this rate case is directionally aligned with the goals of the (state’s climate law) and the state’s energy policies,” DeCicco said. “This rate case really, though, is more about our core business providing gas and electricity safely and reliably to customers. Most of the programs at the end of the day are really focused on improving and enhancing and modernizing assets that in some cases are 60, 70 or 80 years old that are still out in the field and serving customers well, but need to be replaced.”

The settlement was reached not only with staff at the PSC but also with business, union and renewable energy groups.

The Public Utility Law Project of New York, an Albany-based nonprofit that advocates for low-income utility customers, told Syracuse.com that they believe the rate increases could negatively impact those already struggling to pay their bills.

"While PULP acknowledges the efforts to limit the proposed increases, the reality is that over 210,000 customers are already behind on their upstate National Grid bill," Theresa Hotte, a PULP lawyer, told Syracuse.com. "The additional increases proposed by the joint proposal risk pushing essential services further out of reach for many more low- and fixed-income households who are already facing mounting financial pressure."

The public and interested stakeholders are expected to have an opportunity to comment on the settlement, with the PSC board voting toward the end of the summer on the new rates, which would take effect in September.

April 25, 2025|Updated April 25, 2025 8:38 p.m.

Staff Writer

Larry Rulison has been a reporter for the Times Union since 2005. Larry’s reporting for the Times Union has won several awards for business and investigative journalism from the New York State Associated Press Association and the New York News Publishers Association. Contact him at 518-454-5504 or lrulison@timesunion.com.

It was once a busy branch of the Long Island Rail Road. Now, coyotes prowl one of New York City’s last wild places. What will it become next?

Listen to this article · 9:31 min Learn more

Christopher Maag regularly visited the Rockaway Beach Branch over 10 months.

This railroad track hasn’t carried a train across central Queens in 63 years, and it is more strange and more beautiful for it. The Long Island Rail Road’s Rockaway Beach Branch once offered a 30-minute trip from Manhattan to New York City’s ocean beaches. Along the way it traversed three and a half miles of parkland valleys, earthen embankments and concrete viaducts from Forest Hills to Ozone Park.

The line was abandoned in 1962. And so nature pursued its messy designs. Forests grew. Signal towers fell. Coyotes colonized the dark bramble. In Rego Park, a section of track came unmoored from its fastening pins, and the rock ballast eroded. The track swayed free in the wind. A seedling fell between the stones. It became a red maple tree that grew and caught the rail, folding the steel I-beam into its bulbous trunk.

On a chilly day last winter, Jason Hofmann leaned down, framed the scene with his iPhone and took a picture.

“I like the way the branches move in the wind — it creates interesting geometry with the railroad tracks,” said Jason, 17, who lives nearby and occasionally walks the abandoned tracks. “It feels like nature taking over a war zone.”

Most of the old train line is managed by New York’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services. The middle section, a mile-long stretch through Forest Park, is open to the public. The rest lies behind razor wire, wobbly fences and hillsides of poison ivy. A few neighbors improvise ways to get inside, as do a handful of people who sleep under tarps.

“It’s gorgeous,” said Travis Terry, who lives in Forest Hills, three blocks from the old line. “It’s been untouched for 60 years, so you have these great trees. You’re in a forest and then you think to yourself, ‘Wait, I’m in New York City!’”

The locals are joined by especially ardent urban explorers, some of whom take multiple buses and subway trains to get there. They enjoy the abandoned line for its decayed beauty, and because so few people know it’s there.

“It’s under the radar because it’s in Queens, and it’s hard to get to,” said Jeff Seal, a train-loving performer who filmed himself walking the entire line. The video has received 12,000 views since he posted it on YouTube six years ago, which hasn’t done much to raise the Rockaway branch’s profile. “I like that it’s hidden in plain sight,” he said.

The place may not remain hidden for long. Mr. Terry leads Friends of the QueensWay, a nonprofit that hopes to turn the abandoned train line into a linear park similar to the High Line in Manhattan. The group has received $154 million in grants from the city and the federal government, enough to complete the first mile and a half of park construction.

“It’s important for us to utilize every inch,” Mr. Terry said.

