Streetsblog New York City

Brad Aaron reports:

Political will, holistic planning, centralized management. That's what Malcolm Murray-Clark says it takes to implement an effective congestion pricing plan.

He should know. The Director of Congestion Charging at Transport for London (TfL) oversees a program that is as ambitious as it is successful -- a program that went from idea to implementation in just 26 months, significantly reducing traffic and pollution while earning approval ratings as high as 59 percent.

As cars and trucks clogged the arteries of lower Manhattan on their way out of the central business district yesterday evening (right), Murray-Clark held forth to a capacity crowd at 7 World Trade Center. Sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences, the lecture also featured Stephen A. Hammer of Columbia University and CUNY's Dr. Robert "Buzz" Paaswell, director of the University Transportation Research Center and former executive director of the Chicago Transit Authority.

From the start, Murray-Clark said, London Mayor Ken Livingstone pulled no punches regarding his intention to reduce auto traffic. In fact, Livingstone ran on a platform that included congestion pricing. And upon taking office in 2000, he got to work. Today, London is one of two major world cities experiencing a reduction in car trips (Paris is the other).

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London Mayor Ken Livingstone said yesterday that he wants to introduce an emissions-based congestion charging fee in an attempt to reduce his city's carbon dioxide output and to encourage cleaner transportation. The mayor's proposal is to charge the heaviest polluting vehicles emitting 225 grams of CO2 per kilometer, a £25 fee to drive into London's Central Business District. At today's exchange rate that is the equivalent of $47.50 in US dollars. Livingstone said:

Most vehicles that will be charged £25 are high priced models. Those who buy them can afford to choose from pretty much the whole of the mainstream car market but have chosen to buy one of the most polluting vehicles. By making these changes to the congestion charging scheme we are encouraging people to take into account the impact of their choice of new car on the environment and the planet.

Also under the Mayor's proposal, owners of the least polluting vehicles, like the microscopic G-Wiz electric car, would not be charged any fee for driving into the Congestion Zone. And in further blow to the owners of "Chelsea Tractors," known as SUV's here in New York City, the 90 per cent resident's discount for car owners living inside the congestion charging zone would be eliminated for owners of big polluting vehicles. Livingstone's announcement comes three weeks after Richmond Council, south west London, became the first local authority in the country to announce plans for emissions-based residents' parking charges.

An how about this quote from Geoff Pope, the Liberal Democrat chairman of the London Assembly Transport Committee. What would you give to hear a New York City elected official say something like this?

Urgent action is needed to tackle the growing number of Chelsea tractors (SUV's) coming into central London. They are damaging and unnecessary vehicles in a densely urbanised, twenty-first century city.

Related:

• Stockholm Congestion Charge Coming Back Next Year
• London Calling. Are New York's Leaders Really Listening?
• An American Carwolf in London

London officials closed the northern side of Trafalgar Square to traffic creating a vibrant new public space.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Chuck Schumer argue that New York City risks losing its place of global pre-eminence in a Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday. The editorial is a response to growing conventional wisdom that says London is overtaking New York as the world's leading financial capitol. In the editorial, available online only to subscribers, Bloomberg and Schumer say that there is much the city can learn from its British counterpart.

One lesson not mentioned in the editorial, which reads mainly as a push to reform the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is the role that long-term urban planning, quality of life improvements and agressive traffic reduction measures have played in London's ascent.

For London's Mayor Ken Livingstone, projects like congestion charging, banning cars from Trafalgar Square and the creation of the London Climate Change Agency, aren't just about altruistic environmentalism. "Ken's a very savvy marketer. He knows that these initiatives make London a more attractive place for big companies to set up shop and attract employees," an official at Transport for London told me.

Today's Guardian reports that macro environmental issues now inform everything that London's Mayor does:

Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, is these days possessed of one great idea. Climate change, and how to avert it, consumes him. It now informs all his decisions on transport. It is top of his agenda for social housing and new building developments. He reads about it in his spare time. He talks about it to anyone who will bend an ear and he will travel to the ends of the earth if necessary to cut deals with other politicians, to steal the best ideas from other cities and to communicate with anyone the urgency and scale of the problem.

Though Livable Streets issues weren't mentioned in the Bloomberg-Schumer editorial, New York City's business community is increasingly aware of their importance. As Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City has said, "The gridlock on New York City's streets has become a brake on the city's economy. She warns, "It is going to be increasingly difficult for New York to market itself as a place where you can get the most done in the least period of time with the best workforce if we're not able to solve the congestion problem."

Meanwhile, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, a possible 2009 Democratic mayoral candidate, is off to visit the World Travel Market expo in England to sell UK travel groups on package tours that include a trip to Brooklyn. Marty told the Daily News, "Tourism is one of Brooklyn's biggest and most vital growth sectors, and I'll do whatever it takes to show the world the beauty of our borough."

There are a couple of things, of course, that Marty won't do to enhance the beauty of his borough. He won't support London-style traffic reduction measures. He won't stop parking his SUV and about a dozen other vehicles on the pedestrian plaza, technically park land, outside of historic Borough Hall. And he won't push the city, state and developer Forest City Enterprises to do smart, thoughtful, long-term planning around the massive "Atlantic Yards" project.

