Gotham Gazette: Endless Traffic: Can It End?
Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20060116/200/1713
Endless Traffic: Can It End?
by Gail Robinson
16 Jan 2006
On the third day of last month's transit strike, some New Yorkers found a silver lining in the shutdown of subways and buses. Bicycle traffic had increased by 500 percent. People got more exercise as they walked to work. And some of the emergency traffic rules -- requiring cars entering much of Manhattan to have at least four people, and restricting some avenues for emergency vehicles -- seemed to work.
"Because this strike is teaching us that we are dependent on mass transit, not cars, to travel in and around Gotham, we now have the freedom to rethink our outmoded policies of giving every inch of public space for the exclusive use of private automobiles," wrote Harris Silver of Citystreets in the New York Sun.
New Yorkers are of course happy the strike is over, and most surely hope that, when the vote is completed this week, transit workers will have approved their proposed new contract. But Silver is not alone in believing that something good came out of the strike -- a hint of what New York could do to combat congestion caused by cars and trucks.
Because such congestion pollutes the air, wastes energy, threatens pedestrians and cyclists, and affects the quality of life, a growing number of individuals and organizations say New Yorkers should not have to put up with it anymore. For inspiration many look to London, which three years ago began charging drivers to enter the city's auto-clogged central district during peak hours. (That's not all London has done: See New York Needs A London Plan by Stephen Hammer.) Although Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that such a plan, popularly known as congestion pricing or value pricing, is not on his agenda, advocates still plan to pursue it along with other strategies that might ease traffic throughout the city.
THE PROBLEM
New York City has a low rate of car ownership and remains the one major American city where most people do not even own a car. Almost half of New Yorkers use public transportation to get to work -- about ten times the national average, according to a report (in pdf format) by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Since many others walk or bike, only 360,000 New Yorkers drive cars to get to their jobs. Nevertheless, every weekday some 800,000 cars enter Manhattan south of 60th Street.
The city streets almost burst from the strain. "The heart of midtown Manhattan can accommodate only 9,000 moving vehicles without succumbing to gridlock," John Seabrook wrote in the New Yorker in 2002.
And so the average New Yorker who drove at peak hours spent about 50 hours a year in traffic delays in 2003, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's Mobility Survey (in pdf format). It's a lot worse elsewhere. New York ranked (in pdf format) as the 18th most congested urban area in the nation, behind not only such well-known bottlenecks as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. but such smaller areas as Orlando, Florida, and Baltimore, Maryland.
Such statistics provide scant comfort. Congestion creates huge problems here. It fouls the city's air, since trucks, buses and cars create much of New York's smog and soot problem and adds to the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming. The traffic wastes energy and slows buses.
The jams extend beyond Manhattan. One key argument against the Atlantic Yards project is that it would bring the already clogged traffic along Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn to a complete halt. Residents of Staten Island cite as a key problem the severe traffic congestion arising from the borough's rapid growth. The American Automobile Association singles out the exit ramp from the George Washington bridge in upper Manhattan as one of the worst "commuter hot spots" in the entire country, creating traffic jams on the Major Deegan and Cross Bronx Expressways.
AIDING AND ABETTING CONGESTION
At least some of this congestion results from deliberate policies over the years.
Indeed, congestion traditionally has been seen as an indication of urban vitality. To many experts, "a bumper-to-bumper crop of cars is a byproduct of the very prosperity, mobility and individual flexibility modern citizens value: Where traffic is at a standstill, it generally means business is humming," Ann Hulbert recently wrote in the New York Times Magazine.
For decades, Robert Moses, the city's master builder of the 20th century, encouraged cars by building parkways and gearing his projects to drivers instead of bus or subway riders. Planners removed rail track from bridges in favor of more lanes for cars. The Brooklyn Bridge could carry 426,000 people a day in 1907, but only 178,000 in 1988, according to former city traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz. To make matters worse, the city does not charge a toll to cross any of its four East River bridges -- and, since 1986, has charged only a one-way toll (into Staten Island) on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which some critics consider one of the most pro congestion policies ever devised.
The city government provides free or subsidized parking to some employees. As a result, government workers in lower and midtown Manhattan are twice as likely as their private sector counterparts to drive to work , according to one study (in pdf format). "If government workers commuted by car at the same rate as other workers, there would be 14,000 fewer cars coming into the Manhattan Central Business District each day," the report concluded.
And some critics charge the city's view of its role adds to the problem. "We're still measuring success the old fashioned way," said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. He notes that, under transportation, the Mayor's Management Report does not explicitly mention reducing traffic, and instead cites such goals as "improving traffic flow" and repairing potholes.
