Car Culture

Anticipating a vote in the City Council this afternoon to override the mayor's veto of Intro 331-A, a bill to regulate pedicabs, a group of pedicab operators was demonstrating outside the American Museum of Natural History after Bloomberg's big Earth Day speech.

Bookending his much-vaunted Earth Day speech with congratulatory video clips from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mayor Mike Bloomberg called for New Yorkers to take the initiative in the international fight against global warming, positioning himself as a leader on the issue.

The debate over congestion pricing has been heating up in advance of Mayor Bloomberg's big Earth Day speech tomorrow. What better time to get some talking points on the matter from Bob Kiley, who served as the Commissioner of Transport for London from 2001 to 2006? (Kiley was also chairman and CEO of New York's MTA from 1983 to 1990.)

The Fort Greene Association has scored another victory in the fight against abuse of placarded parking, this time with some help from very high places.

Add the Queens Chamber of Commerce to the list of pre-emptive congestion pricing foes.

The SoHo Alliance is at it again. The neighborhood organization that specializes in persecuting street vendors and artists rather than helping to figure out ways to carve out a bit of street space for them and all of the people over-spilling SoHo's sidewalks, is now mobilizing against the City's plan to install new bike lanes along Prince and Bleecker Streets.

On Monday, April 23, the day after Earth Day and the Mayor's Long-Term Sustainability speech, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn plans to hold a decisive vote on Intro. 331-A, a law limiting and restricting pedicabs. Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the bill but rather than going back and trying to improve the legislation by, say, simply increasing the cap on the number of pedicab licenses, Quinn has been twisting Council members arms to override the Mayor's veto.

More enduring than Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and the resurrection of Elvis is the deeply held belief that there is such a thing as "free" parking for the average motorist in New York City. "Free" means you do not have to pay.

Stuck in traffic congestion all day long, one might think that New York City's bus drivers might be at the center of the movement to reduce automobile dependence and encourage more efficent forms of urban transportation. But if the conversation I heard last week is representative, it's the cyclists that are wrecking all that havoc out there on New York City's streets.