Because the Rockaway branch is in New York City, even this forgotten wasteland has become contested ground. A competing group, called QueensLink, hopes to restore train service aboveground, with a new tunnel connecting the branch to the subway system. Cost estimates start around $4 billion and balloon to $9 billion. The group has won $400,000 to study the rail idea from the U.S. Department of Transportation — the same agency that also gave $117 million to QueensWay to build its park.

“It’s a remarkable resource that has to be used,” said Neil C. Giannelli, 70, who has lived along the line for 24 years and supports QueensLink.

In the meantime, the Rockaway branch grows more beautiful for its disuse. To spend a year trespassing the old tracks is to enjoy the infinite overlapping riot of things planted and dead, built up and falling apart.

If the Rockaway Beach Branch becomes a park in Queens it will be thanks in part to the success of the High Line, another once-abandoned train line that opened as a park starting in 2009 and now attracts tourists from around the world.

Robert Hammond is a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, which led the redevelopment effort. To sell his vision, Mr. Hammond asked the photographer Joel Sternfeld if he might take a few snapshots of the abandoned train line.

Between his photo books and museum exhibitions, including a show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984, Mr. Sternfeld was among the most celebrated art photographers in the world. He agreed to help the High Line, but not for money. His only request was time.

“I need a year of exclusive access,” Mr. Sternfeld recalled telling the group.

Mr. Sternfeld got his year, and keys to the abandoned line. The wet spring dried. Summer weeds bloomed. Though the High Line in the 1990s was a refuge for artists and teenage thrill seekers, Mr. Sternfeld’s pictures included no people. Instead they focused on faint trails bushwhacked into thickets of invasive Ailanthus trees. His pictures, full of leaden skies and muted auburn bramble, lent the High Line the mystique it needed to land powerful backers, Mr. Hammond said, including Diane von Furstenberg and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“For me, it was the seasons,” Mr. Sternfeld said in a recent interview. “I have always been interested in the seasons, and the changing of the seasons.”

A quarter century later, the project to redevelop the Rockaway branch is in the same early phase as the High Line was when Mr. Sternfeld walked it. Yellow lichens dot the rusted steel like polka dots on a necktie. Flocks of blue jays march down the canopy like columns of soldiers, squawking and unafraid. Behind an apartment tower in Rego Park, a high-banked ridge gave way and buried the rail line beneath a slow-moving avalanche of soil.

On a warm day last summer, Alex Cotter left the sidewalk by Yellowstone Boulevard and scrambled onto the steep embankment to the Rockaway branch, using tree roots as handholds to pull himself up. He hoped to see an opossum. Instead he was trapped, dense Ailanthus blocking all northern progress, greenbrier thorns to the south.

“I always thought it would be interesting to go up there, I just never actually did it,” said Mr. Cotter, 28, who grew up near the line in Rego Park. “Maybe I’ll come back when it’s cold.”

By The New York Times

Beneath the Yellowstone Boulevard bridge lies a triangle-shaped lot that once was a dumping ground for televisions and car batteries. A decade of free labor turned it into the Compost Collective, where trash is sorted by volunteers and chickens peck one another in a double-decker coop.

At the collective’s winter picnic this December, Anuradha Hashemi stood in the shadow of the quiet train bridge and kept watch over her son’s first bonfire.

“Mom!” said the boy, Obi, 6. “My marshmallow is on fire!”

In the early 2000s, Patrick Mohamed bought a tall, narrow house in Woodhaven. His back patio ended in a cinder-block wall. Just beyond the wall, the Rockaway branch’s embankment rose in a hillside of weeds and trash.

Now Mr. Mohamed is 63, gray at the temples but still quick with his steps. A cold day in February found him in his driveway surrounded by steel barbells, completing his daily exercises. Mr. Mohamed walked to the back of his property, hopped two steps carved into the cinder blocks and climbed into his garden, on land appropriated from the old train line.

Raised tomato beds climbed the hill like a staircase. They were topped with trellises for long beans and bitter melons and small-gauge screen to keep the rabbits out. Where the hill crests, fat terra cotta planters filled with barren soil extended Mr. Mohamed’s domain all the way across the first set of tracks.

