[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.)

As for Jonathan's question: the BTA shows that over the course of a typical weekday, 72 percent of all vehicle miles traveled inside the Manhattan Central Business District are by cars, trucks and buses that have crossed into the CBD, either at 60th Street or across the Hudson or East Rivers, and thus would pay the congestion toll. The remaining 28 percent of VMT is mostly by medallion taxicabs (22 percent). Cars and trucks that stayed within the cordon zone and couldn't be tolled accounted for just 6 percent of all CBD traffic. (All this is derived and shown in the table at the bottom of the BTA's "Cordon" worksheet.)

This tells us that: 1) Even if "intrazonal" traffic rises sharply, as Jonathan fears, it will add relatively little VMT because it's such a small share of overall cordon traffic to begin with; and 2) rather than fret over the free pass for intrazonal trips (which are impractical to toll with current technology), congestion pricing needs a strategy to stop a surge in taxicab use from filling the newly freed road space.

The plan currently advocated by Ted Kheel and myself does just that. It combines a 33 percent surcharge on all three taxi-fare components -- mileage, waiting time, and the "drop" -- with time-variable car tolls of $3/$6/$9 on weekdays and $2/$3/$4 on weekends (trucks pay double, reflecting their greater bulk, while medallion cabs are exempt from the toll but pay the surcharge). Under this Kheel-Komanoff Plan, intrazonal VMT is predicted to rise by approximately 120,000 miles a day -- 40,000 by cars and trucks, 80,000 by taxicabs. But cordon VMT by vehicles coming from outside, and thus tolled, falls far more, by 450,000. This yields a net drop in cordon travel of 330,000 VMT, an 8 percent decline that, the model predicts, will boost average travel speeds within the CBD by around 20 percent.

The point of this post isn't to advocate for a particular plan, however. It's to show that rebound effects and other asserted congestion-toll pitfalls can be modeled and, with the right plan, accommodated.

The figures are based on 2007 traffic levels. Current volumes are probably slightly less. While a decrease in "baseline" traffic cuts into the benefits of congestion pricing, both the saved time and new transit revenue predicted for Kheel-Komanoff are still striking. And, yes, if you want to test our pricing plan (or your own) with reduced baseline traffic, the BTA even has a switch to adjust the volume.

Photo of M14 bus: Kriston Lewis/Flickr.

• 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.

The mayor says his proposal might not cost NYC Transit much since most crosstown bus passengers are free transfers from subways. The story citywide is probably different, though. We estimate that free buses in all five boroughs would cost $740 million a year (after netting $30 million now spent maintaining farebox machinery). How could this lost revenue be made up?

One way would be a modest weekday congestion charge to drive into the Manhattan Central Business District: $6 during peak hours, $2 overnight, and $4 in-between, charged inbound only. That’s just one option; others can be seen by inputting various congestion prices into the Balanced Transportation Analyzer spreadsheet. (All figures in this article are derived from and sourced in the BTA; start with the "Bus Boarding" worksheet.)

Ted Kheel views free buses as a down payment toward universal free transit in NYC, financed largely through a fair congestion charge. With his more limited proposal, a down payment toward Kheel's, Mayor Bloomberg has taken the first step toward realizing that vision.

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:

• Payrolls in exurban Dutchess County would be taxed at the same rate as those of transit-reliant New Yorkers.
• Most Bronx and Brooklyn drivers would pay new tolls and yet those driving in from New Jersey would not.
• Manhattan residents would garner much of the benefit from lighter traffic in the form of quieter streets and faster cab rides, yet they would pay little of the tolls.

In short, “shared sacrifice” was more rhetoric than reality. Plus, the Ravitch Plan offered no incentive to switch trips out of rush hours to less crowded travel times, in effect foreclosing on both choice and efficiency.

On the four criteria above, Ravitch offered not a single solid win. The plan was a Band-Aid, but the times demanded a major overhaul.

True, Albany is broken. Even a perfectly balanced plan would have faced tough sledding. Political reform is essential, but so too is recognizing that transit and traffic won’t get the needed makeover until they are addressed in a unified and broadened transportation vision.

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.

Politically, who knows? It’s easy to shrug and say that if Albany can’t get it together to enact $2 tolls, there’s no chance for an ambitious plan like Kheel-Komanoff.

And yet … unlike the plans on the table, which impose tolls while giving little back (as did Mayor Bloomberg’s failed congestion pricing proposal), our plan is about gain, and freedom, and relief:

• Gain for the millions of transit riders who will enjoy better service and more spending money.
• Freedom from recurring fare hikes and service cuts.
• Significant relief from traffic congestion that frustrates drivers, dehumanizes our city and saps the economy.

Lately I’ve kept a low profile about our plan out of deference to Dick Ravitch and his well thought out plan that recognizes the gravity of the crisis. But Albany is so stuck, and the dialogue so stilted, that it seems time to air a bolder, more ambitious plan.

