Congestion pricing is in trouble. With just weeks to go before the Traffic Mitigation Commission makes its recommendations to the City Council and State Legislature, public support is waning and opponents appear to have the upper hand. The one sales pitch that scored high in public opinion polls, using pricing revenue to hold down transit fares, was discarded this week when the Mayor decided to support the governor's fare hike.

Congestion pricing is struggling for two reasons. First, it has been framed as a revenue issue instead of a traffic-busting, quality-of-life-improving, environmental measure. Second, City Hall has not made a politically compelling case for how pricing revenue will be used. Politics demands that congestion pricing be about more than extending the 7 train and building part of the Second Avenue subway and LIRR connector -- projects that won't be completed for many years and overwhelmingly serve Manhattan.

In contrast to these mega-projects, the congestion fee is immediate and specific. This clash between specific, immediate costs and diffuse, long-term, benefit has produced a public discussion focused on who will pay the congestion fee and how, rather than what the benefits will be and for whom. Fortunately, there is still time for Mayor Bloomberg to turn things around by combining congestion pricing's broad social and environmental benefits with a package of short-term, highly visible, specific transportation and quality of life benefits that excite the public imagination.

Flatbush Avenue and Fulton Street, Downtown Brooklyn.

By January 31, the Traffic Mitigation Committee will present a new congestion pricing plan that will likely suggest tolls on East River Bridges and a fee to cross 60th Street. Once the Committee issues its new recommendations, City Hall should relaunch congestion pricing by proposing two major new benefits. First, the rapid implementation of neighborhood streetscape and pedestrian improvements on the city's busiest commercial corridors, especially outside of Manhattan. Second, a Paris-style, bus service expansion including the launch of new bus rapid transit lines and major improvements in local service accompanied by aggressive promotion targeted at bus riders and transit unions.

Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Flushing, Queens.

The Commission's new congestion pricing proposal is expected to raise an estimated $500 million a year. The boroughs would be buzzing if City Hall dedicated $150 million a year of this new revenue to highly visible, streetscape and pedestrian improvements on the city's busiest commercial corridors, especially in fast-growing Queens. The Mayor would utterly transform the congestion pricing debate if he traveled the boroughs like a Livable Streets Johny Appleseed sprinkling new buses, wider sidewalks, greenery, street furniture and truck traffic-reducing bulb-outs in his wake. In doing so, the Mayor would re-frame congestion pricing as an economic development and quality of life project rather than a "tax on the working class." The Mayor, rather than suburban Assembly member Richard Brodsky, would dominate media coverage as he met with local business and civic leaders and offered speedy, attractive plans to revitalize neighborhood centers using congestion pricing revenue.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone's staff say they used three words to generate public support for congestion pricing in London: "Buses, buses and buses." City Hall should hammer the message that bus riders are the big-time beneficiaries of pricing. Local TV news networks, daily commuter papers and weekly community papers should be filled with stories about the new bus services that pricing will create in neighborhoods throughout the city. Bus riders should be made aware of exactly how many new buses, fewer delays and increased service they get on their own routes.

Roosevelt Avenue and 76th Street, Jackson Heights, Queens.

Mayor Bloomberg's 2030 Plan already includes a massive boost in bus service. With $258 million in one-time federal congestion pricing aid the MTA will roll out 367 new buses on 36 routes in 22 neighborhoods and ten new Bus Rapid Transit lines. But buses need even more. Paris, which is about one-third the size of New York City, is building 17 new BRT lines. With the additional revenue from the Commission's expected bridge tolling proposal, Mayor Bloomberg could double the number of planned BRT lines to 20 for an additional $120 million per year. This would still leave $230 million per year for MTA capital expenses -- substantial new revenue to bond for big subway and rail expansion.

Initially, Mayor Bloomberg presented congestion pricing as part of a grand vision for a greener, more sustainable New York City. Cynical opponents diluted that vision by re-characterizing congestion pricing as just another bad tax on New York City's working families. Yet, the Mayor's original vision had the support of 40 percent of New Yorkers without even mention of a specific benefit. Mayor Bloomberg is a great salesman. He can win congestion pricing if he revisits the idealism of his original vision and adds to it local, visible and immediate benefits that the average New Yorker can understand and appreciate.

Flickr Photos: Betty Blade, Threecee, Haikiba, Pete Biggs.

Cartoonist, writer and former Ford Motor Company employee Bruce McCall offers this "Wouldn't it be funny if.." rendition of post-congestion pricing Manhattan, from Sunday's New York Times (click here for the full illustration). As with his confounding and flip Atlantic Yards illo from a year ago, it's hard to discern what McCall is trying to say here.

Or is it? One Streetsblog tipster, referring to the piece as "egregious," wrote of the Times: "They really don't get it." Yet the NYT has published numerous pro-pricing editorials as well.

What's your take?

From a Streetsblog tipster:

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all get the City Council treatment?

Last night, NYC Councilmember David Weprin made an appearance at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park to let the public know that he helped direct taxpayer dollars to support Shakespeare in the Park. But unlike the hundreds of theater goers who walked the two blocks from Central Park West to the theater, Councilman Weprin had his driver illegally enter the loop road -- which was closed to vehicles so joggers, walkers, and bikers could enjoy some exercise without being menaced by traffic -- drive to the theater, and park illegally on grass and pavers by the side of the road. The area where his car was parked was dense with pedestrians as they gathered for the theater.

Central Park is a big place and one car can always fit in the park, but if everyone were to use Central Park like Councilman Weprin, Central Park would be one big traffic jam and parking lot. I suspect that it never occurred to Councilman Weprin that his driving might damage the fragile fabric of Central Park. Most cars in the city drive without the slightest sense that they are surrounded by children and senior citizens and that their driving harms the neighborhoods through which they pass.

