The subway is already "congested". Trains are consistently running slow or held in stations do to "congestion ahead". How does he plan to add more trains or add cars to existing trains.?

Overcrowding of trains and and subway stations
and is a health and hazard problem that no one wants to address. In the event of an emergency the evacuation would be in chaos ... (how many lives would be lost).

The subways are dirty and unsanitary ... adding more riders would only add to the problem.

"Red" Ken isn't called "red" because thats the color of his socks. He comes from and is nurtured by a long explicitly socialist tradition. This particular quote clearly states his position that urban socialism and private profit business activity are not mutually exclusive. He argues that the social committment to congestion pricing has increased the velocity and density of economic activity in London. But it is a chicken and egg thing. Were there not a culture of social committment and civic trust there would be no concurrence on congestion charging and therefor no greater market economy enhancements.

Our business culture, central to the ideologies of both political parties, seeks only to diminish the power of government. This is nurtured by an underlying cowboy, quasi-anarchic, political culture of individual solutions and Private (with a capital P) Enterprise. That a business leader who bought his political office with hard currency should lead a drive for civic trust is not merely ironic. In the U.S. only a business leader can even ask for civic trust.

But the frontier political culture is not limited to the over-riding privatist ideology. Worse, it is central to Federalism. Federalism is a political structure designed to help our nation settle the frontier. That we would now in our history have to battle sprawl was not a problem that the Holy Founding Fathers conceived. The idealized system of "checks and balances" and "states rights" have only served to castrate urban political power.

Our political culture is very primitive and crude relative to the parlimentary systems typical of Europe. There is very little difference between the parties so much so that those few differences (abortion rights, gun control, NAFTA), blurrred as they are, have to be blown into huge proportions just to hold each party's base vote during the elections.

When a party has control of a parliament it may act. Not so in the US. I fear the checks and balances will checkmate and imbalance the creation of a civic consensus around congestion charging. It will be a very difficult political lift without an active, identifiable movement of urban democracy, and probably a political party to support it. That every move we have to make as a city must be cleared by the State or the Feds or the Authorities (MTA, NYSDOT) is quickly going to push this critical issue off into the mire that lost NYC the Commuter Tax. With no political ideology to guide us and no independent political structure to support us this issue will not be able to stand on itself.

I hope the discussion stays "trans-partisan" here in NY, like it should. It'll be much more intelligent that way. Oh, and wish me happy birthday--I was born yesterday.