Does anyone think this will really get NY'ers out of cars? Better mobility for some pedestrians and some diversion from crowded subways or slow buses, yes, but less traffic?

Closing down some streets to cars, all of the time or during certain hours, will get rid of that traffic. Delanoë's reforms seemed to be concentrated in the Marais (hmm) as walking around that hood is noticeably better than previously, and leaving it we were surprised to find the same old bad street crossings and heavy traffic. As long as the political will is there to expand those reforms it could work out really well.

On the other hand, Paris already has public transportation that is well funded and decades ahead of New York's; congestion pricing was our best hope to fund ours properly. Now I suppose we can "tax the rich" as all those helpful populist congestion pricing opponents suggested. Wake me up when that happens, as I might have escaped to another time zone.

Reducing vehicle-miles of travel in the core of the city will certainly make bike travel easier. But the vast majority of New Yorkers travel to he core by public transit. Billions of dollars of public funds have been spent over the past 25 years to make the system more reliable and attractive. Except for two subway lines, MTA could run many more trains during peak hours. This would cost more money. Some 900 serviceable subway cars are slated to be junked (perhaps to provide more elbow room for sardines in the Atlantic Ocean). These cars could be retained for another dozen years, allowing a 10 to 20% gain in service to occur in the next couple of years, as new cars now on order arrive. If the city's congestion pricing plan had directed some of its revenue stream to making the existing system better, it might have had a chance of making it.

A key problem is the large gap between advocates of "green transport" and rail advocates who often get absorbed in the nitty-gritty. Many thanks to streetsblog for posting the next meeting of the Regional Rail Working Group (which is tonight) and providing a link to our website.

I have to agree, this won't reduce cars at all! I much prefer the reduction/elimination of much of the street parking in the city. Let's turn some of the parking into wider sidewalks or separated bike lanes. (Then maybe a Paris-like bike sharing program could work.) People won't drive in if they have nowhere to park...and at least parking garages charge market rates, unlike meters.

If we do something like this, we'd need to totally redesign the streets to make them bike-friendly; the average person (especially the average tourist) is not going to be comfortable, probably rightly, riding a bike on say Houston Street. Even the lanes are unsafe.

For now Bloomberg should probably resort to less drastic measures of taxing drivers (double existing tolls and toll the East River bridges, for a start...). And maybe a personal 8-dollar per block toll on Sheldon Silver.

"By 'populism' do you mean social justice?"

Look it up, dear.

"Serious" transportation engineers only talk about smart cars, if you believe the prevalence of stories on Bernie Wagenblast's Transportation Communications Newsletter (linked from The Subwayblogger. Weird.