CONGESTION PRICING
In 2000, central London faced many problems similar to those confronting New York today. Although only about 10 percent of people traveled into the area by private cars (by one estimate, less than 15 percent of New Yorkers use private cars to come into Manhattan), this greatly taxed streets that have changed little since medieval days. With London set to have an elected mayor for the first time, Ken Livingstone ran on a platform that included a charge on driving at peak hours in certain parts of the city, with the revenue slated for mass transit, particularly an increase in the number of buses.
Interestingly the idea for congestion pricing had its roots in New York -- in the work of William Vickery, a Columbia University professor and Nobel prize winner. In the 1950s, he proposed the subways charge riders more at peak travel times. He later extended the concept to traffic. The idea was adopted in Singapore and in three Norwegian cities. But in Vickery's hometown, congestion pricing has remained largely just an idea.
While the British may not be quite so enamored of their cars as Americans, it is a country whose onetime leader Margaret Thatcher said, "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure." Livingstone's Conservative rival came out against congestion charges, and opponents set up a Web site to collect signatures and campaign against the proposal -- in sometimes virulent language.
But Livingstone won, and he and his traffic commissioner Robert Kiley, who once chaired New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, went ahead with the plan. Beginning in February 2003, the city charged cars entering an area of about eight square miles on weekdays 5 pounds, or about $8.75, with some exemptions. In July 2005 the fee increased to 8 pounds. People can pay at machines, stores and by Internet or cell phone. Video cameras photograph cars to insure compliance.
The city government considers the program a success. It lists (in pdf format) reductions in congestion of about 30 percent. Auto trips during peak hours declined by about 20 percent, as bus ridership increased by 29,000 in the first year. The city plans to extend the zone westward in February 2007.
There are dissenters. While the charges have eased inner city traffic, they have made things worse on approaches to the city and on outer roads, Johan Wennstrom wrote in Tech Central Station, an online technology publication.
Some say it has hurt business. "A five pound-a-day charge has already resulted in 70,000 fewer car journeys a day into central London -- and this diminution of paying customers has already had an extremely negative impact on retailers and restaurateurs in particular," the London Chamber of Commerce's chief executive, Colin Stanbridge, told the Guardian.
Other cities may follow London's lead however. Stockholm has been testing a plan and will decide whether to implement it permanently later this year.
A PLAN FOR NEW YORK
On this side of the Atlantic, the idea attracted a flurry of interest last November when the Partnership for New York City, a business group, began discussing how congestion pricing might work here.
Some of the impetus arose from concerns that congestion is bad for business. ''In the core of Times Square, there is no doubt about the need to create more space for pedestrians,'' Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance business district, told the New York Times. ''In one October afternoon a couple of years ago, between 3 and 7 p.m. we counted 4,000 people walking literally in the street, in traffic lanes, because the sidewalks were too crowded.''
But newly reelected Mayor Michael Bloomberg quickly cast doubt on any such proposal. "Although we're always open to ideas from the business community, this isn't on the mayor's second-term agenda," said Edward Skyler, then a Bloomberg spokesman (now a deputy mayor).
The partnership says it will issue a report later this year that will consider congestion pricing along with other measures to fight New York's traffic jams. But however the partnership comes down on the issue, other groups will push for it. The Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief has formed to advocate a number of measures to combat congestion, including congestion pricing. And in its editorial on Bloomberg's inauguration for a second term, the New York Times said, "We hope that the mayor uses his unusual position to go a few places where no normal politician dares, like imposing congestion pricing for cars coming into those areas of the city with the heaviest traffic."
"There is no other tool out there as effective for cutting traffic as congestion pricing," Andrew H.Darrell, New York regional director of the group Environmental Defense, has said.
A 2003 analysis by the Regional Plan Association says charging people to enter part of Manhattan at peak hours could reduce morning rush hour traffic by up to 17 percent, depending on the specifics of the pricing scheme. In its analysis, the group found that only one percent of the four million people who enter Manhattan on a weekday would not do so because of a congestion fee.
There is some small precedent for the idea here. The Port Authority charges customers using EZ pass at its bridges and tunnels in the city $1 more at peak times than at less traveled hours of the day.
Until recently, congestion fees would have been unworkable because tollbooths with attendants would have had to collect the charges. But experts say the technology now used in EZ passes allows motorists to be charged electronically without even stopping.
The charges appeal to environmentalists and advocates for mass transit, walking and cycling. They also have support from some free-market champions. "Roads are congested because they are free, and because no market mechanism exists to allocate scarce road capacity," wrote Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren of the Cato Institute, a think tank that supports limited government and free markets.
