I don't think there really is much of a disconnect in NYC.  NYC is not like most places.  It has an excellent public transportation system.

The disconnect is with people who don't live in the city.

I worked for the NYSDOT in NYC several years ago.  Some in the community were calling for expanding "the world's longest parking lot" (AKA the Long Island Expressway).  We dutifully drew up rough plans for making the LIE a double-decker highway, thus doubling the capacity, but we all knew it wouldn't happen.  Not only would it be insanely expensive, but it wouldn't do any good.  It would just encourage people who were carpooling, taking the bus, or taking the LIRR to drive in their own vehicles.  Call it a corollary of Parkinson's Law: traffic increases to fill the capacity of any highway you build.  

At the same time, a perfectly good ramp was being torn down and replaced upstate, in the Albany area.  Why?  There was a 10-minute wait during morning rush hour.  New Yorkers considered it hilarious that 10 minutes was considered a long wait, and ridiculous that ramp is almost-new condition was being torn down.  

"If that logic is true, why wouldn't closing roads and narrowing roads will result in fewer cars over time?"

It is true and results in less cars on the roads.  In many areas in Europe, the base infrastructure is hundreds of years old and some areas simply will not even handle 2 lanes of traffic.  A lot of times, one car is a squeeze.  Many city centers, especially those within the old city walls that have narrow streets anyway, but once did allowed automobile traffic, are now found completely closed to traffic.  Strangely enough, modern closures to traffic were initially resisted by the store and business owners in the area, but many have found their businesses revitalized when cars are denied access.  The areas where cars are newly prohibited spring immediate life as many people gladly abandon their cars, leaving them parked in garages or on the street, outside the old walls to spend a nice afternoon away from the noise, pollution and dangers of crossing the narrow streets with little cars zooming all around.  Sidewalk cafes  quickly take up the vacant space and become an enjoyable place to spend the afternoon.

Some of the other busy but smaller capacity highways between closely tied cities have begun to plan on reducing the capacity of the highways to force the motorists up to the toll highways that bypass the local cities completely.  Traffic lights are taken down and replaced with round-abouts and the roads are constricted in the areas entering the rounda-bouts.  A two lane street will become a 1-way street and, just before the round-about entry, one lane will be eliminated.  The added benefit is that the vacant lane is then available for parallel parking, something sorely needed in most European commercial areas.  A 4 lane/2 way street will be reduced to 2 lanes, with parallel parking on each side.  At first its a little difficult to get used to the changes, but once one discovers the new routes and parking areas and the new spaces that have opened up, you realize that it was a change for the better.

The other alternative is the "conjestion charge" which I will let our GB friends tell you more about.  I think that, if I'm not mistaken, the daily charge for entering London centre during business hours is about 8 £, or about
$15.00.  From what I can tell, it does seem to keep the traffic down to minimum levels there.  Lots of people walking now.  Unfortunately, the weather is absolute crap most of the time.

I remember hearing a talk in grad school from some researchers from another department looking at automated vehicle / highway systems.  They described a future where cars would communicate with each other, brake together, accelerate together, etc.  The goal was to have "platoons" of cars rolling down the interstate at 90 mph with only three feet of space between bumpers, multiplying road capacity by six (or so they claimed; actual Atlanta traffic is already close to this without the automation):^/  Being the environmental engineering department, we tore into them:  What do you do with six times as many cars pouring into the city center when they get off the automated highway?  What kind of air pollution increase will you get from the additional cars traveling faster and getting lower mpg due to the speed (note that Atlanta already had air pollution problems due to vehicles)?  Assuming you could get the software to work perfectly, what about the safety risk posed by mechanical failures at this speed and spacing?

Anyway, the funny thing was the researchers' reaction.  They really seemed surprised that anyone would question the self-evident wisdom of their plan, or that anyone would think that more cars on the highway was a bad thing.

I live in Jersey City and walk in Manhattan a great deal, all over. I very, very often am making better time than the people I see in cars. Walking in Manhattan is great fun, but the sidewalks too are crowded. Reclaiming some, nay, a lot of the streets for pedestrian (and bicycle) use would be a tremendous improvement.

Many if not most people in Manhattan are walkers to one extent or another. But usually people from elsewhere are not. I see this whenever I leave the NY area. Two blocks -- we're driving? And when surbanite friends come in: ten blocks! -- we're walking?

Some also seem to be afraid of the subways. So it does seem to me that there is a gap between the people who live in or around Manhattan, or work there, or whatever, and those who are there for other reasons.

All the great things about Manhattan become greater if more streets are made available for walking, and freed up for above ground alternatives to the subway. I never take the subway unless I'm going at least 30 blocks, and often not even then unless I'm in a hurry or it's raining. The subways are not as much fun as they were 30 or 40 years ago when there was tons of life underground. But I still love them being there when I need them.

