February 23, 2006
Private Cars Cause Most Traffic,
Can business groups and environmental groups convince the city to reduce the number of privates cars? The NY Times reports that some neighborhood business development and environmental groups submitted a reportto the Mayor's office that shows that 60% of the traffic is from passenger cars - and many of these people could be taking public transportation instead. You can read the report right here (it's a PDF) that Transportation Alternatives put together, and here are some findings:
1) The personal auto accounts for most of the traffic circulating in the Manhattan CBD [Commercial Business District] – more than trucks, buses, commercial vehicles and taxis combined.What Gothamist found interesting were points #4 and #5 - that people opt to take their cars out of comfort (isn't it too big a hassle?) and that people drive through busy areas just to get to other parts of town (we'd think drivers would try to avoid those areas). Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff is apparently reading the report, and given the previous interest in learning more about congestion pricing, Gothamist wonders if there would be City Hall favor for a Manhattan passenger car tax. Anyway, we can no longer blame delivery trucks or taxis for the traffic - it's the regular Joe or Jane in their car.
2) Autos represent the least productive use of scarce public space.
3) For most people making CBD trips, the personal auto is more of a hindrance than a help to getting around.
4) For most commuters who work in the Manhattan CBD, driving is a matter of choice, not necessity.
5) Traffic congestion at the bridges, tunnels and avenues leading into the CBD is exacerbated by the large number of motorists who drive into and then out of the CBD to reach non-CBD destinations.
The big reason for business owners to decrease car traffic is to make sure pedestrians are able to walk around and buy buy buy. One caveat of the business groups' support is that the groups are not from the busy Manhattan districts, like Times Square or Bryant Park, but even those areas might have some interest in relieving traffic.
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If people are driving out of "convenience" and "comfort", let's hit 'em where it hurts- the pocketbook. Charge drivers to come into the city during the week.
I agree with Joe. I drive my car into work on occasion as a treat for myself (although I leave the house at 6:30 to avoid the crush and generally don't leave Manhattan again until well after rush hour is over when I do it). I usually take a bus, a boat and a train to get to my office in Midtown. A charge of some kind during the week may not be a bad idea. I doubt it will change the traffic volume, but it might make people stagger their travel times more. However, I think if they charged on the weekend as well, that might do damage to the economy as day trippers who come into Manhattan from the Metro area to shop and such may be discouraged and stay closer to home.
30-day metrocard: $76/month
A cheap car: $199/month
Car insurance $100/month
Gasoline $50/month
Maintenance $20/month (average)
You do the math.
Walking: Free. Pollution free. Good way of getting daily exercise.
Biking: The Urban car. Go anywhere whenever you want, instead of waiting for the train or bus. Upfront costs = 1-2 metrocards and last for 2-3 years with low maintenance. Also pollution free.
Eliminating the need to travel more than a block to get the necessities of life: Priceless.
Obviously Dew failed mathematics.
MetroCard $76/month
Metro North $184/month
Car $0/month (Paid cash)
Insurance $80/month
Gas $50/month
Maintenance $20/month
I walk along the West Side Highway sometimes during the morning rush - the great majority of the vehicles have only the driver in them! That's really a sin. We don't need taxes - that just means rich people get to pollute the rest of us.
They should have left in place the HOV restrictions that had been imposed after 9-11; somehow, people who are now driving by themselves managed to get to work when the HOV requirements were in place.
Apparently everybody who complains about the cars has never had to ride the L train at rush hour. How about making public transit a little less horrifically godawful with some of this cash? I walk across Manhattan to get to work because I could no longer tolerate suffocating on some hipster's hairy armpit every morning.
Jen,
The best example of a #5:
the Holland & Lincoln Tunnels. Why go to Jersey paying a toll when you can go over a free East/Harlem River bridge and a free trip through the tunnel, then take a free ride over the Verrazano back home.
I wonder just how much influence the Manhattan garage owners have to keep the cars coming.
