Does Congestion Pricing Save Lives?

Here in the US, there's one very easy way for a politician to ensure that he or she will not be elected:  Proposing a tax increase.

Forget that.  If it even sounds like a tax increase--or the government, in any way, shape or form taking more money--it will destroy the aspirations of any candidate.

That is one of the reasons why no New York City mayoral candidate has ever proposed it.  Michael Bloomberg, in the middle of his second term as Hizzoner, made it part of his long-term sustainability program for the Big Apple.  Then-City Council Speaker Christine Quinn favored it.  So did the conservative Republican leader of the New York State Senate, Joseph Bruno.  And then-Governor Eliot Spitzer liked the idea, too.

The somewhat-modified plan was approved, 30 votes to 20, by the New York City Council on 31 March 2008.  To qualify for Federal funds to research and implement the plan, the State Assembly had to vote for it  by 7 April.  That day, after a closed-door meeting, the Assembly's Democratic Council decided not to vote on the proposal, citing "overwhelming opposition", in the words of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Within three months, the price of gasoline would spike to $4.00 a gallon. (I know that for you Europeans, that is cheap. But I can recall my father filling up the gas tank of the family station wagon for $5.00 when I was in my early teens!)  That, ironically, would cause a five percent decrease in automobile trips into Manhattan below 60th Street, the area that would have been affected by a congestion-pricing plan.

I think it was Woody Allen who said, "Life is hard.  But what's the alternative?"  Something like that might be said about congestion pricing.  Yes, it would cost money and it might mean giving up something else.  But if it saves lives--forget "lives" plural, let's talk about just one, perhaps your own--wouldn't it be better than the alternative?

Turns out, a claim that congestion pricing could save lives is not hyperbole.  There's evidence to support it, courtesy of in Colin Green and his fellow researchers.

Professor Green is a health economist at the University of Exeter Medical School.   This month, he and his colleagues will present a study at the Royal Economic Society's annual conference in which they show that in the congestion zone, there has been, not only a dramatic decrease in the number of accidents, but also an even more dramatic drop in the accident rate, i.e., the number of accidents per vehicle mile driven.  

That was a significant finding because a decline in the number of accidents could be attributed to other factors--or could be seen as a statistical aberration--more easily than such a shrinkage in the rate per mile.

Moreover, Dr. Green and his cohort found that fewer accidents were occurring in the rest of London, outside the congestion zone.  What that suggests is that one of the objectives of congestion pricing is being achieved:  People's behavior is changing.  More are riding bikes and walking; fewer are driving.  And the revenue collected from congesting pricing is used to improve mass transit and cycling infrastructure, which causes more people to see them as realistic alternatives to their (usually short) driving trips.

Milan, Singapore and Stockholm all have plans similar to London's in place.  As far as I know, no one has studied them in the way Dr. Green has examined London's plan.  But I would suspect that similar, if less dramatic, results have been achieved.  Whatever the results, if lives are saved, I think it's worth whatever would be charged to drive and park in the center of the city.

 

A History of British Cycling--Infographic

If it has anything to do with England or History, I'll probably be interested.


If it has to do with England, History and cycling, well, I'm there!

And there I went when someone sent me this link, from Total Women's Cycling, with an infographic about the history of British cycling. 

In it, I found some things I'd never known before.  For example, from 1890 until the 1950's, the National Cyclists' Union banned racing on open roads.  And the Tour de France was first televised in the UK in 1980.

The infographic also mentions a cyclist whom I regard as one of the greatest of all time, perhaps the greatest besides Eddy Mercx:  Beryl Burton.  She won several road and pursuit titles and broke records previously held by men.  It might be said that she dominated the sport in a way that Jeanne Longo loomed over the rest of the female peloton two decades later or Missy Giove ruled the then-nascent sport of downhill mountain bike racing a few years later.

And the graphic ends with some of Britain's favorite bike rides.  Enjoy!

Riding Again: Fino Alla Prossima...

The sun shone almost all day today.  People called in to report UFO sightings.

OK, I'm exaggerating just a little.  But it's been weeks, months even, since I've seen as much sun as we've seen today.  So, of course, I took a ride.

Oh, joy!  I get to ride two days in a row and neither of those rides are commutes or errands.  I'll admit, today's ride wasn't the toughest I've ever done.  But my lack of riding this winter showed on the hills in the north Bronx and Westchester County.  

