Well, Streetsblog has finally given up on congestion pricing:
The reason? Apparently nobody wants it:
This is confusing, because until recently Streetblog was saying everybody wants it:
Not like any of this matters anyway. They’ll just figure out a new tax, and unlike congestion pricing it’ll probably be one you can’t choose to avoid:
Though according to the governor there’d be no avoiding congestion pricing either since it would cause the cost of pizza slices to go up:
So I guess you could say whether you drive or not the cost of congestion pricing would be…baked into everything you buy.
But congestion pricing or no congestion pricing, things in New York City are expensive–including e-bike trips, and this David Zipper guy is still whining about it:
I don’t know why suddenly people feel like a trip on a bicycle with a motor should cost the same as a subway or bus ride, though I would fully support making all regular Citi Bike trips free and increasing the cost of the e-bike trips even more to make up for it. Or, better yet, since lots of e-Citi Bike trips would probably have been bus or subway trips, why not make up for the loss of congestion pricing with a tax on those trips? Congestion pricing was supposed to have generated $1 billion annually, Citi Bike sees something like 30 million trips per year as of 2022, and as of the end of 2023 something like 46% of those trips were on e-bikes. So if we tacked a mandatory MTA surcharge onto each electrified Citi Bike trip, it would only cost the e-Citi Bike user…
…$72.46 per trip to offset the congestion pricing pause.
Seems doable to me.
Meanwhile, Paris has installed something like a billion miles of bike lanes for the Olympics:
And has even legalized “salmoning,” my one enduring contribution to the English language:
Plus they even get to keep their mountain biking venue:
The Games will further strengthen Elancourt Hill’s leisure dimension. Open to everyone, it will become a major destination for mountain bike enthusiasts, whatever their skill level, as well as fans of walking and jogging. The hill will also become an area for family walks in a safe, pollution-free environment surrounded by regenerated nature.
All while banning shared scooters:
Much to the dismay of this lunatic:
Scooters are more fun than bikes? That’s just deranged.
As for New York, we remain a half-assed bike city at best, and instead of banning shared scooters we just stick ’em in the Bronx:
This is because people love throwing e-scooters into rivers, and the Bronx is the only borough in all of New York City with an actual fresh water river.
Speaking of the Olympics, the YouTubes won’t let me embed the video, but Australia beat the UK in the team pursuit when a rider slipped off his saddle in the final lap:
I used to laugh at the old “no slip system,” but the Brits were just a few stitches away from a gold medal:
[From here.]
But the biggest news from the Olympics is the retirement of Phil Liggett:
Mechanical drivetrains, rim brakes, cycling caps, Phil Liggett–all of these things are disappearing for good. It really does feel like the end of an era…
Hopefully he gets some good miles in.