Nails, Meet Coffins

Well the official story is filed by the Times. It’s really outrageous that the debate should end this way.

The developments suggested that passage of the mayor’s plan was extremely unlikely this year. Asked if congestion pricing was dead, Senator Martin J. Golden, a Brooklyn Republican who has been supportive of the plan, said, “It doesn’t sound like it’s alive, that’s for sure.”

Mr. Bloomberg had lobbied hard and backed an extensive publicity campaign to pressure lawmakers to approve his plan by Monday, the deadline for the city to seek as much as $500 million in federal aid. But legislators complained that he had failed to answer basic questions about the proposal, which has never been tried on a broad scale in any American city. Still, last-ditch talks continued late Monday night. The mayor’s office had no immediate comment, and it was not clear whether any federal money would still be available.

In a tense meeting on Monday, testy exchanges erupted between the mayor and the Democratic state senators he was trying to win over. At one point, according to several people present, Mr. Bloomberg told the senators that his administration had sent plenty of information about his plan in the mail, and that it was not his fault if they had not read it.“If the mayor came in with one vote, he left with none,” said Senator Kevin S. Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat.

“His posture was not ingratiating,” he said. “He says he doesn’t know politics, and he certainly bore that out by the way he behaved.”

I have this dream where I wake up tomorrow and the Mayor has gone and thrown up all the cameras and the barriers.  In my dream this was all just an exercise to show people how little their State Assembly members actually care about The City and the Mayor is right now ordering a small army of traffic engineers and construction workers to go and put up the big signs at all the bridges.

It’s Over

There is something in the defeat of congestion pricing that is especially saddening. Rarely does a proposal come along that offers to make the world share the burden of modern life more equitably by asking(or forcing) citizens to pitch in to aid in the creation of something bigger and better than themselves. To watch this idea die is to watch our civic religion destroyed by selfishness, greed, ego and corruption. And for what purpose did our leaders sell us out? For the tiny fractions of commuters who use cars? For the parking industry? For no good reason whatsoever? It’s hard even to see in the red faces of outer borough politicians even a shred of genuine outrage. None dare make the real argument against congestion pricing that is the backbone of American suburban mythology: not on my dime.

What happened to loving The City? The great resurgent metropolis reached out for a pittance from the rich outer borough commuters who clog it’s great streets and make it’s sidewalks small, its citizens sick, and it’s streets a noisy mess. And those commuters, as they have for generations threw back their heads and laughed at us. How silly of The City to think that after all these years they could force an end to the free, planet killing, neighborhood destroying joy ride of the automobile commuter. How many more neighborhoods must be plowed under to appease the great hoards of commuters who don’t even bother to stop in The City but use some of it’s most valuable real estate every day as through street. Is there nothing that will appease the gaping maw of suburbia.

And lets not kid ourselves and suggest that the debate was conducted with dignity. The desperation of the outer boroughs and suburbs, facing the greatest challenge to their car dictatorship pulled out all the stops. Suddenly it was poor people who drove all over the place, as though the traffic jams of cars were filled with people whose crushing poverty forced them to commute by the single most expensive mode available. Then there was the elderly driver commuting into Manhattan to see a doctor as though the East River bridges were already clogged with bumper to bumper Buicks doing 15mph in the fast lane. They even dragged the biggest and best myths about American traffic planning out of the closet, that we can build more flyovers and tunnels and cloverleaf intersections to move cars faster, that tolls are killing middle class drivers, and that cars stuck in traffic are actually going somewhere and not just looking for parking or passing through.

So the next time you’re walking around the city and you see bumper to bumper cars blocking intersections and ruining our streets, just remember that those drivers had a choice. Remember that it was those very same drivers, now suffering the slow death of hope that is New York City gridlock, who raised their voices when the time came for them to pay their share.