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If the House GOP really cared about local control of transportation funds, they could draft a bill that distributes federal funding to cities and towns. The problem for John Boehner and the oil companies who back this bill is that cities and towns spend transportation dollars on things like transit, biking, and walking.

Please work this angle, not the one that sounds like us asking for charity from motorists. That wonderful system of diverting a piddling of gas taxes to transit was set up by Reagan (as we are now reminded by transit advocates trying to perform some Republican Voodoo) to make metropolitan regions look like beggars. Never mind that we pay far more federal taxes overall than we get back in any form, this clever shell game successfully convinces the sprawlists that budgetary up is down.

Battles to receive any federal funding are going to be uphill for the foreseeable future. We can do best in this environment by beating back boondoggles like the Tappan Zee and its cousins around the country. As federal highway spending is reduced, local responsibility necessarily fills the void. New Yorkers will not tolerate silly preferences (such as Cuomo’s) for sprawl over subways when it becomes a question of noticeable differences in our state income tax.

Including public opinion, it appears. According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, a majority of city voters disagree with Quinn and the council that city sanitation stickers are “unnecessarily punitive.” The poll found that 60 percent of voters, including 57 percent who park on the street, support the use of the stickers.

It’s amazing how reliably New York motorists support harsh penalties for auto-rated nuisances, in the abstract. In the congestion pricing debates, all manner of draconian penalties for double parking were bandied about as alternatives that wouldn’t punish the good working people of New York who never double park. We didn’t get to find out if those penalties would have provided some minor gain in efficiency because of course they were dropped the moment that congestion pricing was pushed back. If they were passed, they would surely have been enforced as evenly and thoroughly as the laws against car alarms, horn honking except in case of danger, and blocking bicycle lanes.

The fact that New Yorkers support harsh penalties for acts we often commit is a mix of self-delusion, corrupt privilege (see: ticket fixing scandal), and also a dash of tough New Yawk City bullshit. Look at how we tolerate laws against drinking on stoops and in parks, even as we drink on stoops and in parks, and if we are ever accosted by police for it we will try to get out of the ticket with great passion, but if we fail we will just chuckle and pay the fine. That’s just the way of the world! (Except in most of the world.)

Recognizing this proud civic dysfunction, the best a transportation advocate can do is use it thoughtfully even as we argue for less-insane ways of mitigating simple problems like over-consumption of finite Manhattan street space, such as charging a price for using it. But yeah, bring on the jail time for blocking the box, etc!

Quinn will always fail in her quixotic attempt to play a Real Motorist, because in her circle of elite privilege she isn’t even aware that New York’s commoner oil-addicts have become experts at manipulating the parking kabuki. Lowering the stakes of a misstep removes an advantage they hold dearly over the bumpkins driving in from Pennsylvania.

Similarly, many community members complained that the traffic enforcement agents stationed at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge wave through traffic without the slightest regard for pedestrians or walk lights. When the agents are stationed there, said Crane, “there effectively is zero pedestrian crossing time.”

And as we all know, this is what “TEAs” are “told to do”. But by whom? We have a police force simply to enforce the law, and there’s no law that says to prioritize motorists at downtown intersections. We have a city DOT to manage traffic, but they do not seem to be in charge of these malignant TEAs.

Who is directing TEAs to rob pedestrians of our crossing time, and how do they have the authority to dictate city traffic policy with such lethal ineptitude?

Half of all pedestrians hit on Delancey Street are struck while they have the walk signal, according to Benson.

Yet no where near this proportion of incidents leads to a criminal trial, where facts can be determined fairly. Is it not even potentially a crime in this city to drive vehicles over people following walk signals?

Parisian cyclists have won the right to go through red lights following a fierce debate over their claim that the move would reduce the risk of road accidents.

A three-year campaign by cyclists’ associations — which say it is idiotic for them to stop at traffic lights — bore fruit when the Government published a decree authorising councils to change the rules.

If only our leading New York advocacy groups were similarly in touch with the murky reality of cycling in city streets. Nothing is black or white, certainly not whether it is always wrong or dangerous to cross against a light as a pedestrian, or a cyclist. As everyone who walks knows, half the time when you disregard signals it is to avoid conflicts with impatient motorists. You see that the street is blissfully, momentarily clear and you cross it—why should you not?

Our traffic laws are a central component of a system that kills hundreds of New Yorkers a year, while other cities enjoy far lower fatality rates. People who think that our laws are beyond criticism, that questioning current law is anything other than healthy democratic engagement—they need get their heads checked. Perhaps their crash helmets are on too tight.

One reporter assured readers that biking doesn’t lead to excessive sweatiness, another found that her nighttime ride on a busy road wasn’t as perilous as expected, and a number of them found that walking to the station made them see their neighborhoods with fresh eyes.

The only time I sweat because of cycling is when I get all hot and bothered and from being asked dumbass questions about it. Including whether I arrive at work drenched in sweat from a casual 25 minute ride. I arrive in the same condition as my coworkers who have traveled by train, foot, or cycling. We all experience the weather—and it happens to be winter out there at the moment. That this preoccupation with sweat continues year round shows just how disconnected some people are from the world outside their houses and cars. They live in a climate controlled bubble.

But yes it is nice some reporters at a Connecticut paper have bravely tried living for one day without a personal automobile, just as the majority of earthlings do every single day. But be careful: it’s addictive!

The question that needs to be asked in urban settings is not whether you ever want to sit in congestion again. Who does? The question is whether you want to eliminate congestion on your Main Street 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year — knowing that the consequence would be a community with decimated economic and social value, increased reliance on car use, increased crashes, and, ultimately, more congestion.