Since New Year’s, I’ve discussed the Kheel-Komanoff plan with dozens of electeds and advocates. The private response has been uniformly positive.

There may still be time to win a real hearing -- or at least infuse elements of our plan into Ravitch's. Let’s find each other now, before it’s too late.

...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.

Charles Komanoff in the booth at WNYC earlier this year. Photo: WNYC/Flickr

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.

SB: So the major planning and environmental groups who lined up behind congestion pricing are starting to push the Ravitch plan, and at the same time we have the same opposing forces lining up against bridge tolls. How are you going to sell this politically?

The prime underlying principle in the Kheel Plan is, I would say, "When New Yorkers use transit everybody wins, when New Yorkers drive everybody loses." And what we ought to be doing is maximizing the incentives for New Yorkers to use mass transit and we ought to be de-incentivizing or discouraging New Yorkers from driving.

The real arena is with Brooklyn and Queens, and with the populist -- or faux-populist, as Streetsblog would say -- forces. Why will they come in? Why they ought to support it is because it is geographically balanced, and it’s providing an incredible value to everyone in the city, especially the boroughs, in the form of free buses -- buses being much more of a borough than a Manhattan medium -- and providing nearly free subways, 75 percent discounted subways. The way that I would put is the way that I put it a year ago to Brooklyn and Queens, "How are you going to tell your constituents that you turned your back on a plan that could make mass transit virtually or practically free?"

SB: You do lose a bit of the pitch if you can’t say totally free subways.

CK: We do, so why are we doing that? We’re doing it for $600 million, that’s what we get by holding on to the fare box for those hours. The fare box now [collects] about $2,300 million and we hold onto $600 million. I don't think it's trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I think it’s an ironclad answer to the very legitimate concerns about subway crowding, and if we had free subways during those three morning and three evening most-crowded subway rush hours we might stress the system just beyond what anybody is willing to tolerate.

It's a much easier sell and it's a terrific argument -- the time of day pricing on both modes -- it really solves a lot of problems and creates a lot of benefits.

SB: Does this plan recommend bus service improvements and reaching those parts of Brooklyn and Queens that say, "We don’t have a transit option?" Is that part of this plan or is it implicit that that will be added?

CK: It's an input that needs to be added. There are some things that we don’t have quite the reach to do, but we think it’s really important to do that. I will point out that the existing bus fleet will experience a 20 percent boost in productivity from this plan because of the combination of reduced traffic and the fare-free boarding. So in that sense the existing bus fleet will run much more efficiently, and it will be a much more attractive form of service. That admittedly begs the question of adding the routes and we think it's vital to do that.

SB: What’s the cordon in your model?

CK: It's the same as we had a year ago, but the so called "offset" -- so that if a driver was already paying on a Hudson River crossing or the Queens Midtown Tunnel, the fee would be deducted -- we don’t have that. Whatever tolls there are now stay in effect, and our cordon toll is in addition. When I say that our toll averages out to around $16, that’s $16 in addition to what a driver may now be paying to drive into the cordon.

SB: So it would not equalize prices at cordon crossings across the board, you would have some variation in those prices?

CK: Yes, but what that means is that it would equalize the political impact, so the legislators from Brooklyn and Queens who were very irate about the virtually no-impact cordon toll on Jersey, we’ve defused that argument. Now there may be more cries from New Jersey, from the other side of the Hudson, but at least we’ve laid to rest this idea of geographic inequality that was a big problem with the mayor’s plan.

SB: The Ravitch plan, they anticipate, would generate $2.1 billion per year. How does Kheel Plan 2 compare to that?

The existing bus fleet will experience a 20 percent boost in productivity from this plan because of the combination of reduced traffic and the fare-free boarding.

The other is that we are not at all averse to having the MTA be able to tap some of Bill Thompson's weight-based registration surcharge. Clearly we don’t think that that’s an optimal answer to the whole MTA funding situation, because it’s very unlikely that something of the magnitude Thompson is talking about is going to pass, and the Thompson plan -- just like the Ravitch plan -- isn’t really going to do anything for traffic congestion. In fact it’s not going to do anything for subway congestion either but there’s nothing wrong with having that in a scaled down form. That seems like the kind of revenue source that really is most suited to reducing the state’s budget deficit. It’s not a transportation measure. It’s a revenue raising measure and fine, I would support it as a tax measure primarily for the State of New York, so let the state tap it and then let the state earmark a fraction of it for the MTA.

SB: We are hearing a lot about the stimulus package coming up and how much the federal government might be putting towards transit projects, but once this crisis passes do you think we'll be able to count on heavy spending on MTA capital projects from the feds?