No one likes living in a traffic choked world. The people who drive in New York City need to be aware of how they contribute to the degradation of our communities. Our elected officials should serve as role models for the rest of society rather than sending the message that personal benefit is more important than public good.

Photo: Larry Greenberg, QCLDA

This is the third essay from Alex Marshall, who has written extensively on transportation issues as a journalist and author. He is a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, where he edits the bi-weekly Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

"All SUV drivers are assholes," I've frequently found myself thinking as I face the grille of a Cadillac Escalade while crossing a street on foot or from the perch of my bicycle seat. Why would anyone drive such a vehicle in New York City, hardly a brutal wilderness calling for four-wheel drive? They sure don't need the space to haul a load of firewood.

It's undeniable that SUVs make life difficult for the rest of us street dwellers, simply by virtue of their sheer size. Their height impinges on the sight lines of everyone, even other drivers. And because SUV drivers can't see as well themselves -- the action is literally too far below them -- they are more dangerous.

But I try to keep an open mind. Who's an asshole depends on where one sits, and to the SUV drivers, I'm probably the asshole, darting in front of them on my bike like a pesky gnat they would like to swat away, while they are trying to savor another sip of coffee.

I am served a dose of humility when I remember my experience with strollers. Before having a child myself, I would chafe at the legions of "stroller people," as my now wife and I called them, who took up all the sidewalk space on the Upper West Side, using their child carriers like battering rams to get ahead of the pack. I swore not to become one of them.

But now, with toddler, I have an SUV-style stroller, the very type I swore never to have. Why? Because, well, it's necessary for various reasons I won't go into now. And frankly, when I'm trying to get around with my kid and worrying about the hundreds of things parents worry about, I probably crowd out some humble pedestrians with nary a second thought.

So, as the "asshole" thought creeps into my head when I'm out on the streets, I think that maybe there are good reasons to drive an SUV in New York City. I should ask them. And I'm trying.

To nudge my consciousness toward more openness, I've been attempting for the past few weeks to interview SUV drivers. But I've been unable to catch one yet. I've found that that brief minute we have while waiting at a traffic light together is not enough to do a good interview. And so far I've not been able to catch a driver in that crucial interval when they are exiting their car and might have a few minutes to talk.

The statistics on SUV purchasing suggest some answers, though. Although I had trouble finding a fresh set on the web, what I remember from a few years ago is that consumer charts showed that people in Manhattan actually bought SUVs at twice the rate of the average American. This makes little sense, given the lack of practical need for an SUV in a dense urban city, until you remember that Manhattanites are rich. And then it snaps into place.

SUVs have become the key signifiers of status. They have little if anything to do with struggling up a slippery dirt road using four-wheel drive. For various reasons, perhaps fitting in with my previous musings about American's inclination for domination and armor, SUVs signify that one has been able to remove him or herself from the troubles of the masses walking, bicycling or even driving below them.

But hey, I could be wrong. I promise to report back here about the answers SUV drivers give as to why they drive their vehicles in our grid of streets, while, inadvertently I'm sure, making life difficult for the rest of us.

Photo: Jason Varone

On Earth Day Mayor Mike Bloomberg placed transportation and environmental issues at the top of New York City's political agenda. He took a major step towards changing the conventional wisdom that traffic congestion is a sign of the city's vibrancy and economic health. And he joined the list of forward-thinking global mayors like London's Ken Livingstone and Bertrand Delanoe in Paris who have said that excessive automobile dependence is a drag on the urban economy, detrimental to public health, and a contributor to global climate change.

Proposing congestion pricing was clearly a big deal. But missing from the PlaNYC announcement were immediate physical changes that reveal the "Greener, Greater New York" that the mayors speech called for. Because, even if congestion pricing is approved by the state legislature, it will take time to put in place. The mayor needs a symbolic, yet tangible, action that matches the scale and ambition of his new vision.

That grand, green, gesture is a three month car-free summer for Central Park. With the stroke of a pen Bloomberg can deliver a premier car-free space for millions of people. The political legwork has already been done. Car-Free Summer already has the backing of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and four of the five City Council members surrounding the park (Lappin, Brewer, Garodnick and Viverito. Dickens has been non-committal). More than 100,000 people have signed a petition calling for a completely car-free park.

There is very little downside to a Car-Free Central Park. DOT traffic studies conducted during Christo's "Gates" installation suggest that the traffic impacts around the park would be virtually non-existent (Download the three-part study here: 1, 2, 3). And a soon-to-be released report by Transportation Alternatives indicates that closing Central Park's Loop Drives to private vehicles would help reduce the amount of through-traffic using Harlem's congested streets as a short-cut to and from Lower Manhattan.

Delanoe launched his ambitious transportation reform effort by converting a riverfront highway into a beach called "Paris Plage." London's Ken Livingstone had the power to impose congestion pricing without legislative approval. But he built public approval for pricing, and an overall transportation reform agenda, with tangible improvements that people could feel and see. One of the most visible was the conversion of the horrendous traffic sewer that was Trafalgar Square into a bustling public plaza.

Likewise, here in New York, PlaNYC 2030 needs to be transformed from rhetoric to reality. While there are many such opportunities, none is as big, as visible and as easy, as making Central Park car-free this coming June, July and August.

As New Yorkers well know, sidewalks around subway stops and major transit hubs are often intensely crowded. Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC team is aware of this and buried on page 48 of the Technical Report supplementing PlaNYC's transportation recommendations is a new program called "Safe Routes to Transit" (SR2T). While the attention to pedestrian issues is welcome, given the scope of the congestion problem near major transit stops, SR2T is a fairly modest proposal and is best viewed as a good beginning, a point of departure for significantly improving the walking part of transit trips.

