Right.

And Plan B, now that CP has mobilized people, is to redistribute street space, since everyone pay equally but motor vehicles suck up more of it. (Could be part of Plan A, too).

The CP rationale is that street space is scarce and everyone has an equal right to it, so it needs to be rationed by price to limit congestion.

Without such a limit, the only constraint on congestion is congestion itself — people will drive until the traffic is so bad that some of them can’t stand it, so whoever is willing to waste the most time gets the street space.

That means that whenever an area is highly congested, it will remain highly congested no matter how great your efforts to accomodate traffic — and no matter how much you remove that accomodation.

Mannhattan is congested with signals set to maximize traffic flow, narrow sidewalks, and lots of lanes allocated to general traffic (legally or illegally) and parking. Manhattan will also be congested if sidewalks are widened, barriers are used to limit lanes to buses, and to bikes/skaters/segways, signals are set for 18 miles per hour, etc.

As a part time pedestrian and part time cyclist in Manhattan, I want my share of the street to equal my share of the population, or my share of the tax revenues used to maintain the street. And given all the square footage 100 percent allocated to motor vehicles (legal parking, limited access highways, the central lanes of major arterials), that will require a much bigger share of what is left, with or without CP.

CP is about allocating space among drivers, with a financial kick-back to the rest. Without it, allocating space between drivers and everyone else becomes an all-out battle.

“And Plan B, now that CP has mobilized people”
Well, there really is a Plan B, and I hope you’re right and the public gets behind it. From public documents and presentations, we have a pretty good idea of what DOT’s Plan B is. It includes:
> Real BRT in all five boroughs (Bus lane enforcement cams must get state legislative approval.)
> Curbside parking reform. Not clear how widespread, but looks likely that there will be higher meters in the CBD and probably elsewhere.
> High visibility ped improvements in places like Times and Herald Square and proliferation of plazas reclaiming excess street capacity.
> Continued rapid expansion of the on-street bike network and completion of key greenway links in every borough.
> More bike promotion with ciclovia type car-free events and ride promotions.
> Continued exapansion of ped improvements Safe Schools and Seniors programs.
> (Car-free parks. Not articulated, but I’m optimistic. It’s symbolically too potent.)
> More Health Dept and connection between tranport, land use and fighting obesity and inactivity.

Jan Gehl said it took 30 years of steady improvements to remake Copenhagen. NYC has had about 20 years of fits and starts, that probably add up to one to five years of Copenhagen effort.

(The on-street parkers admitted that they only used the car on weekends, but still valued the feeling of knowing they could drive anywhere they wanted whenever they wanted, even if they never really did so.)

Hence the need for widespread availability of hired-for-use cars in the no car lifestyle. My family feels freedom from out car too, but I, who have to park it and get it serviced feel like a slave.

Just tonight we chose a restaurant we could walk to and not one we would have to drive to because I was worried about finding a space good for alternative side tomorrow.

And just yesterday I got a parking ticket after my wife and I spent five minutes looking for a sign trying to figure out why the space was not legal. No matter how hard you try, you end up with tickets.

(You mean like ZipCar?)

Zip car, rent a car, etc.