CK: It seems to me that if we can solve the problem of the moment, which is the MTA deficit and the fare, and if we can do it in a way that is as revolutionary and as liberating as [the Kheel Plan], I think we will have done enough and the landscape of transportation and transit will be so different five years after a plan like this has gone into effect. I don’t think we need to fret now about what are we going to do in 2020. Not very many years from now it will be possible to charge VMT fees throughout the city and throughout the region, which will be a more comprehensive funding source, and ultimately the cordon fee ought to be superseded by a VMT fee-based system that will charge more to drive in congestion, or to create congestion, and less for driving that doesn’t. People are beginning actually to talk about that in the transportation policy community, and that would be the next generation, but we're not quite there yet.

SB: One way to look at the Ravitch plan is as an attempt to shore up the MTA's finances according to the principle that every constituency who benefits from the transit system should pay into it. What would you say is the parallel principle undergirding the Kheel Plan?

CK: I don’t think the Ravitch plan meets its own objective, most starkly in the continued exemption of any charge on drivers [from the Upper West Side and Upper East Side] coming in via 60th Street, which is just a stark omission, it's a giant exception. It's a real class issue. Who lives in those neighborhoods [that would avoid paying bridge tolls]? Relatively wealthy New Yorkers.

Why [Brooklyn and Queens] ought to support it is because it is geographically balanced, and it’s providing an incredible value to everyone in the city, especially the boroughs, in the form of free buses -- buses being much more of a borough than a Manhattan medium.

And there hasn’t been that much discussion of the payroll tax. It seems to [Kheel] and to me that it’s practically insane to be raising payroll taxes in the face of a severe recession. It’s discouraging employment and it’s taking money away from workers and companies, and there’s no way to mitigate that. Everybody is going to pay regardless of who they are and what they do. That may seem equitable, but it’s really very penalizing and it goes completely in the wrong direction.

Probably the prime underlying principle in the Kheel Plan is, I would say, "When New Yorkers use transit everybody wins, when New Yorkers drive everybody loses." And what we ought to be doing is maximizing the incentives for New Yorkers to use mass transit and we ought to be de-incentivizing or discouraging New Yorkers from driving. Transit users are already giving something up. They are giving up the autonomy of getting around in a car. To me and to Kheel the playing field has been badly skewed to benefit drivers, the paradox being, of course, that they no longer truly benefit because there are now so many of them that they've gotten in each other's way, as well as our way. The principle that comes first for us, and certainly for Ted, is to provide all reasonable incentives for people to not drive and to use transit, and that makes for a better city.

SB: There’s been repeated mention of the idea that fare payers should be expected to keep up with inflation and pay more into the system as costs rise. The Kheel Plan would go in the opposite direction…

CK: It’s a standard argument that has as an implicit assumption that the current situation is equitable. For us it comes back to the feeling that the transit users are sacrificing through giving up or foregoing the use of cars, so we’re not starting from an equal situation that otherwise should be preserved proportionally. It is a very disproportionate situation.

SB: Last week Ravitch said that a brisk timetable is necessary to head off some of the most severe austerity measures for the MTA. Before you were talking about Kheel Plan 2 being an issue in the 2009 elections. Have you advanced your timetable?

CK: Absolutely. We have advanced the political timetable because the moment of crisis and decision is here. But it could be that the [City] Council and [State] Legislature debate and reshape and vote on a modified Kheel Plan within the next several months, absolutely. I don’t see any reason that they wouldn’t be able to.

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.

The promo flyer:

More from the press release:

Kheel's plan, devised by a team of transportation planners and economists that Kheel has funded for nearly two years, contains these key elements:

• A dramatic cut in subway fares (75%  on average), including a complete fare elimination on weekends and holidays, overnight and mid-day,
• A variable fare during the weekday peak periods that’s lower than the current fare;
• Complete fare elimination on all NYC Transit buses at all times;
• Congestion pricing on car and truck traffic into the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD), with tolls varying sharply by time of day and averaging $16 per trip;
• A 46% surcharge on medallion taxi fares (note that medallion taxis, and no other vehicles, would be exempt from the congestion pricing charge);
• 25% higher tolls on MTA bridges that don’t directly access the Manhattan CBD.

Using their comprehensive proprietary model of the city’s transit system and road network, Kheel’s team concluded that the plan would:

• Yield over $1 billion in net revenue -- sufficient to wipe out more than three-fourths of the MTA's projected FY-2009 deficit;
• Increase overall subway ridership by 12% even as use of the system shrinks by 6% in the morning peak hour (8-9 a.m.) and 10% in the evening peak hour (5-6 p.m.);
• Raise traffic speeds in the chronically gridlocked CBD by one-third during the day and one-quarter overall, while also boosting travel speeds throughout the City.

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.

• The team's findings conservatively reflect the expected reduction in car travel from a $1.00 toll increase on MTA bridges and tunnels.
• The Kheel team assumed that the MTA's subway service cuts result in an average 6% increase in the duration of an average trip.
• The BTA assumes conservatively that only half of “disappeared” transit trips re-materialize as car trips; it also takes carpooling into account, so that each new trip in a car adds less than one new car to the roads.
• The BTA feeds back traffic increases to travel demand (i.e., road gridlock is somewhat self-limiting), thus producing a conservative estimate of the number of additional cars resulting from costlier and less-frequent transit service.
• The BTA includes conservative (low) assumptions of the effect of higher fares on subway use (“price-elasticities” of -0.09 for subway work trips, -0.234 for other subway trips).

