The secret of European eco-friendliness? Maybe not. Photo: romerican/Flickr

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic — it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:

It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California—it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn't that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they're enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that's all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn't mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It's also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco -- limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive -- then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America's carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you'd think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline -- that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful -- makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won't tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to "work" here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal's essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It's just that they don't pass, because "it's not considered the height of political savvy" to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

"Trains won't work here," because "Americans love their cars," and so high quality rail lines aren't built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

First the trends: oil costs are surpassing $100 a barrel, global warming alarm calls are mounting, polluting autos and trucks increasingly clog city streets, and health concerns about a sedentary and fattening society are mounting.

And now the developments: Handy bike-for-hire stations are proving instant hits in Paris and other European cities and seem poised to invade urban America. Moves to add painted bike lanes along city roadways are being eclipsed by proposals for entire networks of "bike boulevards" -- roadways altered radically to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians. And a companion "Complete Streets" movement -- making roadway space for cyclists and pedestrians, not just cars and trucks -- is gaining traction nationwide.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), founder of the Congressional Bike caucus (now 160-bipartisan members strong), claims a new pro-bike politics is forming, that it can mobilize a 1-million-plus national constituency and force clear recognition of the role of bicycles in the next (2009) federal transportation bill. He and the Bike Summit will be pushing a sense of Congress resolution recognizing the potential of bikes to undergird a greener, healthier and more efficient national future.

Cycling, nationwide, still counts for tiny portions of commuting and shopping trips. But Portland's experience shows the potential, Blumenauer insists: since that city's bike program began in the 1990s, the "modal split" for bikes has quadrupled and a $100 million bike industry of bike shops, bike sales, a start of manufacturing and bike tourism, accounting for 1,000 jobs, has emerged.

Paris' "velib" bike rental program -- the name combines "velo" (bicycle) and "liberte (freedom) -- opened last July and registered an astounding 2 million trips in its first 40 days. Almost identical systems are sprouting up across Europe -- in Lyons, Rennes, Barcelona, Oslo, Stockholm, Seville, Brussels, Vienna. Many others are soon to come including London and Rome. There's also reported interest in Moscow and Beijing.

This April the first serious U.S. fast bike-rental system is due to open in Washington, D.C., followed shortly by San Francisco. Considering the idea or in active negotiations are Houston, Tucson, San Antonio, Portland, Cambridge and Boulder. Among possible U.S. cities is Chicago -- Mayor Richard Daley tested a Velib bike in Paris last summer and came back a fan. 

Sarah Goodyear: Your talk at Baruch College is titled "The Window of Opportunity is Now: How Wireless Can Move Us to More Sustainable Transportation." Explain what you'll be discussing.

Robin Chase: The pitch starts with my complete horror that we have less than five years to turn worldwide CO₂ emissions around. One of the senior climatologists that I refer to said if that turning point of CO₂ emissions happens in 2015, i.e. seven years from now, we have a 50-50 chance of averting catastrophic effects of climate change. I personally would like to improve those odds.

When we think about the transportation world, everything is major infrastructure change: Let's build more rail, more transit, more walkable communities. Let's create more fuel-efficient cars and move to hybrids and alternative fuels. Not one speck of that work is going to have a remote impact in the time frame we're talking about. So while I think those are critical and important things for the medium run and the long run, we need more people focused on what we're going to be doing in the next five years.

SG: How does wireless fit in?

RC: From my Zipcar experience and from watching congestion pricing played out in London and Stockholm, I've learned that money -- market pricing, or accurate reflection of pricing -- is what turns people's behavior on a dime. If we're serious, that's where we have to go. Marketing is everything and wireless technologies bring us to a totally different world of possibility.

Zipcar and car-sharing is one example of how the ability to rent a car by the hour easily and therefore pay almost full car costs for that hour causes people to drive dramatically less. You don't run out and buy your quart of ice cream, because it's going to cost you ten bucks to buy that quart of ice cream. You say OK, I'll do without, I'll eat cookies, I'll pick up ice cream tomorrow.

