A new Quinnipiac Poll finds that New York City voters oppose the idea of congestion pricing by a margin of about two-to-one and the idea of East River Bridge tolls by more than four-to-one. The survey also found that only 24 percent of New York City voters "say they usually travel into and out of Manhattan by car."

The new poll results somewhat contradict a November survey by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign that found 45 percent of New Yorkers would be receptive to the idea of congestion charging and are overwhelmingly in favor of the potential benefits of a congestion pricing system.

While some are likely to view the Quinnipiac Poll as a rebuke to citywide traffic relief efforts,
the results are very much in line with the findings of surveys taken in London and Stockholm prior to the launch of those cities' successful and, ultimately, popular experiments with congestion pricing.

Before its implementation in Stockholm, Sweden, a survey showed that 80 percent of Stockholm residents were opposed to the idea of congestion pricing. Yet, after a seven month trial from January to July 2006, opposition had largely evaporated. In September 2006, 53 percent of Stockholm residents voted to keep the city's congestion charging system in place.

Likewise, prior to the start of London's now-popular congestion pricing system, opposition was intense. Samantha Bond, the actress who plays Miss Moneypenny in the most recent James Bond films led protests at the West End theatre. The newspapers screamed "Ken-gestion!" and "Carmageddon!" London Mayor Ken Livingstone described the opposition as a "massively hysterical reaction from opponents." Still, Prime Minister Tony Blair and virtually every other local and national politician distanced himself from the plan. The January 8, 2003 edition of the Guardian predicted, "The scheme will be condemned as a failure within days, perhaps hours, of it starting. The senior officials in Transport for London will be named and shamed. Livingstone will be told he must resign."

Livingstone went ahead with the congestion pricing plan and February 17, 2003 is the day the traffic disappeared in the city of London. The number of cars entering central London dropped by about 60,000. Drivers weren't necessarily complaining. One automobile group estimated that the average driving speed in central London had doubled. Livingstone declared it, ''the best day we've had in traffic flow in living memory." Prior to the congestion charge about 250,000 motorists each day were trying to drive into Central London.

Right away, the reduction of traffic in London's pricing zone was beyond the high end of the forecasts with 16 percent less congestion and 38 percent fewer cars driving into the Center of London. London's buses, as notoriously dysfunctional as New York City's, were all of the sudden working. The average wait for a bus had cut to just one and a half minutes. Bus ridership quickly grew 14 percent during rush hours.

After three years of congestion pricing, Transport for London surveys showed that more than 70 per cent of Londoners say the scheme has been effective and twice as many support the charge as oppose it. First London, a business group similar to the Partnership for New York City, found that 49 percent of Central London businesses believed congestion charging was working. Only 2 percent of companies say they would consider relocating to a site outside the zone because of it.

Mayor Livingstone has approved a westward expansion of the zone, new Low Emission Zone and a $50 charge to SUV owners who wish to drive into Central London.

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Mayor Bloomberg's State of the City Speech yesterday looked back on a year in which "so much went right throughout" New York City and looked forward to a year focused on improving schools, encouraging more real estate development, and eliminating sales tax on footwear and clothing.

Unlike Mayors of many other world cities, the kinds of urban environmental issues we focus on here at Streetsblog merited nary a mention in Bloomberg's speech. Although Bloomberg's re-organized, second term Department of Transportation and Long-Term Planning and Sustainability Office are supposed to have some great projects in the works they were not mentioned either. The Mayor's July 11, 2001 campaign promise to "Untangle New York City Traffic" still remains largely unaddressed and unfulfilled.

This is the closest he came in yesterday's speech:

We'll continue supporting our city's Business Improvement Districts, which bolster the neighborhood businesses that are the backbone of our economy. And to strengthen them even more - this year, we'll launch "NYC Clean Streets" a $1.6 million initiative making commercial corridors in all five boroughs more attractive.

We'll also keep investing in the transportation infrastructure critical to our economy. That means not only extending the Number 7 line, a City-funded project that will spur the historic development of the Far West Side but also helping Congressman Rangel, Senators Schumer and Clinton, and others, to secure Federal support for Lower Manhattan's rail link to Jamaica, Long Island and Downtown Brooklyn, too. And I also look forward to working with Governor Spitzer to finally create the rail gateway our city deserves one that will be a lasting monument to the great Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

We're also making unprecedented investments in another area crucial to our quality of life: our parks. Just a few blocks from here, for example, we'll proceed with building Brooklyn Bridge Park - the borough's biggest new park in nearly 130 years.

