Governing Magazine/August 2003

PLAYERS

GRIDLOCK GURU

Want to drive in Manhattan at rush hour? You'll have to pay for it if
Sam Schwartz gets his way.

It has been almost six months since the City of London began imposing
a surcharge on anybody who drives a car there during weekday hours.
Although it is still too soon to get a solid read on the results, the
early feedback from this scheme to cut traffic congestion has boosted
the hopes of so-called "congestion pricing" advocates all over the
world--including the United States, and in particular New York City--
the movement's "biggest prize," in the words of London's Financial
Times.
This is why, if you pay attention to such things, you may have seen
Sam Schwartz's name in the news recently. Schwartz was New York City's
deputy traffic commissioner during much of the 1980s, and he has for
decades promoted the idea that cars entering Manhattan's central
business district at peak times ought to pay for the privilege. Now a
consultant on traffic matters and columnist for the New York Daily
News, Schwartz has become something of a guru for any journalist
writing about traffic in New York.
Full of literal street smarts--in a typical column this summer, he
gave his readers detailed directions for getting out to the Long
Island beaches without getting stuck on the Long Island Expressway--he
is also passionate about limiting automobile use of what he calls "our
most precious natural resource"--space. "Why should it cost the same
to drive around Rockefeller Center as to drive around 86th St. in
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn?" he asks. "If you want to drive by Rockefeller
Center and see the tree during Christmas week, and ride at 1 mile an
hour while you're polluting the air and showing the family the tree,
you should be charged."
Schwartz's theories derive from work done in the 1950s by Nobel-
prize-winning economist William Vickrey, whose studies of the price
mechanism led to airline reservation systems, long-distance telephone
pricing, and Vickrey's own proposal for tolls over New York's East
River bridges. This last idea has gone nowhere for half a century;
unlike most of the other bridges in the region, the ones over the East
River are still free, although in 1986, then-Mayor Edward I. Koch,
with Schwartz's connivance, proposed tolls, only to retreat under a
withering response.
More recently, Robert Kiley, the city's former transit commissioner,
renewed the effort to create congestion pricing. "He was considered a
complete lunatic," says John Kaehny, executive director of
Transportation Alternatives, a New York advocacy group for bicycling,
walking and transit use. "By the time he left, people thought he was
discredited." In New York, perhaps, but not necessarily elsewhere;
Kiley moved on to London, where he is now transport commissioner and
was one of the moving forces behind the congestion plan implemented
earlier this year.
Schwartz has been convinced ever since his early days as a traffic
engineer that "the car as a solution to city transportation is a
failure." In one of his first jobs with the New York traffic
department, he closed one of the street ramps into Brooklyn's Prospect
Park; as he gained more authority, he went on to close lanes in
Central Park in Manhattan; dream up New York's famous "Don't Even
Think of Parking Here" signs; and, with a fellow traffic expert, coin
the term "gridlock." The New York media still call him "Gridlock Sam."
Although he is convinced that New York City will get congestion
pricing someday, Schwartz concedes it will take a messy political
battle. "It's like people go back to the Wild West days," he says,
"and you're trying to regulate their horses. As though it's in the
Constitution that you can drive alone into the central business
district with a 200-horsepower engine at speeds below walking speed.
For this to happen, you've got to find an incredibly courageous
politician or one who's a little out of his mind."
--Rob Gurwitt

BY THE NUMBERS

STALLED IN GOTHAM

Annual delay per peak road traveler
--73 hours per person
--Rank among 75 largest cities: 8

Amount of congested travel
--69% of peak vehicle miles traveled
--Rank: 18

Congested lane-miles
--60% of roadways
--Rank: 17

Annual excess fuel consumed
--658 million gallons
--Rank: 2

Congestion cost
--$7.7 billion
--Rank: 2

Source: Texas Transportation Institute, "Urban Mobility Study 2002"
(data from year 2000)

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