Likewise ride sharing, which is what GoLoco is all about. There are a couple of reasons ride-sharing has been underused. One of them is stranger anxiety: I really don't want to step into a car with anybody. The rise of social networks has transformed that equation. We're all friends of friends, so we can get some level of comfort around that. Then the whole money-changing-hands piece. People think it's complicated, why bother. They think it's dirty, embarrassing and awkward. So we can do an online payment system. And the whole matching-up of people finding those rides--that's what the Internet and our wireless devices in our hands are all about. That we can make those connections relatively easily.

A screenshot of GoLoco users on Facebook

SG: How can wireless technology and mesh networks enable congestion pricing?

RC: What is shocking about the congestion pricing model that was done in London and in Stockholm and in Singapore is that those systems are creating wireless infrastructures on closed networks with proprietary devices. If we're going to spend out oodles of money for wireless infrastructure for our transportation systems for congestion pricing and for road pricing, we should be making those open networks using open standards, i.e., things that consumers and businesspeople have devices that hook up to. We'd actually do an open source communications platform. And we can transform this required investment in transportation wireless infrastructure into something that's an economic development boon and that makes information ubiquitous and very, very low cost, while we're making carbon -- the old economy -- high cost.

We can turn the cars into wireless hotspots. So imagine the car becoming a hotspot if you're within a quarter mile to a mile of a car, that is next to another car, that is next to another car, that is next to a gateway. If we open that up to become an open network with open standards, ultimately your laptop and your cell phone and the traffic light and the parking meter will all be part of the same communications network infrastructure. And all that peer-to-peer communication is free.

The transportation wireless connectivity can be in full flow with the rest of the economy. From a technological standpoint, it takes some of the risk out of the investment -- when we invest in a closed, proprietary system and the rest of the world moves on, it means you're going to have a defunct proprietary system in a very short time. If instead we say we're going to use open standards and we want individual consumers' devices to be creating this open network, individuals will be swapping out and buying their own devices as things get upgraded. It's kind of like the web 2.0 version of transportation technologies.

SG: So how would it work for a car owner?

RC: There would be a black box that you put into your car. It would cost around $50. Individuals will have to go buy that device and install it in the car themselves. It'll just be plugging it into the cigarette lighter. Once you buy that device with your own money and install it with your own money, I'm going to give you double that in tolls for free. So what we've done is instead of the city's having to go around to every traffic light and put up all the cameras, make the millions of dollars in investment, instead of that we're saying end users are financing the buy for the hardware and the installation. It will bring the start time for the congestion pricing system up, because we don't have this complicated stuff going on in the hard infrastructure in the city.

SG: What are the civil liberties implications of this type of system?

RC: Locational privacy is in the [mesh network] software, and we need to demand that. It's being done with other applications for voting. We really need to protect our locational privacy. And with the camera taking shots of people's license plates at intersections, we lose that. I realize, yes, we've lost it with the cameras that exist downtown, and yes, we all carry a cell phone in our pockets, but I think it takes it to a totally other level if every car in America for road pricing is going to be trackable. We need to put our foot down now.

There are so many issues at stake here. For me, climate change would be number one. But I don't think we have to give up privacy at that altar and we shouldn't.

SG: What are the chances of getting anyone to listen to your ideas?

RC: I've been having success in getting increasingly higher and higher up to get people to listen. This talk in New York is great, in that I hope to catch the ear of some of those decision-makers.

SG: Does your history with Zipcar help you get people to listen to you, to see you not as an activist but as an entrepreneur?

RC: Yep. Absolutely.

SG: In the ritualized drama of New York politics, all this innovation is a lot to get people to accept.

RC: I realize, it is brutally complicated. And I realize the politics and the economics and the factions. But I think we can make the case that there's a huge win from many aspects to doing it this way. There's the economic development potential. Everyone's looking at the whole homeland security resilience of networks -- this comes into play. I feel that we can make a choice. But I'm too much of an outsider to be able to predict.

SG: You talked about road pricing becoming a reality on the national scene.