Everywhere else in New York, land rights are adjudicated to the square inch. On the Rockaway branch, things are looser. Some homeowners keep their backyards flush with the property line laid down by the railroad. Many have edged their fences back a few feet, claiming space for a shed, a foosball table or a rope swing. Few of Mr. Mohamed’s neighbors are eager to see the line repurposed as a park, which might bring nosy strangers to their backyard retreats.

“I’m worried about people looking in, hurting our privacy,” said Lasha Revia, 46, who carved a stone-lined terrace into the embankment where he hosts family gatherings in summer.

But no one else along the entire three-and-a-half-mile line has pursued a campaign of territorial expansion as successful as Mr. Mohamed’s.

“I built this over 24 years,” he said. “I did it a little piece at a time.”

One man can impose only so much order on a place so riotous. Rather than feel discouraged by the disorder, Mr. Mohamed greets it with delight. In summer, when the garden pruning is finished, he retires to his back deck. He watches darkness descend at its own celestial pace.

“At night it gets really dark back here,” he said. “We get great stars, and the moon comes out really clear.”

Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.

A version of this article appears in print on April 27, 2025, Section LI, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Train Tracks Gone Wild. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Long Island Rail Road

Around the New York Region

Related Content

Every weekday, we recommend one piece of exceptional writing from The Times — a narrative or essay that takes you someplace you might not expect to go.

New Yorkers will soon have a new pool to splash around in come summer — and, in the winter, a new rink for ice skating. There’s even fun in store for the in-between seasons.

That’s because the northern edge of Central Park, long bypassed by visitors drawn to the green space’s southern landmarks, is poised to become a vibrant destination with the April 26 opening of the $160 million Davis Center at the Harlem Meer. The Central Park Conservancy calls this its biggest and most complex project since it was founded in 1980.

At its heart is the Gottesman Pool, a state-of-the-art aquatic facility set to rank as the city’s eighth-largest, designed to serve thousands of swimmers and foster community connection in a historically underserved corner of the park.

The Davis Center, a public-private collaboration led by the conservancy with $60 million from the city and $100 million in private donations, replaces the aging Lasker Rink and Pool, a 1960s structure that had fallen into disrepair.

Designed by Susan T. Rodriguez and Mitchell Giurgola Architects, the facility nestles into the park’s rugged terrain, its low-profile pavilion crowned by a sod roof that doubles as a scenic overlook.

The pool, opening for public swimming in late June, can accommodate up to 1,000 swimmers at a time, offering a cool respite during those sweltering city summers.

In winter, it transforms into an ice rink — and in spring and fall, it becomes the Harlem Oval, an artificial turf field for community activities.

How it works: There’s a riser system placed underneath the rink in the winter and the lawn in warmer months — to support their own bases. It’s then removed for revelers to make a splash in the pool all summer long.

“The opening of the Davis Center in Central Park is a shining example of what makes New York City more livable and the best place to raise a family,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a press release.

The pool and surrounding facility restore a landscape altered by decades of urban interventions. Unlike the Lasker Pool, which disrupted the natural flow of water into the Harlem Meer, the Davis Center reconnects a stream through the historic Huddlestone Arch, creating a wetland edge that enhances the area’s ecological integrity. Not to mention something scenic for visitors to take in.

A new shoreline boardwalk, accessible to all, winds along the Meer, inviting pedestrians to explore the park’s northeastern corner, a 20-minute bike ride from Midtown.

“Today is a joyful and deeply meaningful day for Central Park and for New York City,” said Betsy Smith, President and CEO of the Central Park Conservancy. “What once was a beloved but aging facility is now a beautiful, welcoming place that celebrates Central Park and welcomes New Yorkers to swim, skate, learn and connect — all year round.”

The facility’s design prioritizes community needs, informed by years of dialogue with Harlem and East Harlem residents.

The pavilion, with its Corinthian granite walls and expansive glass doors, serves as a light-filled hub for gatherings — housing changing rooms, restrooms and a compact café.