But not everyone agrees. Mitchell Moss, a professor at NYU's Wagner school and onetime adviser to Bloomberg, has called congestion pricing "a threat to the economic vitality of our city." Writing in the Daily News, he said, the fees would "increase the cost of getting to work for New Yorkers who live in communities not served by mass transit, hurt Manhattan hospitals that treat patients from all five boroughs and make our museums and cultural attractions less accessible to suburbanites."
Others raise the equity issue. Congestion pricing, wrote Kerry Dougherty in the Norfolk Virginia-Pilot, penalizes lower income workers and "rewards those with flexible hours and punishes those with inflexible schedules [who] tend to be concentrated toward the bottom of the wage scale."
This is less true in New York than in other places,since in New York poor people are unlikely to own cars, let along drive them into Manhattan in the middle of the workweek. But certainly any fee poses more of a burden on people with less money to pay it.
And even the plan's adherents concede it would face huge political obstacles (in pdf format), with many observers predicting that Bloomberg would not want to risk a bruising battle on this issue.
TOLLS FOR BRIDGES
Photos by Michael Hauer
The mayor has reason to be wary. Early in his first term, he considered placing tolls on the now free East River bridges to generate revenue. The idea had first surfaced in 1970, as part of a possible New York response to the requirements of the Clean Air Act. But it never went anywhere.
And it died again in 2002. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz reportedly called the tolls "a turkey," and his Queens counterpart, Helen Marshall, said commuters should not be "punished" for traveling from one borough to another. City Council members from Brooklyn and Queens protested too. Bloomberg backed down, saying, "Some of the effects of reducing traffic and that sort of thing would be ... a good idea, but I think, if you really look at it, it's not a short-term solution to our problems."
But advocates say it would solve problems. They note free bridges are not free, costing about $60 million a year to maintain and operate. According to a report (in pdf format) by transportation analyst (and Gotham Gazette columnist) Bruce Schaller, the tolls would reduce traffic congestion in downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City by up to 14 percent.
OTHER IDEAS TO FIGHT TRAFFIC
Turn-restricted Streets: Under Bloomberg, the city has designated nine cross-town Manhattan streets "Thru Streets," restricting turns from them during the business day. A report (in pdf format) by the Department of Transportation found that travel times on the street fell by 25 percent, while speeds increased by 33 percent.
Cleaner Fuel:Last summer, Bloomberg announced a $71 million program to improve traffic congestion in the city. In truth, much of the program would leave cars where they are but make them burn cleaner fuel.
Encouraging Alternative Transportation, etc.:The mayor's new program also called for spending $21 million on various efforts to encourage walking and bicycling and $14 million for improvements to the Traffic Management Center in Long Island City, which sends out electronic advisories of traffic tie-ups.
Traffic Calming: So called "traffic calming measures'' are not so much designed to reduce traffic as to make the cars less of a threat to pedestrians and cyclists. As part of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project, the city is changing the timing on traffic signals to give pedestrians a green light a few seconds before vehicles get the go-ahead. This, said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6 in Brooklyn, "gives pedestrians the opportunity to take control of the crosswalk." While such measures do not explicitly aim to reduce congestion, Hammerman said, they can have that effect because they slow traffic down, making driving a less attractive option.
Parking policies: Drivers circling blocks looking for parking spaces create congestion. The solution according to some advocates: less parking, not more. A 2002 survey found that only 24 percent of the almost 30,000 curbside parking spaces in Manhattan south of 59th Street had meters. Donald Shoup, a professor at University of California Los Angeles and author of "The High Cost of Free Parking" argues that free parking adds to "extreme auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl and extravagant energy use." Shoup believes the city should set rates for on-street parking high enough so that about 15 percent of the spaces are usually unoccupied. London has already done this.
Removing Roads: For many years, people figured the solution to congestion was to build more roads. While such a solution is largely impractical in densely developed New York, many say it is not very effective anywhere. Building more roads, as the interstate system and Robert Moses' New York parkways have shown, makes driving more attractive, leading more people to do more of it.
Conversely, some experts believe, removing roads does not make congestion worse. In the late 1990s, Transport for London studied a number of major roads -- including the West Side Highway in the 1970s -- that were taken out of service. While traffic engineers predicted chaos, little resulted. Instead, some traffic disappeared, wrote Aaron Naparstek in the New York Press: "When it wasn't convenient to drive anymore, commuters took a different mode of transit, traveled at a different time of day, or made fewer, more efficient trips."
While few people call for destroying existing highways, advocates say that something must -- and can -- be done to ease traffic. "We got rid of graffiti, we have discounts on subways and buses, and we may even be on the verge of having clean public bathrooms," the Regional Plan Association wrote in 2003. "We have it in our grasp to do something about mind-numbing traffic congestion."
