Mike Pence was interviewed last Sunday and as usual, he crashed and burned when asked the simplest questions. He babbled about American’s right to protest peacefully and of course, Jonathan Karl pointed out that Trump’s last reaction to a protest lead to violence. Trump walked away when it appeared his thugs had lost, and now he might be indicted on felony charges.
Pence just stumbles along with his semi-religious baloney, all the rhetoric but no moral fortitude. He babbles along about being proud of the Trump administration. What the hell is there to be proud of? The Trump/Pence administration destroyed our Southern border, screwed the poor and middle class in order to add to the riches of the billionaire class, built a Supreme Court that stole a woman’s right to control her own body and failed miserably in a whole raft of other areas. Still, he is seriously considering a run for the White House. Quelle disaster.
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Elizabeth Warren spoke this week about the need to reinvigorate the banking regulations that had been weakened during the Trump administration which, like the weakened railroad regulations, have led to disaster.
The reality of all this is that if you want to have your world work, at least a little, you need laws and regulations on practically everything. No one loves this idea, but it’s just a fact of life. This was dramatically proven during the Trump administration when we had no laws in place to control the crook in the White House. We had always assumed that the guy we elected President would be a quality human being. Yet we elected Nixon and Trump who were basically crooks and a Bush who was dumb as a post and easily controlled by Dick Cheney who had a whole list of his own agendas, all of which led to war somewhere.
The bottom line is that people are basically dishonest and if you give them a chance to advance themselves, whether it be honestly or dishonestly they will take the money and run. This is true of Presidents, bankers, and railroad CEO’s, just like everybody else. We stopped regulating the railroad guys and they cheated on safety. We stopped regulating the bankers and they cheated on caution. But they aren’t the only ones. We can say the same thing about mine operators, pipeline owners, airlines, auto manufacturers and almost everyone in almost every line of work or manufacturing. Yes, OSHA is a pain in the ass but that’s because the people OSHA regulates have proven over the years that they are greedy pigs who can’t be trusted to look after the health and safety of their own workers, let alone all the others touched by their endeavors.
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The biggest story out of New York City, after Donald Trump’s potential arrest this week , is the noise being made about Congestion Pricing. For those of you who don’t pay much attention to what goes on in the Big Apple, Congestion Pricing is a flawed plan by the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) to charge a fee of up to $26 a day, for drivers to go into the heavily congested midtown section of Manhattan.
Everyone who lives in Manhattan, or any of the territory that surrounds it for about a fifty-mile radius knows that the MTA is the most non-functional agency ever created in the Eastern United States, with the possible exception of the NYC DOT.
In any functional society, Congestion Pricing would have been dead on suggestion. Its two goals work in direct opposition to each other and therefore it is destined, like most MTA proposals, to dismal failure. So, what are the two goals? The first is to lessen the city’s strangling traffic problem. The second is to make money to help support a failing MTA. But the two goals cancel each other out. If the program works financially and provides big bucks to rescue the MTA it will mean that a lot of people are still driving their cars into midtown so there is still a great deal of traffic. If the plan actually keeps people from driving into midtown there will be very little money made by it and the MTA will be in deep doodoo.
The main goal of the plan, cutting traffic in Manhattan, is laudable and necessary, and it might even have a slight chance of being solved if we got rid of all the politicians.
Figuring solutions to cutting traffic anywhere should be fairly simple because it is primarily a mathematical problem. You have so many square feet of roadway and so many square feet of cars. You can’t put eleven square feet of cars into ten square feet of roadway. It seems very simple and easy to understand, but that’s where politicians come in. They have constituents who often want stuff that takes up some of the square feet of roadway and that really screws the pooch.
Here in Manhattan, we are trying to reduce traffic so the first thing the politicians do is to add bike lanes, restful little parks, and dining sheds to the already inadequate square feet of roadway available to the cars that already don’t have enough space for easy transit. Now they are contemplating making the “temporary” dining sheds permanent, even while they are contemplating Congestion Pricing.
And as a pretty significant sidelight to all this, the states of NY and NJ along with the federal government are pushing the biggest transportation infrastructure project ever in the form of the new rail and car tunnels that will run from Jersey into the city, making it possible for far more people to drive into the already crowded streets of Manhattan.
When that finally happens, if it finally happens, there will be permanent gridlock.
But there is a solution. It will take years and be incredibly expensive, but it will work. In fact, it already has worked in other cities. Oh, yeah, it will also create a lot of unhappy drivers, bikers, and restaurant owners.
The first part of the solution will be to create parking outside of Manhattan. That will mean huge facilities in Bergan and Hudson counties in NJ along with Westchester, Staten Island and Long Island. The best way to do this is to put them underground and add shopping or entertainment facilities on top of them to help allay the costs of construction and maintenance. The parking rates for these facilities must be significantly lower than the bridge fees into Manhattan, and the facilities must be served by convenient public transportation that runs from inside the facility to central locations around the city.
The entirety of the construction, but especially the amenities serving the parking customers must be kept outside the clutches of the real estate industry. The commercial and entertainment facilities should be built to serve the parking customers and only secondarily to create rents as a real estate investment. Everything must be aimed at making these facilities attractive, convenient, and reasonably priced to the commuter. Parking in one of them, including the subsequent ride into the city must be easy and affordable. That’s what will make the second part of the plan work.
The second part of the plan involves the elimination of free parking in Manhattan. This is where the drivers will howl. There are cities in this country that have been doing this for a long time. Boston has been doing it for fifty years.
First, all parking on avenues and crosstown arteries will be eliminated entirely except for truck deliveries to stores. Second, all parking on side streets will be restricted to permit parking for cars registered in that precinct. Permit parking will be paid for on a monthly or yearly basis. All cars without permits must park off street. This will not be practical unless all future construction requires the inclusion of underground parking facilities for more cars than apartments in the building.
Yes, it’s a tough proposition but we have been dicking around with unsuccessful solutions to our traffic problems for decades and nothing has worked. Nothing that we have on the board now, certainly not Congestion Pricing has any chance of success. This plan will work. It will take years, cost a fortune, and piss a lot of people off, but it will work. This was just a broad outline. There are thousands of details that must be worked out, but it will work.