Mayor Sets a New Tone, Pushing Drivers Toward Mass Transit
The New York Times
By Randy Kennedy

[ Return to T.A. Quotes in the Media | Read the latest news on this issue | View this article on the New York Times Web site ]

Unlike his predecessor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is not much known for fiery righteousness, except when he takes on the school system. But at a news conference this month, another subject seemed to bring out the Giuliani in him.

He was questioned about a study that argued that his administration's driving restrictions into Manhattan were inflicting economic damage on the city. "Time out," he said forcefully, pointing out that the study had been paid for mostly by parking garage owners, for whom lots of traffic means lots of business. "I think," he told the reporter, "that is where you can end that question."

Instead of similarities, the exchange actually pointed out an important difference between the two mayors: in one of the nation's most congested cities, Mr. Bloomberg is making the battle against gridlock one of his administration's top priorities. And while Rudolph W. Giuliani tended to favor drivers when he focused on transportation, Mr. Bloomberg frequently seems to be siding against them, in a way not seen since Mayor John V. Lindsay's "car-free weekend" experiments.

In Mr. Bloomberg's budget, in his policies, even in the example he is setting by riding the subway to City Hall most mornings, he is questioning the assumption that New Yorkers with cars should be able to take them where they want when they want with few hindrances — other than the heavy traffic created by too many other drivers doing the same.

He summons up little sympathy for people who are finding it more difficult to drive into central Manhattan. "In the end," he said during one of his recent weekly radio programs, "we all have to take mass transit."

In the next week, Mr. Bloomberg's resolve on his stance will be tested as never before, as West Street and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel are prepared for full reopening for the first time since Sept. 11. This will return traffic in Lower Manhattan as close to normal as it has been in months, putting much more pressure on the mayor to lift the morning driving restrictions. Mr. Bloomberg has vowed to hold his ground, for now, but lawyers working for those who oppose the restrictions are already sharpening their knives.

Traffic experts and advocates for mass transit say that, so far, the administration's efforts to wean people from their cars seem to be based more on the mayor's broad sentiments than on considered policymaking. And the message is not always consistent. At times, they say, Daniel Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development, sounds much more car-friendly than his boss, commiserating with business leaders who are opposed to the single-occupant car ban in the morning on many crossings into Manhattan.

"Bloomberg has a much more progressive vision of the relationship between the car and the city," said John Kaehny, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group. "But he hasn't developed a consistent philosophy or plan that you can really pin down."

Still, a tentative theme does seem to be emerging from the mayor's priorities. It is a theme suited to a man with a long background in the boardroom and one that many drivers will undoubtedly not like: city roads, bridges and curbs — particularly those in the most crowded part, the central business district of Manhattan — are an expensive, limited resource and should be treated as such. In other words, if drivers want to use them, maybe it should cost something. First of all, according to theory, charging is an effective way to manage the use of the resources. Second, it makes the city extra cash.

"Public space is a precious commodity," one senior administration official said. "And if it is a precious commodity, then shouldn't the government be thinking about how to regulate it more? I think that's where he's coming from."

Evidence of the mayor's thinking can be found throughout the small print of his proposed budget. Beginning in the spring, for example, at about 3,500 parking meters on the East Side of Manhattan, parking on Sundays will no longer be free.

The mayor wants fines for some kinds of illegal parking to be markedly increased, up to $100, and for limousine drivers to have to pay more for licenses.

He has also decided to greatly expand a program for charging trucks and vans for curbside parking that was once free in much of Midtown. The program was started under the Giuliani administration, but Mr. Bloomberg asked his transportation commissioner, Iris Weinshall, to expand it even beyond what she had recommended, onto most streets from Third Avenue to Eighth Avenues between 43rd and 56th Streets.

Mr. Bloomberg has made it clear since he took office that he intends to start attacking totems of car culture, beginning with the entrenched one that has long existed in city bureaucracy. He asked agencies to shrink their car fleets, and ordered a cut of 30 percent in the huge number of official parking passes issued to everyone from the press to priests.