The best congestion pricing plan I'ver seen is 'Gridlock' Sam Schwartz's
I agree with those above who say that raising the price of tolls will have very little impact. How many drivers were deterred by gas prices that were rapidly approaching $4/gallon last year? Very few.
I think strict HOV policies are the only way to go. Drivers survived the HOV rules during the transit strike, right? The City doesn't need to go THAT strict, but head in that direction.
Perhaps sites like Gothamist could create online carpool-screening services, almost like a dating service. Pre-screen your passengers before arranging to give them a lift into the city.
Lastly, I wonder if a group of bright young high-schoolers somewhere might take on the challenge of determining precisely how the timing of traffic signals affects our rush-hour traffic flow. Surely there is a way for the green lights to be perfectly in alignment so as to favor the direction of the rush-hour flow. Or what if there was a computer program that could, at the press of a button, slightly tweak the traffic signal timings along the entire West Side...
You're kind of screwed any way you do it ThinkTwice. If you take advantage of the "free" bridges and go through Staten Island, you still need to pay $8 to get on to Staten Island. If you think about it, there is no way to get in and out of the city in a car and avoid a toll. I think it's especially unfair for those of us who live on Staten Island. Everyone complains that we get free ferry service, but what other city residents have to pay for more than a subway ride home? Even if you choose to drive from any other borough it's free for you. It's never free for us.
Re: Getting in and out of the city toll free.
I imagine MT is speaking about that in regards to already living in one of the boroughs. As if you are coming from 95 north, you can indeed enter and leave the city without paying tolls.
Re: Reducing traffic. What are all these people doing driving in Mahnhattan, especially single occupancy vehicles? Some might have to, on that particular day, for one reason or another. But what about the people who simply choose to, in light of other options? I simply don't understand why someone would choose to travel in nyc via car unless it was absolutely necassary. It doesn't make any sense, economic or otherwise, any way you cut it. No question about it, there should be an economic penalty attached to this, so as to more accurately represent the myraid costs involved in choosing to travel in nyc via car, unnecassarily.
Have any of you considered that there is a large population that do not live anywhere near LIRR, Metro-North, PATH, Jersey Trasit...etc.??? I live next to a Metro-North station yet I choose to drive. Why? Because I save 45 minutes of commute time which works out to be about $300.
I live in Midtown East and have a car; street parking in my neighborhood absolutely sucks because it totally caters to commercial vehicles, even though I live east of 2nd Avenue on a block that is primarily residential.
I only use my car on the weekends--and not even every weekend; during the week, my dad keeps it in his company's parking garage in his parking space, since he takes mass transit to work leaves his car at a park & ride all day.
My guess -
A cheap car: $199/month
(this must be one bomb of a car!..a kia?)
Civic with $0 down, good credit, %5 rate,
and 60 mth trm lease is $281) average is
usually about 300 a month..new..
Car insurance $100/month ????????
($1600 yr no points)
Gasoline $50/month
(try again with the gas..$90 a month)
Your math seems a bit low..I didn't
include the maintenance..not saying your
wrong or anything..With the $200 a month
car I envision this old 98 honda with
missing rims, a flooded headlight, cracked
tinted windows and bashed in side mirror..
I live in Brooklyn and work in a place in Jersey where Jersey transit doesn't go; I'd have to include the price of a $15 cab ride on top of a $7 jersey transit and $2 subway fair if I was adding up the price of a one-way commute; $24 means it's cheaper for me to drive my car, unfortunately.
(Luckily, sort of, I'm usually leaving the city fairly early and not returning until at least 10pm, and I'm only doing the commute three days a week, and I carpool with another guy when I can. I suppose I should just live in Jersey, but I can't bring myself to do it.)
I truly think a lot of NYC congestion has to do with the mediocre Jersey transit system, which I don't think goes to enough places and/or connects well enough. Jersey is so packed with cars to begin with (I think the insurance rates there may be higher than the city), and no one has put enough thought into really revitaliving NJTransit, or at least keeping it up with the amount of sprawl.
-n