(Robert) Mosesian in its ambitious bid to establish a new transit financing authority, and (Jane) Jacobsian in its attention to the pedestrian and transit taking majority, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's sweeping transportation plan represents a welcome full frontal attack on traffic congestion and all of its attendant ills. Unfortunately, much of it depends on the state legislature. And so the mayor should take a closer look at something he can control: where New Yorkers park and how much they pay to park there.
Traffic ills -- health, economic and environmental -- are poised to get much worse. In addition to the much publicized influx of population and tourists and their attendant travel needs, the city is facing an estimated 83 percent increase in truck traffic (by 2020 over 1998 levels) and a torrent of new traffic unleashed by a bevy of major development projects like Atlantic Yards.
Despite the resurrection of Robert Moses' ambition, neither the mayor nor anybody in their right mind is proposing that we solve the problem with new roadways. The human and financial costs are too great, and new roads, we have long understood, just invite more driving.
Leaving Cars Behind
The wiser approach is to make better use of the street space we already have by switching car trips to methods of travel that make better use of our limited space. This "mode shift" forms the bedrock of the mayor's 16 green transportation initiatives. To make alternatives to the private car more appealing, the mayor wants to improve and expand bus service, enhance pedestrian access to transit stations and promote cycling with more paths and bike parking.
But two of the 16 initiatives hold by far the most potential to solve New York City's transportation problem: a $50 billion transit expansion program and a London-style congestion pricing system to help pay for it.
Congestion pricing, in addition to raising $400 million per year for the transit expansion program, would yield immediate transit benefits just by clearing away many of the cars that currently slow city buses. And by forcing drivers- especially city employees who currently drive at twice the rate as everyone else- to switch to subways and buses, the plan would significantly strengthen the political constituency for further transit improvements.
Even for the 5 percent of outer borough workers who currently drive to Manhattan (the other 95 percent take transit or drive elsewhere), congestion pricing holds benefits. Their commutes will shorten markedly, and all New Yorkers will benefit from cleaner air and less health eroding traffic.
As much sense as congestion pricing makes, its success is far from secure. For congestion pricing, and the long list of transit projects it would fund, to become reality, it must first gain the approval of a gauntlet of state legislators who with a nudge from the powerful parking and automobile lobbies could easily block it.
The Lure Of The Parking Space
Unless Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff are content to leave their legacy in the hands of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, they should pursue three parking policy reforms that would, like congestion pricing, reduce traffic and generate millions for transportation and street improvements. Unlike congestion pricing, these reforms do not require the approval of the state legislature.
Most Manhattan-bound drivers (in pdf) drive out of choice, not necessity. A recent Schaller Consulting study uncovered the reason why: Most drivers do not pay for parking. As any transportation expert will tell you, the carrot of free parking is too irresistible for drivers to refuse, even when they have decent transit options.
Government workers have their coveted (and often counterfeit) placards, and all drivers have access to a bounty of free and $1.50 per hour spaces, even if they have to circle the block for 40 minutes to find one. Because under-priced spots along the curb are always full, cruising for parking accounts for up to 45 percent of all traffic on city streets.
Three steps, used in other big cities, would enable the mayor to redress root causes of traffic congestion while generating a windfall to fund street improvements:
--Increasing the price for metered parking to a level that frees up spaces and reduces cruising;
--Charging residents for permits that would give them preferences for parking on public streets;
--Cleaning up the rampant misuse and abuse of city issued parking permits.
With a new generation of transit improvements funded by congestion pricing, Bloomberg and Doctoroff are poised to move mountains, if only they can move Albany. As a hedge, they should tackle what they can clearly control: New York City's broken parking policy.
Paul Steely White is executive director of Transportation Alternatives.
