Today’s Headlines

One inaccuracy in the Sun article: Vivian Cook’s district includes Jamaica, not LIC. Cathy Nolan represents LIC and has expressed similar concerns.

I think that Jamaica is more at risk because it’s further out (but still a short LIRR ride to Manhattan) and has lots of parking garages. I’m not sure how real the risk is, though.

Larry, those are mostly better ways of deciding who gets to drive in the CP zone than the method that’s currently on the table — who has the money.

Since charging for driving on congested roads is so terribly unfair, let’s move onto bread. What could be more unfair than charging for bread? There are lots of better ways of deciding who gets bread than having to charge for it. Lots of them. Start by giving bread away for free. There is a charge for bread but not streets? Absurd. Obviously, bread should be free.

Food stamps for all. The bread unfairness problem solved. Let’s move onto electricity. It’s darn unfair that overburdened working people have to pay for electricity. A charge for electricity — including peak period pricing no less — but no charge for bread or streets? Absurd. Electricity should be free.

Hey Spudly, the subsidized transportation equivalent of food stamps is the bus system, not driving a private motor vehicle into a highly congested area and claiming a scarce piece of asphalt as one’s private domain.

There has been a great deal of hostility to government spending to meet people’s basic needs in this country over the past 20 years.

Meanwhile, there is a great deal of attachment to government benefits for the non-poor that other folks do not get.

How about rotation as a way to allocate that space? Those who have been driving to Manhattan have had the privilege long enough. Identify them and ban them for a few years, and give (and a smaller number of others) a chance. And if I choose not to exercise that priviledge, sobeit.

New Mexico actually has a tax on bread, which is the most regressive tax I can imagine (although a tax on rent would be up there).

However, as I’ve written before, I just can’t get too worked up at a system that favors the top 2.3% of commuters and the bottom 95.4%, while causing moderate hardship for the second-highest 2.3% of commuters. Seriously.

http://www.grieve-smith.com/neighborhood/BrodskyShellGame.html

Spud,

As Larry Littlefield has pointed out, a low-income assistance program for congestion pricing would be a constant target for abuse; you could formally transfer your car’s registration to the delivery guy down the street, pay him $200/yr for the privilege, and continue to drive it yourself. And please don’t tell me that this would be subject to enforcement; no traffic laws are enforced in New York, there’s no reason to think this one would be any different.

That said, such a scheme would certainly be better than the status quo, so if such a provision would be politically necessary to have some kind of congestion pricing, it might be worth it.

Now that electricity and bread unfairness are solved, let us move on to parking placards. How truly unfair that the average citizen does not have a parking placard. Let us resolve this problem by issuing free placards for all and ending regressive meter parking.

On the topic of fair motoring, let us also mandate free car insurance, and lest we limit the freedoms of any, free cars for those who pass the appropriate means testing. HEAP could be expanded to include a free car and free gasoline.

Oy, oy, oy. Let’s backup here for a minute. I did not compare bread to driving — “Free” did and I just noted that some people do in fact get free bread. I did not compare electricity to driving — “Free” did and I just pointed out that some people do receive public assistance to pay their electric bill. I see the point Free is trying to make but he needs to choose better examples.

And I do not support free cars or car insurance. Driving into Manhattan is definitely not a necessity. As I’ve said before, I support efforts to reduce traffic and congestion. I do think more people should take mass transit. I do think mass transit should be better funded.

My whole point — and the point I’ve been trying to make clear here for several months now — is that who gets to use the public streets should not be decided by government policies that favor people who have the most money. That’s it. I’m not an obstructionist. Want to decrease traffic? Good, do it in a way that affects everyone. Ban all vehicles from the CP zone if you want.

And congestion pricing probably won’t hurt me one bit. I commute to work by subway. You might have seen me on the train this morning. I own a car, but over 3 years after driving it off the dealer’s lot it still has less than 13,000 miles on it. Ninety-five percent of the time it’s parked in the garage in my building, which I pay for.

And, frankly, I can afford the CP fee. Forty bucks a week wouldn’t set me back much. This is just a moral issue I feel strongly about.

I don’t think CP would affect congestion very much. The strongest argument for CP is the money that would go to mass transit. But you know what? That money can come from many, many places. Any half-decent auditor could identify a million inefficiencies in government and the MTA that could be corrected tomorrow if the political will existed. Demand accountability from government, don’t just throw up your hands and say that the only place to get the money is to charge more citizens more fees. And definitely don’t accept that it’s OK to bar certain income groups from using public resources in the same way that the wealthy use them.

“Ban all vehicles from the CP zone if you want.”

I want I want! We’ve been hearing this argument almost a year now, with the same old distractions. A lot of us would love to “ban cars,” but we know it ain’t gonna happen. And though I know pricing will work far better (and is the only system that fairly rewards people not driving), I would take Mexico city or Athens style rationing over the free-for-all that we have now. But guess what? Ain’t gonna happen!

This here’s the USA, where resources are regulated by capitalism. It’s the only way we’re any good at regulating anything, and it’s the way we will succeed in regulating automobile over-consumption. It might set people’s rusty old class warfare alarms off, because this is a new kind of regulation that we’re being forced to engage in, but there are more important things than that. Like saving lives. Of working people hit by cars, and the health of people breathing auto emissions, and the mental health of everyone having to walk around, listen to the horns of, and run out of the path of these giant iron-clad wheelchairs that suburbanites think they need to GO anywhere.

There is nothing fair about a system that gives away an expensive public resource only to those above a certain income threshold who choose to spend it on machines that are ecologically destructive and make accidental homicide commonplace. It’s time to let it go.

Spud, in 1987 my mom bought me a car for $300, which is $531.71 in 2006 dollars, so I’m sure that even in NYC you could put a new car on the road for $750. The threshold is for keeping it on the road, and getting it to Manhattan every day, and parking it.

I’ve lived in the South Bronx, and I know that even in poor neighborhoods there’s a range of incomes. The people who have those cars on the curb are relatively well-off. And just like you, most of them don’t drive into Manhattan. They leave their cars in their neighborhoods for shopping and recreation, or they work outside of the CBD. They can afford the $40 a week too – although the hope is that they’d prefer to spend it on something else.