Much of the snow has melted, but I still had to ride over patches of slush mixed with road salt, mud, gravel and the detritus of this season.Both Vera and Helene, my Mercian mixtes, have fenders.  But I've put new chains on both of them and didn't want to clean up their drivetrains all over again.   

Of course, I could blame the LeTour for the added effort I had to expend.  However, the truth of the matter is that I just need to ride more.  The cold is one thing.  But I just will not ride when there's a lot of ice on the streets, as there has been for the past few weeks.  It's one thing to slip and fall into a snowbank on the side of a trial; it's something else to slide and tumble in traffic.

Anyway, it felt so good to be riding again, just for the sake of riding, that I actually started to weep as I pedaled along a path that followed the ever-so-gentle curves--and jagged rocks--of the Bronx River from the Bronx into Westchester County.  Make what you will of that; it felt good, almost as good as the riding itself!

Along the way back, I saw this:

I'm always fascinated to see old signs painted on the sides of buildings. Were the folks who commissioned them seeking immortality?  Of course, I spent the rest of the ride wondering about "Fino, the fighting Congressman"--especially since "Fino" means "till" ("fino a" means "until")  in Italian.

Turns out, he had a really interesting career.  He represented his district for eight terms in the US Congress during the 1950's and 1960's.  Although he was a conservative Republican who introduced legislation to outlaw the Communist Party, he also supported Medicare (which began during his time in Congress), increases in Social Security benefits and financing for mass transit.  But perhaps his most novel idea of all was one he proposed in 1964:  a national lottery to raise revenue for hospitals.  When he proposed it, New Hampshire had just become the first state to authorize a lottery, something no state had during the previous seven decades.

Now that I've read about him, I think much of Fino's politics had at least a touch of class resentment:  At the time, his district consisted mainly of working-class Italian and Irish homeowners who, like him, didn't like the elitism they percieved in politicians like John Lindsay, who served as New York City's mayor during the last two terms Fino spent in Congress.  

What would he have made of someone like me riding a bike through his neighborhood on a day like today?

Seeing Old And New Friends

For the first time since the beginning of the year, I rode to Rockaway Beach.  Although the temperature flirted with 5C (40F), there was still a lot of snow and ice, particularly in the areas between the parked cars and traffic--i.e., where you end up riding on a lot of streets.

I was pretty whupped when I got to the beach. I was chiding myself for being out-of-shape when one of the locals assured me that it's OK, she's tired, too.

Then I remembered that I'd been pedaling into 25-35KPH winds just about all the way there.  My snowy friend assured me that flapping her wings in such conditions is work and she gets tired, too.

I got to Rockaway Beach in time for their St. Patrick's parade.  It seems that all through March, there are parades (here in New York, anyway) for that Englishman who was kidnapped by Irish raiders and sold into slavery.  According to legend, a vision of an angel inspired him to escape and go to the continent to become a monk.  Then he returned to the Emerald Isle and, during the next thirty years of his life, covered it with churches and monasteries.  

So they're celebrating an Englishman who colonized their island?  Of course, the difference between Patrick and the later British conquerors is that he accomplished his dominion through ecclesiastical means, in contrast to the military and economic stranglehold the Crown would later have.

Rockaway Beach has long been a predominantly Irish-American community, and it seemed as if every single resident was on the streets.  A few even sauntered and shuffled on the sand by the ocean.  Most of them were too drunk--or, at least, had imbibed enough Guinness Stout not to care about history, the weather or much of anything else.

Heck, this guy didn't even care that he was riding an orange bike:

Don't get me wrong:  I love orange bikes.  I've had a few in my time.  But I have to wonder whether orange is the right color for St. Paddy's Day.

A Monument To This Season

With all of the snow and ice we've had this winter, it seems as if some bikes will be frozen in place forever, for some future archaeologist (extraterretrial, perhaps?) to find like one of those ants they sometimes find encased in amber.

The ones that aren't fully or partially buried seem like public statues. Snow layers them in much the same way that it drapes the outstretched arms and wings, and the impassive faces, of those figures of metal and stone.

(I must admit that, during the past few weeks, my bikes haven't moved much more than the ones I've been describing. Or so it seems.)

Last night, I saw an example of a velocipedic monument to this season on Manhattan's West 57th Street, just east of Columbus Circle: