Today’s Headlines

Everyone knows this. They’re just being disingenuous. They want full control of the hellhole, there’s no room for sharing even if no one loses anything in the end.

From the article in the NYT: “Manhattan seems comparatively underserved. Its 117 stations represent about 9 percent of the New York total, similar to Staten Island, which has less than a third of Manhattan’s population.”

It’s hard to make a simple comparison just based on population. On one hand, the car ownership rate is much higher in Staten Island, and the car driving rate is probable even higher. On the other hand, there’s much more commercial traffic in Manhattan (e.g. taxis).

A couple of thoughts, in no particular order.

To some extent, pedicabs serve the same traffic calming function as horse carriages.

I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with inducing demand for something “unnecessary”. It generates jobs out of nowhere, and it entertains some tourists. It can be good for the local economy. The question of course is whether the “side effects” of this artificial demand outweigh the benefits.

Candidate contradicts own policy goals in inane fashion, NYT and poli sci prof hail his quest for “nuance.”

Mainly sycophantic media.

You say potato, I say potahto. You say nuance, I say pandering.

Lhota delivered an unintentionally great quote in the top-link Metro story. He was talking about pedestrian plazas when he said “I don’t see why they need to be there 24 hours a day.” But what if he had been talking about streets being open to cars 24 hours a day? What if certain streets were open to cars only on weekdays? Or only during the rush hour? Or only during very limited hours for truck deliveries to businesses and garbage collection? Without meaning to, Lhota has come up with a fantastic concept for civilizing our streets. Perhaps Green Party candidate Tony Gronowicz would like to discuss it in more detail. It might be a good issue to mobilize NYC’s car-free majority and especially Manhattan’s car-free super-majority.

Manhattan VMT is 17% of NYC total, so an argument can be made that the borough is under-represented for gas stations (boy, that’s a weird concept!). OTOH, most of that driving is by vehicles that “reside” in other counties, where drivers can easily gas up anyway.

BTW, my VMT data is from 2002. I’ve been unable to get more recent data, though I don’t think there’s been much change.

It looks like politics, along with democracy, is making a comeback in the post-Bloomberg era. StreetsPAC will have it’s work cut out for them.

It’s a lot more complicated than that. You actually made a good counterpoint that the city might be gaining money from elsewhere, putting it ahead. Of course, that means someone else is behind. Actually, that’s the problem with tourism. The places which aren’t great places to visit lose tourism dollars while those that are gain those dollars.

Anyway, here’s the added complexity since you mentioned amusement parks and other types of entertainment-you need to look at the big picture. OK, you have an amusement park. Now how do people get there? More often than not it’s by car. I think you see where I’m going with this. Yes, the amusement park provides all types of jobs. It even arguable creates wealth because raw materials are needed to build it (and those raw materials can ultimately be recycled for other uses). The problem is will the travel and other negative externalities of people entertaining themselves offset any gains? So really, my answer boils down to this-if we need roads and cars to get to entertainment, then it’s probably not worth building even if it creates jobs. You end up using more societal wealth to clean up the mess left by cars than you’re gaining. On the flip side, if it’s something people can walk to, like a street fair or a local amusement park, then it might be worthwhile. As you can tell, I’m no fan of the tourism industry where people need to fly thousands of miles to be entertained. I don’t see the value in it for society, and frankly I don’t see the value in it for most individuals. I tell people who travel a lot that they’ll still be the same person with the same problems when they get back, only they’ll have one new problem-paying for their vacation. And in the spirit of full disclosure, the furthest I’ve traveled in my life from where I was born was 400 miles (a family trip to Montreal in 1973). Other than that, it’s rare I venture further than about 100 miles from home. Most times I never go further from home than Manhattan.

And yet it’s the one thing which will matter most to me personally as it’ll make the streets much more pleasant to me during the times I usually use them. To me this is a bigger thing than if we got a bunch of new bike lanes here. Seeing potholes better, and also no longer having ugly yellowish which puts me to sleep, are huge improvements. People may not care or notice now, but I guarantee when the lights are installed they will.

What is “along with democracy” supposed to mean? Plazas and bike lanes are highly popular.

You’re right, of course, but it’s not really about that. It’s mostly about possession and keeping unwanteds out of public. If drivers valued their own time, they’d support things like the ped plazas, tolls, and CP.

BTW, a not insignificant proportion of the driving public probably gets paid the same whether it sits in traffic or not. :-

http://e3tnw.org/ItemDetail.aspx?id=25

http://www.lighting.philips.com/pwc_li/us_en/application_areas/assets/p-6059.pdf

http://www.lightinglab.fi/publications/files/report30.pdf

There are a lot more studies out there but the basic idea is that light which is less yellow results in better reaction time and improved peripheral vision.