Of course it there were a system of public bathrooms on top of freed up streets, then Manhattan would be heaven itself -- at least for someone who lives outside of it where it's still affordable, but yet has a cheap and easy train ride in.

One last thing: the parkway (walk, bike, etc.) around the edge of Manhattan, well developed along the West Side, is a magnificent and needs to be completed. Green in the middle (Central Park), green around the edges, and now, if a large number of streets could be freed for walking -- oh, my!

Will Manhattan survive the end (tailing off) of oil? That's one of those things I think about to combat bouts of irrational exuberance, which is what induced this post.

Great post Peakguy.  I see you managed to find some traffic too.

I do not think anybody has the answers.

A big part of the problem is that Americans love, love, LOVE their cars--the freedom, the privacy, the potential power and speed, the symbol of identity, and--believe it or not--a feeling of safety and control.

For example, my son lives in Minneapolis and used to own a pretty good car. Being kind of strange, like his Dad, he sold the car and has been using public transportation for a few years--for moral reasons more than any other. Oddly enough, the woman he is going to marry also uses public transportation (buses primarily), and now they are debating whether to get a car after marriage. She wants one, and in my experience women usually get their way. However, they will probably drive very little, because both live close enough to their jobs so that if they had to, they could walk. These young people are regarded as strange by their friends, and even stranger for having no credit card debt. My son hates malls just as much as Sailorman hates them.

Many people love shopping malls because of the free parking, the private security, the clean restrooms, the temples to materialism. Wal-Mart is heaven-on-earth to lower income people, and some women are not joking when they say they hope that when they die and go to heaven it will be Wal-Mart.

Perhaps where wealth accumulates and prestige is largely based on display of wealth (or pretended wealth) malls will continue to be the temples of the masses. Downtowns are perceived for shopping to be expensive, have to pay for inconvenient parking, limited selection of stores, unpleasant environment with possibly dangerous panhandlers, prosties, and drunks, not to mention crazy dirty smelly homeless people and the occasional stray bullet from nearby slums.

Public schools suck in most neighborhoods of most cities; the rich send their kids to private schools, the poor kids play hookey and terrorize the tourists, and the middle-class moves to the burbs for better schools and especially to get away from minority groups and crime.

It is impossible for most cities to build their way out of congestion--been tried many times in many places with many variations in the U.S., and to the best of my knowledge it has never worked. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away I was going to be a city planner and solve all these problems. O.K., we're all starry-eyed idealists at nineteen, or we have no heart. I learned much about urban ecology, sociology, social problems and reasons for the decay of our cities. Nothing I learned gave me a shred of hope for city planning as a way to improve the problems of the city.

Some puzzles remain: St. Paul is a better city than Minneapolis--far less crime, less congestion, more honest government, much easier to park, much less road rage and rudeness than in Minneapolis. Garrison Keillor makes fun of this difference on his "Prarie Home Companion" show on National Public Radio, but it is true. The reasons for this marked difference are in accidents of history, so far as I can tell. For example, St. Paul has far more racial tolerance and better schools than does Minneapolis, but my only guess as to why is its history as a French/German/Irish mostly Catholic city, whereas original ethnicities are quite different in Minneapolis. St. Paul is loaded with private colleges and Minneapolis has most of the University of Minnesota and not much in the way of private colleges. Perhaps the large number of young and liberal and tolerant students in St. Paul make a big difference--hard to say. Because of lower rents, many thousands of UM students live in St. Paul and get to school on the excellent bus service to the big U.

Hi everyone.  Dan Miner from Peak Oil NYC here.  
Reducing auto congestion in midtown is an
excellent move for NYC, and would be a key
part of any peak-aware urban policy.  
Don't know if it's been discussed in all the posts,
but Peak Oil NYC is organizing a three day
conference on preparing New York City for fuel
depletion, on April 27 - 29, at two midtown
locations. TOD readers in the NYC area are invited
to volunteer for the conference, and to help
promote it.  

We also have a substantial report on this topic,
which addresses short term transportation policy
and a number of other areas.  Please visit
www.peakoilnyc.org for more about the conference,
and to download the report.

If anyone would like to physically meet other
New Yorkers who are aware of PO, we have regular
meetings, so feel free to drop by.  

I'm late to this thread, but just realized that even if I don't have time to read it yet I need to post a link to Bill McKibben's story on Curitiba, often called the "environmental capital" of Brazil.  Curitiba has won many international awards for urban planning, its approach to public transport being central to its accomplishments.