RC: Gas taxes, as you know, haven't been raised since the early '90s. As we push for alternative fuel cars and fuel-efficient cars, what is already an inadequate source of revenue is every day more and more inadequate. Policy makers at the highest levels have completely figured this out. The alternative is you have user fees by the mile instead of by the gallon. So it's 100 percent positively coming, and since we know it's coming, we should be doing these technology trials and set-ups so that it's viable, it's possible. When we put the congestion pricing question into context, it is truly a trial, a behavioral and technical trial, for what road pricing looks like. And the cordon-and-video-camera technique is not what can be done for road pricing. So we have to realize, now is our window. Let's get it right.

Because of the time frame we're working with, I want to see the technology out there and viable, so that the day the politicians finally wrap their mind around it, the next day we can turn it on.

Photo: Phoebe Sexton/Harvard News Office

It wasn't your typical congestion pricing forum, but last night about 50 people got to hear the pros and cons of the Bloomberg plan debated in a relaxed, informal setting, with instructions from the moderators to keep drinking.

The event, sponsored by the London-based Institution of Civil Engineers, brought together two proponents and two critics of pricing at Manhattan's 11th Street Bar, in Alphabet City. Amidst the academic banter, kind lighting and cold pints, it was hard to imagine things would get all that heated. They didn't.

Not that the dialogue was short on substance. Critic Dr. John Falcocchio, Professor of Transportation Planning at Polytechnic University of New York, for instance, didn't seem to be against pricing as a concept as much as he was skeptical of the plan as proposed. According to Falcocchio, a variable pricing scheme based on the Stockholm program, rather than London's flat-rate model, would be a better fit for New York. Falcocchio said charging more during peak congestion times would speed traffic flow more effectively than a flat fee, which he believes will fail to reduce congestion "in a measurable way." Falcocchio acknowledged the transit benefit from pricing revenues, yet advocated for improved enforcement of traffic laws before a possible "gradual" implementation of pricing.

NYC DOT Director of Studies Thomas Maguire replied that enforcement is built into the plan, and that the city would like to have more red light cameras (which depend on approval by suspicious state lawmakers). Maguire also pointed out that there is no neighborhood in the city where a majority of commuters don't already take transit, but noted that some of the worst congestion is in "asthma alley" neighborhoods leading into Manhattan and the central business district. Driving, Maguire said, is a choice, and pricing uses a "carrot and stick" approach to encourage motorists to choose transit.

Representing the anti-pricing Queens Chamber of Commerce Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free, attorney Corey Bearak claimed that population projections cited by PlaNYC are "dead wrong" (talking point alert!), and are an "excuse" to squeeze the middle-class "schlump" who has to drive into Manhattan. Bearak said neighborhoods with asthma-stricken populations are located "nowhere near" the congestion pricing zone, and that too much of the anticipated pricing revenue would be devoted to administrative costs. Instead of pricing, Bearak said, the city should work on reviving the commuter tax.

After a round of queries from the audience to both sides -- including one about the city's "schizophrenia" when it comes to clipping bikes (out of DOT's hands, responded Maguire) and bike parking (no definitive answer here, other than possible isolated zoning adjustments) -- ICE moderator David Caiden called the question. "Congestion Pricing, as proposed in PlaNYC 2030, Solves Manhattan's Transport Problems," yea or nay?

Twenty-six audience members were polled in favor, with "not even 15" against.

As moderator, I don't believe Caiden was counted among the 26, but he could have been. "I think it should be $50," he said earlier in the evening, referring to charging "those evil-doers coming in by car."

"But I'm not at all biased," he added.

Sweden re-launched its congestion pricing system today following a 6-month trial and voter referendum last September, in which Stockholm residents approved the traffic control measure by a margin of 52 to 45. The referendum was a definitive victory for a system that reduced Stockholm's traffic congestion by as much as 50 percent and decreased noxious air pollution by 14 percent (you can see some stats here). Notably, prior to the 6-month trial run, polls showed that as many as 80 percent of Stockholm residents were against the idea congestion pricing.