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Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20060116/200/1717
New York Needs a �London Plan�
by Stephen A. Hammer
16 Jan 2006
With Mayor Michael Bloomberg�s inauguration behind us, the debate now begins in earnest about the issues he will tackle in his second administration. As he considers what to do, Mayor Bloomberg would do well to consider London�s example.
Some of the issues facing Mayor Bloomberg are clear � since the election he has vowed several times to build new affordable housing and aggressively focus on Lower Manhattan redevelopment. New Council Speaker Christine Quinn may have a few ideas of her own, of course, as do many other politicians and advocates around the city who would like the mayor to put his overwhelming electoral mandate to work on their behalf. Neighborhood revitalization efforts will be at the top of many lists, while others will likely focus on a congestion charge scheme like the one that has proven so successful in London. Such initiatives would all leave a mark on New York, but in isolation � and without a broader vision � their long-term impact would ultimately be limited.
A bolder approach would borrow another big idea from across the pond � the London Plan. More formally known as London�s Spatial Development Strategy, this land use planning document articulates a coherent, long-term vision that says where development should occur, and what it should look like. What is truly unique about the London Plan, however � and what makes it noteworthy for policymakers in New York � is the way it links to and is supported by other strategic plans covering topics like transport, noise, waste management, air quality, economic development and energy. To borrow a term from British policy debates, London�s strategies emphasize �joined up� thinking, with each individual strategy reflecting and supporting key themes found in other policy documents.
In the London Plan, for example, London Mayor Ken Livingstone announced he wants developers to build high density, energy efficient, mixed-use complexes near existing transit hubs, and he is using his planning control powers to make sure this occurs. By concentrating development, the Mayor makes it easier for Londoners to walk or bike to bus stops and London Underground stations. In other words, his land use plan is also a transportation and energy conservation plan, complementing his congestion charge program, while simultaneously reducing traffic noise and improving the city�s air quality. It is hardly rocket science, and in the world of urban planning these ideas are fairly commonplace. But whereas most cities employ this technique on a spot basis � say to revitalize one small neighborhood � in London the mayor wants to make it work citywide.
The London Plan also ventures into energy policy by requiring new developments to generate electricity on-site using renewable energy technologies. In doing so, the mayor is reinforcing his economic development strategy by focusing on making London the hub of a new urban energy business sector in Europe.
Strategic planning is nothing new to New York City � or to Michael Bloomberg. The world-renowned 1929 Regional Plan demonstrably shaped how our city grew, and we still benefit from the system of bridges, tunnels, highways, parkland and natural preserves that resulted from that original planning effort.
More recently, Mayor Bloomberg has issued a bold solid waste plan, helped New Yorkers reclaim waterfront access, and worked to expand commercial development in Brooklyn. He partnered with local residents to create a �vision plan� for a more livable Hunts Point and extended bikeways so New Yorkers can safely pedal to work. (The latter idea proved particularly important during the December transit strike, when thousands of New Yorkers took their bikes out of storage to get around the city, despite the frigid temperatures.) These initiatives articulated a clear vision by the mayor and his team about how to improve our city.
What is missing, however, are the links that make the London Plan an important tool for that city�s future. New York�s new waste plan could have emphasized both export and the use of locally available recyclable materials as the basis for new manufacturing jobs here. Plans for �big box� stores delight many New Yorkers � but aggravate others � because they frequently are proposed for areas like Red Hook, where limited public transit access forces shoppers to drive, increasing local traffic congestion. Brooklyn�s proposed Atlantic Yards development has far more public transit options, but there has been no discussion of how clean, on-site energy systems for this massive complex could help address the looming electricity crisis identified by Mayor Bloomberg�s 2004 Energy Task Force.
None of these issues are mutually exclusive, but because city agency responsibilities are narrowly defined, new development proposals often advance within a policy or planning vacuum.
A �New York Plan� would thus represent a seismic shift in how New York City is managed. Residential and commercial development would not stop, but would instead be directed to specific neighborhoods on terms that better reflect the city�s long range interests � not just the developer�s parochial financial interests and �as-of-right� prerogatives.
In other words, a New York Plan would help the city achieve sustained economic growth, less traffic and a cleaner environment, while providing City agency heads with a mandate and platform to deliver it. As in London, such a plan could galvanize public support around a vision of our city�s future, and create a powerful legacy befitting Mayor Bloomberg�s historic second term opportunity.
Stephen A. Hammer, a consultant on energy and environmental issues who studied urban planning at the London School of Economics, teaches a course on urban energy policy at Columbia University�s School of International and Public Affairs.
Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20060116/200/1717
Link to Article Source
Endless Traffic: Can It End?
by Gail Robinson
16 Jan 2006
On the third day of last month's transit strike, some New Yorkers found a silver lining in the shutdown of subways and buses. Bicycle traffic had increased by 500 percent. People got more exercise as they walked to work. And some of the emergency traffic rules -- requiring cars entering much of Manhattan to have at least four people, and restricting some avenues for emergency vehicles -- seemed to work.
"Because this strike is teaching us that we are dependent on mass transit, not cars, to travel in and around Gotham, we now have the freedom to rethink our outmoded policies of giving every inch of public space for the exclusive use of private automobiles," wrote Harris Silver of Citystreets in the New York Sun.
New Yorkers are of course happy the strike is over, and most surely hope that, when the vote is completed this week, transit workers will have approved their proposed new contract. But Silver is not alone in believing that something good came out of the strike -- a hint of what New York could do to combat congestion caused by cars and trucks.
Because such congestion pollutes the air, wastes energy, threatens pedestrians and cyclists, and affects the quality of life, a growing number of individuals and organizations say New Yorkers should not have to put up with it anymore. For inspiration many look to London, which three years ago began charging drivers to enter the city's auto-clogged central district during peak hours. (That's not all London has done: See New York Needs A London Plan by Stephen Hammer.) Although Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that such a plan, popularly known as congestion pricing or value pricing, is not on his agenda, advocates still plan to pursue it along with other strategies that might ease traffic throughout the city.
THE PROBLEM
New York City has a low rate of car ownership and remains the one major American city where most people do not even own a car. Almost half of New Yorkers use public transportation to get to work -- about ten times the national average, according to a report (in pdf format) by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Since many others walk or bike, only 360,000 New Yorkers drive cars to get to their jobs. Nevertheless, every weekday some 800,000 cars enter Manhattan south of 60th Street.
The city streets almost burst from the strain. "The heart of midtown Manhattan can accommodate only 9,000 moving vehicles without succumbing to gridlock," John Seabrook wrote in the New Yorker in 2002.
And so the average New Yorker who drove at peak hours spent about 50 hours a year in traffic delays in 2003, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's Mobility Survey (in pdf format). It's a lot worse elsewhere. New York ranked (in pdf format) as the 18th most congested urban area in the nation, behind not only such well-known bottlenecks as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. but such smaller areas as Orlando, Florida, and Baltimore, Maryland.
Such statistics provide scant comfort. Congestion creates huge problems here. It fouls the city's air, since trucks, buses and cars create much of New York's smog and soot problem and adds to the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming. The traffic wastes energy and slows buses.
The jams extend beyond Manhattan. One key argument against the Atlantic Yards project is that it would bring the already clogged traffic along Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn to a complete halt. Residents of Staten Island cite as a key problem the severe traffic congestion arising from the borough's rapid growth. The American Automobile Association singles out the exit ramp from the George Washington bridge in upper Manhattan as one of the worst "commuter hot spots" in the entire country, creating traffic jams on the Major Deegan and Cross Bronx Expressways.
AIDING AND ABETTING CONGESTION
At least some of this congestion results from deliberate policies over the years.
Indeed, congestion traditionally has been seen as an indication of urban vitality. To many experts, "a bumper-to-bumper crop of cars is a byproduct of the very prosperity, mobility and individual flexibility modern citizens value: Where traffic is at a standstill, it generally means business is humming," Ann Hulbert recently wrote in the New York Times Magazine.
For decades, Robert Moses, the city's master builder of the 20th century, encouraged cars by building parkways and gearing his projects to drivers instead of bus or subway riders. Planners removed rail track from bridges in favor of more lanes for cars. The Brooklyn Bridge could carry 426,000 people a day in 1907, but only 178,000 in 1988, according to former city traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz. To make matters worse, the city does not charge a toll to cross any of its four East River bridges -- and, since 1986, has charged only a one-way toll (into Staten Island) on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which some critics consider one of the most pro congestion policies ever devised.
The city government provides free or subsidized parking to some employees. As a result, government workers in lower and midtown Manhattan are twice as likely as their private sector counterparts to drive to work , according to one study (in pdf format). "If government workers commuted by car at the same rate as other workers, there would be 14,000 fewer cars coming into the Manhattan Central Business District each day," the report concluded.
And some critics charge the city's view of its role adds to the problem. "We're still measuring success the old fashioned way," said Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. He notes that, under transportation, the Mayor's Management Report does not explicitly mention reducing traffic, and instead cites such goals as "improving traffic flow" and repairing potholes.
