I Googled California pedestrian law and of course got mostly accident attorneys, and one website had this bit “Pedestrian accidents accounted for 57 percent of fatal traffic collisions in San Francisco in 2007, according to a report by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.”

My observation is people cross in the middle of the block in NYC and don’t in SF, at least on wide streets with traffic. I don’t think it’s as much enforcement as survival.

But I would defer to a California resident about any current law changes.

I appologize for taking this thread on a complete tangent, but I need to know the answer to a question:

I was at a coffee shop in Chicago, and a beat cop came in. A SWPL type came up to him and asked him about traffic laws in Illinois. Seems he was just in from California, where the law is that cars need to stop when pedestrians enter the street, and that this is enforced.

The cop looked at me and my wife, smirked, and said, “Don’t try that here”.

I’ve also heard that jaywalking laws are enforced there. People in Chicago can’t even spell jaywalking.

So… true or not?

When I’ve had a car in Manhattan I didn’t find driving nearly as difficult as parking. A high percentage of drivers are professionals — cabbies, delivery drivers, etc. and the driving is generally better than car culture places like California where every 16 to 90 year old is on the road and generally also their cell phone. One reason people jaywalk in NYC is they know the drivers are good, you’d be crazy to walk into the street in San Francisco or LA.

I like the shared cab idea, like the old Jitneys and the Gypsy cabs. Does NYC have Zip Cars yet?

This is a plan I actually support.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/taxi-commission-approves-ride-sharing-experiments/

I guess I just don’t follow your logic nor see much evidence for claims that congestion pricing as it was currently proposed does not hurt the poor, as well as some “middle class” in a city like NY that is very costly to live in. I have already demonstrated some evidence why it will, not just based on monetary factors but also mental health concerns. Can you come up with some examples as to why this is a myth? As far as I know London is the only major city to have such a plan, yet London is quite different than NY.

Firstly, driving around London is an even worse nightmare than New York. It has no real grid system, and old narrow roads that make no sense for large and medium sized vehicles to be driving along. London also has a far more developed bus system. Yet, when we look at traffic as the main thing to address, is that really what should be the first priority? London has a VERY class system supported public transportation system (zones) which put all of the most well off in Central London and all of the least well off farther away with LONG miserable commutes. Prof. Florida commented on in his last book how London and NY are similar, and I think they are in how a number of people are not too happy with their long commutes on crowded trains and buses…they just do it because that’s what the less well off have to put up with surviving or trying to “make it” there.

Even more ironic about this is that those who live farthest away pay more for transport. London, like NY is a financial center and like the nation it lives in has a long standing tradition of a borderline caste system that is not particularly well received by the lower classes (leading to things like the National Front).

This is not to say the U.S. has not had such issues which we are often in denial about, but NY has had a history of more diverse structure of its neighborhoods where there were some less well of folks living in Manhattan or close to it. Of course, the trend of living in the suburbs from the 1950’s on helped, but in earlier days the 1 fare system probably allowed for diverse neighborhoods since if you wanted to live farther in the city, it would only cost you more time…which may have been worth it for some groups.

However, this has reversed over the past decade or so where Manhattan and areas of BK and Queens that are closest to downtown/midtown have which used to house some lower and middle class are becoming almost exclusively for the most well off. I cannot see how congestion pricing as it was proposed does anything other than perpetuate such trends. Also notice WHO are those who tend to advocate most strongly for congestion pricing. They are almost always white, middle-upper-middle class liberal minded folks who tend to live in the most well off areas. Meanwhile, poor communities that have major problems with asthma, dumping, and other health disparity issues do not get front page headlines and are FAR more damaging to most of the population than issues with traffic.

Where is the understanding and empathy for those who are concerned about this? Bloomberg failed miserably in expressing this, and comes as no surprise given the way he has handled similar issues that communities who don’t agree with him are handled (i.e. the Olympic stadium and his move to extend/eliminate term limits). From he and other supporters of congestion pricing who seem to think it is now or never it seems the concerns of these communities are dismissed. Is not simply eliminating cars all together like tearing the foundation of a house out even when you know it’s not built well? Or tearing down buildings with asbestos because you want to get rid of it without thinking ahead? Or perhaps in the shortsighted tradition of elites deciding how the origional Penn Station was tore down in the name of “modernity?”

Why does congestion pricing need to be almost entirely punitive in nature? Why would it not it be better or at least acceptable to renovate the transport system gradually, finding ways to raise more funding to improve and increase service so those who live in areas that are not as well accessed by the frequent public transportation that most Manhattanites benefit from (ask anyone along the G train, JMZ, or not even near a good bus or subway, etc.)? Why not create or also include in the plan incentive based programs, like encouraging “green” car or some kind of smart car use by those who may benefit from a car with tax incentives, or lower congestion pricing for use of such vehicles? Sure, if you live in Manhattan and a few blocks walk from a subway that is always running it’s easy to tell everyone else that congestion pricing is good, or if you are a recent transplant to NY from far away that has no real ties or family in nearby communities where a car might provide some convenience.