The first time I went there, I had never heard of Curitiba. I had no idea that its bus system was the best on Earth or that a municipal shepherd and his flock of 30 sheep trimmed the grass in its vast parks. It was just a midsize Brazilian city where an airline schedule forced me to spend the night midway through a long South American reporting trip. I reached my hotel, took a nap, and then went out in the early evening for a walk--warily, because I had just come from crime-soaked Rio.

But the street in front of the hotel was cobbled, closed to cars, and strung with lights. It opened onto another such street, which in turn opened into a broad and leafy plaza, with more shop-lined streets stretching off in all directions. Though the night was frosty-Brazil stretches well south of the tropics, and Curitiba is in the mountains-people strolled and shopped, butcher to baker to bookstore. There were almost no cars, but at one of the squares, a steady line of buses rolled off, full, every few seconds. I walked for an hour, and then another. I felt my shoulders, hunched from the tension of Rio (and probably New York as well) straightening. Though I flew out the next day as scheduled, I never forgot the city.

<snip>

Maybe an effort to convince myself that a decay in public life was not inevitable was why I went back to Curitiba to spend some real time, to see if its charms extended beyond the lovely downtown. For a month, my wife and baby and I lived in a small apartment near the city center. Morning after morning I interviewed cops, merchants, urban foresters, civil engineers, novelists, planners; in the afternoons, we pushed the stroller across the town, learning the city's rhythms and habits. And we decided, with great delight, that Curitiba is among the world's great cities.

Not for its physical location; there are no beaches, no broad bridge-spanned rivers. Not in terms of culture or glamour; it's a fairly provincial place. But measured for "livability," I have never been any place like it. In a recent survey, 60 percent of New Yorkers wanted to leave their rich and cosmopolitan city; 99 percent of Curitibans told pollsters that they were happy with their town; and 70 percent of the residents of São Paulo said they thought life would be better in Curitiba.

This city has slums: some of the same shantytown favelas that dominate most Third World cities have sprouted on the edge of town as the population has rocketed. But even they are different, hopeful in palpable ways. They are clean, for instance-under a city program, a slumdweller who collects a sack of garbage gets a sack of food from the city in return. And Curitiba is the classic example of decent lives helping produce a decent environment. Because of its fine transit system, and because its inhabitants are attracted toward the city center instead of repelled out to a sprawl of suburbs, Curitibans use 25 percent less fuel per capita than other Brazilians, even though they are actually more likely to own cars.

I have lived a lot of places, But by far the best road ways for turning around and going back the way I have come, I find here in Huntsville Alabama.   Where in most places it is Legal to do an U-Turn at an intersection.  Along what is known as Memorial Parkway ( 231-431 state hwy part of the way, The MAIN north-south Road)  Whereever there an overpass, underneath are U-turns built into the system.  Even where they are rebuilding and soon will put in overpasses to lessen the daily traffic, they put in U-turns.

Germans brought us the rocket to Huntsville and And the good designed roads.  Just could not predict that as soon as the biggest Memorial parkway rebuild is done Oil prices will make those folks think twice about living north or south of the county line

peakguy,

I found an article on the pay site of The Economist about the London Congestion Charge

Despite the doubts, and despite complaints from shop owners, London's congestion charge--introduced in February 2003--has managed to ease the gridlock in the city centre. Traffic is down by 18%, jams by 30%.

In London, this is done through a GBP 8,- charge.

However, if you look at the data, it is not so clear

The main observation is that indeed the average over a day is reduced significantly (by 18%), but the peak load during morning rush hour has only been reduced by app 5%. And that is a bit of a problem, because the policy of charging people should at least have significant impact on the issue that is most important: Reduce traffic when the available capacity is maxed out.

So IMHO, just charging people won't do. You have to have a combination of things, like additional mass transit, no more free parking, bus lanes, bicycle lanes, etc.

NYC....living there in late 70's early 80's.....used to walk from wall street up to my place in Chelsea on the west side...window shop, bar hop, chicks........NYC after snow storm was great.....walking 5th or Madison with no traffic.....I think the electric or hybrid vehicle is going to be the answer.......the owner of the solar company I do sales for just put up a solar car-port at his place.....plug in your electric or hybrid (with extra batteries) and drive around town up to 200 miles......just to note: solar sales very strong here in front of rebate/grant reduction by state of NJ......we went to Trenton, state capital to hand deliver and time stamp our customer applications yesterday and met many other solar competitors in or outside the BPU office......everyone had between 10 and 20 solar installation jobs/grant applications  to submit......yes, there was a sense of urgency because the grants were dropping from $49,500 to $43,500 for a 10 kw but also people are saying things like "I've been thinking about it.......let's do it."
Plus, the new 30% tax credit for business owners  makes it a homerun......it's a great time to be a PV panel manufacturer