Stockholm

GEORGE places his tape recorder on DR. SELMAN’s ottoman.    read more »

GEORGE places his tape recorder on DR. SELMAN’s ottoman.    read more »

A Quinnipiac poll finds that New Yorkers oppose congestion pricing--charging drivers a fee to travel below 60th Street during rush hours--by a margin of 2-1. Streetsblog, which has been advocating for such a policy, still has hope:

the results are very much in line with the findings of surveys conducted in London and Stockholm prior to the launch of those cities' successful and, ultimately, popular experiments with congestion pricing.

-Matthew Schuerman

For those of you interested in urban traffic policy, the pro-bike, anti-car website StreetsBlog has an account of DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall's recent attendance at an international gathering of transportation officials in Stockholm.

To the apparent disappointment of the item's author, officials from London, Stockholm and elsewhere talked enthusiastically about the effects of their "congestion pricing" programs in cutting traffic, while the New York contingent was mostly happy just to listen.

From the item:

Weinshall had no big traffic reduction strategies or plans to share with the assembled because unlike the other cities at the conference, New York City doesn't have any.

While that's not quite true -- this is the administration, remember, responsible for the limited-turn "thru streets" that delighted transportation nerds at the time of their introduction -- Weinshall's reluctance to go within a mile of congestion pricing isn't really a surprise.

Bloomberg, remember, offered a relatively innocuous statement on the subject back in February -- "there are places in the world that have tried congestion pricing, and it's certainly something that we should be looking at," he said -- only to have his press office immediately warn off any interpretation of the comments as a "loosening" of his opposition.

It seems that for the foreseeable future, the rights of New York drivers to sit in heavy traffic will remain free of charge.

-- Josh Benson UPDATE: One of the StreetBlog authors emailed to object to the use of the term "anti-car" in this item. "We've got nothing against cars," he wrote. "Rather, we take issue with transpo policies that promote car use in the city to the detriment of other modes."

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