Also, in the poorest parts of the United States people still own cars. You don’t necessarily have to be wealthy to own a car, and as I attempted to describe earlier, the convenience of owning one versus the cost of public transportation (which has risen at a rate in NYC over the past decade that has never been seen, as far as I am aware of) for some who may not even be well off or live in less ”

Again, I’m not entirely against the idea of congestion pricing, but am concerned that forcing its implementation in the current situation is not wise given the infrastructure.

Congestion Pricing does not hurt the poor. This is maybe one of the biggest most over-used myths about congestion pricing. it benefits them by providing better transit for a segment of the population least likely to own a car and drive it to work in Manhattan.

Today we pay for roads with our time instead of money and we all know that time is worth money. When one thinks about the nature of high-paying employment versus low-paying employment, one realizes that higher-paid employees generally have a greater degree of flexibility in their scheduling. Lower-wage employees are more likely to be fired for being late due to congestion, or at the least to have their wages docked.

Time is also much more valuable to the poor in general – 15 minutes late to pick-up the child from Day care results in a much bigger penalty for the single mother than for the working Lawyer.

There is also far too much Free parking in New York City – 60,000 meters in Manhattan is far too few. IB is correct that circling blocks for parking is responsible and has been well documented as responsible for excessive traffic in neighbourhoods such as Park Slope Brooklyn.

The problem with IBMs proposal for congestion pricing was that it was too complex and tried to use bridge-tolling technology for area-wide pricing. The alternate proposal, from Toronto’s Skymeter, would allow for anonymous, distance-based pricing with discreet billing and protection of location information (which is also kept separately from personal/driver information) should be reconsidered as it would actually reduce movements within Manhattan. Its simply not fair that someone who drives around the City all day long would be charged the same as someone who drives in and parks all day.

Ultimately, there will never be enough road space to accommodate all the cars that everyone wishes to drive. That means luring people out of their cars with attractive alternatives and also putting an actual price on road capacity, instead of the soviet/communist regime of line-ups that currently allocate this scarce resource.

My family was never well off, but my mother was a NYC public school teacher who taught pretty far out in Brooklyn, and at one point taught at Kingsborough Community College very far out in Brooklyn, where taking a having a car was far better than taking public tansportation. This also applied to myself when I was a teacher living in the Far end of the Upper East Side and taught in the Bronx. If you live in Manhattan and work in Manhattan it makes little sense, but if work is in an “outer-borough” with poor access to transportation, and better access to parking on weekdays, then having a car isn’t such a bad idea, if you have to move it every day to get to work.

However, when summer comes, for teachers, this gets complicated, where you will either have to get “lucky” and find a spot at the right time (can’t wait too late or you’re doomed) or get ready to have to move your car early the next day and then become part of what I see as a growing culture of “alternate side of the street musical chairs.” This happens with people who have cars in mostly residential neighborhoods, and can’t afford nor wish to pay the astronomical prices for private parking, scheduling their lives around moving their car so they won’t get ticketed for alternate side of the street regulations (2-3 times a week). This involves sometimes arriving at a “good spot” 1 hour early and sitting in the car, or in the outer boroughs double parking for the street cleaners and then moving the car back after you can’t get ticketed (all de facto allowed by the NY DOT).

The point here is that while cars do cause problems in the city, my issue is with the assumption that everyone who owns cars in Manhattan and NYC, in general, therefore must be quite well off. Cars driving around looking for parking, I believe, has been found to cause a pretty decent percentage of street traffic.

I’m not sure this could be mitigated by the idea that residents with cars are given some kind of voucher, or perhaps low-cost parking rate, and non-resident cars were either tolled heavily or not allowed to park on the street at all, but one idea that would be nice is to rid the alternate side of the street rules one of the two days a week it exists in most of Manhattan as has been done more and more in highly congested areas in Brooklyn (i.e. Park Slope).

I am a supporter of improving the environment in NYC and adding bike lanes (even though some that they have added, costing how much who knows – and it is more than just paiting a bike lane in, as it has involved a lot more construction — are barely used at all, like the one added on Hudson St. up 8th Ave.), but I was also against the congestion pricing plan Mayor Bloomberg had attempted to implement. It clearly benefited the more well off residents in Manhattan and elsewhere would could afford the high cost for driving into the borough, while other environmental issues pertaining to health disparities have not garnered nearly as much attention, public transportation has undergone price increases, service cuts, and been either at peak usage or over in some areas. The point is, forcing congestion pricing without the infrastructure to support such a plan is going to hurt the less well off far more than those with the money to pay for the inconvenience.

I am one who wishes the highways built under Robert Moses along prime water real estate were gone, but the fact is access to the rest of the nearby nation from NYC is pretty much terrible without a car, or expensive (i.e. the high speed rail). So, if a NYer wants to leave, taking a train or bus (even the cheap ones folks rave about) to Albany or even Boston for a weekend is more expensive and stress filled than if you drive. Jam packing folks in trains and buses can be very stressful, so the fact is service has to improve significantly to sustain such changes, none of which has been properly proposed or prepped to be implemented. I would love to see less cars and more biking, etc. but more needs to be done to prepare us for such a change.