Author and son in 2005

"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.

I know the Post pays you to ridicule anything that deviates an inch from the USA-SUV norm; but how you can call the Grand Street bike lane dangerous is beyond me.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention where we were biking that day: to a movie house on East Houston Street to see "Man on Wire," the documentary film about Philippe Petit's 1974 wire-walk between the Twin Towers. The film is a testament to the human spirit and imagination -- the same spirit, I would say, that animates me as a cyclist, and the same imagination that is, finally, guiding the new DOT to create a bit of safe space for non-motorized vehicular travel in New York City.

Best,

Charles Komanoff (father of two, a New Yorker since 1968)

Front row l-r: Tish James, Paul Steely White, John Liu, David Yassky. Photo: Mike Infranco.

With the fallout from Wall Street taking a toll on city coffers, Mayor Bloomberg has a lot of tough calls to make. The "Bikes in Buildings" bill [PDF] is not one of them. It's a lay-up -- a simple rule change that promises big gains for bike commuting. The bill, also known as Intro 38, would require commercial landlords to allow tenants to bring bikes inside buildings. No storage requirements attached.

On the steps of City Hall this morning, City Council members David Yassky, Tish James, and John Liu joined Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White and a band of advocates to urge passage of the bill. In total, 30 members of the City Council have already signed on to the measure, a majority of the chamber.

A similar pledge to promote bike storage in commercial buildings is enshrined in the transportation plank of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC. As the speakers were quick to point out, "Bikes in Buildings" is an even easier lift.

"It's simply to mandate that you have to allow access to bicycles, and then you let the landlords figure out, case by case, what's the most efficient way to do it," said Yassky. The way things stand now, he noted, even if businesses encourage employees to bring bikes to work, most building managers won't let it happen. "You can bring a dolly or a stroller, but not a bike."

Reversing this widespread policy would address one of the major obstacles to bike commuting, especially among people who already ride: the lack of a secure place to keep bikes at work. Rigorous projections of the bill's effect are not available, but, drawing from his decades of experience analyzing bike traffic, former TA president Charles Komanoff gave a rough estimate that "universal bike commuter access to buildings would cause at least a 25 percent increase and perhaps as much as a 50 percent increase in bike commuting."

Deb Shapiro, a lawyer who works near Madison Square Park, testified to the senselessness of landlords' current policies. When she asked her building manager why she couldn't bring a bike inside, she was told it came down to concerns about liability and property damage. "I know a little bit about liability issues, and this just didn't make sense to me," she said. "What damage is a bike going to do to a freight elevator? You see all these other things that can go in and out of an office building, like dumpsters and cleaning carts. What more could a bicycle do?"

Yassky had a theory about where that baseless fear of bikes comes from. "There's this feeling that it isn't the proper decorum for an office building to have people bringing their bicycles in," he said. "How outdated can you get? I think any building owner should be proud that the tenants in his or her building are biking to work. That should be a badge of honor."

Some commercial landlords are a step ahead of the curve, White noted: "Hundreds of buildings are doing this with no problem -- Class A office buildings with marble floors."

Advocates are pushing for City Council to consider the bill this fall. "We need a hearing in City Council and we really need Bloomberg to voice support for this," said White.

Looks like Chrysler has figured out a novel way to move their 2008 model gas guzzlers off the lot. Sign up for their new "Let's Refuel America!" credit card and they'll lock in the price of gas at $2.99/gallon for three years.

That's right, it's a 36-month guarantee that you don't have to think about moving over to a more fuel efficient car, commuting by bus, lobbying your elected officials for a national passenger rail system or the fact that Chrysler is essentially writing checks to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria and Vladimir Putin on your behalf.

Before you rush out to purchase yourself a new, 13 mpg Dodge Durango and set up shop at the nearest pump as a gasoline reseller, you'd better read the fine print. The program caps the number of annual "price-protected gallons" that Chrysler will actually pay for. If I understand their "gallon allotment calculation" correctly (Charlie Komanoff, feel free to step in here and do some math), Durango owners get a maximum of 2,400 discounted gallons over three years. As for global warming, oil war, suburban sprawl and American economic disintegration, Chrysler is offering a lifetime guarantee.

Remember the orange bikes locked up all around Manhattan during Fashion Week that managed to outrage the NYPD and Ghost Bike memorialists in equal measure? It turns out they weren't just an advertisement for fashion house DKNY, they were part of a comprehensive "fashion plan to eliminate all motor vehicles in NYC by the year 2018." For a sense of just how difficult it's going to be to implement the plan, note how much air time the video above gives to Mercedes Benz.  