CONGESTION PRICING
In 2000, central London faced many problems similar to those confronting New York today. Although only about 10 percent of people traveled into the area by private cars (by one estimate, less than 15 percent of New Yorkers use private cars to come into Manhattan), this greatly taxed streets that have changed little since medieval days. With London set to have an elected mayor for the first time, Ken Livingstone ran on a platform that included a charge on driving at peak hours in certain parts of the city, with the revenue slated for mass transit, particularly an increase in the number of buses.
Interestingly the idea for congestion pricing had its roots in New York -- in the work of William Vickery, a Columbia University professor and Nobel prize winner. In the 1950s, he proposed the subways charge riders more at peak travel times. He later extended the concept to traffic. The idea was adopted in Singapore and in three Norwegian cities. But in Vickery's hometown, congestion pricing has remained largely just an idea.
While the British may not be quite so enamored of their cars as Americans, it is a country whose onetime leader Margaret Thatcher said, "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure." Livingstone's Conservative rival came out against congestion charges, and opponents set up a Web site to collect signatures and campaign against the proposal -- in sometimes virulent language.
But Livingstone won, and he and his traffic commissioner Robert Kiley, who once chaired New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, went ahead with the plan. Beginning in February 2003, the city charged cars entering an area of about eight square miles on weekdays 5 pounds, or about $8.75, with some exemptions. In July 2005 the fee increased to 8 pounds. People can pay at machines, stores and by Internet or cell phone. Video cameras photograph cars to insure compliance.
The city government considers the program a success. It lists (in pdf format) reductions in congestion of about 30 percent. Auto trips during peak hours declined by about 20 percent, as bus ridership increased by 29,000 in the first year. The city plans to extend the zone westward in February 2007.
There are dissenters. While the charges have eased inner city traffic, they have made things worse on approaches to the city and on outer roads, Johan Wennstrom wrote in Tech Central Station, an online technology publication.
Some say it has hurt business. "A five pound-a-day charge has already resulted in 70,000 fewer car journeys a day into central London -- and this diminution of paying customers has already had an extremely negative impact on retailers and restaurateurs in particular," the London Chamber of Commerce's chief executive, Colin Stanbridge, told the Guardian.
Other cities may follow London's lead however. Stockholm has been testing a plan and will decide whether to implement it permanently later this year.
A PLAN FOR NEW YORK
On this side of the Atlantic, the idea attracted a flurry of interest last November when the Partnership for New York City, a business group, began discussing how congestion pricing might work here.
Some of the impetus arose from concerns that congestion is bad for business. ''In the core of Times Square, there is no doubt about the need to create more space for pedestrians,'' Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance business district, told the New York Times. ''In one October afternoon a couple of years ago, between 3 and 7 p.m. we counted 4,000 people walking literally in the street, in traffic lanes, because the sidewalks were too crowded.''
But newly reelected Mayor Michael Bloomberg quickly cast doubt on any such proposal. "Although we're always open to ideas from the business community, this isn't on the mayor's second-term agenda," said Edward Skyler, then a Bloomberg spokesman (now a deputy mayor).
The partnership says it will issue a report later this year that will consider congestion pricing along with other measures to fight New York's traffic jams. But however the partnership comes down on the issue, other groups will push for it. The Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief has formed to advocate a number of measures to combat congestion, including congestion pricing. And in its editorial on Bloomberg's inauguration for a second term, the New York Times said, "We hope that the mayor uses his unusual position to go a few places where no normal politician dares, like imposing congestion pricing for cars coming into those areas of the city with the heaviest traffic."
"There is no other tool out there as effective for cutting traffic as congestion pricing," Andrew H.Darrell, New York regional director of the group Environmental Defense, has said.
A 2003 analysis by the Regional Plan Association says charging people to enter part of Manhattan at peak hours could reduce morning rush hour traffic by up to 17 percent, depending on the specifics of the pricing scheme. In its analysis, the group found that only one percent of the four million people who enter Manhattan on a weekday would not do so because of a congestion fee.
There is some small precedent for the idea here. The Port Authority charges customers using EZ pass at its bridges and tunnels in the city $1 more at peak times than at less traveled hours of the day.
Until recently, congestion fees would have been unworkable because tollbooths with attendants would have had to collect the charges. But experts say the technology now used in EZ passes allows motorists to be charged electronically without even stopping.
The charges appeal to environmentalists and advocates for mass transit, walking and cycling. They also have support from some free-market champions. "Roads are congested because they are free, and because no market mechanism exists to allocate scarce road capacity," wrote Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren of the Cato Institute, a think tank that supports limited government and free markets.
