[TRAINS/CARS/BIKES] Move People, Not Cars

The New York Times' "Freakonomics" blog posted a piece about congestion pricing yesterday, and a torrent of comments ensued. I jumped into the fray, intending to be brief; but as they say, I didn't have time to write a short piece. Here it is, with some typos removed:

The success of any pricing plan aimed at reducing traffic congestion is determined by a) the effectiveness of other options (e.g., public transit and bicycling) and b) what the revenues would be spent on.

To my first point, in New York City, the idea of internalizing external costs is a no-brainer. And while the faux-populist arguments about the regressiveness of a pricing plan are appealing, they are easy to swat away with New York’s considerable transit system. Poor people in New York use transit. This is not true, of course, in cities that don’t have public transit, but many cities do, in one form or another, and poor people use it. You also see people riding bicycles or walking on dangerously fast roads. (How is that good for poor people? If you don’t own a car in most cities, you’re worthless – that’s not regressive?)

Still, public transit in New York could use a lot of improvement. For instance, have you taken a bus in New York recently? On some routes, you’re better off walking. It’s unconscionable that New York isn’t a world leader in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT); segregated lanes should be devoted to low-floor buses that passengers board after paying fares to facilitate shorter stops. Yes, lanes should be taken from personally owned vehicles in New York and devoted to transit.

New York also suffers from a dearth of quality bicycling infrastructure, despite the valiant efforts of our new DOT Commissioner. And the bicycle is not a child’s toy – it can be an incredibly effective transportation tool in many cities. Just as another commenter wrote “mo-tor-cycle,” and with good reason, bicycles are an incredibly efficient use of space. The only reason bicycling isn't viable in so many places is that it is downright dangerous to ride a bicycle in most places (sadly, even in New York City). But a real network of separated bike lanes throughout New York – something like what Copenhagen and Amsterdam have – would encourage many New Yorkers to ride. “Oh, but Denmark is Denmark, and America is America” – yes, and Denmark, nearly 40 years ago, was a lot more like America. Bicycling was not widely accepted in Copenhagen until citizens pushed for better infrastructure; now, 40% of Copenhagen residents commute by bike. (Copenhagen is much smaller than New York City, so I am under no delusion that we can reach such numbers – but Washington, DC, can. So can a lot of other American cities.)

A pricing plan would be a great revenue generator. This is where my second point comes in: such revenues have to be devoted to moving people effectively in large numbers – not cars. A hundred years ago, the Brooklyn Bridge moved twice as many people as it does today because it accommodated trolleys rather than cars. The automobile is simply not an effective way to move large numbers of people, and we can’t build our way out of congestion with more roads in New York. Some people responded to this posting to suggest that we simply build more roads: come to New York, and tell us where these new roads should go, and then tell us where the displaced thousands of residents should move to make way for these roads. (You’d have a hard time selling this idea in most other cities in the United States, too – not just New York.)

We simply can’t just move cars more effectively in New York. So if we are to move people more effectively, we have a way to create a relatively cheap, efficient system. And there is no silver bullet; the answer is probably a combination of cars, subways, commuter rail, bicycles, and buses (and again, in my opinion, BRT should be a major component).

This system has to be great. And people will recognize a great system when they see it. But right now, New Yorkers won’t fall for a pricing mechanism because they don’t believe they’ll get anything for it. So the revenues generated from a pricing plan aimed at automobiles have to be devoted 100% to an integrated transportation system.

As for the type of pricing plan, I am dubious about a congestion plan. It requires a lot of infrastructure, and I tend to be wary of technological solutions – not because I’m a Luddite, but because I think an over-reliance on technology sometimes steers us away from other ideas that might be just as good or better. Instead, I would prefer to see New York eliminate off-street parking requirements (yes, New York City has off-street parking minimums, while other major cities in the United States are getting rid of them; and while there are limits in one part of Manhattan, those limits are easy for developers to get around). Also, New York should tax the heck out of off-street parking spaces. Parking spaces are destinations for cars – there’s an “if you build it, they will come” dynamic there – and regulating them more tightly would be very easy to do from a technological perspective.

As for the politics… Well, as with all of these ideas, that’s where the rubber hits the road.

[HUMOR/ARCHITECTURE] Quite Lame

My friend Jen sent me today's Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis' daily strip:

I love Pastis' drawings. The scarf and hat are priceless.

[POLITICS/ENVIRONMENT] Smells Good, Too

This is pretty funny.

[MOVIES] "That Sounds Terrible! I Have to See it Now!"

*Sniff* Aw, man, was that you?

New York Magazine has a funny piece about the new Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds: "How Bad Is Seven Pounds' Ending, Anyway?" Turns out it's pretty bad.

Don't read the article if you're planning on seeing the movie and/or just don't want to know the ending.

