This past Thursday, an article in The New York Times posed an interesting question: is the rising cost of gas doing for traffic what Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan was supposed to do: reducing the number of cars on the city’s streets and increasing the use of mass transit.
Here’s the takeaway from Sam Schwartz, also known as “Gridlock Sam” in the pages of the New York Daily News and the head honcho of a 60-person, eponymous “multi-disciplinary consulting firm specializing in traffic and transportation engineering:”
“We’re at the point where people really are changing habits,” said Sam Schwartz, a transportation consultant. He said that if gas prices stayed high, the result could be close to the goal set by Mr. Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, which, if it had been approved, was expected to reduce traffic in much of Manhattan by 6.3 percent.
“If we start eclipsing $5 a gallon, which we might over the summer, I think we might get very close,” Mr. Schwartz said.
The City’s Department of Transportation isn’t so sure:
“The magnitude here is by no means comparable to the effect that congestion pricing would have in reducing traffic,” said Bruce Schaller, deputy transportation commissioner for planning and sustainability.
“What congestion pricing does,” he added, “is it focuses traffic reduction on the most congested places and times, whereas gasoline prices spread the impact out.”
The bottom line though, as the article points out, is that when driving gets more expensive — whatever the reason — drivers tend to give up their cars and use mass transit.
