Congestion pricing is also dead on the Westpark Tollway, Harris County (Houston) TX.

So people are just going to sit on the tollway and be congested together, I suppose.

Whatever they prefer. Vox populi.

Sincerely,
Peter Wang, PG
Texas Registered Professional Geophysicist

Hello Glenn,

I am sorry to read that it is finally dead for this legislative session. Car dealers, road repair companies, big oil, etc, probably had more money for effective lobbying than bicycle shops and a small % of concerned citizens. Too bad, I was hoping that NY could be an early-adopter; a urban model for the rest of the country.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

I will admit that I was ambivalent on this one. It seemed so "New York".
And of course my personal experience caused me to associate with the old "pedestrian mall" concept that was such a rage in the 1970's, and most of which were glaring failures. I think of the 4th street mall in Louisville KY, in which the 4th street corridor was blocked off at each end to block access by automobiles. A covered glass shopping mall was built over the street and the downtown convention center was attached to the whole mess. The idea was to reduce congestion.

It did. The stores in the mall could never get traction, given that all of thier customers had to either walk, bike or take a bus to them. Instead, the stores moved out to the East End suburbs where they could survive. The idea of driving to work from out in the suburbs or out of town, then having to walk to go shopping with your car sitting downtown never appealed to the public, especially in driving rain or winter ice.

The convention center was a nightmare, and never gained conventions, as they went to the fair and exposition center out beside the airport....it made sense really, rather than take a bus to the convention center, instead to take a much shorter shuttle to the fairgrounds.

A few years ago, the whole thing was finally abandoned as the utopian catastrophe it had been, and 4th street was reopened to traffic. I am sure many folks in New York were familiar with these type of foul ups in cities they had lived in, and rightly or wrongly, made the same associations by memory that I did. The whole proposal did it's job however, in that it earned Mayor Bloomberg his "green" stripes, as he prepared to abandon his party affiliation and go independent, and now aim for bigger things.

It always astounds me the pure staying power of the automobile. If any city was ever misbegotten to be a "car town" New York would have to be it, where the effort involved to even attempt to own and operate a car has to be almost titanic, and where alternatives are at least somewhat available. And yet the car survives and even thrives.

Does that give you an idea of the police state type methods that will be required to force people away from thier cars in the rest of the country?

(edited for grammer and spelling)
Roger Conner Jr.
Remember, we are only one cubic mile from freedom

Over here, in the UK, we have had London's "Congestion Charging" for some time. A huge proportion of the revenue skimmed off the drivers is swallowed up by the actual system itself!

We have an amazing propensity to investing in crap and hugely expensive systems (e.g. Passport Office, NHS Patient Record, Nimrod, Scottish Parliament etc.)

I understand that the authorities here are aiming to have a more widespread road-pricing system sometime in the future - based on expensive gadgets in each car plus more expensive gadgets along the roads.

I have an alternative that may be seen at TripTax.com

Unfortunately, I have little time, or incentive, to promote this much simpler alternative approach. However, I just thought that you might be interested.