Car Culture

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." 

The Atlantic Monthly's Matthew Yglesias argues that high-density living is a key strategy to fight climate change. Yglesias takes issue with fellow Atlantic Online blogger Ross Douthat and author Joel Kotkin, who defend suburban sprawl -- what James Kunstler has famously called "the most destructive development pattern the world has ever seen, and perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known." Reporting on a recent talk by Kotkin, Douthat writes:

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:

The Village Voice took a trip down lower Broadway earlier this week to see how smoothly the new bus lanes were flowing. The answer? Despite reports of stepped-up enforcement, change is not coming quickly to the traffic culture of Lower Manhattan -- as you can see from the picture at right, which shows a bus trying to lay claim to a spot in the "buses-only" lane.

Over on the New York Times's City Room blog, Sewell Chan reports on opposition to the July 8 closing of the West 72nd St. exit ramp from the West Side Highway, a move that has been fought in court for years by neighborhood activists. The off-ramp is being demolished at the request of the Extell Development Company, which is constructing the massive Riverside South residential complex, to enable the extension of Riverside Boulevard, the complex's main street. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer has tried to make the case that poses a security risk, issuing a statement that said, in part:

New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis points out that the good guys in Transformers are mostly fashioned after GM trucks and SUVs. In her review, Dargis calls the film "part car commercial and part military recruitment ad." She also notes that while the Transformers originated as a toy in Japan, curiously none of these robots turns into a Toyota:

This is the third essay from Alex Marshall, who has written extensively on transportation issues as a journalist and author. He is a senior fellow at the Regional Plan Association, where he edits the bi-weekly Spotlight on the Region newsletter.

An article in Sunday's New York Times discussed the decline of stickball and other games on city streets:

Congestion in Jackson Heights: The DOT needs some new ideas