alt Hacker NewsYou’re kind of proving the point here. NYC has fewer car owners and yet NYC doesn’t have a single pedestrian street or street closed to through traffic. Sounds like a city that can’t imagine itself without cars even though it’s completely realistic.
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Also, many of the cars we see in the city are bound to be from outside the city (like New Jersey). Just look at the traffic in the Lincoln and Holland tunnels at rush hour.
A less abrasive approach than congestion pricing might just be pedestrian streets or narrower streets/wider sidewalks. If you make the city unattractive for cars, there will be fewer of them, and I am willing to bet that programs like these are less likely to trigger the outrage congestion pricing has, because it doesn't target car owners directly and en masse. You can sort of pick away at it, street by street. There will be less of a show of solidarity, because, hey, it's not my street.
The only thing that seems silly is penalizing delivery trucks. This only raises the costs of goods and services. This is one reason I would favor narrower, one-way streets over pedestrian streets. You still want vehicles. The issue is that many if not most vehicles in NYC are a luxury item and do nothing but negatively impact the common good. They don't even make transportation easier for their owners, on the whole. Of course, this should be combined with other policies that improve public transportation and improve availability of good and services in the city to reduce the burdens that cars alleviate.
Not true. E25st by Baruch college has turned into a plaza. There are some more, that I can think off. (8th/St Marks by A Ave, is a park) etc.
This used to be a regular street at some point https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZivSNhiEnn2Q4pjr6
There are plenty of other examples, just now they look more like plazas, and not streets.
I don't think they were trying to disprove the point. They admit that the US is largely car centric EXCEPT NYC, which is why congestion pricing has worked well. Also, car ownership rates are probably extremely correlated with density/efficiency of public transportation.
There is probably no other city in the US where you can truly eschew car ownership (this includes metro "dense" regions like San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston). Maybe you could include Chicago where there is a heavy amount of density/walkability in most of central Chicago neighborhoods.
You’re either exaggerating or don’t spend much time in NYC. Half of Broadway is closed to cars now, same with Wall Street. We have summer streets where they close many on weekends. Lots of dedicated bike lanes and a few isolated paths throughout the city. Could there be more? Sure. Are they completely absent? No.
There is a street in Williamsburg that has been pedestrianized. I cant remember which one.
Broadway has had large expansions to its curbing from the flatiron building to union square.
Its a slow process but its getting there.