The new initiative -- which, notably, is focused entirely on the outer boroughs -- combines three existing programs under one umbrella and adds up to being the most specific and significant pedestrian improvement offered by PlaNYC 2030. SR2T has three elements:

Bus Stops under the Els - improve pedestrian and vehicle safety and circulation at intermodal stations located underneath elevated subway structures.

Started in 2003, four locations have been improved of the forty identified. Improvements consist of sidewalk islands, neckdowns and bus bulbs. Starting in 2008, DOT or DDC will build out three per year.

Subway/Sidewalk Interface - improve safety and relieve congestion on sidewalks and intersections adjacent to subway entrances

This subway/sidewalk interface project is a terrific DOT/ City Planning initiative begun at the urging of Transportation Alternatives in 2000. There are 468 subway stops in New York City and originally 29 were selected for a first look. Improvements at two subway stops have been completed and 24 more are planned. Starting in 2008 the city will complete two a year.

Interestingly, city planners found very poor pedestrian conditions at 24 of the 29 stations they studied. Experience suggests that sidewalk crowding and dangerous pedestrian crossings are a common problem at subway stops. A study of all 468 stops would probably come up with a list of at least one hundred more that need wider sidewalks, neckdowns, leading pedestrian intervals, better lighting and improved crosswalks. This program needs to be expanded and accelerated. Improvements to two stations a year is paltry. Interestingly, none of the 24 stations chosen for pedestrian improvements are in jam-packed Manhattan.

Sidewalks to Buses - create or improve sidewalk infrastructure, crosswalks and other pedestrian amenities to bus stops where walking is difficult today.

Surprisingly, there are still many parts of New York City without sidewalks. The city plans to build up to a quarter mile of sidewalk near bus stops in some of the most transit-deprived sections of the city. Starting in 2008, new sidewalks will be built at up to 15 bus stops a year until 2030. One of the first projects will be done at a Hylan Boulevard  bus stop near Fairlawn Avenue on Staten Island's East Shore.

SR2T is an important new program. It deserves to be expanded and accelerated and should include major transit hubs like Penn/Moynihan and Grand Central Stations and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The subway/sidewalk project should also include Manhattan, where crowding is, clearly, the worst.

Photo: AntyDiluvian / Flickr, Graphics: PlaNYC Mobility Needs Assessment (PDF)

New York motorists must be the nation's most ardent car lovers, considering the hardships they accept -- the scarce and exorbitant parking, the gridlock, the inevitable tickets and some of the nation's highest insurance rates -- for the pleasure of driving a car and the freedom to escape the city on a whim.

The three commemorative exhibits on Robert Moses, like the press articles covering them, have neglected the mass transit issue almost as seriously as Moses did. The New York Times mentioned in passing that he "championed highways as he starved mass transit" but said no more on the subject. Paul Goldberger, writing for the New Yorker, devoted a few more words to the matter, before dismissing it entirely. He reasoned: "[I]n Moses's day cities all over the country were building highways at the expense of mass transit. Some critics were complaining but most people didn't see [the problem] until long after the damage had been done."

Perhaps Moses was doing what everyone else was doing, or perhaps he was leading the others. Whatever our conclusion, it does a disservice to our city to ignore this piece of the Moses story, and what it has to teach us. With that thought in mind, I decided to share with New Yorkers my most notable experience with Moses.

It was 1965. Moses' Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority was awash in funds; so was the Port Authority, headed by Austin Tobin. Meanwhile, mass transit was strapped for money, and transit workers were demanding higher wages. Moses and Tobin had built empires catering to the automobile, while turning a back on mass transit; they were not concerned.

I decided to make a proposal. I suggested that tolls for the city's bridges and tunnels be doubled, and the proceeds used to subsidize mass transit. If this two-pronged proposal sounds mundane now, in 1965, it did not. It was front page news in all the city's papers, including the New York Times; in some, it commanded two inch banner headlines. Moses and Tobin, normally arch rivals, joined immediately in branding the proposal illegal. Later, in an article titled "Is Rubber to Pay for Rails," Moses fumed: "Ted Kheel has gone berserk." "The Kheel scheme is too silly for words." "Of course, nothing will come of it." "Kheel has earned the degree of M.U.B., Master of Unconscionable Bunk."

Harsh words. And maybe a little shortsighted. For a seed of an idea had been planted, and it slowly grew. Within a few years, tolls were doubled and then tripled, and TBTA revenues were eventually used, in part, to fund mass transit.

Fast forward to the present. Once again a transit problem confronts us, as we face the reality that car congestion is strangling the city's economy, destroying our health, and damaging the atmosphere. And once again, a novel and controversial solution has been proposed, or rather, a pair of solutions, which-- like my two-pronged proposal in 1965-- would turn car drivers' pain into mass transit's gain.

Here are the old ideas in their new clothes. Prong one is congestion pricing: imposing a fee on cars driven in the city, which would discourage some from driving, and raise revenues from those who do; prong two, is free mass transit: eliminating the bus and subway fare, and using the revenues from congestion pricing to cover the costs. The carrot and the stick. Simple enough. But as strange to our way of thinking as my proposal almost half a century ago.

Here's what they say about these ideas.

First, on congestion pricing, a recent New York Times article reported: "Everyone accepts that if your car is stationary, it's fine to pay for parking." "But if you tell people they have to pay to move their car between two points, they think it's crazy." Maybe in New York. But congestion pricing has been adopted successfully in cities like London, Stockholm, Rome, Singapore, Melbourne and Toronto. In fact, as the article acknowledges, "there's reason to think that we could be entering a golden age for congestion pricing."

