The Next Traffic Plan?

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Gotham Gazette | July 18, 2007

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With the defeat of congestion pricing, what's next for fighting traffic -- and for Mayor Michael Bloomberg?Get on your bicycle, advises David Haskell founder of the New York Bike Share Project in today's Times. Bike sharing, a program that allows riders to pick up and drop off a bicycle anywhere in the city by swiping a card, offers a relatively easy and inexpensive way to reduce auto trips, Haskell says.Streetsblog looks back by at an article by Transportation Alternatives executive director Paul Steely White that appeared in Gotham Gazette last spring. It proposed a three-part effort to reduce parking on city streets: raising prices for parking meters, charging residents for street-parking permits and cracking down on misuse of parking privileges by city employees. This plan makes sense, White wrote, because "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."Other traffic fighting schemes outlined in AMNY today include requiring commercial buildings to offer bicycle parking; offering incentives for carpooling and even, in a throwback to the days of gasoline restrictions, allowing cars only with specified license numbers to enter congested areas on certain days (odd numbers Tuesday, on even Wednesday?), a scheme floated by congestion pricing foe Assemblymember Richard Brodsky.But it's too early to give up on congestion pricing, writes Newsday. Bloomberg should press ahead, the editorial says: "No obstacles to this smart, progressive plan are too onerous to be overcome -- if reasonable leaders are willing to put aside their own agendas and think of the greater good."But the Sun thinks Bloomberg should just fuhgeddaboutit: He has bigger fish to fry. The paper says, "It would be better for New York for Mr. Bloomberg to walk away from the feuds with Mr. Silver and the legislative gridlock in Albany. Leave that to Eliot Spitzer. Let the mayor step up to the national stage."

Submitted by admin on December 18, 2007 - 16:59. categories [ ]