We'll also break ground for the first playing fields in what will become the 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Park on Staten Island - which will be nearly three times the size of Central Park.

Creating more housing - and making more housing affordable - was one of the key long-term sustainability goals that we outlined last month. And in March - as part of the "PLAN-NYC" process - we will present a detailed agenda for implementing those goals and for solving the problems raised by the bigger, older, and more environmentally challenged city New York will be in the year 2030.

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Mayor Bloomberg delivered his State of the City address at Brooklyn Tech yesterday afternoon. Anyone hoping to hear policy proposals on traffic, transportation, livable streets, climate change and long-term sustainability issues was likely disappointed.

During the speech, a Streetsblog tipster happened to be biking along Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn on his way to the Manhattan Bridge. As he passed Brooklyn Tech he found his path blocked by a phalanx of double- and triple-parked limos, cop cars and gleaming black SUV's with city government license plates.

The State of the City, indeed. 

Photo: Recycle-A-Bicycle interns Juan and Anwar

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OnNYTurf maps out New York City Councilmembers who are for or against the NYPD's proposed rules to limit public assembly. Blues are against the NYPD restrictions; red is for.

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• New Congress Waking Up to Climate Change (NYT)
• Sen. Bernie Sanders Will Push "Gold Standard" Global Warming Bill (Vermont Guardian)
• New York 2106: A Watery Vision (Polis)
• Crackdown? What Crackdown? Diplomats' NYC Parking Fines Near $18 million (AMNY)
• Nassau County Boss Suozzi Apologizes for Car Wreck (Newsday)
  Admits lights and sirens "should only be used in an emergency situation."
• AirTrain Ridership at All-Time High (AMNY)
• NYPD's Latest Technology Catches Car Thieves (NY Post)
• City Council Transpo Chair John Liu Eyeing Run for Mayor? (Observer)

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Throughout Mexico "topes" or speed bumps, are ubiquitous. These can be metal pods arrayed across the road, or asphalt humps, or even significant concrete wedges. You really do have to slow down, and almost stop to crawl over them. There is usually a sign warning they are ahead, because if you hit one going fast you can total your car. In other words, the topes are effective. Small towns will have one coming and going, because they are more effective than speed limit signs, which everyone would ignore. But even highways have them, near intersections or bus stops.

Along the southern coast of the Yucatan, beyond the last electricity and asphalt, at the end of the road, the Mexicans still want the benefit of a tope, but what to do on an unpaved mud/sand road? Well along the coast, where old ship ropes can be found, the solution is to lay a big fat rope across the road. It works, at least for a while, but it is easily replaced. This one is strung across the road in the small pirate town of Xcalak, Yucatan.

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If the melting of Greenland can't make the American people pay attention to global warming, can anything? Environmentalist Bill McKibben, whose The End of Nature was one of the first books to raise the alarm on climate change for a general audience in 1989, is hoping that "Step It Up 2007," a day of rallies planned for April 14, will at least get things started.

Writing on Grist, McKibben admits that despite overwhelming scientific evidence, popular momentum on the issue is lacking.

[W]e don't have a movement—the largest rally yet held in the U.S. about global warming drew a thousand people. If we're going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need something that looks like the civil rights movement, and we need it now. Changing light bulbs just isn't enough.

So pitch in. A few of us are trying to organize a nationwide day of hundreds and hundreds of rallies on April 14. We hope to have gatherings in every state, and in many of America's most iconic places: on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting glaciers on Mt. Rainier, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West.

We need rallies outside churches, along the tide lines in our coastal cities, in cornfields and forests and on statehouse steps.

Every group will be saying the same thing: Step it up, Congress! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050. No half measures, no easy compromises—the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate.

McKibben reports that early interest in the project is high, but there are only three tiny gatherings listed so far in New York City. And even if people show up at the individual locations at the appointed hour, will it be possible to get any sense of "a movement" from rallies that are spread so thin?

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Here is an interesting bike infrastructure story out of Copenhagen, Denmark. 30,000 Cyclists Get the Green Wave:

Cars and especially buses have for year had the benefit of a green traffic light wave on the roads. But now it is the cyclists turn to enjoy a smooth ride through the city without stopping at red light writes the e-newsletter "News from Copenhagen - Environmental capital of Europe".