Welcome to Brooklyn, Brits. Perhaps the traffic congestion will remind you of what it used to be like in London. Don't forget to look to your left when you step out into the street.

Economist Charles Komanoff points Streetsblog to a news brief from London where Mayor Ken Livingstone insists that the U.S. Embassy owes a whopping $1.6 million in unpaid congestion charging fees:

Embassy employees have not paid the charges £8 ($15) a day for any car entering central London, since July 2005, arguing that the charge is a tax; diplomats are exempt from taxes. But London officials say the charge is a toll, not a tax, and say that British diplomats pay tolls in America.

Livingstone is focused on the Embassy's unpaid fees. But what about the sheer volume of traffic generated by American diplomats? By Komanoff's calculation the U.S. Embassy staff is racking up an average of 350 car trips into central London daily. Komanoff arrived at this number by dividing $1.6 million in unpaid charges by the daily charge of $15, resulting in 107,000 trips. Excluding weekends and holidays, when the charge is waived, approximately 304 days have elapsed since the start of July, 2006. Dividing 107,000 trips by 304 days yields 351 trips per day.

Clearly, Embassy officials aren't big fans of the Tube or double-decker buses. No big surprise. Before being sworn in as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Robert Holmes Tuttle, pictured above, ran one of the largest automobile dealer organizations in the United States.  

Unpaid diplomatic parking tickets are certainly nothing new to New Yorkers. But a recent study, written up in this month's Atlantic, suggests that this sort of scofflaw behavior is indicative of a broader culture of corruption. 

In an effort to learn more about how cultural norms effect political corruption, economists Raymond Fisman of Columbia University and Edward Miguel at the University of California, Berkeley assembled data on more than 150,000 unpaid parking tickets in New York City -- a total value of $18 million -- issued to cars with diplomatic license plates between 1997 and 2002. They broke down the violations by country-of-origin and then compared their list of diplomatic scofflaws to a widely used composite index that ranks countries on the basis of how corrupt they are.

Sure enough, the professors found a direct correlation between the amount that diplomats violate a foreign city's traffic laws and the level of corruption in their home countries. In New York City the top five parking ticket violators are Kuwait with 246 unpaid summonses per diplomat; Egypt, 139; Chad, 124; Sudan, 119; and Bulgaria with 117. Chad can be found at the absolute bottom of the 2005 Transparency International Corruption Index. Countries whose diplomats incurred no outstanding summonses include Canada, Israel, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Based on the behavior of the American Embassy in London and our own government employee parkers here in New York City, the good old U.S.A. seems to be keeping closer company with the group of Third World nations on that first list.

Here is a little something to think about as the fine particulate matter settles deep into your lungs on this lovely Ozone Alert Day. While New York City politely suggests via electronic highway billboard and half-assed p.r. campaigns, that motorists switch to mass transit on days like today, the BBC reports that the Mayor of London wants to reprogram the city's three-year-old congestion charging system to hit the owners of the most heavily polluting personal vehicles with a whopping £25 fee to drive into the city center (that's $45!).

Translator's note: In London, SUV's are derisively known as "Chelsea Tractors."

Mayor Ken Livingstone has said he wants a sliding scale, with lower charges for low-emission vehicles and higher charges for "Chelsea tractors." The mayor said he wanted to encourage Londoners to buy low-emission cars to help cut carbon emissions and protect the environment.

"There is a growing sense of concern amongst Londoners about climate change caused by CO2 emissions, which is the biggest single problem facing humanity, and tackling this threat requires decisive action.

"'Chelsea tractors', many of which are responsible for some of the highest CO2 emissions of any cars on our roads, have to be dealt with."

What would you give to hear New York City's mayor say something like this?

Additionally, Transport for London has released its latest analysis of the city's congestion charging system, entitled, "Congestion Charging Three Years On: Cleaner Air, Safer Roads and Reduced Congestion."

London Mayor Ken Livingstone:
"Cycling is the fastest, cheapest, most healthy and environmentally friendly way to get around London, which is why we are investing almost £20 million this year to improve cycle facilities in the capital. The number of cyclists on our roads has doubled since 2000 and we've already exceeded our cycling targets five years ahead of schedule, on top of achieving a shift from car use to public transport. I will now be looking at setting tougher targets so we can continue to build on this success and encourage many more cyclists in London."

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley:
"As part of our effort to make Chicago the most environmentally friendly big city in the nation, one of our main goals is to promote environmentally friendly lifestyles. Bicycling is a great way to get around Chicago. It's fun, fast, healthy and good for our environment.

"We want to make Chicago the most bicycle-friendly city in the United States. We have an ambitious, multi-million dollar program to establish 25 miles of new bike lanes and 200 miles of signed routes and to install 2500 bike racks. Major improvements to the Lakefront Trail are underway, with new bike paths to be built at other locations.

"Please help by biking responsibly and sharing the road with others. Contact us if you have suggestions to improve cycling conditions. Let's work together to make Chicago a better and safer place for biking!"