That’s just dumb. Travel changes you, broadens you, and keeps you from turning into a narrow-minded townie. If you did it right, you aren’t the same person you were before you returned. That’s the whole point.

The only overarching good-ish quality about Bloomberg was independence, but it did little good given that he has a neoliberal ideology that pretty much fits neatly with George W. Bush’s. It’s only tempered by a slightly better grasp on reality.

Democrats screw things up by internecine squabbling, and Republikans are just authoritarian thugs to the core. If you want something approximating democracy back, we’ll need proportional representation again.

Except most people don’t do it right. Also, most people sad to say are utterly incapable of being broadened. They go to tourist traps or tropical islands and end up spending most of their vacation shopping or eating. And most vacations are hurried simply due to the limited time most people have off. I can maybe see the value of going elsewhere to experience something different, but you don’t get that by running through everything in a week. Maybe if travel meant going some place, then staying there six months, it might make sense from the perspective you mention. From where I stand, it seems a lot of travel is just for the sake of saying you’ve been there. I once heard someone comment along the lines of “Why must everyone be Magellan nowadays?” I think that’s a question we should be asking ourselves. How much does all this travel really benefit us? The lack of progress on many fronts in society these days is exactly because the vast majority of people are close-minded. Evidently travel didn’t waken them up or broaden them.

Joe, if you actually went somewhere different, you would know that a different culture or style of living can be experienced in a very short time. Even if you spent one day in a foreign city (assuming it’s not in the airport or a hotel room), you have experienced something different.

They’ll make a lot of difference because motorists will be able to see cyclists and pedestrians crossing the street a lot better. It’ll also improve the aesthetics of an area. Some of those studies I linked to mention how crime goes down when whiter light creates a more pleasant atmosphere at night, encouraging more people to go out. Night for me is the best time to be out but the sodium lights totally kill it by casting a depressing yellow-orange cast over everything. Even the old mercury vapor lights were better although they still stunk at rendering colors. LEDs are whiter, render colors better, plus save energy. It’s a win all around.

What share of Manhattan’s VMT is taxicabs? Has to be significant. Any thoughts on the taxicab fleet? Will fewer gas stations send them to outer boroughs on empty trips, resulting in a lower level of service? Can they just gas up when they return to the garage for shift change?

These these lights will significantly illuminate the sidewalk. Another benefit is that the new LED lamps have a wider beam. That will improve visibility which should positively effect safety.

Of course, the city will also save money in the long run too.

Joe is right about this. The act of frequent travelling is not the broadening experience that some people like to claim it is; it is in fact by its nature superficial. A person cannot say that he or she has experienced a culture by being there for X number of days. As Joe mentioned, an immersion of, let’s say, six months *might* start giving you some insight into the nature of the place. But, a typical vacation stay gives you nothing but surface glimpses. If you’re truly interested in actually learning about a place, you’d be better off spending your time reading books.

(I am reminded of an episode of the great sitcom “NewsRadio”, in which Matthew (Andy Dick’s character) came back from a week’s vacation, and told everyone that he had been to Japan. He eventually revealed that he hadn’t actually gone, but had spent the week in the library reading about Japan. I remember thinking that I’d much rather spend the week in the library — and I’d come out knowing more about Japan that way!)

I’d add that, for a New Yorker in particular, travelling here and there for a week at a time has a cost — an opportunity cost. It’s that much less time that you can get to know your own great City.

A former co-worker of mine, like me a life-long New Yorker, is someone who frequently jets off for a week to this or that country. One day she was telling me about having been to the Great Wall of China; later that day I happened to mention Bryant Park — and she asked me where that was! There is something seriously askew when a New Yorker has been to the Great Wall of China but doesn’t know where Bryant Park is.

I am not having a go at her for not knowing about Bryant park; there are many places in New York that I don’t know about. That’s the point, really: New York is a whole planet unto itself. In fact, I have made the following vow concerning travel: as soon as I have seen everything there is to see in New York, I will immediately start on the rest of the world. (Of course, one could live ten lifetimes and never see everything there is to see in New York.)

The calculus surely is different for residents of jerkwater towns and nowheresvilles; if I lived somewhere else, I’m sure I’d be keen to travel. But a New Yorker has the good fortune of already being in the Centre of the Universe. So the value of superficial country-hopping is, for us, that much less.

Yes, here I can agree somewhat and seeing nature’s glories might be one of the reasons I might wish to travel in the future. As crazy as it sounds, I’ve always wanted to go to Antarctica. It’s once of the few places left on Earth largely unspoiled by humans.

Theyve been coming down for years now, not rising.