A months-long standoff of sorts ensued, until building management finally opened a storage area big enough to hold 20 bikes, with spaces reserved by permit (the building is 1.5 million square feet). The hostility Times' cycling employees have encountered since moving into the Renzo Piano-designed, Forest City Ratner-built "green" tower has caused some to stop riding to work.

Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White sent a letter to Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., urging him to install adequate bike parking. Here is the response, from Hussain Ali-Khan, VP of Real Estate Development for the NYT.

Dear Mr. White,

Mr. Sulzberger has forwarded me your letter regarding bicycle parking in The New York Times Building. I am happy to say The New York Times Building incorporates many green technologies including bicycle parking!

The Real Estate Development team and the Building Operations department worked with our development partner and co-owner, Forest City Ratner Companies, and with bicycle riding employees to identify a suitable location for secure indoor parking. This was accomplished in December. The delay between moving in and setting up the bicycle parking was mostly due to logistics as we had significant construction activity in the building for several months after the Times moved in and we wanted to evaluate a couple of ideas after contractors and construction materials had been moved out. The reports you received were premature or ill informed and employees need only indicate their need to the security officers to be shown how to access the bike parking area.

I hope this clears up any misunderstanding regarding bicycle parking at The New York Times Building. Good luck with your mission to rid the planet of cars!

Kidding! But not really. 

Today's blast reinforced growing fears that a disgruntled driver, or someone else with a grudge against motoring enforcement bodies, had launched a concerted letter bombing campaign.

The DVLA attack followed an explosion yesterday at a company linked to speed cameras and another on Monday at the London offices of Capita, the firm that collects the capital's congestion charge.

Drivers angered by speed-monitoring cameras, some of whom refer to police vehicles carrying speed-detection devices as "the Talivan," have engaged in acts of sabotage in the past. The UK police have labeled such criminals as terrorists.

A  leader of one of the main militant groups opposed to speed monitoring and congestion pricing, Motorists Against Detection, denied that his group was involved in the letter bomb campaign. "We're not responsible for these attacks and do not condone causing injury," said the man, who goes by the name "Captain Gatso." "However, there is a war against motorists and it seems this is an act of retaliation." His group's site features several photos of speed cameras that have been blown up, with approving captions. Another like-minded site, Roadracers, sports this photo of what appears to be a camera being detonated with pedestrians in the background. It's not clear where or when the photo was taken, or whether it is genuine.

Ominous warnings relating to energy consumption have come recently from people on both ends of the political spectrum. The free-marketeers at the Council on Foreign Relations have issued a report warning that the United States cannot possibly kick its dependence on foreign energy and recommending drastic actions such as -- ready? -- gasoline rationing. Even more alarming, if also hopefully more far-fetched, a Russian who observed the collapse of the Soviet Union first hand, and still has an occasional kind word for communism sees disturbing parallels between that country before it fell and our country today.

Taken together, these writings describe a nation that needs to cut energy consumption now, which implications for urgently needed action at the national, state, local and individual levels. Amid these increasingly ominous signs, here in New York City, serious consideration of the single action that would offer the greatest reduction in local energy consumption for the least amount of work -- congestion pricing -- is nowhere because parochial local politicians are failing to think three feet beyond the borders of their districts. (I'm looking at you, David Weprin.)

First, via the Oil Drum, we learn that the Council on Foreign Relations has issued a pdf-formatted report that sounds an urgent tone about the security implications of the United States's dependence on energy imported from foreign, often hostile nations.

Council. On. Foreign. Relations. 

This is the illuminati speaking: A powerful group that has enormous influence, for better or for worse, on U.S. international policy. As a task force of 27 influentials frets that the global market on which oil is traded may not function properly in the future, it presents this chilling thesis: 

U.S. energy policy has been plagued by myths, such as the feasibility of achieving "energy independence" through increased drilling or anything else. For the next few decades, the challenge facing the United States is to become better equipped to manage its dependencies rather than pursue the chimera of independence.

Two concurring authors of the report issue a more dire statement in a concurring opinion: Our dependence on oil has:

Enriched and emboldened Iran, enabled President Vladimir Putin to undermine Russia's democracy, entrenched regressive autocrats in Africa, forestalled action against genocide in Sudan, and facilitated Venezuala's campaign against free trade in the Americas. Most gravely, oil consumers are in effect financing both sides of the war on terrorism. Transformation in the use of energy, especially in transportation where oil is unrivaled ... is essential.

The United States imports more than 60% of its oil. Oil demand rises steadily year by year as the economy and the aggregate number of miles traveled by our vehicle fleet grow in tandem. Domestic oil production is in decline and has been for 35 years despite heroic efforts throughout that time to boost production. Because of decreasing marginal returns, we can't just drill more and expect more oil to come out of the ground at the same easy rate we've been accustomed to. Alternatives to oil (and natural gas, also increasingly scarce) account for a tiny fraction of the energy we receive from oil, and will take decades to become viable if indeed they are to be successful. Far from achieving energy independence, it is hard to see how our dependence on Saudi Arabia and other oil producers isn't going to increase in the coming decades. As the price of oil increases, we'll be sending away more of our national wealth and receiving less in return.

Most Americans, ingrained with the knowledge that the U.S. has worked its way out of many problems in the past, would say, if they gave the energy issue a second's thought, that we should and will, therefore, reduce our foreign oil dependency. People who have looked at the problem in greater detail say: "How?"

So the Council on Foreign Relations says we ought to focus on conservation (with higher CAFE standards, higher gas taxes, and even rationing). They say that we should do this for national security reasons because, today, there is no fall-back producer to swing into action like there was during the 1970s oil shocks.

Why does the CFR see this a grave national security threat? Junkies quiver and shake when they miss their fix. Imagine the chaos from a prolonged reduction in imports. Dmitry Orlov has. He is a Russian who lived through the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in the early 1990s and he sees disturbing parallels between the end-state Soviet Union and the United States of today, such as a "persistently unfavorable trade balance." Most alarmingly, he observes the runaway flow of capital out of the nation and takes as a given an impending collapse of the United States. "One of the best known facts about empires is that they do collapse," he writes. "No exceptions."

Echoing the concern the CFR shows toward the global market's ability to provide us a steady stream of oil, Orlov writes,

The Soviet Union did not need to import energy. The production and distribution system faltered, but never collapsed. Price controls kept the lights on even as hyperinflation raged. The term "market failure" seems to fit the energy situation in the United States. Free markets develop some pernicious characteristics when there are shortages of key commodities. During World War II, the United States government understood this, and successfully rationed many things, from gasoline to bicycle parts. But that was a long time ago. Since then, the inviolability of free markets has become an article of faith.

Turning to transportation in a comparison of the "collapse preparedness" of the U.S. with that of the U.S.S.R., he writes:

Soviet public transportation was more or less all there was, but there was plenty of it. There were also a few private cars, but so few that gasoline rationing and shortages were mostly inconsequential. All of this public infrastructure was designed to be almost infinitely maintainable, and continued to run even as the rest of the economy collapsed.

The population of the United States is almost entirely car-dependent, and relies on markets that control oil import, refining, and distribution. They also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and repair. The cars themselves require a steady stream of imported parts, and are not designed to last very long. When these intricately interconnected systems stop functioning, much of the population will find itself stranded.

When he factors in the uselessness of suburban and exurban housing in the absence of cheap energy, he sees "mass migrations of homeless people toward city centers." Could it be a coincidence that energy prices have been rising lately and a recent article in the New York Post begins: "The rest of the country may be in a housing slump, but Manhattan apartment prices keep going through the roof, a new survey shows."

But we ought not to just sit here and let major disasters befall us. We are Americans: smart, determined and resiliant, when motivated.

In the United States, 68% of oil is used in transportation, mostly gasoline and jet fuel. The way to conserve energy is to drive less. As an individual, one should cycle or take mass transit at every opportunity. But as a Streetsblog reader, you probably do this already. The way to get others to drive less is to make it more expensive.

Given that last week was Congestion Pricing Week here in New York City, you might see where I am going with this. Now, it has been noted here on Streetsblog, that congestion pricing is a tool properly used to combat congestion, not to lessen energy imports or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But cars are particularly wastefully and inefficient when they are idling in stalled traffic, and this one beautifully simple policy does all three. Two benefits are happy side effects of the intended use of the policy. In London, congestion pricing reduced road casualties by 70 per year, eliminated significant amounts of asthma and cancer-causing air pollutants and is helping to stimulate the local economy. Congestion pricing is a policy that can help make New York City healthier and more vibrant (no, not "vibrant," but truly vibrant).

Faced with enormous looming crises related to automobile over-dependence, local officials in other cities -- London, Stockholm, and now Kampala, Uganda -- have moved forward with a creative solution to interrelated problems. Will New York City join this growing collection of innovative cities? Or will it be held hostage to parochial thinking, lack of vision and refusal to recognize the gravity of the problems that face us?

It is easy to forget that New York City once led the United States in the creation of automobile dependence. The 1929 Regional Plan was the model for how to take a 19th century industrial American city and retrofit it for automobiles and suburban commuters. Robert Moses spent the next few decades building out that blueprint. It is time for a new generation of New Yorkers to show the way to end automobile dependence.

The barriers were often ugly and almost always stole vast tracts of sidewalk space from the public. Meanwhile, their security benefit was usually questionable. While annexing public space from the city's pedestrians the bollards did absolutely nothing to prevent a rental truck filled with explosives from rolling freely into Midtown (a camera-based congestion charging system like London's might help with that, however).

Jeff Zupan of the Regional Plan Association raised the issue here on Streetsblog in July with his short photo series of sidewalk-blocking bollards (here and here). He also wrote an excellent essay, Bombs, Barriers and Bollards for the RPA's Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

Five years after September 11th, the City has responded. Saturday's New York Times reports:

After evaluations by the New York Police Department, the city's Department of Transportation has demanded that many of the planters and concrete traffic medians known as jersey barriers be taken away. So far, barriers have been removed at 30 buildings out of an estimated 50 to 70 in the city.

Officials found that the barriers obstructed pedestrian flow and, in the case of planters, often ended up being used as giant ashtrays. Counterterrorism experts also concluded that in terms of safety, some of the barriers, which building owners put in of their own accord, might do more harm than good.

"Wherever possible, we want to avoid the appearance that the city is under siege or unwelcoming," Iris Weinshall, the city's transportation commissioner said in an e-mail message.

Photo: Jeff Zupan. 

While Thomas Frank argues on today's New York Times' op/ed page that America's current "orgy of plunder and predation" is a mirror image of 19th century political corruption, the business section offers a fantastic package of travel tips for the frequent fliers that 1896 presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan would surely have called the "Plutocracy." 

First, consider venture capitalist Jeff Marshall's "unusual mode of transportation."

Mr. Marshall owns and flies a Soviet L-39 attack fighter jet, which burns through nearly 200 gallons of fuel per hour while in the air. Mr. Marshall, who works in Stamford, Conn., uses the jet to take family trips on Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and Vermont, but has also used it to commute two days a week to Boston, "blowing past stalled traffic on Interstate 95 below," according to the Time.

But how to make sure you don't look rumpled after squeezing yourself out of the cockpit? Court TV's Marc Juris has some tips:

Often, on longer business trips, I send all of my bags by FedEx. That way, I have clean, pressed clothes waiting at my destination. And when it comes to my carry-on suitcase, I make sure it's always stocked with clean clothes. I'll even ship a duplicate bag with easy-to-replace but bulky items like running shoes and toiletries to my hotel. When I'm done with one, I just leave it at the hotel and take the bag with clean items to my next stop. No point carrying around a lot of dirty laundry.

For those who can not yet afford their own jet fighter but don't want their bottle of Evian seized by security, there is always the flight-by-hour option:

Last week's disruptions gave a sharp boost to a smaller but fast-growing segment of the private jet market — a niche for customers who purchase time cards that allow them to fly a certain model of jet by the hour. Jet cards often sell in hourly rates ranging from around $4,000 for five-seat light jets to $9,800 an hour for 10-seat heavier jets, which can fly across the Atlantic nonstop.

And for commercial fliers it seems "Business Class" will soon mean a separate plane, not just a separate section:

Once it begins service, Silverjet will be the third all-business-class airline to begin service in the last year or so on the lucrative New York-London route. The trans-Atlantic market, Mr. Hunt said over breakfast recently, is ready to be shaken up because business and leisure travelers feel they have been shaken down by established airlines. "The business and leisure consumer flying in business class is being ripped off because they're paying 10 times what they would pay in coach class," he said.

Meanwhile, back in coach...

Flight attendants, whose profession was once considered glamorous, may have one of the toughest jobs in the airline industry these days. Planes are packed fuller than they have been in decades, there are fewer perks to provide comfort and distraction for passengers, and flight attendants have seen their pay and benefits cut at many airlines. And now travelers are increasingly confused and agitated about the new restrictions and the long lines to get through security.

Concrete barricades protecting a concrete barricade. Madison Avenue in the upper 40's. (Photo: Jeff Zupan)