The Local reports on the newly relaunched pricing system:

There will be a number of key differences between the new arrangements and those during last year's trial. One change is that the transponders - electronic devices used in the trial to make it possible to take the charge directly out of drivers' accounts - will not be used. Instead, cameras will read cars' plates, and those vehicles whose drivers are registered will have the money debited directly from their accounts.

Other drivers, as before, will have to pay the charge within 14 days of driving in the zone. This can be done online, at Pressbyrån or 7-Eleven stores or in banks.

Another key difference is that taxis will no longer be exempted from paying the charge. A number of taxi operators have already said they plan to increase charges as a result. The charge will be tax-deductable for some companies and commuters.

Mike Castleman, a New Yorker currently in Stockholm offers some congestion pricing photographs on Flickr. Below is a photo of the pricing menu, which charges different fees based on time-of-day. "Kr" stands for Kronor, the Swedish currency.

Stockholm has just completed its congestion pricing trial. Thanks to broad public support, parliament voted to make the fee permanent. Will New York be in the same position years from now? The Local (Sweden) reports:

Sweden's parliament on Wednesday voted in favour of a permanent road toll for Stockholm in a bid to reduce congestion, with the scheme kicking off on August 1.

The system is aimed at reducing traffic and pollution in the city, and the revenue is to be used for road improvement in the Stockholm area. The toll was broadly supported by deputies, who cast their votes several times on individual aspects of the bill rather than on one overall proposal. The toll was operated on a trial basis last year and exceeded expectations of a 10 to 15 percent reduction of cars entering and leaving the capital, registering instead an average fall of between 20 and 25 percent.

Stockholm residents voted to adopt the congestion charge in a referendum held in September 2006 in conjunction with the country's legislative elections. The Swedish capital will join other cities such as London, Rome and Singapore which have already introduced toll schemes.

All vehicles except buses and foreign-registered cars that enter or exit central Stockholm on weekdays during the peak hours of 6:30 am to 6:29 pm will be required to pay a fee. Electric cars and hybrid vehicles will be exempt from the toll until 2012.

Reported in The Local (Sweden):

Support for the congestion charge in Stockholm is greater than ever before, according to a new poll.

In the poll, conducted by Skop for newspaper Stockholm City, 67 percent of those questioned said it was good that the new government had decided to reintroduce the charge. 33 percent of the 1,021 people asked said they disapproved of the decision.

A 51.3 percent majority voted in favour of retaining the charge in a referendum in September. The incoming centre-right administration promised to honour the vote, but said that income from the charge would go towards road-building, rather than towards public transportation as the Social Democrats had planned.

After giving Weinshall props for her actions on the Queens Boulevard front (and taking her to task on the Staten Island Ferry crash), the Times goes on to say how much more needs to be done, voicing some arguments that probably sound mighty familiar to Streetsblog readers:

Whoever gets the job should waste no time in helping to secure federal money to study ways of relieving traffic, including the possibility of congestion pricing. Washington has recognized that the nation's cities need traffic controls, and millions of dollars are being offered to municipalities seeking solutions. New York should claim its share.

There has been a lot of pushback on the idea of congestion pricing, in which drivers would be charged a fee in the most heavily trafficked part of the city, Manhattan south of Central Park. Opponents portray the fee as a regressive tax that would be hard on small businesses, but versions of such a charge in London, Stockholm and elsewhere show promising results, reducing traffic apparently without impeding commerce.

As a quick second act, the next commissioner could take a bite out of congestion and set an example for the rest of city government by revoking its workers' parking permits, an idea promoted by Transportation Alternatives, a nonpartisan advocate for reduced car traffic. City workers from all departments, the police in particular, regularly abuse the privilege -- the permits amount to a free pass to park, even double-park, anywhere -- especially in Lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn.

In the larger picture, the new commissioner should treat city transportation as the regional issue it is. Much of the traffic on the most heavily used streets originates in outlying areas. Workers are commuting from ever greater distances. Sometimes that is a matter of necessity, sometimes it's a matter of perceived convenience.

