Today’s Headlines

  • Traffic Commission Looks at Taxi Stands, License Plate Rationing… (NYT, Sun)
  • Mayor and Governor OK Fare Hikes (News)
  • MTA Could Have Prevented Fare Hike With Increased Variable Tolls (MTR)
  • Stand Clear of the Angry Editorials & Man-on-the-Street Interviewees (News)
  • Quinn Says MTA Should "Heed" Brodsky’s "Offer" of State Funding (Daily Politics)
  • Gore Accepts Nobel Prize. Bush Admin is #1 Climate "Stumbling Block" (NYT)
  • Midwest Duck Hunters Are Noticing the Changing Weather Too (NYT)
  • Wind Energy Could Power All of Britain’s Homes by 2020 (TreeHugger)
  • Shoup There He Is: Parking Advice for New York via Los Angeles (City Room)
  • The City’s First Automatic Self-Cleaning Potty is Set to Open (Sun)
  • Bronx and Brooklyn Nabes Rack Up the City’s Most Noise Complaints (News)
  • Grand Concourse Street Work Will be Done 316 Days Ahead of Schedule (News)
  • p

    The only way I see pico y plata or license plate rationing working is if there is a simultaneous removal of road capacity. Otherwise the empty streets will simply generate new automobile trips to take the place of the cars not allowed on the streets.

    In any case, there’s no revenue enhancement component to pay for the necessary infrastructure.

  • Mike

    A little late, but there was an article in the weekend’s Times Real Estate section about two new developments in Jersey City going up around pedestrian-friendly streets.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/realestate/09njzo.html

  • vnm

    The Grand Concourse/161st Street project should be an improvement over what was there before, but to be completely honest, I’m actually enjoying the construction. There is no traffic at all on 161st Street leading up to the 4 train. It is an awesome and quiet walk without any cars at all. A de-facto pedestrianization of the huge multi-lane street.

  • Chris H

    Color coded license plates are a non-starter because of out of state registrations. Any attempt to force other states to comply would run afoul of the interstate commerce clause.

  • Jonathan

    I agree with Chris. Just wait until the tabloids start running page-three articles about families from Pennsylvania taking their terminally ill children to see the Rock Center Christmas tree who were turned back at the Lincoln Tunnel exit because they had the wrong license plate number.

    Why go to the trouble of instituting pico y placa anyway? If we’re arbitarily limiting motorcars, I would prefer putting HOV-2 back into place.

  • Steve

    The grousing about taxi stands on the ground that it undermines the “iconic” aggressive taxi-hailer is ridiculous. Taxi stands will bring a number of benefits, including (1) deterring those wonderful aggressive taxi hailers from walking a block upstream to steal your taxi even though you’ve been waiting longer; (2) preventing cab drivers from picking and choosing fares by cruising with their off-duty lights on and deciding which hailers to conditionally offer a ride to.

  • Another problem with license-plate rationing is that it denies entry to folks who have a legitimate need to drive into Manhattan.

    I’m not sure why or to whom this is more palatable than giving folks a choice to pay for the resources they are consuming via congestion pricing.

  • Hilary

    People hail taxis because they need or want door to door service. It may be pouring. They may be disabled, high heeled, or carrying bird cages and steamer trunks. I was stunned to see a block-long line of people outside Penn Station the other evening, waiting patiently for a cab. There was no prohibition on them hailing a cab from someplace else nearby. They chose to avail themselves of this service, which they found to be quicker. Taxi stands make sense where demand is concentrated, like stations, and maybe the intersections of Broadway streets (easing crosstown traffic). No hail zones are ridiculous, and probably too discriminatory to hold up in court.

  • Angus Grieve-Smith

    People hail taxis because they need or want door to door service. It may be pouring. They may be disabled, high heeled, or carrying bird cages and steamer trunks.

    I was thinking this too, Hilary, since the only time I’ve ever used cabs with any regularity was when my father was suffering from congestive heart failure and couldn’t walk to the subway or climb the bus stairs. A no-hail zone would have made things more difficult there.

    … but then I thought, maybe not. I remember at least once being outmaneuvered for taxis by people who came later than me but stood upstream. Now that I think of it, a radio cab would have been easier in so many ways, and if we’d known that we couldn’t hail a cab from the corner we’d just have called one.

    As long as radio cabs are available, convenient and competitively priced, I don’t think that no-hail zones are ridiculous or discriminatory at all. And it’s not because I have a radio cab service for a customer.

  • Hilary

    Never knew you could call a cab in Manhattan. That does change everything.