Recently the first 'green wave' bike route has been inaugurated to the satisfaction of 30,000 cyclists, who use the bike lane on one of Copenhagen's busiest streets, Nørrebrogade.

"My ambition is to turn Copenhagen into the best bicycle capital in the World. An obvious step is to regulate traffic to the benefit of the Copenhagen cyclists," says Technical and Environmental Mayor of Copenhagen, Klaus Bondam.

The green wave is the first of its kind and traffic light is adjusted to give cyclists a continuous ride if they travel 20 km/h. "It is a rational and sensible speed to pedal, as both children and elderly can keep the pace," says Klaus Bondam.

The green wave stretches over a distance of 2.5 km and it will only take 7½ minutes to travel the distance whereas longer before. The green wave also means that it does not pay off to travel faster as the cyclist eventually will encounter red light.

The green traffic light wave is regulated towards the city between 6.30 and 12.00 and out of the city between 12.00 and 18.00. "At the moment we are looking for new stretches, where green waves are possible solutions to improve conditions on Copenhagen's many cyclists," says Klaus Bondam. Everyday the Copenhageners cycle 1.2 million kilometres.

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• Subway Elevators Are Heading South (Daily News)
• Lessons from the Number 7 Train Extension (Gotham Gazette)
  
• Working-Class Housing Complex Topped With Greenery (NYT)

  Plans for Bronx apartments include green roofs, even bicycle parking

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Kevin Walsh at Forgotten NY has a new photo essay on his neighborhood, Flushing, Queens. It's not the typical Forgotten NY catalogue of historical obsurities. Rather, in this post, Walsh illustrates what he sees as the destruction of one of New York City's great old neighborhood by developers run amok. Even if you see new development and increasing urban density as a good and necessary thing, as many urbanists and environmentalists do, these Flushing photos make you wonder if this is really the only way that it can be done.

Old Flushing. A typical early 20th century house:

New Flushing. A typical early 21st century, um, house:

Or, as Walsh describes it, "A New Flushing barracks: concrete from curb to building line, the better to place the SUV next to the front door. Our new beauty- and vegetation-free building will get virtually no sun, meaning its heating costs will be high, and will get few breezes for natural cooling. Don't worry -- a bank of Friedrich air conditioners, logos promonently displayed, are already installed."

Yesterday, the New York Times wrote that City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden is "wise enough to recognize that small details or granular moves can either enhance or destroy a city." Maybe she needs to take a trip on the 7 train out to Flushing?

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Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Long-Term Planning & Sustainability is running a series of meetings with community groups. Though the meeting times are posted publicly on the PLANYC 2030 web site, no locations are listed and word has it these borough-wide "Community Leader" meetings are going to be pretty strictly invitation-only.  

Presentation to New York New Visions
6pm, February 5, 2007

Manhattan–downtown Community Leader Meeting
6pm, Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Bronx Community Leader Meeting
6:30pm, Monday, January 29, 2007

Staten Island Community Leader Meeting
6:30pm, Thursday, January 25, 2007

Manhattan–uptown Community Leader Meeting
6:30pm, Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Queens Community Leader Meeting
6:30pm, Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Brooklyn Community Leader Meeting
6pm, Thursday, January 18, 2007

Presentation to the Regional Plan Association
6pm, Thursday, January 18, 2007

Presentation to the American Planning Association
6pm, Thursday, January 18, 2007

Presentation to NYC & Co
10am, Thursday, January 18, 2007

Meeting with Business Improvement District Managers
9am, Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Mayor Bloomberg Delivers "New York City 2030: Accepting the Challenge" Address
Queens Museum of Art, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY
11 a.m., Tuesday, December 12, 2006

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Chris Smith has an outstanding story in this week's New York Magazine pointing out that New York City has fallen behind other world cities in addressing climate change and challenging the Bloomberg Administration to do more. An excerpt:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been cruising through his second term. At this point, with a gaudy approval rating, Bloomberg should be willing to risk his popularity on behalf of a life-and-death subject. But on global warming, Bloomberg has so far been more gesture than guts.

It is only now, five years into his reign, that Bloomberg has started considering the broader changes that could bring striking improvements—and that might inflict short-term political pain. In December, he raised the stakes at a flashy press conference in Flushing Meadows, introducing his “sustainability” agenda for the city through 2030. The speech was long on meritorious goals and almost completely free of specifics. Those are supposed to arrive in March or April.