Its sustainable features, targeting LEED Gold certification, include a green roof planted with native species and a skylight that bathes the interior in natural light.

Philanthropic contributions included $40 million from Kathryn and Andrew Davis, for whom the center is named, and a significant gift from David S. Gottesman and Ruth L. Gottesman, for whom the pool is named.

“Kate and I are honored to support the Davis Center at the Harlem Meer, a project that restores a vital part of Central Park and reconnects it with the Harlem community,” said the Davises in the press release.

Alice Gottesman added, “Swimming and skating outdoors in Central Park are special, unmatched experiences. The new Davis Center at the Harlem Meer will make these opportunities accessible to so many more New Yorkers.”

The pool’s programming, operated by the city Parks department, includes free Learn to Swim lessons and aquatic activities from late June to early September, addressing the needs of a community where access to such resources has been limited.

Year-round offerings, supported by donors like JPMorganChase and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, feature fitness classes, art workshops, and ecological tours, with a focus on engaging local youth.

“The historic Harlem Meer is one of Central Park’s greatest gems, so I’m thrilled that the new Davis Center’s programming and facilities will offer endless ways for visitors to connect with the Meer,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, whose office provided $2.2 million for the project.

The Davis Center’s completion marks the culmination of a decades-long effort to revitalize Central Park’s northern end, where the Conservancy has invested more than $310 million since the 1980s.

On April 26, at noon, a community celebration on the Harlem Oval will launch the center’s public debut, featuring local performances, food and hourly tours.

The Trump administration inadvertently showed its cards when its own lawyers released a confidential document expressing grave doubts about their legal fight with New York to end congestion pricing.

But does that mean Washington’s whole case will go bust?

It started when lawyers representing the U.S. Department of Transportation filed a detailed memo in federal court that laid out why the agency was likely to lose. The memo, which should not have been filed because it is subject to attorney-client privilege, was on the docket for less than an hour Wednesday night before it was pulled.

But by Thursday morning, the letter had been widely shared online. Hours later, the agency effectively fired its legal team of lawyers from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York after suggesting that the disclosure may have been politically-motivated sabotage. A spokesman for the Southern District said the disclosure was an accident.

It is now up to a federal judge whether the 11-page letter, which provides a road map for blowing up the Transportation Department’s legal defense, should be permanently sealed and excluded from the court proceedings.

On Thursday, backers of congestion pricing asked the court whether the letter might be unsealed and made part of the case. Some legal observers said, however, that whatever the court decides about the letter, the better question is whether the damage is already done.

“The cat’s out of the bag,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School who supports congestion pricing. “Everyone knows the contents of the letter, regardless of whether it’s sealed.”

In February, the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said his agency was withdrawing approval for the plan, which had been authorized by the Biden administration. He demanded that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates congestion pricing, stop the tolls. The M.T.A. immediately sued in federal court to prevent Mr. Duffy’s intervention. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York vowed to keep the toll cameras on.

Mr. Duffy has said congestion pricing goes beyond the scope of the federal program used to authorize it — known as the Value Pricing Pilot Program — because it does not offer a toll-free option for drivers entering the area. He has also argued that revenue from the toll should not be used to subsidize mass transit projects.

But the confidential memo, written by three assistant U.S. attorneys in Manhattan representing the Transportation Department, warned that Mr. Duffy’s arguments were “exceedingly likely” to fail in court.

The lawyers said that neither of Mr. Duffy’s arguments were likely to persuade the court, partly because the federal judge overseeing the M.T.A.’s lawsuit, Lewis J. Liman, had recently dismissed elements of those theories in other cases related to congestion pricing. The government’s lawyers instead urged a new direction.

In response to the letter becoming public, the Transportation Department made the remarkable decision to remove those lawyers from the case and released a statement suggesting that the team was either incompetent or motivated by politics. The lawyers, however, apologized in a letter to the judge and asked that the file be sealed.

Mr. Duffy and the Transportation Department will now be represented by lawyers from the civil division of the Department of Justice in Washington, a team that will have to work quickly to get up to speed on the case.

