Last week, the Democratic-dominated City Council demonstrated why the party has such little credibility as an ideologically consistent, or even rational, body, and instead managed to recall only tired antics of someone like Speaker Peter Vallone, who ran the show for years before discovering that such efforts yield zero name recognition in the quest for mayorship.
Young Gifford Miller decided he needed some good press after he flubbed by 4,200% the cost of franking — the freebie mailings politicians get to keep you informed — so he engineered a vote to roll back a Bloomberg decision in 2002 to require parking meters be active seven days a week.
The patent ridiculousness of this fight centers around the glib catchphrase ‘pay to pray’ because apparently every church in the five boroughs is awash in metered spots (my recollection is most of them are fronted by no parking zones), and the new rules severely attenuated one’s ability to worship (provided they were the Christian sort) and drive in the same day. Or people couldn’t drive to church. Or it is the Lord’s Day. I can’t quite figure it out, but the upshot is some essential entitlement was ripped from hands New Yorkers, and Miller, lacking any other issues of note where he can distinguish himself from the mayor (apparently all the good ones like a useless subway searching regulations, or possible malfeasance on the part of the DA and NYPD during the Republican National Convention weren�t as sexy as� parking), rode to the rescue.
Unfortunately, such a campaign runs counter to any good traffic calming or air quality management plans. Only in the outer reaches of the minds of folk like Rush Limbaugh will you find a person who tries to refute the overwhelming evidence that when the costs of driving and storing a car are below the market value of land in a central city, personal car use and the average numbers of riders decrease, leading to increased congestion, longer commute times and increased pollution, all of it subsidized by tax payers. We are paying to help people drive into the city to make our day smoggier and more trying. And the Giff thinks this is going to help separate him from the bland pack of Democratic nominees. It certainly would, if suffrage was granted to New Jersey and Nassau. Given that he just spent $1.6 million mailing postcards, the $7 million this is costing might seem downright cheap.
There’s no hoping that people will be self-policing, or show restraint. Taxes are not simply revenue generating mechanisms, but incentives or disincentives to behave in a particular way. Smoking and drinking are very expensive; owning a home is subsidized, relative to renting. The city has had moments of disincenting car owners (garage-only structures are prohibited south of 96th Street), but by and large stands pretty by pretty meekly while the city is overrun with private cars. I know households that keep more than one car in the city. I have a car — I’d say over half the people I know do. Why? It’s cheap. I have to move it three times a week at most, and it usually takes about two minutes of my time before I leave the house in the morning (how’s that? I’m not telling you. Like any good, self-interested New Yorker, I’m not revealing where my cushy parking arrangement is). If the city made it any more expensive, I would have to reconsider the value of owning a car versus the alternates, of which we have many.
In the meantime, London — the largest city to institute congestion pricing — is looking to increase its daily fee by 50% (at current exchange rates, to about $20 to enter the congestion zone). Everyone predicted voters would push Ken Livingstone (who doesn’t drive and says openly he wants to ban cars) out the door, which hasn’t happened, alone with many other dire predictions of falling property values, and oh, other bad stuff would happen.
There’s not much excuse for not highly regulating cars in cities. Given our twisted governmental structure, most significant decisions (and even ones as minor as lowering the speed limit on a single street) must be approved by the state DOT, so we can only get so aggressive about innovation. And if this is the Giff’s idea of innovation, we can look forward to a slow-moving, crowded and angry future.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the
permalink. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.
Pay to Pander.
Last week, the Democratic-dominated City Council demonstrated why the party has such little credibility as an ideologically consistent, or even rational, body, and instead managed to recall only tired antics of someone like Speaker Peter Vallone, who ran the show for years before discovering that such efforts yield zero name recognition in the quest for mayorship.
Young Gifford Miller decided he needed some good press after he flubbed by 4,200% the cost of franking — the freebie mailings politicians get to keep you informed — so he engineered a vote to roll back a Bloomberg decision in 2002 to require parking meters be active seven days a week.
The patent ridiculousness of this fight centers around the glib catchphrase ‘pay to pray’ because apparently every church in the five boroughs is awash in metered spots (my recollection is most of them are fronted by no parking zones), and the new rules severely attenuated one’s ability to worship (provided they were the Christian sort) and drive in the same day. Or people couldn’t drive to church. Or it is the Lord’s Day. I can’t quite figure it out, but the upshot is some essential entitlement was ripped from hands New Yorkers, and Miller, lacking any other issues of note where he can distinguish himself from the mayor (apparently all the good ones like a useless subway searching regulations, or possible malfeasance on the part of the DA and NYPD during the Republican National Convention weren�t as sexy as� parking), rode to the rescue.
Unfortunately, such a campaign runs counter to any good traffic calming or air quality management plans. Only in the outer reaches of the minds of folk like Rush Limbaugh will you find a person who tries to refute the overwhelming evidence that when the costs of driving and storing a car are below the market value of land in a central city, personal car use and the average numbers of riders decrease, leading to increased congestion, longer commute times and increased pollution, all of it subsidized by tax payers. We are paying to help people drive into the city to make our day smoggier and more trying. And the Giff thinks this is going to help separate him from the bland pack of Democratic nominees. It certainly would, if suffrage was granted to New Jersey and Nassau. Given that he just spent $1.6 million mailing postcards, the $7 million this is costing might seem downright cheap.
There’s no hoping that people will be self-policing, or show restraint. Taxes are not simply revenue generating mechanisms, but incentives or disincentives to behave in a particular way. Smoking and drinking are very expensive; owning a home is subsidized, relative to renting. The city has had moments of disincenting car owners (garage-only structures are prohibited south of 96th Street), but by and large stands pretty by pretty meekly while the city is overrun with private cars. I know households that keep more than one car in the city. I have a car — I’d say over half the people I know do. Why? It’s cheap. I have to move it three times a week at most, and it usually takes about two minutes of my time before I leave the house in the morning (how’s that? I’m not telling you. Like any good, self-interested New Yorker, I’m not revealing where my cushy parking arrangement is). If the city made it any more expensive, I would have to reconsider the value of owning a car versus the alternates, of which we have many.
In the meantime, London — the largest city to institute congestion pricing — is looking to increase its daily fee by 50% (at current exchange rates, to about $20 to enter the congestion zone). Everyone predicted voters would push Ken Livingstone (who doesn’t drive and says openly he wants to ban cars) out the door, which hasn’t happened, alone with many other dire predictions of falling property values, and oh, other bad stuff would happen.
There’s not much excuse for not highly regulating cars in cities. Given our twisted governmental structure, most significant decisions (and even ones as minor as lowering the speed limit on a single street) must be approved by the state DOT, so we can only get so aggressive about innovation. And if this is the Giff’s idea of innovation, we can look forward to a slow-moving, crowded and angry future.