What about free transit? I recently funded a $100,000 study of the benefits of free mass transit, in the belief the benefits would outweigh the costs. The concept shocked many. One writer branded my proposal that of "some hippy environmentalists"; others dismissed the idea as hopelessly utopian- not knowing, perhaps, that only a small portion of transit costs are paid today by fare revenues, and that funds from congestion pricing could comfortably cover that amount. Yet the proposal intrigued people, at the same time it surprised them. Newspapers, television stations, and public radio picked up the story. Pictures of crumpled Metrocards circulated on several websites, while another announced "Metrocards Make Good Coasters." Comments streamed in on the blogs. One site described the proliferating discussion as a "free frenzy".

This weekend's City section of the New York Times featured a mind-blowing essay by children's-book writer Sarah Shey about her habit of taking her one-year-old son out for drives in the city -- drives with no destination or purpose in mind, in which she crossed and recrossed the Brooklyn Bridge endless times.

Shey, who is originally from Iowa, writes that she missed "the pristine geometry of vacant blacktops, where a car can travel at least mile a minute, stair-stepping from field to unclothed field and not meet a patrol car." So she decided to try to recreate her family's bygone post-supper aimless-driving ritual here in the big city. You really have to read the whole thing to believe it, but here are some highlights:

Supper hour didn't work for us in Brooklyn. We had both traffic patterns and my son's schedule to consider. So early Saturday morning it was. My son and I got to escape our cavelike apartment. My husband got to lounge in bed for a few extra hours. And the best part of the deal: I got to concentrate on the road - not, for a change, on my family.

Our nondestination of choice was the Brooklyn Bridge. Back and forth we'd drive - sometimes 10 or 12 times - as if we were on autopilot. I leaned back into the bucket seat of my hatchback, whose posture recalled a dromedary. My hand squeezed the automatic clutch as if it were a stick shift, and for the first time in a week I felt in control.

My destiny was clear: to span the East River. The green light flashed above Tillary Street. I smashed down the accelerator, and with its 130-horsepower engine, my car attacked the 1.5-mile route with exhaust streaking behind us, I imagined, like a contrail.

Shey discovers a few little hitches in her unfettered freedom, like traffic regulations:

For the first couple of times, I took the Manhattan-bound Chambers Street exit, ignoring the "No Turns" sign, and spun around as soon as I passed the triangular traffic divider, a risky maneuver. I didn't want to make that a habit; I was well acquainted with the New York Police Department. Once, on Tillary Street, opposite Brooklyn's main post office, I got pulled over by a police officer. He had found fault with my decision to circumvent a backlogged entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting across two lanes of traffic while waving my arm out the window. I pushed open my door.

"Ma'am, stay in your car," the officer said. "Do you realize what I pulled you over for?"

"Gosh, I know I did something terribly wrong, sir. It felt terribly wrong."

He looked into my eyes. "Ma'am, among other things, you ran a red light. " I'll let you off with a warning."

"Oh, thank you, sir. It's a very confusing approach. I'll do a better job next time."

Luck wouldn't always be on my side. It was time to find a legal route.

Luck was indeed with Shey, and the hapless pedestrians and bicyclists cluttering the streets she felt called to zoom down, unhampered by silly conventions like traffic lights and lane markings. Not because she didn't get a ticket, but because she didn't injure anyone as her car "attacked" her chosen route.

It apparently never occurred to her that she might need to create a new family ritual for Saturday mornings, one more suited to life in New York -- like, say, going for a walk. For Shey, evidently, standing on her own two feet doesn't afford as much freedom as burning oil on the Brooklyn Bridge.

We will know if Mayor Bloomberg heard that call by the choice he makes for DOT. 

As a wise New York City traffic engineer once told me:

"Traffic engineers have failed," Sam Schwartz says. "If you compare the accomplishments of our profession over the last 50 years to the medical profession, our performance is equivalent to millions of people still dying of polio, influenza and other minor bacterial diseases that have been cured."

While London, Paris, and cities and towns all across Northern Europe are, with great success, developing ways to make their dense central districts less convenient, accessible and free to automobiles, American traffic engineers are still focused on figuring out how to shove more motor vehicles through our nation's roadways. The traffic engineers' solution for congestion is to add a lane or build a new road. In Schwartz's words, that's like "telling an obese person that the way to get healthy is to buy a bigger pair of pants and a longer belt."

A long walk across Queens Blvd. at Grand Ave., Elmhurst, circa March 2001. Photo: Jeff Saltzman

Departing Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall often cites the pedestrian safety improvements she ordered for Queens Boulevard as the greatest accomplishments of her six years in office. Before taking over DOT, the Queens Boulevard death machine was killing an average of 9 pedestrians a year, including an astounding death toll of 18 in 1997 alone. Once DOT began focusing on pedestrian safety along Queens Boulevard, the death rate fell to just over three per year. Today, crossing Queens Boulevard on foot is still a challenge but it's a lot safer than it used to be.

As City Hall mulls the future of its Department of Transportation, it is useful to recall the decades of pedestrian carnage on Queens Boulevard and what it took, finally, to staunch the bloodshed. Because it was Queens Boulevard where Iris Weinshall, the city's newly appointed transportation commissioner, overruled her agency's top traffic engineers for the first time and, in so doing, achieved what she often says is her proudest accomplishment.

In late 2000, the Daily News launched a crusade to tame the "Boulevard of Death." Newsday followed suit, and the 7.1 mile long, 12 lane, monster street dominated their contest for Queens readers. The tabloids ran more than twenty-five newspaper articles spotlighting the horrible conditions, including five front pages.

Prodded by the media coverage, the city's new DOT commissioner, a transportation policy neophyte, instructed her traffic engineers to make walking across the boulevard safer and easier. But the engineers resisted. Increasing pedestrian crossing times, they said, would would back up traffic to the Queensboro Bridge and motorists would be stuck fuming. Weinshall, frustrated by her top engineers' apparent inability or unwillingness to trade motorist convenience for pedestrian safety, shared a candid revelation with reporters: DOT's traffic engineers, she said, were "thinking from the motorist's viewpoint."