The comments section is also worth perusing. My brother and I agreed a few weeks ago that, as my brother put it, comments sections get us "to cynical, misanthropic rage or depression in mere minutes." But this one is pretty funny. Here are some highlights:

Holy crap! That sounds terrible! I have to see it now!

He *could* have given his eyes to Tom Cruise instead but alas, the eye patch persists.

The jellyfish part sounds like something I'd write. Yikes.

Haha. This is so wrong, yet so right.

[JOURNALISM] Super Duper Q & A

Charles Kaiser lays out yet another failure on the part of The New York Times in his piece today in The Columbia Journalism Review. Vice President Dick Cheney admitted in an ABC interview that he approved the use of what the Bush Administration likes to call "aggressive interrogation techniques." That's a big story, and the Times ignored it.

Kaiser quotes Harper's Scott Horton as saying the following:

[Waterboarding] has been defined as torture by the United States since at least 1903, the first military court-martial. The United States views waterboarding conducted for intelligence purposes during wartime as a war crime, and it has prosecuted both civilian and military figures involved in the chain of approval of its use. Penalties applied have ranged up to the death penalty. The crime is chargeable under the War Crimes Act and under the Anti-Torture Statute. There is no ambiguity or disagreement among serious lawyers on this part...

The use of waterboarding (actually, a different technique) by some United States military personnel in the Philippines – you remember, when we were saving our "little brown brothers" from themselves – shocked the nation. Have we really slipped this far? Why are we not as horrified?

Oh, but that's just Harper's. You know, a bunch of liberals. Never mind that, as Kaiser points out, retired major general Anthony Taguba wrote, “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.” (As Kaiser says, "the Times also ignored that one.")

Oh, but Taguba clearly has an axe to grind. He led the investigation into Abu Ghraib, and was subsequently thanked for his efforts by being put out to pasture. Never mind that we prosecuted Nazis for their use of waterboarding as a war crime.

And never mind that the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a bi-partisan report that found that this Administration's efforts to gather information "on how to use aggressive techniques, [redefine] the law to create the appearance of their legality, and [authorize] their use against detainees...damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."

And never mind that intelligence experts have repeatedly and unequivocally said that torture – or "enhanced interrogation techniques," or "super duper Q & A," or "questions on steroids," or "a gentle tickle under the chin," or whatever you want to call it – does nothing but get false information and hurt our cause.

Never mind all of these things. If politicians can be viewed as tough and get a boost in the polls, by golly, we should undermine our international reputation and ignore our principles.

Good thing for this Administration that The New York Times is the "newspaper of record." But the Times should understand that it's gunning for irrelvance by continually dropping the ball. Worse than that, it's aiding and abetting criminals.

[POLITICS] The "Bleeps" Are Redacted

Patrick Fitzgerald is my hero. He has just been kicking ass and taking names, and he has a clean-cut, Elliot Ness demeanor to boot. At a press conference a few days ago he read portions of Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich's expletive-spiced phone conversations, and concluded one such quotation with the statement, "...the 'bleeps' are redacted."

Gov. Blagojevich's behavior is appalling, and indicative of a sociopathy that is all-too common among the political and corporate leadership classes (for an example of the latter, look at the Big Three CEOs, who flew their private jets to DC to ask Congress for their bailout – that was not merely a PR blunder). When sociopaths finally get their comeuppance, they look completely clueless; their lack of awareness of other people, which is often what enables them to rocket forward in their careers, is also a type of stupidity, and, when they finally get nailed, they shrink, in our eyes, from intimidating figures to little idiots.

In Illinois, Fitzgerald comes out a hero, further raises his profile, and moves that much closer to his ultimate career goals, whatever they may be. While we can talk about the two men's ethics from a strictly moralistic perspective, I prefer to point out that this scandal is a lesson in short-term vs. long-term gain: the fat-cat pol demanding illegal cash vs. the hard-working US Attorney steadily building a case. Who comes out on top in the end? And I don't mean to ask who wins in this case; imagine that Fitzgerald and Blagojevich are completely unrelated. Nor do I mean to ask who gains in a karmic sense. Rather, the two men's different approaches to life can show us that we gain in the here and now by doing the right thing. Doing the wrong thing is a result of limited intelligence and imagination.

I realize that this may be a rather idealistic proposition; for one thing, as Mr. Rogers said, "good people do bad things," especially in difficult circumstances. For another, there are plenty of Blagojeviches in the world, and they distort the "doing well by doing good" input-output loop. I say this assuming that Gov. Blagojevich is not an example of a good person who did a bad thing, in which case it's troubling to think about what else Gov. Blagojevich has done that we will never know about. Reminds me of what they say about cockroaches: for every one you see, there are 10,000 others.

[HUMOR/POLITICS] Prop. 8! The Musical