As the faux fur-clad model narrating this video says, "If supermodels can't solve the world's problems, then I don't know who can." George Haikalis of Auto-Free New York (right), are you listening? You and Charles Komanoff and the Kheel Plan are cute and all, but if you really want to increase attendance, how about getting some supermodels to detail this 2018 plan at the next monthly meeting?

[T]his is the giant carrot to accompany Bloomberg's congestion-pricing stick. Charge $16 instead of $8, the authors suggest - and add parking and taxi surcharges. Really make the drivers pay. Then take that money and make all the buses and subway free.

Bold enough for you?

Henican talked with lead author and Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff, who said the same approach could be applied to the LIRR, Metro-North and Jersey Transit.

Meanwhile, there's a lively discussion going on over at Second Ave. Sagas, where blogger Benjamin Kabak says he likes the Kheel plan, a lot, but sees it as too good to be true.

People in New York City are, stupidly, married to their cars. They demand below-market, on-street parking. They demand access to roads at the expense of wide sidewalks and bike lanes. They demand access to roads at the expense of common-sense bus rapid transit lanes. They demand the right to drive as though it were protected by the Constitution, and this is simply a misguided and harmful attitude.

But sadly, the ideal society where a Kheel plan could pass because it would negatively impact the people who could afford and positively impact the people who need it doesn't exist. Ted Kheel should be applauded for his vision, and his plan deserves as much attention as anything under consideration now. It's groundbreaking; it's visionary; it would work; and it just won't happen.

Setting aside the Kheel plan's chances of being taken seriously by the mayor and the Congestion Mitigation Commission, before it's over they may be among the few who aren't at least talking about it.

In related news, a new program in Chicago that will allow seniors 65 and up to take transit for free has been deluged with applicants. The AP, via WTHI in Terre Haute, IN, reports that "Governor Rod Blagojevich says response has been so strong that the state is adding a second toll-free number to accommodate callers who are registering for the program."

Yesterday, Theodore "Ted" Kheel's traffic plan was officially unveiled with a 52-page report (pdf) outlining his proposal to make transit free via a round-the-clock $16 congestion charge for cars ($32 for trucks) entering Manhattan below 60th Street. The report says Kheel's "Bolder Plan" would cut CBD traffic by 25 percent, and traffic citywide by nearly 10 percent, all while increasing mass transit funding and decreasing the number of overcrowded trains and buses.

Skeptical? So was lead author Charles Komanoff, he says, until he delved into the data. Not only do the numbers add up, Komanoff writes, the Kheel plan offers an irresistible political hook:

Don Shoup wrote recently that the dilemma confronting congestion pricing is not that opposition is too high, but that support is too low. Free transit resolves this dilemma by offering as tangible a benefit as one can imagine. As I said last week to a legislator from Central Brooklyn who has lined up against the mayor's congestion pricing plan, "Are you really going to tell your constituents that you walked away from a plan that would let them ride the trains and buses for free?" I wish you'd seen his double-take, followed by: "Um, okay, what's this Kheel Plan again, and how exactly is it going to work?"

A highlight of the Kheel plan is the Balanced Transportation Analyzer, an interactive spreadsheet that lets users compare the different congestion pricing proposals (download it here). "Unlike the opaque 'black box' models used throughout the Transportation-Industrial Complex," writes Komanoff, "the BTA reveals its hundreds of underlying assumptions and their interrelationships. It is a true citizen's tool."

Whether this is all too much, too late, considering the Congestion Mitigation Commission's January 31 deadline, and whether or not it's conceivable that the city and all affected bureaucracies would tolerate such a tectonic shift regardless of potential upsides, by leading with the carrot of free transit and following with the stick of congestion pricing, the Kheel planners have shown how Mayor Bloomberg's proposal could have been promoted from day one. On the other hand, it also makes one wonder what might have been if they had brought that approach to the mayor's plan, and pushed along with everyone else.

"If you were to design the ultimate system, you would have mass transit be free and charge an enormous amount for cars."

So said Mayor Michael Bloomberg last April, right about the time he unveiled his plan to charge motorists a fee to drive into Manhattan's central business district. Eight months later, as the mayor's original proposal mutates for better or worse, the MTA is hours away from raising transit fares. Neither idea has exactly caught fire with the public, and the fare hikes could actually end up a foil for congestion pricing -- a plan originally intended as a sustained financial boost for the transit system.

And then there's Theodore "Ted" Kheel. The environmentalist, philanthropist, and renowned labor attorney has lobbied for free transit in New York for over 40 years. Last February he commissioned a $100,000 study that, as it turns out, could put the city's money where the mayor's mouth is. A summary of findings released late last week shows that if the city were to impose a $16 congestion fee ($32 for trucks) below 60th Street in Manhattan, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, along with higher curbside parking fees and a taxi surcharge, the MTA could remove its turnstiles and fareboxes forever.