The traffic engineers may have been surprised at Weinshall's concern. "Accidents" on Queens Boulevard were nothing new. For decades the public and press didn't seem to care. Most years the papers wrote one or two articles about pedestrian fatalities on Queens Boulevard, sometimes none. Previous DOT commissioners did pitifully little about the 4 to 18 pedestrians killed and scores terribly injured each year. Pedestrian fatalities on Queens Boulevard had always just been a fact of life -- collateral damage.

But times had changed. Here came a new Transportation Commissioner under relentless media pressure. Overriding their dire warnings of traffic catastrophe, Weinshall ordered DOT's traffic engineers to act. Within weeks, the speed limit was reduced, crossing times increased, and lighting and signage improved. Over the following months and years, traffic lanes were replaced by angle parking, fences installed to reduce jaywalking, median waiting areas built and widened, and a long term plan developed. As the changes took effect, the pedestrian casualty rate on Queens Boulevard plummeted.

The taming of the "Boulevard of Death" was the crowning moment of Iris Weinshall's six years as New York City's transportation commissioner. It was made possible, in part, because a new, perhaps somewhat naive, transportation commissioner was willing to overrule her agency's top traffic engineers and force them to begin looking at one of the busiest, widest, most dangerous streets in New York City as more than just a system for moving cars and trucks -- but as a public space -- a place where people live, work and walk.

Strangely, and much to the detriment of Weinshall's legacy, the key lessons of Queens Boulevard were quickly lost. Whether talking to a Midtown Manhattan Business Improvement District or a neighborhood group in Brooklyn, Weinshall and her borough-level subordinates often deflected requests saying, "I'm not a traffic engineer. We'll have to get back to you on that." Despite her initial insight that DOT's traffic engineers viewed the city from a windshield perspective, Weinshall continued to defer to them. In a near total void of Mayoral-level interest in transportation issues, during the Weinshall years DOT's top traffic engineers became New York City's de facto transportation planners and policymakers.

Today, the very same traffic engineers that Weinshall faced down on Queens Boulevard have as much authority as ever. In their own words, they "own" New York City's streets. They sign-off on every proposed bike lane, speed hump, median, neckdown, sidewalk-widening and hour of car-free park. When, for example, they decide that it is time for a functional, community-friendly, two-way, neighborhood Main Street to become a one-way highway designed to speed  through-traffic and "maximize capacity," that's that. Neighborhood groups, Community Boards and elected officials can tell DOT what to do. DOT will listen. But until a DOT commissioner or mayor says otherwise, the traffic engineers call the shots.

Whomever takes over as New York City's next DOT commissioner should take a close look at how Iris Weinshall's achievements on Queens Boulevard were won and then ask: Whose "viewpoint" do DOT's traffic engineers have today?

Photo: Foodgeek / Flickr

I entered a turnstile in the Financial District on Saturday, bound for the Upper West Side. The 2 train was running on the east side and the 3 wasn't running at all below 14th Street. So I went instead to the A and the C platform. The C train wasn't running, period.

With the C train out and the 2 and 3 trains FUBAR, the A train, when it finally came, was absolutely packed. Any New Yorker except for -- I'm guessing here -- the richest 1% and the poorest 1%, is familiar with this condition during rush hour, but hopes to avoid it on the weekend. But not this weekend. I had one person in each armpit, while, confounding the laws of physics, I was simultaneously in someone else's armpit. Each stop took a half an hour to get through because the people were blocking the doors open as they crammed into the cars. Someone near me was asking her traveling companion if there wasn't some kind of maximum allowable limit to the number of people who could be crammed into a subway car. Packed as it was, the train frequently crept through the tunnels at a snail's pace because there were workers repairing the tracks or platforms. When I got off at 59th Street, the platforms were being torn up as the floors were being replaced.

It is nice to see investment in mass transit, but somehow, one wishes this investment wasn't quite so ... thorough.

Just as I was considering cursing the MTA for the comprehensiveness of its maintenance operations, I was reminded of who to blame. Above the heads of all these people standing in the aisles, there was a 1938 photograph of the smirking face of a young Robert Moses, standing, arms folded, in front of a giant map of New York's arterial roadways (not the photo above). It was part of an advertisement for an exhibition (third item) celebrating Moses, the dawn of the automobile age, and the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Triborough Bridge.

Now I remembered where to direct my angst over the sorry conditions underground. By systematically starving mass transit to pay for his grandiose automobile projects, the subways were on life support by the time Moses died in 1981. A year later, the MTA began its mammoth program to bring the stations and tracks back into a "state of good repair." More than two decades later, this program continues, creating the need for weekend service curtailments just as the city is bursting at the seams with new residents.

Cursing the MTA would have been misdirected. It is doing what it has to do. Work needed to bring the system up to a state of good repair is ultimately a good thing. But a crash program to restore the system wouldn't be necessary today if the planners of generation ago hadn't been so certain that the automobile was the answer to all transportation problems. And one busy Saturday underground, there was Robert Moses, staring down at a new generation of subway sardines, still mocking us.

I'm very familiar with the automobile age. Please, don't make me celebrate it.

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

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

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

Council. On. Foreign. Relations. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every November, year after year, the city sends two contradictory messages to motorists. On the one hand, it urges all those coming to the city during the holiday season to use mass transit. On the other, its Department of Transportation announces that to accommodate those who will be driving, the Central Park loop road will be open to traffic all day on weekdays from late November until early January, eliminating daytime car-free hours for the park's recreational users. In effect, the city is saying, "We encourage you to use mass transit, but if you want to drive, we have this lovely park you can motor through that we hope will speed your way to Midtown!"

This double message aside, DOT's own traffic data fails to demonstrate a need to throw open Central Park to traffic during the holiday season.