But the most aggressive of Mr. Bloomberg's plans to combat congestion deals with the crossings into Manhattan from the other boroughs and from New Jersey.

He has long favored placing tolls on the city-owned East River bridges, a potentially explosive political issue that many consider unlikely. He has more discretion over the single-occupant driving ban on weekday mornings, which was started under Mr. Giuliani as a stop-gap way to end horrendous jams caused by highway security checks and more cars on the road. Mr. Bloomberg has been able to continue the ban only by including it in special emergency orders he issues every five days to help speed the cleanup of the World Trade Center site.

Aides say that the mayor fully supports keeping the ban in place as a permanent traffic management tool, to force people onto trains, buses and ferries and to thin out traffic into Manhattan during the morning rush. His administration has already spent considerable political capital by keeping the ban in place as long as it has — angering wealthy, well-connected garage owners and powerful labor leaders, some of whom have threatened to take the city to court.

"He seems not to necessarily understand the burden that the S.O.V. ban places on a lot of people in a lot of neighborhoods in this city," said David Weprin, a city councilman from eastern Queens, where most residents must drive or take a bus to get to subway lines.

"I've gone every single way into the city from my district, and believe me if I thought the subway or bus was an attractive, quality-of-life way to go to work, I would do it and so would my constituents," said Mr. Weprin, an outspoken opponent of the driving ban who added that he found the subway "one of the most unpleasant experiences" that New Yorkers had to endure.

"The public transportation system needs a lot of improvement," he said. "And some people people just need their cars." Mr. Bloomberg's perspective, he added, is unavoidably limited. "The mayor is a Manhattan person," Mr. Weprin said. "He's never lived in the outer boroughs as far as I know."

Unlike Mr. Giuliani, who rarely offended core Republican supporters in car-dependent neighborhoods outside Manhattan, Mr. Bloomberg so far seems unconcerned by the obvious displeasure that many of his policies will cause in those same areas.

But in a city where advocates for pedestrians and mass transit usually spend much of their time attacking the city's traffic policies, so far Mr. Bloomberg has earned mostly praise. "Under Mayor Giuliani, given the immediate crisis that the city was in, the issues of crime, welfare reform, quality of life and education had to come first," said Elliot G. Sander, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. "Having said that, transportation is crucial to New York's sustained growth, and Mayor Bloomberg deserves enormous credit for having the vision to give it a higher priority than it has had in decades."

One large group of advocates and traffic experts has nicknamed Mr. Bloomberg the MetroCard Mayor, and says it is cautiously waiting to see whether he will remain true to his anticar campaign positions.

Among those was a transportation priority list that ranked the most important issues facing the city. First was the ability for emergency vehicles to move more quickly through the streets. Second, Mr. Bloomberg's platform stated, walking should be made "safer, easier and faster." Next, mass transit should be promoted and commercial deliveries made more efficient. Only last, he said, "for those who insist on driving, to the extent possible, the traffic must flow."

While the number of people entering the island south of 96th Street was the same in 1998 as it was 50 years earlier — 3.6 million people a day — the number of cars entering the area shot up over that time, from 657,000 a day to more than 1.3 million now, according to the mayor's campaign data.

Under the Giuliani administration, little was done to stem that tide. In fact, many of the former mayor's most visible transportation decisions seemed intended largely with drivers in mind: erecting pedestrian barriers to make it easier for cars to turn, cracking down on jaywalkers. Aides to Mr. Bloomberg, however, say that he sees the crush of traffic in and around Manhattan as a serious threat to the city's economic health.

Other long-congested cities around the world have already started to deal with the issue, including, most recently, London, which announced that it would begin charging about $7 a day next year to any driver who wants to take a car into the heart of the city. As one economist there put it, defending the controversial policy, "When something is free, people will use it all up."

The Bloomberg administration says that it is not considering putting up toll booths around Midtown any time soon, but it did mention that Ms. Weinshall, the transportation commissioner, was going to London soon to explore new ideas.

 [ Return to T.A. Quotes in the Media | Read the latest news on this issue | View this article on the New York Times Web site ]