Relying on exhaustive analyses of dozens of factors ranging from vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and transit capacities to emissions and employment data, assembled in an interactive spreadsheet created by Charles Komanoff, the study, managed by the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility (IRUM) and researched by Joseph Clift, George Haikalis, Brian Ketcham and Carolyn Konheim, found that the Kheel Plan would:

• Reduce traffic within the Central Business District by 25% and within the entire city by nearly 10%. Auto trips into the CBD would drop by one-third.
• Save the public a staggering $4 billion a year in recovered productivity, or more than 100 million "vehicle hours" that would otherwise be spent in traffic. (Some 20% of this value would be realized by bus riders, 32% by truck, taxi and auto users within the CBD, and 48% by vehicle users in the rest of the city.)
• More than recoup revenues now generated by fares. The one-two punch of the $16 automobile toll ($3 billion annually), taxi fare surcharge ($340 million annually) and higher curbside parking fees ($500 million annually) would generate nearly $4 billion annually - enough to replace the $3.5 billion in current tolls and subway and bus farebox revenues and still leave an annual revenue stream of $500 million for improving and expanding transit.
• Provide universal no-fare transit with less crowding than today's service. Making transit free will be an enormous boon for all New Yorkers, particularly low-income residents, and lift, once and for all, the specter of fare hikes. The Kheel Plan also includes a strategy for handling the anticipated increase in ridership that will result in less, not more crowded trains and buses.
• Shorten travel time: Enable a one-third (34%) increase in vehicle speeds within the CBD and an average one-tenth (10%) increase in the rest of the city. A typical 12-minute taxi trip in the heart of midtown Manhattan would be trimmed to nine minutes, while five minutes would be shaved from the typical 55-minute ride for a non-CBD trip, say from Bayside to Bensonhurst. Bus travelers would also save time: a fare-free system would eliminate the tedious swiping of MetroCards that leads to frustrating boarding delays, thereby shortening a typical 20-minute bus ride to 15-16 minutes.
• Produce additional, significant benefits: The plan would generate an additional $2 billion in health cost savings and other benefits from reduced pollution, fewer traffic crashes, lower insurance costs, and increased tendencies to walk and bike - all due to diminished traffic levels.

"The PlaNYC proposal, while commendable and courageous, offers little if any relief to endlessly spiraling subway and bus fares," researchers conclude, while "the Kheel Plan banishes fare escalation from the civic horizon by abolishing the fare itself."

While it was developed independent of the Congestion Mitigation Commission process currently underway, its authors say the Kheel Plan "takes Mayor Bloomberg's visionary congestion pricing proposal to its logical conclusion." As Commission chairman Marc Shaw noted at yesterday's meeting, however, that logical conclusion is going to have to be something that "works in the real world" -- a world filled with term-limited City Council members, parking garage industry-funded lobbyists, a debt-laden MTA and various other challenges. Logical or not, one thing is for certain: With the Commission's aggressive timeline set to deliver an Implementation Plan to City Council by January 31 and Council scheduled to vote by March 28, a conclusion will be reached shortly.

Leading off from the event's title, Jean-Christophe Agnew, a professor of American Studies at Yale, spoke about congestion pricing's roots in bridge-crossing and stall-renting tolls in early modern Europe. Jeffrey Zupan of the Regional Plan Association fast-forwarded to 20th century New York when Columbia professor and Nobel prize winner William Vickery and Mayors Lindsay, Dinkins, and Koch, as well as the RPA itself, all proposed different modes of congestion pricing (none of which came to pass). Zupan also highlighted some points in New York's troubled transit history, among them the fact that, despite population growth in the millions during the last century, the extent of NYC's subway system peaked in 1937.

Environmental economist and "re-founder" of Transportation Alternatives Charles Komanoff jumped in next with some of the theories behind the plans. Quoting pedicab luminary George Bliss, Komanoff pointed out that mobility and community should not be in conflict, "they should enhance and serve each other." Jeffrey Risom followed with examples of Copenhagen's effective methods for reducing traffic congestion while bolstering quality of life: many use incentives for biking and walking rather than "punishments" for driving.

When the floor opened for questions, many in the full-house crowd of about 80 asked about the fairness of congestion pricing -- wouldn't it run poor drivers off the road while providing a smoother commute for the rich? Komanoff asserted that, for one, most people driving into Manhattan's CBD have higher annual incomes than those who take public transit, so most people paying congestion fees wouldn't be those who could least afford it. He also said that in existing congestion pricing systems, such as California's State Route 91, it has been shown that most drivers choose to pay the fee for situational, not habitual, reasons (for example, taking a sick child to the hospital rather than just wanting to get to work faster every day). This tendency leads to less essential car trips as a group, rather than less wealthy drivers as a group, being cut from the equation.

Also discussed was the notion of reforming the car from its growing status as entitled emotional limb back to simply a method of transport. The panel agreed that the proclivity of old habits to die hard is one of congestion pricing's toughest foes. Zupan iterated that the process will take patience and that people do grow to like new and better systems, but only when they can see them in action.

