"FOR the past two decades, New York has been an inspiration to other American cities looking to revive themselves. Yes, New York had a lot of crime, but somehow it also still had neighborhoods, and a core that had never been completely abandoned to the car. Lately, though, as far as pedestrian issues go, New York is acting more like the rest of America, and the rest of America is acting more like the once-inspiring New York."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/opinion/29sullivan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

It's disappointing that the mayor's office did not see this bill as an opportunity to build support for the "sustainable" transportation measures that should come out of PlaNYC. The mayor's office had months to come up with an alternative more to it's liking that would build support for what are sure to be controversial traffic reduction measures. The advocates would no doubt be very happy to back a mayor's traffic reduction plan or bill.

(Incidentally, how can the "sustainability" people at City Hall watch testimony like this without feeling embarrassed for the mayor?)

It's too bad City Hall doesn't perceive the benefit of leading on traffic reduction. Why should they grant the rhetorical high ground to the same councilmembers, including John Liu, who will oppose many of the specifics of a mayoral traffic reduction plan?

Oh, lastly, a majority in a city council committee does not mean passage, or a vote. Speaker Quinn will weigh 199 as one issue among the big slate she has with the mayor.

Case in point was the west side stadium. The analysis showed the traffic would be horrendous .. but the conclusion was still , no problem ..

We have a CEO problem here. Mr bloomberg is not asking the right questions..So now the Board of directors steps in .. We need ot help councilman Liu design the right measurements

1) Traffic is 1% to 2% higher than the pre-9/11 all-time highs? Then what's with the spate of news articles talking about how Weinshall thinks it's all in our minds?

2) Try searching Google for "New York City Traffic." Look who's in the first, second and third position.

I think we agreed - Iris sure sounded strong coming off her prepared statements, but under questioning, her facade fell apart. Councilmember Brewer was most entertained by Dan Garodnick's questioning - trying to get basic information out of the Commissioner and her aides, and just getting smoke.

And I know from our community's - and community board's - negotiations with DOT over the Houston St. redesign, that where DOT has data, they are unwilling to share it. If you force them to share it, they will share only what supports their case and claim that they don't have much data at all. That's not what I heard in the DOT testimony.

I don't know that I would characterize it like that.

I was going to comment that this was one of the bullet points that Aaron should have included: the awakening of John Liu. He asked the panel that included TA, TSTC, Chad Marlow, and Citizens for NY whether they believed that the eventual goal should be reducing congestion or reducing traffic overall. Everyone on the panel agreed - correctly, to this observer - that reducing congestion while not reducing traffic in total would be insufficient.

I think Councilmember Liu saw the light at that moment - that we could, in fact, as a city, decide to have fewer vehicles. Let's hope that was the lesson he took away, and will continue to use his seat to persue.

- Ian

Strangely, on the same day around noon, I received the official response to my request for protective barriers on the Park Avenue pedestrian medians. My favorite line was "guardrails may be considered a source of crash potential themselves". Yeah, exactly...that would even worse than pedestrian interference.

Hilary - I think John Liu's objective is higher office.

The bill is obviously worth fighting hard for, but I do wonder if everyone agress what the objective is.

Awesome!

(And at the outset of the 21st century we all watched with heavy hearts as New York City sank from being the Capital of the World to just a B-level global city, too unimaginative, apathetic or just plain incompetent to rise to the challenge of a new, non-auto-dominated era where quality of life trumps financial services chestbeating.)