> Bus speeds also increased after the tolls were turned on. The Manhattan-bound B39 bus, which crosses the Williamsburg Bridge, ran 28% faster compared to a similar January week last year. Other buses like the SIM24 and and the M50 saw increases in speeds, as well.
I wonder how much cherry picking there is. Did they give the B39 because it's the most improved? Or for some other reason (especially busy?)
(Generally strongly in favor of congestion pricing)
I think that "cherry-picking" is when you find outliers and show them off pretending they are typical examples. What I would call this is maybe a "poster child": a specially chosen example where the result is most dramatic and clearly seen.
The problem with buses is that car traffic can never be bad enough to make cars worse than buses. Buses are doomed to always be worse than cars unless they have dedicated lanes or parking is unbearable. So cars slow down to equal the metro system, bikes, ferries, etc.
A dedicated bus lane can speed up cars more than another car lane because it pulls traffic off the road until driving convenience equals bus convenience.
In fact, I anticipate the city to expand dedicated bus lanes and bus frequency to take advantage of the reduced car traffic. Bike lanes too. Mass transit should steadily improve over the next year as enhancements made possible by less cars are deployed.
The allocation of bridge space to cars is entirely wasteful:
> If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907.
> Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily.
* https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an...
Transport trucks, or folks in the trades, may necessary for commerce and logistics, may still be needed† but private car transportation?
† Or you could ship in goods via rail and do local distribution via smaller trucks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Line
Anyone who has ever tried to adjust the phase of a traffic signal can tell you that sneaking little changes, all over a large city, is fantasy.
This one is a bit frothing at the teeth, but I do recall a few others from after the congestion charge was introduced. It ended up being a minor controversy, and I could have sworn I read confirmation from later on, after the Ken Livingstone was no longer Mayor.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how...
And then from not long after it was introduced, you can see the AA blathering about it again: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2967852.stm
side note because I'm getting down votes: I'm one of those strongly in favour of congestion charges. I believe they made an improvement in London and not just because of these stunts. Of particular value was shifting a bunch of large vehicles to off-peak.
But even more relevant is the fact that people have seen Manhattan gridlock for decades. If they were planning a move like that they would have had to start it in the 1980s at least.