In a news media interview on Thursday, Mr. Duffy downplayed the release of the memo, adding that he remained confident in his department’s legal strategy. He said that the congestion pricing toll remains “fundamentally unfair.”

A spokeswoman for the agency on Friday said there would be “no change in Secretary Duffy’s fight to terminate the congestion pricing program.” Mr. Duffy has already threatened to withhold federal funding and approval for a number of transportation projects in the city and state, if Ms. Hochul does not comply with his demands.

Judge Liman is expected to decide after next week whether the memo should be included in the case. Supporters of congestion pricing, including two nonprofits involved with the lawsuit, have questioned whether it makes sense to seal the document.

“Once it is public, it necessarily remains public,” Dror Ladin, a lawyer representing the supporters, wrote in his letter to the court.

The release of the memo was the latest setback for Mr. Duffy, who has sought to halt congestion pricing despite a chorus of legal experts who have said his agency lacks the authority to do so.

The congestion pricing program, the first of its kind in the nation, charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street during peak traffic, to cut down on gridlock and pollution and raise funds for the region’s mass transit system. After years of federal, state and local review, the plan was approved under the Biden administration in November 2024, and tolling began on Jan 5.

President Trump has promised to end the toll, arguing, without evidence, that it would harm the local economy.

The disclosure of the memo, while embarrassing and “a lawyer’s nightmare,” was unlikely to be a deciding factor in the M.T.A.’s lawsuit, said Eric A. Goldstein, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports congestion pricing.

Mr. Goldstein added that very little in the memo was new or surprising, and that Judge Liman was already well versed on the issue after presiding over four other congestion pricing cases brought by opponents.

One telling detail to emerge from the letter, however, was that the Department of Transportation might try to terminate its approval of congestion pricing by citing “changed agency priorities.”

But, for that argument to prevail, the judge would have to agree that the federal government can renege on commitments made by a previous administration, said Joe Carlile, an appropriations consultant and former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration.

“I don’t know if it’s an open-and-shut case, one way or the other,” Mr. Carlile said, adding that if this strategy works, it could have a chilling effect on private sector investment in government projects.

“That would throw long-term capital projects into disarray,” he said.

Several lawyers said the Trump administration could still prevail against the tolling program in court, though not necessarily before Judge Liman.

Corey Bearak, a lawyer who advises clients on public policy issues and opposes congestion pricing, said that mistakes happen and that by replacing the lawyers in the case, the Trump administration had sent a message “that they are serious about the litigation.” He urged the Trump administration to consider other legal avenues, including joining efforts by opponents who are also fighting congestion pricing in state court.

Brian D. Carr, a lawyer for the Trucking Association of New York, which filed one of the lawsuits opposing congestion pricing before Judge Liman, said he has not read the memo out of principle. He said he has previously received a confidential email from other lawyers by mistake that might have helped his case.

“I immediately delete it because there but for the grace of God go I,” he said. “I would hope that I would get the same respect from an adversary.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Bar managers in a popular New York City restaurant district say they're losing out on business as they wait for their outdoor liquor licenses to be approved.

The State Liquor Authority told CBS News New York most applications are processed within seven to ten days, but business owners on Stone Street in Lower Manhattan say they've been waiting months.

"We're taking a major hit"

Stone Street is closed to vehicular traffic year-round, but it got caught up in red tape with the city's new outdoor dining regulations, one restaurant manager says.

"We've been lumped in with the city streets, and as you can see, we are not a city street. We are not an active street for cars," said Christina Johnston, general manager of Mad Dog & Beans Mexican Cantina.

As a result, the restaurant is forced to display "no alcohol" signs on outdoor tables, and customers can only get alcoholic drinks if they're inside the building.

Restauranteur Ronan Downs owns five restaurants on the historic cobblestone alley.

"They've spoken to our lawyers, and the bills keep mounting up," Downs said. "Yes, we're taking a major hit. But it's also a huge hit for New York City. Thousands of tourists come down here daily, and they're expecting to have a glass of wine, pint of Guinness."

He says the fix is simple.

"We're hoping that very soon they will finally sign a piece of paper," he said. "We'd like to put our best foot forward and show tourists, people who live here what we have to offer."