We didn't start this war, but forgive us if we try to finish it.
In the days after Gov. Hochul restarted the congestion pricing toll that she paused (at great political cost to her and great actual cost to her transit-using constituents), opponents have pounced, trotting out tired old arguments about how charging drivers to enter the most transit-rich area in the country is "unfair" or that drivers don't cause congestion, but cyclists somehow do.
That's what Rep. Mike Lawler (D-Suburbia) claimed last week on the Max Politics podcast, as we reported earlier. After arguing that cyclists should just ride "on the sidewalk" (he later clarified that he meant that Citi Bike docks should be on the sidewalk), he took aim at Vision Zero itself.
"If you actually were serious about reducing congestion, you would look at the impact that Bill de Blasio's Vision Zero had on slowing traffic," said a man whose only view of New York City seems to be from behind a windshield in Manhattan.
The problem with Lawler is that he's simply wrong. Now, I know it's a fool's errand to offer data to a soldier in the MAGA culture wars during America's post-fact moment, but allow me to at least try.
Data from Replica, the traffic analysis company, tell us that car drivers can meet the enemy any time they want, simply by looking in the mirror. As you can see from the chart I made below, total vehicle miles traveled per day within and through New York City are up 12.1 percent in just 18 months:
And the portion of the traffic caused by car drivers is getting richer. Drivers with household incomes above $100,000 are up from 54 percent of the VMTs to 58.2 percent of the VMTs — an increase of nearly 8 percent.
At the same time, the number of people commuting by car to the Manhattan central business district is rising: In fall 2022, it was about 180,100 people, or roughly 13.5 percent of all people entering the zone. By spring 2024, it was 280,800 or 15.2 percent of commuters. That's up nearly 56 percent!
Facts matter, don't they?
Worse than even Lawler are those who seek to turn the simple desire to bicycle safely or walk on streets that aren't choked by fuel-burning four-wheelers into a culture war, as we saw last week in Marc Fisher's screed in the Washington Post (a story that disregarded the paper's own coverage).
But to paraphrase Joe Biden, here's the deal: There is no "war on cars." There is literally no policy being undertaken that will limit drivers' ability to spew exhaust and create havoc on virtually every single street in town. Yes, there is an effort to rein in the deleterious effects of these pollution machines, but drivers will always be free to put and store their cars wherever and whenever they want, albeit sometimes with a toll or a parking fee.
In fact, the real culture war is the one that car manufacturers and car drivers have been waging against the rest of us for about 100 years. Think about how many months of debate accompany every single request for a simple bike lane in this city these days. Now, imagine if car companies were forced to ask the public for support for their product: "Yeah, we've got these 3,000-pound machines that take up all the space in the road and on the curb, spew toxins that you can't breathe, make a lot of noise, congest the roads, so emergency vehicles can't get through and, oh, right, they also kill kids sometimes."
Would our fellow citizens rubber-stamp a product like that? We'll never know because they're never asked to. That's what winning a culture war looks like.
And speaking of the culture war that we've obviously lost, look where public opinion was 100 years ago, reflected in this Times coverage of Nov. 23, 1924:
In other news:
- Oh, speaking of the war on cars, the Times remains blind to it: In its otherwise excellent coverage of the demise of outdoor dining, Pete Wells ran a bunch of before and after photos of dining areas: In all the "after" shots, the one popular (and sales-tax generating) dining area was once again converted to a parking space for a freeloading car owner. But the Times didn't even mention it. (The Daily News also covered — its story didn't mention cars or parking, either. Our coverage three weeks ago was better.)
- Meanwhile, Paris wants to replace parking spaces with trees. (Bloomberg)
- The Post is so keen to attack the state's fairly low climate goals that it trotted out ex-Gov. George Pataki.
- And the tabloid's war on congestion pricing is still going strong.
- Gothamist and Crain's did a second-day take on the City of Yes compromises, but we did that already.
- Former federal transit man Larry Penner says there are some holes in the $72-million grant that Sen. Chuck Schumer lined up for Penn Station. (Mass Transit)
- A woman died after jumping out of a moving Uber on the Long Island Expressway. (NY Post)
- Ferry ridership is up. (Gothamist)
- Rep. Ritchie Torres has a presser today to condemn the state DOT's plan to widen and expand the Cross-Bronx Expressway, but he's likely to make much bigger news. Look out, Gov. Hochul. (amNY)
- The Tribeca Citizen called up Charles Komanoff for this excellent preview of congestion pricing.
- Just in time for Thanksgiving, our friends at the NY Groove finally did it: provided a user's guide to the Port Authority.
- And, finally, read this horrifying story about a psychotic driver and his laughing passenger:
