Streetsblog New York City

Last week, the Mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability released its newest report, "Exploring Electric Vehicle Adoption in New York City" [PDF]. In a breezy 22 pages, it lays out some strategies to maximize electric vehicle purchases by so-called early adopters in the next five years. 

As a sustainability initiative, the merit of the proposal depends on whether trips in these new electric cars will replace trips powered by internal combustion or trips by foot, bicycle, and transit. According to the report, electric vehicles charged on New York's grid would emit as little as a quarter as much carbon per mile as conventional automobiles. "Electric cars are cleaner than conventional vehicles," said Natural Resources Defense Council vehicles analyst Luke Tonachel, "but walking, biking, and transit are all cleaner still." 

Switching to electric cars also does little or nothing to improve street safety, decrease congestion, or promote good urban design -- impacts that also benefit more sustainable modes of transport. Which seems to have been overlooked elsewhere, even in countries with enlightened transportation policies. As Charles Komanoff wrote on Streetsblog in November, Denmark's roughly $40,000 tax on conventional automobiles doesn't apply to electric vehicles, and EVs get free parking in downtown Copenhagen -- big perks that will lead more people to drive and fewer to bike or use transit. So is New York City planning to subsidize electric cars the same way they're doing in Denmark?

Thankfully, the PlaNYC report doesn't recommend using financial incentives to push people toward electric vehicles. "The absence of endorsements for such subsidies is a strong signal that the Bloomberg administration does not intend to follow Denmark’s mistake of subsidizing EVs in ways that would encourage more driving," said Komanoff. "This is very good news."

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My recent post refuting David Owen's attack on congestion pricing ignited a long, rich thread. Here's one comment, from "Jonathan," that struck a nerve:

[A] cordon-pricing plan … which doesn't charge center-city residents could result in an increase in those residents' automobile use. If the streets are free of outer-borough traffic, more of my Manhattan neighbors might drive to work, or simply make extra automobile trips within the cordon that without CP [congestion pricing], they would have made by subway or taxi.

Jonathan's right: Any Manhattan cordon-pricing scheme will lead to an uptick in car trips that start and end within the charging zone. It's one of those "rebound effects" that congestion-price modeling needs to account for, and which I've taken pains to incorporate in my Balanced Transportation Analyzer pricing model.

Indeed, I daresay that the BTA handles just about every issue ever raised on this blog about congestion pricing. How many transit users will switch to cabs? Will variable tolls really flatten rush-hour peaks? Won't faster roads lure back the trips killed off by the toll (Owen's conundrum)? And many more.

Technically, the BTA is a spreadsheet. But I think of it as a vast mansion, whose 46 interlinked "rooms" (worksheets) are stocked with precious data and ingenious algorithms for cracking open questions like these:

• How does congestion on weekends compare with weekdays?
• How sharply do traffic speeds rise as volumes fall?
• Which boroughs and counties stand to pay the most with congestion pricing?
• Will a cordon toll lead to more bicycling, and will that improve public health?
• Can decommissioning vehicle lanes increase congestion pricing's benefits?
• Which will boost transit use more: lower fares or better service?
• How many fares does a cabbie get in a ten-hour taxi shift, with and without pricing?

Multiply that list a hundredfold and you get a sense of the BTA's hidden treasures.

I say "hidden" because, except for a few mavens like "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, who calls it "the best [modeling] tool that I have seen in my nearly 40 years," the Balanced Transportation Analyzer remains largely untapped by advocates. To me, it's as if we're all starving while this rich storehouse next door goes to waste.

Which prompts me to ask: Why is the BTA so underused? Is our community missing out on a valuable tool? What should we do about it?

Let's make this an open thread, with emphasis on what can we do together to make the BTA more accessible and useful to New York's livable streets community. (The model is adaptable to other cities, so those of you not from NYC are also invited.)

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Mayor Bloomberg lifted a page straight from the Kheel Plan playbook yesterday in calling on the MTA to make crosstown buses free [PDF]. Bus riders and transit advocates should be beaming.

Free buses will save bus riders time and money and will benefit everyone by luring some taxi and car users to transit and easing traffic gridlock. Ted Kheel recognized this as far back as the 1960s. Over the past year, he and I have quantified the benefits from free buses, and they're striking:

• MTA Bus engineers recently clocked "dwell time" -- those maddening seconds and minutes taken up by passenger boarding -- on the Bx12 Limited route from 207th Street to Co-op City. A typical run takes 56 minutes and 17 seconds, with passenger stops consuming 16 minutes and 16 seconds -- nearly 30 percent. The engineers found that doing away with fare collection could slash dwell time on the Bx12 to 2 minutes 36 seconds: an 84 percent reduction and a 24 percent saving in total trip time.
• The combination of free fare and speedier service -- including less waiting, since faster buses would arrive more quickly -- would attract many more riders. We estimate 28 percent more (16 percent from the fare savings, 12 percent from the time savings).
• The 28 percent gain in ridership wouldn’t require more buses, even on crowded routes, since the average fare-free bus would travel 32 percent faster. (That 24 percent time saving equates mathematically to a 32 percent speedup.) In effect, absent the human gridlock to collect fares, buses could complete four runs in the time it now takes to do three.

To be sure, these numbers aren't fully proven. The speed gains were measured on one bus route among hundreds, and the imputed boosts to ridership are based on elasticity studies from years ago. But the numbers make intuitive sense. And they're certainly impressive. We place the time savings to bus riders alone at $460 million a year, even valuing passengers' time at a meager nine bucks an hour. The additional travel-time savings to motorists from attracting even a modest number of drivers to transit buses would probably be worth far more.

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This week’s MTA vote won’t just cost New Yorkers 25 percent more per ride, it will also be costly in lost time.

Using the Balanced Transportation Analyzer (BTA), I estimate that the fare hikes and service cuts which begin June 1 will:

• Add an average of 6 percent more waiting and travel time to bus and subway commutes; which will...
• cause 40,000 more autos to pile into the Manhattan Central Business District each day; which will...
• slow traffic by an average of 5 percent in the CBD and 1-2 percent across the City; costing...
• drivers, truckers and bus riders $600 million in lost time annually within the CBD, and probably $1.5 billion or more citywide.

The one-two punch of higher fares and less frequent service can be expected to shrink subway use by around 8 percent and bus ridership by 6 percent. This is a calamity not only to our city's vitality but for the MTA as well, since it cuts deeply into the very revenue these measures were supposed to generate. Indeed, the BTA model projects that the real gain in farebox revenues won't even reach $500 million -- well under half of the projected $1.2 billion deficit.

The key criteria by which New York City transportation policies are judged are driver expenses, rider expenses, driver travel times and rider travel times. The MTA and the legislature have managed to worsen three out of four -- and, for good measure, have aggravated others, such as traffic pollution and mayhem. A stopped clock could hardly have done worse.

Advocates spent four months in feverish but fruitless campaigning for a stopgap solution -- the Ravitch Plan -- that was buoyed more by Dick Ravitch's sterling reputation than by its intrinsic merits. Indeed, the plan was rife with inequities:

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As Albany lawmakers ponder which of a half-dozen Ravitch plan variations they might support, the possibility looms that no solution may come in time. New Yorkers could see their fares rise 25 percent while service is cut back -- a twin catastrophe in this tough economic time. Yet no big new ideas are being advanced to protect mass transit users, which is why I believe the time has come for consideration of Ted Kheel’s and my traffic plan.

Our plan rests on three powerful attributes: revenue generation, tolling equality, and sheer efficiency. We achieve these with an inclusive pricing model that asks drivers to pay a fee ranging from $2 to $10 upon entering the Central Business District with the price dependent on the time of day, and charges taxi passengers for their contribution to congestion as well.

The basics:

• Our toll plan generates $1.7 billion a year in revenue; that’s twice as much as the $800 million from Ravitch’s tolls, even though our top toll of $10 matches Ravitch’s $5 (we charge inbound only). As for Sheldon Silver’s $2 toll plan, it nets just $450 million.
• Our plan has no free riders; oops, make that free drivers. Jersey drivers pay the toll, drivers entering the CBD at 60th Street pay the toll, and Manhattanites pay the lion’s share of a 33 percent taxi fare surcharge that raises a quarter of our total revenue. Under the Ravitch and Silver plans, East River drivers who make only 36 percent of crossings into the CBD would be coughing up 60 percent of new toll revenues.
• Everyone wins something in our plan. Buses are free (paid for by $800 million of our $1.7 billion revenue pot). Straphangers get deep off-peak discounts (paid for by the rest -- though some of the reductions might need to be deferred to help stanch the MTA deficit) and a bit more elbow-room in rush hour due to peak-spreading. Drivers get a 20 percent traffic speed-up in the CBD (faster travel “upstream” too), while the variable toll offers a measure of choice.
• Free and faster-moving buses will achieve three goals. They’ll lure enough drivers and straphangers out of gridlocked streets and packed trains to ease crowding on both. By stopping drip-torture boarding that halts movement during Metrocard-swiping, they’ll traverse their routes fast enough to handle the influx. And they’ll provide a huge break to riders across the city, a disproportionate percentage of whom live in poorer, non-Manhattan neighborhoods.

Too good to be true? No, it’s real, the numbers have been checked and re-checked, the plan works.

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Ted Kheel and Charles Komanoff are out with an updated version of their plan to fund low-cost transit with congestion fees on cars and trucks. Coming hot on the heels of Kheel Plan II, the latest iteration -- called Kheel-Komanoff -- lowers the cordon tolls in a bid for political support but does not close the MTA's budget deficit:

...the schedule of cordon entry fees in the Kheel II Plan, which tops out at $25, appears too radical for the public to accept in one gulp. This necessitates an “entry-level” congestion-toll proposal, one tailored to be politically palatable while retaining the Kheel Plan essence of combining a free or cheaper transit “carrot” with a congestion fee "stick."

We have fashioned such a plan. We call it the Kheel-Komanoff Plan to distinguish it from the basic Kheel model of free or nearly-free public transit. Kheel-Komanoff substitutes a $2 to $10 sliding toll scale for the $5 to $25 tolls in Kheel II. It also reduces the 50% taxi surcharge to 33% and trims the 25% rise in non-cordon bridge tolls to 20%.

More bullet points come after the jump. For the full pitch from Komanoff, head over to Grist.

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Today Ted Kheel released a revised version of his plan to fund transit through a congestion pricing mechanism on motor vehicle traffic. Streetsblog spoke to one of Kheel's lead analysts, Charles Komanoff, about the updated plan (see the major components here) and why he believes it offers a more comprehensive answer to New York City's transportation problems than the MTA rescue package unveiled by the Ravitch Commission last week. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Streetsblog: What are the major ways that the second version of the Kheel Plan differs from the original version?

Charles Komanoff: The major difference -- and it's kind of profound -- is the time of day and also weekend versus weekday pricing for both motor vehicles and the subways. A very cool result is that the average cordon fee under our plan would work out to be around $16, so we’re matching the number we had before, but we're doing it with a range from $5 to $25 that is geared to the amount of congestion that the trip causes. Which makes much more sense because the city gains a good deal more from eliminating a cordon car trip at eight in the morning on a Tuesday than from three in the morning on a Sunday.

A second difference is that we don’t have 100 percent free subways anymore but we have something that is in some ways better, which is peak pricing. This will spread the peak load in the subways so that 22 out of 24 hours of the day -- and all the hours on a weekend -- there will be more subway use than there is now. During the two peak hours -- 8 to 9 a.m. and 5 to 6 p.m. -- there will be considerably less subway use than there is now, which means not only do we address the concerns that people had previously -- “My goodness the subway is so crowded now at rush hour, you’re going to make it worse!” -- we’ve defused that argument because during those two worst hours there’s going to be less subway use than there is now. And I should make clear the six hours a day in which we're going to charge on weekdays are 7 to 10 in the morning and 4 to 7 [in the p.m. rush].

There is a third important change. The taxi surcharge is now 50 percent; previously it was 25 percent. Now remember that medallion taxis under our plan are not going to pay a cordon fee. You couldn’t do it because they’d be going back four or five times. I wish we could charge for Manhattan residents who have cars that are just going to be driving within the CBD and not breaking the cordon. We can’t get to that and that’s got to happen in the future, but at the very least we can charge a healthy surcharge for medallion taxis and that accomplishes three things. One, it generates almost $700 million and the system needs money. Second, it acts as somewhat of a break on what could otherwise be a big boom in taxi use as the streets get less congested... And third -- and this is where the politics come in -- who is going to pay the lion’s share of this taxi surcharge? It’s going to be Manhattanites, so we are really trying to balance the equities geographically.

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Ted Kheel and his band of transportation analysts are releasing an updated version of their low-cost transit proposal, which they are pitching as an alternative to the Ravitch Commission's MTA rescue package. The revised Kheel Plan retains the original's congestion zone cordon, charging vehicles to drive into Manhattan below 60th Street. The major twist is that drivers and subway riders would be charged variable-rate fees depending on the time of day (straphangers would only pay a fare during the morning and evening peaks).

I spoke to Kheel Planner Charles Komanoff about the new version, why politicians in Brooklyn and Queens should embrace it, and how it stacks up against the Ravitch Plan. We'll post the interview later today. Follow the jump for the major points from Kheel Plan 2.

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New Yorkers can expect more misery on the streets as well as underground if the MTA has to follow through on the austerity measures it unveiled yesterday. The transportation analysts behind the Kheel Plan -- the congestion pricing variant that balances higher driver fees with free transit -- calculate that the likely combination of service cuts and higher fares and tolls will put tens of thousands more cars on the road:

Kheel's team reported these likely consequences from a combination of a 25% across-the-board subway-and-bus fare hike and proposed service cuts, along with a $1.00 increase in MTA bridge and tunnel tolls:

• An additional 30,000 cars (a 4 percent increase) driven into the City’s most congested streets
• A 6 percent drop in subway ridership and a 4 percent drop in bus ridership;
• A 4 percent decrease in already snail-paced traffic speeds

The figures derive from an updated version of the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, the Kheel planners' number-crunching algorithm. The new BTA will be unveiled shortly, together with a revised Kheel Plan, "with time-varying tolls and subway fares sufficient to close the MTA deficit and fund vital expansions." That means the new plan will include the option to charge fares during peak times, spokesman Mark Hannah told Streetsblog. (Charles Komanoff outlined the revisions on Streetsblog this June.)

Free transit was not bandied about much at the Ravitch Commission's public hearings in September, but Kheel's team sees a window of opportunity in the next election. "Our major goal is to make our plan an issue in the 2009 campaign," Hannah said, noting that several electeds have reacted positively to the Kheel proposal. "It's a matter of, at this point, getting a champion."

Meanwhile, for all you wonks in the audience, follow the jump for more information on the methodology behind the projections.

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Dear Steve Cuozzo --

I was ready to ignore your rant yesterday, IDIOTIC DOT TAKES A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, as another in The Post's reflexive (if well-written) screeds against any incursion into NYC car-dominance, when I came across this line:

"The madness just came to Grand Street as well, where a dangerous bike lane is shunned by any sane cyclist."

I take that personally, seeing as how just last Sunday, my teenage son and I used the Grand Street bike lane to ride from Hudson Square to the East Village.

The lane was great. The green paint, the arrows that mark the lane at intersections, and the strategic placement of the lane between the curb and the line of parked cars, evidently made it clear to our fellow New Yorkers that this was indeed a bicycle lane. For the entire distance, a good 3/4 of a mile, we only had to maneuver around one parked car and a handful of pedestrians.

Otherwise, it was smooth sailing, and a lot safer and more relaxing than the usual Sunday traffic mix. For me, it's no big deal, I'm an adult and have been cycling daily here for 35 years. But for my 14-year-old, who's still learning what it takes to maintain his legal right to the road in the face of swarms of cars and trucks, many of them operated heedlessly, the lane made a big difference.

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