In 2004, the DOT studied the effects of entrance closings that had taken effect in November 2004 The report, published April 2005, can be found here: 2004 Holiday Traffic Plan: Central Park Drive Improvements (PDF file). As part of the study, the agency recorded traffic volumes at various entrances and exits on the loop drive and on several adjacent avenues both at the height of the 2004 holiday season (December 6-10 and 13-17) and after holiday hours had ended (January 10-14, 2005).

Unfortunately, DOT did not record traffic volumes during the five mid-day hours (10 am to 3 pm) that cars use the Park during the holiday period, but it did count cars during the morning and evening rush hours (7-10 am and 3-7 pm). One would expect that to justify opening Central Park to traffic all day, holiday traffic volumes would be substantially greater than during non-holiday periods. This is simply not the case. In fact, the data suggests there is less traffic.

Central Park has two major exits for traffic traveling southbound. Traffic heading into Midtown is most likely to leave the park via the exit at 7th Avenue and Central Park South. The second-most popular exit for southbound cars leaving the park is the one at West 72nd Street.

At the 7th Avenue exit during the rush-hour periods, fewer cars left the park during the holiday weeks than after the holidays: an average of 5,608 cars versus 6,732 cars a day, or 1,124 fewer cars. The West 72nd Street exit saw a small increase in traffic leaving the park during the holiday weeks: an average of 3,570 cars versus 2,960 cars, or 610 more cars a day leaving the park during the holiday period.

Adding it up, there were 514 fewer cars a day, on average, leaving the park at its two major southbound exits during the holiday weeks than afterwards.

Nor were the surrounding avenues unusually packed with cars. There was no significant uptick in traffic on the avenues adjacent to the Park during the holiday weeks compared with the post-holiday week. For example, the holiday versus post-holiday counts during the morning rush at Fifth Avenue between 62^nd and 63^rd were 4,296 versus 4,379; at Central Park West between 62nd and 63^rd they were 1,002 versus 906; and at Columbus Avenue between 62^nd and 63^rd, they were 4,063 versus 3,954. That adds up to an average 82 additional cars a day during the holiday weeks on these avenues at a time when the city is supposed to be so gridlocked that the Central Park drive simply must be opened to traffic all day.

What could be the reason for the DOT's continued insistence that the world's most famous urban refuge must be made available to any motorist who wants to speed through it in the middle of the day? I'm starting to believe that superstition is at work here, the same kind that prompted our ancestors to sacrifice virgins or sheep to appease the gods -- only now, the DOT believes that if it doesn't sacrifice a great urban park each year, the traffic gods will grow angry and something terrible will happen. But something terrible is already happening: For six weeks, recreational users of the Central Park Drives will have no escape from the danger, pollution and aggravation of traffic. The gods must surely be angry.

Ken Coughlin is Chair of the Car-Free Central Park Campaign which has collected over 100,000 signatures in support of a car-free park.

At times over the last two and a half years I have done quite a bit of organizing and advocacy work to help get new bicycle lanes and shared-lane markings installed on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, my neighborhood's main bike route. Though I was the community person leading the initiative and was often in close contact with the Department of Transportation staffers responsible for the project, I still found myself surprised when the bicycle stencils went down on the street a couple of weekends ago. The markings were different than what I had expected.

The main goal of the shared-lane markings, as I understood them based on my conversations with DOT, are to help motorists and cyclists know that bikes have a right to ride in the travel lane along the narrower stretch of the Avenue. As such, I expected that the stencils would be painted smack in the middle of the travel lane, similar to Berkeley, California's Bike Boulevard markings. Instead, the Fifth Avenue stencils, modeled after San Francisco's "Sharrows," were placed along one side of the travel lane, just outside the range of parked cars' doors.

Sharrows have been studied and tested and are supposed to provide real benefits to cyclists. Yet, to my eye, stencils along one side of the travel lane don't send the message that bikes have a right to the middle of the road. Rather, they seem to send the message that cyclists should be riding in the margins, squeezing between parked cars and moving traffic. I imagine a number of motorists will read them the same way and feel justified in blasting their horns at cyclists riding in front of them. This, I thought, was contrary to DOT and the community's goal for the shared-lane markings.

I don't bring this up to complain about the new markings or bash DOT. Overall, I think the stencils are a step forward and, though there was friction at times, I think the collaboration with DOT was constructive. I probably should have asked to see the design before the stencils went down. I bring up this issue to highlight the broader question of community involvement in designing and building New York City's growing bicycle network.

As thoughtful, involved (and occasionally cranky) cyclists debate bike lane design here on Streetsblog and as New York City's Department of Transportation embarks on its effort to produce 200+ miles of new bike lanes over the next three years, one of the big, outstanding questions is, simply: What is the most constructive way for cycling advocates and city government to work together and interact? How can we best put our heads together and use our resources to make New York a better biking city?

In trying to answer this question, it is worth taking another look at London' England's new Cycling Design Standards.

Transportation Alternatives' Deputy Advocacy Director Noah Budnick points me to Chapter 2, page 26 (PDF file), which describes CRISP -- the "Cycle Route Implementation and Stakeholder Plan." CRISP outlines a detailed process for how city government should collaborate with key stakeholders and community members in the creation of new bicycle infrastructure. Rather than approach every new bike lane as an ad hoc project, CRISP helps "streamline bike lane implementation from both a design and political standpoint," Budnick says. CRISP -- in theory -- helps city government, bicycling advocates and community groups understand each other and work together (I still need to talk to someone about how it works in practice).

New York City cyclists are a demanding, knowledgable and active constituency. They are, inevitably, going to have problems with 200+ miles of new bike lanes designed and built without their input. DOT, meanwhile, is surely going to need political help from cycling advocates as new bike lanes take street space away from motorists and are striped through neighborhoods that don't want them. As in London, New York City needs to have a process in place to help cycling advocates, community groups and city government to work together constructively.