But not everyone agrees. Mitchell Moss, a professor at NYU's Wagner school and onetime adviser to Bloomberg, has called congestion pricing "a threat to the economic vitality of our city." Writing in the Daily News, he said, the fees would "increase the cost of getting to work for New Yorkers who live in communities not served by mass transit, hurt Manhattan hospitals that treat patients from all five boroughs and make our museums and cultural attractions less accessible to suburbanites."
Others raise the equity issue. Congestion pricing, wrote Kerry Dougherty in the Norfolk Virginia-Pilot, penalizes lower income workers and "rewards those with flexible hours and punishes those with inflexible schedules [who] tend to be concentrated toward the bottom of the wage scale."
This is less true in New York than in other places,since in New York poor people are unlikely to own cars, let along drive them into Manhattan in the middle of the workweek. But certainly any fee poses more of a burden on people with less money to pay it.
And even the plan's adherents concede it would face huge political obstacles (in pdf format), with many observers predicting that Bloomberg would not want to risk a bruising battle on this issue.
TOLLS FOR BRIDGES
Photos by Michael Hauer
The mayor has reason to be wary. Early in his first term, he considered placing tolls on the now free East River bridges to generate revenue. The idea had first surfaced in 1970, as part of a possible New York response to the requirements of the Clean Air Act. But it never went anywhere.
And it died again in 2002. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz reportedly called the tolls "a turkey," and his Queens counterpart, Helen Marshall, said commuters should not be "punished" for traveling from one borough to another. City Council members from Brooklyn and Queens protested too. Bloomberg backed down, saying, "Some of the effects of reducing traffic and that sort of thing would be ... a good idea, but I think, if you really look at it, it's not a short-term solution to our problems."
But advocates say it would solve problems. They note free bridges are not free, costing about $60 million a year to maintain and operate. According to a report (in pdf format) by transportation analyst (and Gotham Gazette columnist) Bruce Schaller, the tolls would reduce traffic congestion in downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City by up to 14 percent.
OTHER IDEAS TO FIGHT TRAFFIC
Turn-restricted Streets: Under Bloomberg, the city has designated nine cross-town Manhattan streets "Thru Streets," restricting turns from them during the business day. A report (in pdf format) by the Department of Transportation found that travel times on the street fell by 25 percent, while speeds increased by 33 percent.
Cleaner Fuel:Last summer, Bloomberg announced a $71 million program to improve traffic congestion in the city. In truth, much of the program would leave cars where they are but make them burn cleaner fuel.
Encouraging Alternative Transportation, etc.:The mayor's new program also called for spending $21 million on various efforts to encourage walking and bicycling and $14 million for improvements to the Traffic Management Center in Long Island City, which sends out electronic advisories of traffic tie-ups.
Traffic Calming: So called "traffic calming measures'' are not so much designed to reduce traffic as to make the cars less of a threat to pedestrians and cyclists. As part of the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project, the city is changing the timing on traffic signals to give pedestrians a green light a few seconds before vehicles get the go-ahead. This, said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board 6 in Brooklyn, "gives pedestrians the opportunity to take control of the crosswalk." While such measures do not explicitly aim to reduce congestion, Hammerman said, they can have that effect because they slow traffic down, making driving a less attractive option.
Parking policies: Drivers circling blocks looking for parking spaces create congestion. The solution according to some advocates: less parking, not more. A 2002 survey found that only 24 percent of the almost 30,000 curbside parking spaces in Manhattan south of 59th Street had meters. Donald Shoup, a professor at University of California Los Angeles and author of "The High Cost of Free Parking" argues that free parking adds to "extreme auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl and extravagant energy use." Shoup believes the city should set rates for on-street parking high enough so that about 15 percent of the spaces are usually unoccupied. London has already done this.
Removing Roads: For many years, people figured the solution to congestion was to build more roads. While such a solution is largely impractical in densely developed New York, many say it is not very effective anywhere. Building more roads, as the interstate system and Robert Moses' New York parkways have shown, makes driving more attractive, leading more people to do more of it.
Conversely, some experts believe, removing roads does not make congestion worse. In the late 1990s, Transport for London studied a number of major roads -- including the West Side Highway in the 1970s -- that were taken out of service. While traffic engineers predicted chaos, little resulted. Instead, some traffic disappeared, wrote Aaron Naparstek in the New York Press: "When it wasn't convenient to drive anymore, commuters took a different mode of transit, traveled at a different time of day, or made fewer, more efficient trips."
While few people call for destroying existing highways, advocates say that something must -- and can -- be done to ease traffic. "We got rid of graffiti, we have discounts on subways and buses, and we may even be on the verge of having clean public bathrooms," the Regional Plan Association wrote in 2003. "We have it in our grasp to do something about mind-numbing traffic congestion."