The city would benefit greatly from a transportation leader who promotes use of public transit, walking and cycling as not just a way to a destination, but as a way of life.

Last month residents of Stockholm, Sweden voted in a citywide referendum to continue that city's experiment with congestion charging. By charging motorists a fee to drive into the city center, congestion charging had successfully reduced the amount of time Stockholm motorists spent waiting in traffic by 30 to 50 percent while significantly reducing air pollution and providing a number of other benefits as well. The vote represented a remarkable flip-flop in public opinion. Only months before, residents of Stockholm were firmly opposed to congestion charging. That changed once they experienced the results. There was, however, just one hitch: While the voter referendum approved congestion charging, the left-leaning political parties that had supported the system were voted out of office in the very same election.

The voter referendum on congestion charging was not legally binding. It was only advisory and it was not known whether the new government would continue the program. Now a Swedish newspaper is reporting that the newly elected Swedish government will keep the congestion charging system going with a compromise: More of the revenue that the system generates must be put towards road improvements in the Stockholm's outer rings.

"Now that the streets of the city and the roads leading in to the city have begun to clog up again since the congestion charge was removed, it is very clear that this is an effective tool and it would be foolish not to use it", write the three Centre Party MPs in today's Dagens Nyheter.

Parliament member Lennart Hedquist suggests that it may be possible to reach a compromise. "I am not in favour of the tax as it is now. But the compromise could be that the tax will be used for infrastructural development in the areas around Stockholm", he told The Local.

One possible lesson for New York City seems clear: Any congestion charging system that is developed for Manhattan needs to provide direct and tangible benefits to the outer boroughs.

Photo: Snerz on Flickr

But Reject the Political Party That Supported It. Result: Gridlock Over Gridlock.

On Sunday, residents of Stockholm, Sweden voted to continue their city's seven-month long experiment with congestion charging. With 53 percent of the electorate in favor of congestion charging, the referendum represented a definitive victory for a system that reduced Stockholm's traffic congestion by as much as 50 percent and decreased noxious air pollution by 14 percent. But the politics of traffic, it seems, can never be so simple. The same voters who affirmed congestion charging rejected the political party that was set to implement it. We spoke with James Savage, the editor-in-chief of The Local, an English-language, Internet-based, Swedish newspaper in an effort to sort it out and see if he had any advice for New York City traffic reduction advocates:

Streetsblog: So, what happened in yesterday's election?

James Savage: The tradition in Sweden is to hold all elections on the same day so we have municipal elections, we have a general election and local referenda on various issues. The general election resulted in a change of government with the ruling Social Democrats thrown out after twelve years. In Stockholm, the local municipal authority, which was also Social Democrat, was thrown out and replaced by a center-right coalition.

SB: The headline in your newspaper describes the result of the congestion charging referendum as "Neither a Ja nor a Nej" -- I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly -- but what did you mean by that?

JS: Yeah [laughing], you're not. The congestion charge was introduced by a Social Democratic municipal authority that had gone into elections in 2002 saying that, in fact, there would be no congestion charge. But then the Social Democratic Government, in order to get the support that it needed from the Green Party at the national level, agreed to impose the charge on the municipality in Stockholm. The Social Democratic leadership in Stockholm cooperated with their national leadership even though it was against their manifesto's promises.

SB: Annika Billström (pictured right) is the leader of Stockholm's municipal authority? She's the mayor?

JS: She was the mayor. That's one of the things that happened yesterday. She is no longer the mayor and how much that depends on the way congestion charging was introduced -- that's one of the questions that people are asking now. People suspect that it played quite a large role in her defeat.

SB: How come?

JS: She started out against congestion charging and then basically lay down as soon as the Central Government tried to impose it. That annoyed people even though, ironically, residents of Stockholm eventually started to appreciate the congestion charge and voted to keep it.

SB: So, the party that brought on congestion charging was essentially punished for they way they went about it and yet the referendum still voted in favor of congestion charging.

