Well the big news around here is that our governor just bailed on congestion pricing, which was supposed to start at the end of this month:
I’ve been skeptical about congestion pricing (not the concept so much as our implementation of it and rationale for it), but the stated reason for not doing congestion pricing is even more spurious than the stated reason for doing congestion pricing. It was supposed to reduce traffic, clean the air, and create funding to make public transit better so the city wouldn’t be such a shithole, but now we can’t do it since the city has become too much of a shithole? Regardless, clearly what’s really going on is that the ruling party is afraid of how this will affect them in the upcoming elections because there’s a sense out there that this is yet another case of progressivism run amok, so like a guy without a condom they’re pulling out at the very last moment.
Naturally there’s been much disagreement over congestion pricing lo these past years, with both sides putting forth arguments both rational and zany, but ironically in this messy post-coital moment everyone is mostly right. The lefty-loosies are correct that the governor is spineless:
And the righty-tighties are correct that it’s insane to trust these people:
By the way, according to the person who’s dedicated his life to advancing congestion pricing, that air pollution it was going to help address isn’t even a problem in the first place:
First SUVs were melting the planet, now they’re mostly harmless:
It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with the latest trends in climate change. It’s almost like people turn the urgency setting up and down depending on what their own agenda happens to be at the time.
At this point it would be both simultaneously interesting and horrifying to learn how much the money the state has spent on the wet spot on the sheets that is the congestion pricing plan over the past five years, but in any case attempts to tame the streets will probably remain decidedly low-tech for the foreseeable future:
Unlike congestion pricing, which is way too sophisticated and highbrow, politically speaking crushing scooters is a winner, since New Yorkers pretty much universally detest them, and at this point there are maybe three or four Streetsblog readers left who are still doing the whole “…but cars!” thing when the subject comes up, but that’s about it.
Like many people across the country I often find myself laughing at New York City and the silly problems its denizens so often bring upon themselves, but then I remember that I live here, so I pretend that I don’t by hopping on a bike and heading for the hills:
Now that I’m finally out of the seemingly interminable overhauling phase I can finally enjoy the bike:
And I am enjoying it:
It may be a keeper.
