Living Car Free - good article (NYC focused)

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/issueoftheweek/20060116/200/1713

Makes me want to live there....








Nah.

yeah, it's a good article. something needs to be done - it's horrible. the few times i've driven in the city have just been a time consuming and frustrating process. we're talking 2 hours to go about 15-20 miles!

anyway, most of the traffic seems to stem from delivery trucks and taxis. not necessarily private cars. would people still support congestion pricing if it meant their taxi ride was $5 more?

>>>>>>>Parking policies: Drivers circling blocks looking for parking spaces create congestion. The solution according to some advocates: less parking, not more. A 2002 survey found that only 24 percent of the almost 30,000 curbside parking spaces in Manhattan south of 59th Street had meters. Donald Shoup, a professor at University of California Los Angeles and author of "The High Cost of Free Parking" argues that free parking adds to "extreme auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl and extravagant energy use." Shoup believes the city should set rates for on-street parking high enough so that about 15 percent of the spaces are usually unoccupied. London has already done this.<<<<<<

New York City already has the municipal meeter on streets in midtown. They need to raise them and EasyPass all the East river bridges. Those without Easy Pass will just get a summons

I wanna live in New York just to go carving up through the traffic in peak hour on my bike! what could be more fun. Maybe I should go for a overseas holiday

I went to NYC the for the first time last weekend. I actually didn't see a whole lot of bikers, but this was mostly on Saturday/Sunday and crappy weather. The few that I did see didn't even have front or rear lights at night! It's a shame, since a bicycle is perfect for that city - if it were a bit safer I am sure many more would start riding bikes to work.

I think I will take my Tucson, AZ commute.

The problem is that NYC needs more roads. If you knocked out all the buildings and put roads in instead, pretty soon the traffic problems would disappear. ;o)

The problem is that NYC needs more roads. If you knocked out all the buildings and put roads in instead, pretty soon the traffic problems would disappear. ;o)

do you know who robert moses was? he thought the same thing too...only he wasn't tounge in cheek.

The problem is that NYC needs more roads. If you knocked out all the buildings and put roads in instead, pretty soon the traffic problems would disappear. ;o)

If we knocked out all the buildings and built more roads it would be New Jersey

The has evidence that modern urban planners create more traffic congestion so that they can profit by building more congestion causing infrastructure by cynically selling it to the public as a way to relieve congestion.

"The Brooklyn Bridge could carry 426,000 people a day in 1907, but only 178,000 in 1988, according to former city traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz. "

"Conversely, some experts believe, removing roads does not make congestion worse. In the late 1990s, Transport for London studied a number of major roads -- including the West Side Highway in the 1970s -- that were taken out of service. While traffic engineers predicted chaos, little resulted."

If removing some roads doesn't make congestion worse, building them in the first place didn't make it better. Building them just made profit for the contractors who built them. Here in the DC area they want to widen a road, I-66. I went to a meeting on the project where the highway traffic modelers were present. After the meeting I got to talking to them about their studies. The were positive that increasing the lanes on the road would increase the total travel time for all travelers affected by the change. From what I recall the increased delay came from two causes. The extra lane would result in more interference due to more lane switching at the DC end, and by pushing cars from the highway into DC at a higher rate the cars from the highway would interfere with the movement of cars in DC that never use the highway but are trying to cross the city.

I think the road builders take advantage of Braess's Paradox to drum up more business. When I owned a car I planned 50 minutes for a certain trip, (between Alexandria and Potomac Mills for those who know the area) on weekends. A few months ago a friend who lives a few miles closer, (outside the beltway and outside the fairfax county parkway for locals) told me that it is now much longer than that from their house. How can that be? When I owned a car the Fairfax county parkway hadn't been completed neither had the Prince William parkway, both roads were sold to the public to relieve congestion along the very route. Now that both those roads are built, surprise, surprise, congestion is worse. Guess what? Gotta build more roads, gotta widen those roads, maybe replace the bike routes with car lanes.