JS: It's rather contradictory isn't it? But that is basically what happened and the center-right alliance that has been elected to replace Billström and the Social Democrats is broadly opposed to congestion charging.

SB: Must this new government now re-activate the congestion charge? Was the referendum binding?

JS: No. The referendum was only advisory. The government isn't obliged to re-introduce the congestion charge. What makes it more complicated is that the new center-right government has traditionally been opposed to congestion charging. They say that they will respect the will of the people but there is a third confusing factor here. People living in the suburbs which are controlled by different municipal authorities than central Stockholm, and traditionally vote for the right wing, are broadly opposed to the congestion charge because they're the people who have to pay it.

SB: Were these suburban municipalities able to vote on the referendum?

JS: No. And in the plan set up by the Social Democratic government there was no mechanism for the suburbs to be consulted. But the municipal authorities in these different suburbs had their own referenda. The Social Democrats considered this to be completely irrelevant. They weren't going to pay any attention to this at all. But of course now, the Social Democrats are written out of the equation and we've got a center-right government and a center-right council and they will make their own decisions and they will take these referenda into account. So, it puts the whole thing up in the air.

SB: So, the politics of traffic is a mess pretty much everywhere, I guess.

JS: It's a mess [laughing]. It's extremely complicated.


SB: An article in your paper reported that there was a major turn-around in the public mood on congestion charging, that it was unpopular at first and then people warmed up to it. Does yesterday's referendum show that congestion charging worked?

JS: Yeah. While there is a big difference in opinion between people in the City and people outside the City -- if we just stick to the city people were very much in favor of it. Most people in the city don't have cars or if they do have cars they don't use them to go to work every day. So, the streets were noticeably emptier of cars which is much more pleasant for people. The buses moved more quickly through the traffic because there was less congestion.

SB: Wasn't there some benefit to the suburbanites in this? Were they able to get into work faster or anything like that?

JS: Well, yeah, and this is the right wing argument in favor of congestion charging. Certainly some people in the suburbs liked that they could pay their way to get into the city more quickly. And many of these suburbs are fairly wealthy areas. But that was not a majority opinion.

SB: So when will congestion charging start again, if it does?

JS: It is supposed to be introduced in March or April of next year. But because of the political complications the deadline is likely to be pushed further into the future.

SB: Do you think it is going to happen?

JS: I think something will happen, I don't think that the city council in Stockholm and the new mayor will be able to ignore entirely the votes of the majority of people here who, you know, also put her into power. But I think there will be concessions. There will be some kind of compromise solution.

SB: What kinds of compromises might they come up with?

JS: Perhaps a lower price. Or on the right side of Stockholm politics there is talk of building new roads, new ring roads outside the city. So, perhaps a combination of a congestion charge with revenues going towards building a new ring road.

SB: Have you ever been to New York City?

JS: I have, yes.

SB: Without necessarily knowing too much about New York City's local politics what sort of advice would you have for congestion charging advocates here?

JS: You really have to be careful of the geographical divides -- of having a congestion charge that benefits people living in one area and disadvantages people living in another. You've got to find a way to make everybody benefit from it. And it has to be framed as part of a solution for traffic in the region as a whole. If you're looking at it from the position of reducing traffic and getting people out of their cars, then you need to make a big investment in public transport or ring roads and make the link very clear. This is something that the Social Democrats failed to do in Stockholm -- to make a really clear link, like in London, between the money that you get from congestion charging and improvements in public transport. They failed to show that what you're taking with one hand, you're giving with another.

Photo by Jeroen Wolfers

From this morning's International Herald Tribune:

Near-complete results for the Sunday referendum showed that 51.7 percent of Stockholm voters approved the traffic toll, while 45.6 percent voted against it.

The congestion fee was contested when city officials introduced it in a seven-month trial that ran between January and July.

Public opinion swung in favor of the charges after studies showed that weekday traffic on average dropped 20 percent during the trial, while pollution decreased 9-14 percent.

Depending on the time of day, Stockholm drivers paid 10 kronor and 20 kronor, or about €1-€2 (US$1.30 - US$2.50) when they entered or exited the city's center. The toll was in effect from 6:30 a.m. to 6:29 p.m. every weekday, with no fees on weekends, holidays or at night.

A city analysis showed permanent congestion fees would bring a net profit of nearly 500 million kronor (€54 million; US$69 million) a year - money that would be spent on improving public transportation and better roads.

Additional Links:

• Neither Ja Nor Nej to Congestion Charge
• Stockholmsforsoket
• "Bra!" to Congestion Pricing
• IBM Solution Chosen for Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden's seven-month congestion pricing experiment is on hold until a voter referendum in September. Alan Atkisson reports:

Last year, the politics around the planned "congestion tax/environmental fee" got so heated that Stockholm's normally calm radio channels began to sound more like America's whiniest call-in shows. Friendships strained under the divide between the "Ja" and "Nej" side of the equation, and many commentators predicted that Stockholm's currently left-leaning city government would experience a crushing defeat on the strength of its support for this issue. All that is behind us now. Because the toll works. And the people like it. And it has been discontinued.

Discontinuing the toll was actually the plan all along. The political compromise that got the idea through involved framing it as an experiment, the "Stockholm Trial" in official talk. Stockholm would try it for seven months, and look at the data, and then the people of Stockholm would vote about whether to turn the system back on, or dismantle it. And that's where we are now. The toll system, which worked nearly flawlessly since being inaugurated on 1 January, was turned off on 31 July.

The very next day, traffic jams reappeared on the major arteries that had, magically, been free of such jams for the previous half-year....

Read the rest of this article at World Changing.

Below are a few slides from the presentation delivered by Gunnar Soderholm (PDF file), Stockholm's Deputy Chief Executive Officer. If you are a transportation geek and you read Swedish, you will love this:

I need to double-check this, but from Soderholm's presentation it looks like congestion pricing reduced the daily number of vehicles traveling in and out of the Stockholm by about 22% or nearly 100,000 vehicles total.

In September, three months before it started, public opinion was firmly against the idea of congestion pricing. By May, after five months of living with the system, public opinion had completely flipped. That is, if "bra" means "yes" and "daligt" means "no." If not, then, well, the Swedes hate congestion pricing.

Stockholm's suburbanites appear to be in favor of congestion pricing at just about the same rate as the general population. Perhaps outer borough New Yorkers would be less opposed than people think if the revenues raised by congestion pricing were poured back into transit improvements.

Most remarkable, even motorists appear to be coming around to supporting congestion pricing. 

Experts were surprised by how relatively quickly and easily this high-impact change was adopted and accepted.

Congestion pricing is a single measure that can have a major impact on a city's output of climate change-causing carbon dioxide emissions. Can you imagine a day when New York City's transportation agency concerns itself with global climage change?

On Thursday, June 29, 2006, as DOT's press office was issuing the statement above, New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall was in Stockholm, Sweden. She was there to make two presentations to the 11th Annual IMPACTS conference, an international networking event for transportation administrators and professionals from cities in Europe, North America and Latin America.

The first day's focus was congestion pricing (Warning: most of these are links to PDF files) and on Thursday Weinshall's professional counterparts from Stockholm, London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen made detailed presentations on the far-reaching measures that they were taking to reduce traffic, use their cities "limited space" more efficiently, and reduce the type of "conflict" that killed three New York City cyclists in June alone.

Stockholm is the latest major world city to implement a congestion pricing system to reduce urban traffic and the conference kicked off with a presentation by the city's Deputy CEO, Gunnar Soderholm. According to Soderholm's Powerpoint presentation, available online, since launching the congestion pricing system in January, the number of vehicles driving in and out of Stockholm is down 20 to 25 percent. Congestion, or time spent sitting in traffic, is down 30 to 50 percent in the inner city. Noxious emissions have decreased 10 to 14 percent. And there have been no negative impacts on Stockholm's retail or economic growth. All of these results exceed the city's original goals. Facing widespread opposition at its start, polls now show that a majority of Stockholm residents approve of congestion pricing and say they will vote to keep it in place when the issue comes up as in a citywide referendum at the end of July.

Later in the day, a similar story was told by John Mason, Transport for London's Head of Enforcement. London's congestion pricing system, up and running for four years now, has reduced congestion in Central London by 26 percent. Thirty-seven percent fewer cars travel through the middle of the city. Congestion pricing is raising £110 million per year most of which is being plowed back into the city's bus network. As a result, bus patronage is way up and bus reliability and travel times have vastly improved. An unexpected side benefit of congestion pricing is that there are 40 to 70 fewer motor vehicle crashes annually in Central London, air quality has improved measurably and climate change-causing carbon dioxide emissions are down. Though there are fewer cars and less traffic, essentially the same number of people are traveling in and out of Central London daily, the impact on business has been "broadly neutral," and polling shows that the majority of businesses "recognize that decongestion has created a more pleasant working environment."

The focus of the conference's second day was "unexpected events." While European transportation administrators boasted of successes in reducing traffic and ambitious plans for the future, on Friday New York City's transportation commissioner made one presentation on New York City's response to December 2005 transit strike and another on post-9/11 security in New York City. Weinshall had no big traffic reduction strategies or plans to share with the assembled because unlike the other cities at the conference, New York City doesn't have any.

I asked a Department of Transportation spokesperson if Commissioner Weinshall took the opportunity of a Stockholm visit to "look at the new congestion pricing system, experience its effects, or talk with any officials about how it's working out." I was told that "the only time the Commissioner heard about congestion pricing was at the conference when a Stockholm government representative," presumably Soderholm, "spoke to the participants about it."

* * * *

If you only read the first sentence of DOT's brief response to the recent spate of bike fatalities on New York City's streets, it comes across as a nice statement. It's human. It expresses feelings. It's not every day that you get emotion out of a big government bureaucracy.

But then you get to that second sentence and it's all business. New York City's streets are "crowded." Crowding results in "conflict." Sure, when there is conflict between a car and bike, the car is usually going to win. But what are you gonna do? We've got "limited space" here in the big city. 'Flict happens. DOT can always point to the fact that overall pedestrian injury and fatality rates have fallen during the Weinshall years.

New Yorkers tend to view traffic congestion as something akin to the weather. It's good, it's bad, there is nothing much you can do about it. Traffic as a force beyond the control of mere mortals, just like New York City's murder rate and school system were once considered unmanagable and beyond fixing.

In its two sentence public statement on the deaths of Dr. Carl Nacht and Derek Lake, DOT seems happy to reinforce this notion. It is probably more bureaucratic reflex than conscious strategy. The agency has liability issues to consider. And their job is probably a whole lot easier if the public isn't too involved. The last thing DOT needs is community groups running around thinking that New York City could actually do something about traffic congestion. DOT is, after all, the city agency that would have to do it.

And yet, other world cities are proving that it is entirely possible to do something to reduce urban traffic congestion. If Commissioner Weinshall sat in on some of the presentations of her European colleagues on Thursday, she knows.

Thoughts and prayers are nice. But they are not what New York City needs from its transportation agency. 

Yesterday, The Local, an English-language Swedish newspaper reported the following:

"The widescale opposition to Stockholm’s congestion charge appears to have evaporated. According to a new poll carried out by Sifo on behalf of the Green Party, 62% of Stockholm residents are planning to vote to keep the charge in the autumn referendum… Opinion has shifted in favour of the charge since the trial has shown it to have a positive effect on traffic levels."

According to one newspaper poll, 80% of Stockholm residents opposed congestion pricing before its implementation. A March 10 survey showed that 44% were in favor of congestion charging and 47% were against. In September Stockholm voters will go to the polls for a referendum on whether or not to keep the congestion charge.

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Stockholm gets congestion charge go-ahead Protests Mar Opening of Stockholm Congestion Tax "Quiet start" for Stockholm congestion charge 197 new buses have been bought by the Stockholm transit agency