Talk shifted from the historical and theoretical to the immediate and practical: the what's and how's of congestion pricing for New York City. When asked how taking one in ten cars off the road would make any real difference to gridlock, Zupan responded that the relationship between the number of cars on the road and the amount of congestion is not necessarily linear. For example, he said, when there is a 10% reduction in volume of traffic, there can be up to a 30% gain in space for the remaining cars.

Other points raised included the fact that New York, unlike London, already has a way to track almost three-quarters of its drivers -- through their E-Z Passes -- and that adding a tracking element to the existing technology wouldn't incur nearly the cost that creating and installing all-new tracking systems in the UK has. Therefore, New York City's congestion pricing system might not have to start as high or be raised as much as London's to make equivalent capital gains.

Komanoff outlined his four stopgap measures for the time between the implementation of congestion pricing (and the subsequent swell in numbers of transit riders that might result) and the completion of the Second Avenue subway and East Side Access: 1) drivers can stagger their trips to spread out rush hours, 2) while many subways are currently operating at capacity, MetroNorth and the LIRR are not; they could take more intra-city riders and help relieve subways, 3) there is unused subway track on many lines and being able to use it depends not on politics but on raising money, 4) potential for biking in the city is largely untapped; thinning car traffic would provide a great incentive for more to ride.

Reported by April Greene

In an op/ed piece in Monday's Daily News, Brooklyn-based transportation consultant Brian Ketcham proposed some changes to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. Ketcham, who has been pushing for some form of congestion pricing since his time working for the Lindsay Administration more than 30 years ago, argues that New York City should:

• Put tolls on the free East River Bridges.
• Move the pricing zone's northern boundary down to 60th Street.
• Eliminate all free and long-term street parking and charge hefty garage rates at on-street meters inside the Central Business District.

It is not surprising to see the idea of East River bridge tolls popping up right now. Prior to Mayor Bloomberg's Long-Term Sustainability announcement in April, virtually everyone who was doing serious thinking about New York City traffic reduction was focused on the 170,000+ vehicles traveling over the free East River bridges each day.

In July 2003, Ketcham and economist Charles Komanoff published, The Hours, a study that found that tolling the free East River Bridges would "do away with more than 9% of the idle time that motorists, truckers and bus riders now lose in traffic tie-ups throughout New York City" with significant congestion reductions in the outer boroughs, in particular.

Earlier that year, Komanoff also published "Who Will Really Pay," a study that found commuters who drive to work over the East River bridges earn, on average, $14,300/year more than those who don't drive to work over a free bridge (download it here).

A September 2003 Transportation Alternatives study of East River bridge tolls by Bruce Schaller made similar findings. Schaller also noted the difficult "political realities" of tolling the bridges.

In November of 2003, Jeff Zupan and Alexis Perrotta at the Regional Plan Association published a study that tested four different congestion pricing scenarios, all of which included some form of East River bridge tolls (download it here). One of their models found, "At the East River bridges traffic would drop by about 25 percent, likely leading to the virtual elimination of congestion at those crossings," as well as "relief on local streets" and "less traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway."

With all of that in mind, here is Ketcham's Daily News editorial, re-printed in full:

Congestion pricing is a terrific and necessary idea, and Mayor Bloomberg deserves great credit for reenergizing the concept. But to have a real chance to work, his plan must be rejiggered - now. It must be simplified in its design and coordinated with proposed fare hikes.

The basics are clear. Across the city, people are fed up with traffic. And they don't want to pay more for transit until it gets better. That's why we should immediately halt the MTA fare and toll hike process so we can determine whether a simpler congestion charging plan could net a reliable $500 million a year for fares and capital improvements.

But that's just the necessary first step to purchase the goodwill of the public. At the same time, Mayor Bloomberg should roll out a much simpler traffic control system that really makes sense to all New Yorkers. The plan that's currently on the table prescribes a needlessly complex infrastructure and demands costly administration and enforcement.

Here's how to fix it. First, ditch the elaborate detection grid. For his three-year trial, the mayor has proposed building a full-scale network with 340 charging stations on Manhattan streets south of 86th St. A grid of E-ZPass sensors and cameras would track and charge cars $8 and trucks $21 to drive into the core of Manhattan during the business day. Trips that begin and end in the charging zone would pay $4 a day. Taxis and through-traffic, which are a large part of the traffic, would be exempt from charges, as would residents moving their cars on street-cleaning days.

Charging cars and trucks to get into the central business district makes perfect sense - but the rest of this scheme would be a logistical nightmare. All trips would be screened and photographed, some many times, and payments and locations recorded, producing a database of great concern to the American Civil Liberties Union - but adding little revenue.

The complication, controversy and confusion are not worth the costs - which would be around $169 million more than the federal government has allotted to install the new technology.