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Those who have labored a lifetime on the city's environmental fronts were blown away on Earth Day to hear our words articulated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg with more mastery and conviction than any of us have mustered. Brilliantly couching congestion pricing in the context of the city's survival, the mayor made it a moral imperative. To convince motorists there is a trade-off, the mayor shrewdly seeks to get tangible transit improvements in place before charging motorists for entering Manhattan.
But the Mayor and Governor Eliot Spitzer must act quickly if they are not to be hamstrung in their commitments to expand transit use. They must reverse New York City Transit's plan to junk 607 subway cars as new ones arrive this year and next. NYC Transit's reason for throwing away usable cars, which could also be rebuilt for one-third the cost of new ones, is that there is no yard space for overnight storage. Accepting that limit will leave NYC Transit with no spare cars, its smallest fleet ever, and unable to deliver the increase of subway service central to the mayor's plan.
The mayor cites bus rapid transit as a quick, high-visibility way to boost ridership, but even this will take too long if it relies on dedicated buslanes. What can be installed quickly is the high-tech component ofbus
Rapid transit -- a GPS tracking and radio communication system. This would eliminate much of the bus bunching that infuriates riders, and the monitors at each bus stop, posting wait times for each route, should help make waiting for a bus more tolerable, even seducing some drivers out of their cars.
Congestion pricing could be made simpler as well. A lot more funds would be available for transit users if the congestion fees were simply collected on the bridge spans and along 60th Street, rather than at dozens -- even hundreds -- of charging points south of 86th Street. Equalizing the charges on all crossings would provide a strong signal to motorists that it doesn't pay to drive out their way to avoid tolls. While the mayor's proposed adjustments in congestion charges levied in Manhattan may remove any advantage of untolled bridges, the complexity muddies the message.
Instead of capitalizing on Manhattan having just four untolled entries, the proposed multiple checkpoints, exceeding London's charging cordon, will be a lot more costly and may raise new objections to tracking motorists' movements.
Even the staunchest supporters of congestion charges in the boroughs see neighborhood parking permits as an essential element of any plan to reduce traffic. The permits would not guarantee a parking place, but would
Charge outsiders a hefty price for precious curb space. Fees and fines could be reinvested in streetscape improvements and effective traffic calming. Such measures would reinforce the quality-of-life benefits of tolls.
The old pre-E-ZPass image of bridge tolls of long spillback of traffic from toll plazas is dead. There is a growing concession in the boroughs that a seamless charging technology can unclog approach roads to free bridges from the lemming-like traffic that is drowning neighborhoods and delaying drivers. Armed with the mayor's powerful ability to change the political
equation, why not institute congestion fees in the fastest, most productive way?
Carolyn Konheim is chair of Community Consulting Services.
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Are bicycle-powered pedicabs just a diversion for tourists or are they a legitimate form of mass transit? Mayor Michael Bloomberg's veto of a bill to regulate the city's pedicabs has kept alive debate about the role of the fledging bicycle taxi industry in the city.
The New York City Council recently passed a bill that represented a compromise between pedicab owners and powerful opponents of the industry, primarily taxi, hotel and restaurant owners.
The bill would establish a cap of 325 pedicabs in the city and require the cabs have $2 million in liability insurance, that drivers be licensed and that vehicles undergo inspection. The legislation would also ban the use of electric motors to help with pedaling and authorize the police department to restrict pedicabs from Midtown during the holiday season and from any Midtown street for up to 14 days at other times.
Pedicab owners supported insurance and other safety regulations to maintain standards and prevent pedicab owners who are not paying insurance from charging lower rates to the detriment of those owners who are insured. The owners, however, opposed the cap on the number of pedicabs, as well as the bans on operation during the holiday season and the use of electric assists.
Ironically, it was not pedicab owners but their drivers who prompted the mayor to veto the bill.
Drivers testified at what was expected to be a routine bill-signing ceremony that they feared losing their jobs – seemingly with good reason since the current number of pedicabs, estimated at up to 500, probably exceeds the new cap. After hearing from drivers, Bloomberg surprised everyone by declining to sign the bill and on March 31 announced his veto. During his weekly radio show, the mayor commented, "Let the free marketplace decide." He suggested that a cap of 500 would satisfy him.
It is not clear whether the City Council, which adopted the bill with than the two-thirds majority needed to override a mayoral veto, will vote to do so.
The New York Sun reported that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn will force through an override, while the Village Voice quotes the bill's sponsor, Councilmember Leroy Comrie, as saying the bill's fate is undecided. An override vote - if there is one - is expected to take place at the council meeting scheduled for April 23.
If the council overrides the mayor's veto, the bill would formalize the city's acceptance of the pedicab industry as part of the Midtown landscape while limiting the vehicles’ numbers and potentially restricting their operation during the most congested -- and most lucrative -- times of the year.
The council’s regulatory scheme for pedicabs is similar in some ways to the long-established taxicab medallion system. The number of medallion cabs is limited by law to about 13,000 vehicles and the industry is subject to an extensive set of requirements for insurance and driver licensing.
Yet the medallion cabs are never banned from Midtown -- in fact, they are allowed special access to some bus lanes and provided with taxi stands at key locations.
Insurance requirements are actually lower for medallion cabs than for pedicabs under the bill, an ironic contrast given that cabs can travel at much higher speeds and are thus more likely to be involved in accidents causing severe injury.
Proponents of the bill say that the cap, insurance requirements and licensing regulations are important to prevent pedicabs from further clogging traffic, to protect against unfair competition with taxicabs for street hails, and to protect pedestrian safety. This view essentially sees pedicabs as an entertainment option for tourists. It thus makes sense to limit their number and operations to prevent the pedicabs from interfering with other users of Manhattan streets.
Pedicab proponents paint them as a fast, safe and environmentally and passenger-friendly means of transportation.
Gregg Zukowski, a pedicab owner and driver, wrote in Gotham Gazette last year that because of its ability to weave through traffic, a pedicab can zip from Grand Central to Penn Station in eight minutes, while a taxicab could take 20 or 30 minutes. Pedicab drivers say that many of their riders are New Yorkers who value the faster ride or who cannot find a medallion taxi.
With the exception of one accident in which a private bus struck a pedicab in 2001, there have apparently been no major accidents involving pedicabs since their advent in New York City a decade ago. With pedal power, pedicabs do not contribute to either smog or global warming.
Leaders of several city transportation and environmental groups emphasized the environmental implications of the issue in a letter urging council members not to override the mayor’s veto. “If you are truly committed to protecting our environment and heading off environmental catastrophes such as those highlighted in the Academy Award winning film An Inconvenient Truth, you simply cannot vote in favor of legislation that is specifically designed to undermine evolving green industries,” the letter said.
Perhaps the greatest appeal of pedicabs is their passenger-friendly image, created by drivers who engage in conversation and will point out the sights along the way to tourists.
Pedicab owners implicitly point to a future Manhattan streetscape with fewer cars and cabs and more eco-friendly modes of transportation. Pedicabs would be part of this, joined by pedestrians, bicycles and clean-air buses, all of which use less street space per passenger mile traveled than cars or conventional cabs. There might be additions to this new transportation list; Vespa, the manufacturer of motorcycles and scooters, recently released a study that concluded that substituting motor scooters for cars would reduce global warming vehicle emissions in the city.
The council's bill does allow for changes in the future. The cap on the number of pedicabs would expire two years after the bill becomes law, unless the council renews it. Thus, neither this bill (nor a replacement that simply increased the numerical cap) really resolves the place of pedicabs in the city. The bill does take important steps toward making sure pedicabs are safe. But it does not settle the thornier issues about who should be using the city's congested streets and for what purposes.
Bruce Schaller, who has been in charge of the transportation topic page since its inception in 1999, is head of Schaller Consulting, which provides research and analysis about transportation. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University.Â