Sunday was New York City's 26.2-mile block party, a once-a-year occasion for residents and visitors alike to actually enjoy the city streets.

A recently announced economic-impact study of the 2005 race calculated that the marathon--complete with participants and spectators from near and far, sponsors, charities, media, prize money, and ancillary events--pours $188M into the city's economy, making it by far the city's most lucrative one-day sporting event. The race has such tremendous cache that nearly 100,000 applicants applied to be among the field of 37,000, and two-thirds of them traveled in from outside the area. And don't forget the other key numbers: two million spectators and 300 million TV viewers around the world. Concentrating on the race's impact in financial terms, however, is to miss its tremendous environmental, public health, and community-building benefits.

What makes the race so special that marathoners want to "run New York" more than anywhere else, and are willing to shell out megabucks to do so? Ask them, and they'll tell you that it's the city itself. In the days leading up to the race, marathoners see New York through rose-colored glasses. Training run in Central Park? Lucky you, we just happen to have more roadways closed due to marathon setup. Ready to pick up your number at Javits Center? Take a special free bus from Midtown! Need something to do on Saturday? How about a closed-street jog from the U.N. across 42nd Street and up to Central Park!

And then on Sunday, the whole city gets in on the action. For this one wonderful day, the same highway-like streets that shoot cars through our neighborhoods at all hours, making sidewalk socializing unpleasant and isolating neighbors from one another, magically transform into public commons. Spectators spill off of the narrow sidewalks into the roads as the sea of humanity passes by.

If you watched the race in person, you surely talked to dozens of people squeezed around you, cheered for their friends, and snapped pictures of them with their runners. You and the other 2 million spectators were able to be there thanks to our city's dense housing and subways (which even the DOT urged us to use on this day).

Given the chance to enjoy the streets, New Yorkers and visitors party it up--enjoying brunches, bands, and bar fests and bringing rich life to streets that are otherwise primarily just vehicular thoroughfares. Marathoners look forward to the turn off of the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan, for example, because the roar of the crowd is so intense, and spectators position themselves hours in advance to be at the front lines there. The rest of the year, however, you can usually count on one hand the number of people hanging out on that stretch of First Avenue.

And now, let's imagine for a minute if it weren't so rare to have people enjoying the streets. Enrique Peñalosa made the suggestion in his speech last month, as he envisioned a Bogotá-esque Ciclovía applied to major New York streets like Broadway and 42nd Street. Every Sunday and holiday in Bogotá, 120 kilometers of roads--nearly three marathons' worth--are opened for the use of people instead of cars. Participation is comparable to marathon spectatorship, at 1-2 million, and it represents an even greater percentage of Bogotá's population. These people are healthier and happier thanks to Ciclovía, and I bet that the economics work out just fine too.

If the marathon passed you by on Sunday, you must have enjoyed the spectacle: listening to the voices and footsteps, breathing in the fresh air, talking to total strangers. Wouldn't it be nice to do these things more often?

Photo: Shibula/Flickr

The movement for congestion pricing needs to start here, would inevitably start here and has started here. Here is a simple submission: People should pay for the privilege of bringing their air-polluting, noise polluting, lethal, two-ton pieces of private property onto the streets of such a dense place. But the reason for the payment shouldn't be for any of those unsavory attributes of the automobile.

Drivers everywhere should be required to pay for the cleanup that will be needed for their pollution, not just here. Many industries with more concentrated negative externalities, to use the economic term, are required to pay into funds that ameliorate the consequences of their pollution. G.E. had to pay to clean up the Hudson River after it contaminated the river with PCBs; motorists should have to pay to clean up their pollution too.

Noise pollution (namely, honking) isn't a problem unless there are people around to have to hear it. Here in New York, heavy fines are threatened on anyone who honks unnecessarily. We are also working toward a ban of audible car alarms.

As for the car's deadliness, its worst attribute, well, the engineers are working on it.

No, the best reason for congestion pricing is that cars get in the way of business.

As Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City says, "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."

Traffic congestion slows you down when you're trying to get somewhere. It slows down the delivery of essentially goods throughout the city and slows the movement of people -- the city's most valuable economic input -- by clogging the roads that could be moving them along much more quickly with free flowing buses, cabs and bicycles. Traffic congestion gets in the way of emergency vehicles, no doubt contributing to the finding that heart attacks are more likely to be fatal in New York City than anywhere else in the nation. The fact that congestion pricing would lead to less air and noise pollution while improving the public realm is just a happy coincidence. But it is one that should make every New Yorker support congestion pricing, whether you're in favor of making New York into an efficient platform for commerce or you are concerned about a rise in sea levels or you simply want to live in a more pleasant, breathable city.

Congestion pricing is working in the world city most similar to New York and it would work here. In fact congestion pricing should be applied not just to New York, but to every city in the United States with more than 8 million people living at a density of greater than 25,000 people per square mile.

Talk about "eyes on the street," there is a group of New York City residents who patrol the city's streets and parks at all hours of the day and night, everyday. They are the city's dog owners and dog walkers. And they are under attack.

The boom in New York dog ownership owes itself in large part to an informal agreement that allows dog owners to take their dogs into parks between 9 pm and 9 am on any day of the week and let their dogs romp and roam parks unleashed.

Urban dog owners, like this one, know that their dogs are more well behaved when they have the chance to get a lot of exercise and socialize with other dogs and people. Where I grew up in suburban Staten Island, dogs were more territorial because, off the leash, they occupied only one small yard their entire lives, rarely interacting with other people and other dogs.

There is currently a lawsuit that would put an end to off-leash hours in city parks. Despite a 60 percent decline in the number of dogs bites in city parks over the past two decades, a Queens man wants the Parks Department and NYPD to enforce the city law mandating that dogs must be on leashes at all times in public.

