Charles Komanoff

Evidence keeps mounting that congestion pricing can catalyze major reductions in traffic crashes. A year ago I reported on research that vehicle crashes in central London fell as much as 40 percent since the 2003 startup of London’s congestion charge. The same researchers are now expressing the safety dividend in terms of falling per-mile crash rates, and the figures are even more impressive.

Mayor de Blasio’s newest rationale for his deal to shutter the horse-carriage stables in the West 50s is that it will alleviate traffic congestion in Midtown. At an MLK Day event yesterday in Brooklyn, the mayor told reporters:

What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland is what must be said about City Hall’s new traffic study: There’s no there there.

Rumors are swirling that the long-awaited answer to the key question vexing the MTA -- how the state’s $8.3 billion share of the unfunded portion of the MTA capital plan will be paid for -- is that dreaded four-letter word: D-E-B-T.

Long-term climate prospects brightened somewhat in 2015. Pope Francis put climate care on the moral and political agenda. President Obama rejected the Keystone XL dirty-oil pipeline. Denialist heads of state were routed in Canada and Australia, and their brethren in the U.S. faced growing ridicule. To cap it off, nearly 200 nations signed the UN Paris accord, committing to cutting emissions. Meanwhile, U.S. coal use took another double-digit plunge. And U.S. electricity generation from zero-carbon photovoltaic solar cells continued to soar and has now grown 20-fold in just five years.

Two of the region's papers laid out their Albany 2016 agendas in New Year’s weekend editorials. Both led with ethics reform, but the similarities ended there. One paper boldly called on the legislature to "adopt some version of the innovative Move NY tolling-and-congestion pricing plan." The other was silent on transit and traffic, even as it spurred Gov. Andrew Cuomo to "lead on climate change.”

"Our streetwise Dionysian godhead," is how one veteran of the 1987 Midtown bike ban protests described Stephen Athineos, who died yesterday of a heart attack in Inwood, where he lived.

Talk about running in place: At current growth rates in subway ridership, the service increases that NYC Transit is promising to roll out next June will probably be used up by April.

Maybe it’s the sleekness. Or the digital disruptiveness. Or something slipped in the water bottle on your seat. Whatever it is, some data mavens are contorting into pretzels to deny the obvious -- that Uber is contributing to the slowdown in Manhattan traffic.