There's an easy alternative that would actually work. New York should capitalize on its bridge and tunnel portals to Manhattan. Close the loophole of the four untolled East River bridges in Brooklyn and Queens - which right now are the source of nearly half the free entries into Manhattan. Install overhead charging monitors on the six inbound bridge spans and set the congestion fee on them so there is no difference with MTA tolls.

Drivers would then no longer clog local streets to find cheaper routes. Research shows that tolls on the four bridges will cut congestion citywide by 9%, which is more than the mayor's 6.4% traffic reduction goal in his Manhattan target zone.

The bigger challenge is how to charge the more than half of drivers who now enter the central business district free from north of 60th St. This traditional northern boundary of midtown provides an elegant line in the sand - and an ideal site to test charging on Manhattan streets. Tolls would be collected only once on the two highways and on the 11 southbound avenues that cross 60th St. These 19 total stations would cost $7 million to install - well within the $10.4 million in federal funds allotted for the pilot. The low operating cost would leave $500 million a year for public transit improvements.

Supporters of the mayor's plan might have one reasonable objection to this idea: How can we also discourage people from driving within the central business district? The answer: Eliminate all free and long-term street parking and charge hefty garage rates at on-street meters.

New York needs congestion pricing. But to succeed, congestion pricing itself needs to be transformed into a more sensible version of the mayor's costly, headache-prone proposal.

Ketcham has more than 30 years of professional experience in traffic engineering. As a New York City official in the early '70s, he authored the nation's first transportation control plan to meet clean air standards.

Mayor Bloomberg plans to announce today his support for a national carbon tax. In what his aides are calling one of the most significant policy addresses of his second and final term, the mayor will argue that directly taxing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change will slow global warming, promote economic growth and stimulate technological innovation — even if it results in higher gasoline prices in the short term.

Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to present his carbon tax proposal in a speech this afternoon at a two-day climate protection summit in Seattle organized by the United States Conference of Mayors. (A copy of the speech was provided to The New York Times by aides to the mayor; the full text is available here, along with the complete Times story.)

Needless to say, Charles Komanoff at the recently spiffed-up Carbon Tax Center, thinks this is a big deal (worthy of an Oscar or a Nobel Peace Prize, perhaps?):

With his speech today, Mayor Bloomberg joins former Vice-President Al Gore as the nation's leading advocates of a carbon tax to cap and reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

And consistent with the Mayor's local transportation policy push:

Bloomberg's support of a U.S. carbon tax is philosophically consistent with his big current local initiative, a congestion pricing plan to improve mobility, economic activity and the quality of life in the Manhattan Central Business District by charging an entry fee for motor vehicles. A carbon tax and congestion pricing both embody the principle that safeguarding “the commons” -- our air, water and public space -- requires that we exact from ourselves a commensurate price for uses that damage or deplete it.

From Time's Up!:

Cyclist and pedestrian advocates gathered [Tuesday] night at the corner of Houston Street and 6th Avenue where Hope Miller was killed by a drug-impaired driver on September 25th. An honorary plaque provided by Street Memorials and a memorial stencil, bearing Hope Miller's name and date of death, were placed near the crash site.

Speakers included Charles Komanoff, Economist and author of "Killed by Automobile", Time's Up! Executive Director Bill DiPaola and City Council Member Alan Gerson, who spoke about the importance of pedestrians within the fabric of New York City and asked when the City will make pedestrian safety its number one priority. Time's Up! volunteers spoke as well on the City reneging on their plan for long-promised bike lanes on Houston Street.

Afterward, those on bicycles took a lane of Houston Street riding together for safety to Bowery and 4th Street for a similar memorial stencil to honor the most recent victim, Julia Thomson, who was killed by a drunk driver on September 30th.

Photos of Hope Miller and Julia Thomson stencils by Phillipp Rassman via Flickr.

Boxer is quoted as preferring cap and trade, which seems to be most favored among politicians and big corporations as a way to leverage market forces to address climate change.

"I think cap and trade makes the most sense. When we pass legislation to combat global warming, we will not be hurting this economy. We will be helping it."

Dingell, however, favors a carbon tax as a more direct, visible and predictable means of reducing carbon emissions. He says,

To be fair, the economic pain must be shared all the way down to the consumer. And he says the way to do that is to tax anything that produces too much CO2. "This is going to be tough. And it's gonna cost, and its gonna hurt. In my view, probably the only thing that will really work. In all honesty, I'm not convinced that if you don't change people's behavior, you're going to change the way they behave."

The Carbon Tax Center has a page that explains why it thinks a carbon tax is the way to go. CTC co-director and Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff recently published a piece in favor of a carbon tax over at Gristmill. On the other side of the issue is the US Climate Change Action
Partnership, a group of major corporations and environmental
organizations in favor of a cap and trade system. Environmental Defense chief scientist Bill Chameides, wrote a piece in Gristmill as well laying out the case for a cap and trade system.

The debate between Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade is an important one that could lead to new federal legislation by the end of the year.

(Editor's note: Why do I always want to write it, "Cap'n Trade?")