The mayor’s sustainability brain trust is headed by Rohit Aggarwala, an academic expert in city history who was working as a management consultant at the ubiquitous McKinsey & Co. before being hired by Dan Doctoroff. The task force is mulling anti-car ideas that could stir serious rage—like shrinking the number of parking spaces in Manhattan. But Bloomberg punted on congestion pricing, which would have cut traffic and pollution, because he considers it politically impractical, and he’s far more likely to pursue technocratic and financial avenues.

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Back in November Streetsblog published the first-person account of a cyclist who had been menaced and run over by a road raging SUV driver on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Remarkably, within hours of publication, Streetsblog's online community had identified the owner of the vehicle and published his e-mail address, headshot, and an aerial photo of his home. By day's end, the owner of the SUV -- Ian Goldman, CEO of a Staten Island-based tech company called Celerant -- had been contacted and responded to the cyclist's story.

Well, don't get too pleased with yourselves. What you might have thought of as an online community collaborating in open source fashion to bring some measure of accountability and justice to a road raging, law-breaking SUV driver that the police refused to deal with, the Wall Street Journal calls part of a "weird and creepy" trend of "shame sites" participating in an "online vigilantism movement."

Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Saranow included the Streetsblog Ian Goldman incident as part of her big trend piece, The Snoop Next Door, on the front page of the latest Weekend Journal. Since the Journal is subscription online, here is a link to syndicated version.

MyBikeLane.com and the "Bike Bully of Beijing" both make appearances in the story, as does Goldman, who refused to comment.

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Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff had an excellent letter in the New York Times on Sunday in response to the article about Sara Robbins, the Brooklyn Heights woman tragically, horrifyingly killed by a private sanitation truck last month:

To the Editor:

Your reporting in "A Death in the Family" (Dec. 24) makes clear that the traffic maneuver that killed Sara Robbins, the director of Brooklyn Law School’s library, in Brooklyn Heights last month was a left turn by a private sanitation truck.

So it’s mystifying, and maddening, that for all the article’s fussing over “the intricate mechanics of the collision,” it neglected to say that Ms. Robbins, who was proceeding straight and on foot, had the right of way over a turning truck.

Eight years ago, our study of New York City pedestrian fatalities, "Killed by Automobile" (PDF file), established that the most lethal crash scenario is drivers turning into pedestrians in crosswalks, and that the most lethal vehicles, per mile driven, are private sanitation trucks.

Ms. Robbins's awful death, combined with that of Jessica Schmitz, who was killed two days later when a private sanitation truck turned into her path as she was lawfully crossing Park Avenue in Manhattan, suggests that nothing has changed.

Charles Komanoff
TriBeCa
The writer is coordinator of Right of Way, a pedestrian advocacy group.

The letter resonated with Kelley Pillow, a West Village woman who strolls around the neighborhood with a 9-month old baby. Here is the e-mail she sent to Komanoff after reading his letter, re-published with permission:

Dear Mr. Komanoff:

Thank you for responding to the NY Times re: garbage trucks and their rampant driving that is killing pedestrians. I did not know there existed an advocacy group for pedestrians in NYC and am happy that someone is paying attention!

I live in the West Village and am the new mom of a 9-month old baby boy. Prior to parenthood, I viewed the task of getting from Point A to Point B in the city as a kind of life-or-death adventure challenge, but now that I am strolling Sam I have increased stress and anxiety about running the simplest of errands.

DAILY I witness cabs, buses and delivery trucks (not to mention the other private cars) blatantly running the red lights - bursting between hoards of pedestrians who have the legal walk sign. And just last week, at 23rd Street and 7th Avenue, I was grazed by a private medical van that was turning - while the walk light was so very clearly in my favor! He hit my side, missing the stroller. Can you imagine what might have happened if he hit the stroller? The other pedestrians who witnessed the hit all breathed a great sigh of relief. I had tears in my eyes.

No wonder families move out of the city. I was not aware of the statistic on the garbage trucks, who do in fact appear aggressive. But the biggest violator and "out to kill" pedestrian vehicles I see regularly are the city buses. They run red lights at high speeds to cross intersections and screech to a violent halt on the other side where pedestrians jump away to avoid their wrath! Funny, we're funding public transportation and garbage trucks that put our lives in harm's way.

Anyway, just wanted to say thank you for fighting for us. I don't feel we should have to move out of the city to raise Sam.

Best,

Kelley Pillow

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