That would be a bad enforcement policy. If the court rules that it must be enforced, many dog owners may be forced to leave the city for the suburbs. It also may encourage the return of criminals, drug dealers and anti-social behavior in park spaces that are currently well-used thanks to dogs and their owners.

The city's enforcement policy should continue to respect the current 9 pm to 9 am off-leash policy. The vast majority of dog owners realize that it is a privilege to let their pets roam free in the city parks and are good at self-policing. If a dog is particularly unfriendly or misbehaves frequently, an owner can be told to leash their dog. It's the sort of far sighted compromise that this city needs to do more often.

(Full disclosure: I was dog sitting an energetic Vizsla puppy this weekend)

"Before I was mayor I blamed mayors for traffic. Now I blame Department of Transportation officials and Police Commissioners." After getting the laugh, the mayor gave the shrug: "We like traffic, it means economic activity, it means people coming here." Soon he left in a private car.

For those who are baffled at why New York City remains in the transportation policy dark ages, Bloomberg's off-the-cuff remark speaks volumes. While world cities like London and Paris are finding that reducing motor vehicle traffic in the urban core is a boon to local business, quality of life and overall competitiveness in the global economy, New York is still stuck in a 1950's traffic engineering mindset that insists the gridlock, honking, and spewing tailpipes of 1.1 million vehicles cramming into Manhattan each day is prerequisite for a healthy, vibrant urban economy.

Clearly, Hizzoner hasn't read, Necessity or Choice (PDF), the Bruce Schaller study that found that a mere six percent of Manhattan retail business is done by car, and that the majority of those motorist-shoppers live in places with plenty of mass transit options.

While a thriving economy does tend to bring more traffic into New York City, evidence is piling up that getting drivers out of their cars and into more efficient modes of transportation is even better for a big city's health and growth.

The bottom line question to the Mayor and those who hold fast to the dying idea that Traffic = Economic Growth is this: If increasing traffic congestion is the sign of vibrant, growing economy, what happens when New York City reaches a traffic saturation point? What happens when we simply can't squeeze any more cars and trucks into the city's 19th century street grid? Must economic growth stop?

That question is most clearly being answered in the neighborhoods around Mayor Bloomberg's favored mega-development projects, most notably Manhattan's West Side Stadium and Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards. These projects are being fought and killed largely on the grounds that the traffic congestion they will generate is unmanageable and lethal to community life and local business.

So, does New York City have to stop growing because of traffic? Or does New York City need a comprehensive transportation and land use strategy that reduces motor vehicle traffic congestion, encourages more efficient modes of transportation, and allows New York City to continue growing into the 21st century? 

Streetsblog thinks the answer to this one is pretty obvious. We're just waiting for the Mayor to stop squandering his second term and his legacy and look at the city's traffic and environmental problems in the rational, business-like manner that is, supposedly, his way.

Reporting by Alec Appelbaum

The New York Observer's Real Estate reported that the woman struck by a mini-van pulling out of the Fairway Market parking lot in Red Hook on Thursday, July 6, has died. The Daily News identified her as Janett Ramos, 45, of Sunset Park.

Despite the rapid increase in Van Brunt Street traffic created by the new Fairway and Red Hook's booming development, the Department of Transportation has said that it will not begin studying the area's traffic until Fall. Nevertheless, the agency has restriped the intersection where Santos was killed as well as some other intersections along Van Brunt.

At the end of May, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall found time between Fairway shopping trips to tell NY1, "We wanted the store to open up, we wanted to see people develop their traffic patterns, and then we'll be back here in the fall, we'll put our counters down, and we'll see if any of the corners will meet warrants to put up traffic lights."

Two editorial comments on the DOT's methodology in Red Hook:

1. Traffic signals and paint stripes are not the only or even the best tools for calming and controlling traffic in city neighborhoods. There is an entire school of engineering and street design called "traffic calming" (Warning: Links to a PDF document but it's worth the click). Van Brunt Street, a 16-block straightaway from the Battery Tunnel to the new grocery store, is a natural candidate for traffic calming.

We have reason to believe that DOT Deputy Commissioner Michael Primeggia does not like traffic calming and that he believes that his job is to keep the city's traffic moving, not to calm it. On June 23, 2003 at a meeting in Brooklyn Borough Hall, I watched Primeggia deliver the coup de grace to the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project, a six-year, $1.2 million community-driven initiative run by an internationally-respected consulting firm. Red Hook should not let one agency honcho stop it from demanding real traffic calming as a part of its development process.

2. Red Hook needs real transportation planning. In many cities, sometimes even in New York City, it is standard practice for transportation agencies to model and plan for traffic prior to the opening of big new grocery stores, cruise ship terminals and Swedish furniture behemoths. In Red Hook, Commissioner Weinshall has, essentially, chosen to identify trouble-spots by waiting to see where the traffic clogs and the bodies pile up. This is traffic engineering by body count.

It is similar to the methodology DOT used at Queens Boulevard, the infamous "Boulevard of Death," in the late 1990's. In the Queens Boulevard Pedestrian Safety Study, the City's consulting engineers only examined locations that had two crashes in the same spot. Their attitude was that one crash could just have been an accident. Two crashes indicates a real problem, worthy of mitigation.

On the one hand, you can't argue with success. Fatalities on Queens Boulevard are way down since DOT's re-engineering. Counting dead and injured bodies is clearly an effective way of identifying the worst vehicle-pedestrian conflict spots. On the other hand, it isn't particularly effective if you or someone you know is included in the counting.

There ought to be a way to plan and engineer New York City's streets without turning New Yorkers into human guinea pigs. But until we have a transportation agency capable of doing that, the beleagured residents of Red Hook may consider offering up a second human sacrifice at Van Brunt and Wolcott. That ought to warrant a traffic signal.

Photo: The Real Estate.