Air Quality

Supporters of congestion pricing rallied yesterday in Times Square, urging state lawmakers to act by July 16 on Mayor Bloomberg's initiative or risk losing $500 million in federal funds. "The time is now," said the mayor, according to the New York Post. "We cannot walk away from this opportunity." 

Back in April, Marcelo Ebrad, the mayor of Mexico City, announced he wanted those who worked in his administration to ride bicycles to work one day a month (at right, Ebrard, center, kicks off the program). Many were shocked at the idea, or simply laughed it off. But this excellent article in the San Diego Union details how the mayor's decree to his employees has meshed with several other initiatives to raise the profile of bicycling as a legitimate form of transportation in the traffic-clogged city:

Finally, we get to see just how much former executive director Jon Orcutt was tamping down the high-powered talent at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The latest issue of Mobilizing the Region is jam-packed with good articles. Here are some highlights (and, yes, I'm kidding about Orcutt but serious about this week's MTR being really good):

The Sierra Club points out that in India, there are currently about 7 cars per 1,000 persons (as compared to nearly 500 per 1,000 in the US). With the advent of the $3,000 car, that is surely about to change. The Independent's Andrew Buncombe reports:

 

Stockholm has just completed its congestion pricing trial. Thanks to broad public support, parliament voted to make the fee permanent. Will New York be in the same position years from now? The Local (Sweden) reports:

When George Monbiot, the popular columnist for the UK's Guardian newspaper, gets interested in something, he digs and digs until he's found what he's satisfied is the truth. Monbiot is interested in global warming, and presents in Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (U.S. Edition: South End Press, May 2007) a heavily footnoted 215-page brisk and compelling case for why we should all be very worried. This is probably the clearest and broadest book yet published about global warming, with doses of skepticism, inquisitiveness, sobriety and optimism. Every Streetsblog reader should read it. More important, every Streetsblog reader should get it into the hands of five Streetsblog non-readers and ask each of them to do the same.

At a press conference today, a group of Bronx and northern Manhattan elected officials have signed on in support of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing effort. They are:

Given some of the unfathomable declarations floated in the name of opposition to congestion pricing ("We have to do something about the pedestrians"), it's hard not to wonder what goes on in the minds of those who so passionately reject any perceived infringement upon their "right" to clog the streets and poison the air for "free."