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Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20060116/200/1717
New York Needs a �London Plan�
by Stephen A. Hammer
16 Jan 2006
With Mayor Michael Bloomberg�s inauguration behind us, the debate now begins in earnest about the issues he will tackle in his second administration. As he considers what to do, Mayor Bloomberg would do well to consider London�s example.
Some of the issues facing Mayor Bloomberg are clear � since the election he has vowed several times to build new affordable housing and aggressively focus on Lower Manhattan redevelopment. New Council Speaker Christine Quinn may have a few ideas of her own, of course, as do many other politicians and advocates around the city who would like the mayor to put his overwhelming electoral mandate to work on their behalf. Neighborhood revitalization efforts will be at the top of many lists, while others will likely focus on a congestion charge scheme like the one that has proven so successful in London. Such initiatives would all leave a mark on New York, but in isolation � and without a broader vision � their long-term impact would ultimately be limited.
A bolder approach would borrow another big idea from across the pond � the London Plan. More formally known as London�s Spatial Development Strategy, this land use planning document articulates a coherent, long-term vision that says where development should occur, and what it should look like. What is truly unique about the London Plan, however � and what makes it noteworthy for policymakers in New York � is the way it links to and is supported by other strategic plans covering topics like transport, noise, waste management, air quality, economic development and energy. To borrow a term from British policy debates, London�s strategies emphasize �joined up� thinking, with each individual strategy reflecting and supporting key themes found in other policy documents.
In the London Plan, for example, London Mayor Ken Livingstone announced he wants developers to build high density, energy efficient, mixed-use complexes near existing transit hubs, and he is using his planning control powers to make sure this occurs. By concentrating development, the Mayor makes it easier for Londoners to walk or bike to bus stops and London Underground stations. In other words, his land use plan is also a transportation and energy conservation plan, complementing his congestion charge program, while simultaneously reducing traffic noise and improving the city�s air quality. It is hardly rocket science, and in the world of urban planning these ideas are fairly commonplace. But whereas most cities employ this technique on a spot basis � say to revitalize one small neighborhood � in London the mayor wants to make it work citywide.
The London Plan also ventures into energy policy by requiring new developments to generate electricity on-site using renewable energy technologies. In doing so, the mayor is reinforcing his economic development strategy by focusing on making London the hub of a new urban energy business sector in Europe.
Strategic planning is nothing new to New York City � or to Michael Bloomberg. The world-renowned 1929 Regional Plan demonstrably shaped how our city grew, and we still benefit from the system of bridges, tunnels, highways, parkland and natural preserves that resulted from that original planning effort.
More recently, Mayor Bloomberg has issued a bold solid waste plan, helped New Yorkers reclaim waterfront access, and worked to expand commercial development in Brooklyn. He partnered with local residents to create a �vision plan� for a more livable Hunts Point and extended bikeways so New Yorkers can safely pedal to work. (The latter idea proved particularly important during the December transit strike, when thousands of New Yorkers took their bikes out of storage to get around the city, despite the frigid temperatures.) These initiatives articulated a clear vision by the mayor and his team about how to improve our city.
What is missing, however, are the links that make the London Plan an important tool for that city�s future. New York�s new waste plan could have emphasized both export and the use of locally available recyclable materials as the basis for new manufacturing jobs here. Plans for �big box� stores delight many New Yorkers � but aggravate others � because they frequently are proposed for areas like Red Hook, where limited public transit access forces shoppers to drive, increasing local traffic congestion. Brooklyn�s proposed Atlantic Yards development has far more public transit options, but there has been no discussion of how clean, on-site energy systems for this massive complex could help address the looming electricity crisis identified by Mayor Bloomberg�s 2004 Energy Task Force.
None of these issues are mutually exclusive, but because city agency responsibilities are narrowly defined, new development proposals often advance within a policy or planning vacuum.
A �New York Plan� would thus represent a seismic shift in how New York City is managed. Residential and commercial development would not stop, but would instead be directed to specific neighborhoods on terms that better reflect the city�s long range interests � not just the developer�s parochial financial interests and �as-of-right� prerogatives.
In other words, a New York Plan would help the city achieve sustained economic growth, less traffic and a cleaner environment, while providing City agency heads with a mandate and platform to deliver it. As in London, such a plan could galvanize public support around a vision of our city�s future, and create a powerful legacy befitting Mayor Bloomberg�s historic second term opportunity.
Stephen A. Hammer, a consultant on energy and environmental issues who studied urban planning at the London School of Economics, teaches a course on urban energy policy at Columbia University�s School of International and Public Affairs.
Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20060116/200/1717
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