Monday, July 14, 2008
Car ownership in cities is akin to a husband and wife asleep any other day – or rather, night, for that matter. (Disclaimer: this is just a generalisation okay.)
The husband snores loudly, emits foul gases, salivates, rolls about… while the wife’s eyelids have short-circuited and refuse to shut.
The husband is an analogy for the citizens, while the wife is the government that is constantly tortured wide awake by its own people and its own problems.
Yeah, the husband has bad habits, but the wife still loves him. Maybe these characteristics even expand the appeal of this man, so thinks the wife.
Yeah, motors are dirty, they cause jams and pollute the environment, but you still gotta love them. They’re indispensable where public transport fails to take the grit, and you’ve got to ride on your own two (or four) wheels.
What about the wife suffering insomnia from the husband’s atrocious sleeping habits? Governments are always caught in the middle with regards to dealing with the car problem – a right and left turn are both booby traps. They’ve got to walk the plank the divides two crocodile enclosures precariously.
I felt inspired to write the above post after chancing upon the following article. My reading: the writer takes an ambiguous stand about cars. The avoidable-indispensable debate (love-hate is too generic to afford usage here).
(I think the ‘London solution’ mentioned in the article has to be the electronic road penalty, abbreviated ERP – which, taking one step further, comes from where else but Singapore. Singapore is proud to introduce another twenty more gantries to show the world that it can do it – and so can you!)
The madness of owning a car in Manhattan
By David Usborne
B-Net website; originally from The Independent (London), 23 Jul, 2007
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20070723/ai_n19387592?tag=artBody;col1
I am on my way home after a week spent a long away from New York. It has been the perfect summer break - books, no newspapers, only an occasional, reluctant glimpse at the television news and hours watching the ever-changing palate of the ocean from the deck of our rented house.
Best of all, we have been in a place without roads and, therefore, without cars. I have not missed them and I am not looking forward to returning to a Manhattan that I know will be more tangled in motorised mayhem than ever thanks to exploding steam pipes not far from my home.
It has always been a wonder to me that Fire Island, a sand barrier off the southern edge of Long Island, could seem so far from the city when the distance is just 50 miles. The last part of the trip is by ferry, which is when you leave your car behind. Once there, you find a community of wooden homes in the dunes connected by wobbly boardwalks. The only thing that could run you over is a deer.
The Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has spent much of the last few months trying to sell a plan for a congestion charge for Manhattan, more or less inspired by London. But it’s going to be a long slog. His proposal has some genuine difficulties, such as the suburbs becoming parking lots and a mass transit system that is bursting at the seams.
Beyond that, you know how Americans are about their cars - roughly as they are about guns. You don’t mess with their right to own them and drive wherever they please. A congestion charge also sounds a lot like a tax and new taxes are taboo in this country, however sensible they might be.
You’d think that if any city in the US would be interested in following London’s example, it would be New York. It’s the most pedestrian-friendly large city in the nation and hardly anyone I know has a car anyway. OK, I do. Owning a car in New York has its benefits, like being able to flee it, to Fire Island for instance. But then there is the murder of parking. Someone recently calculated that a quarter of the emissions from cars in the city come from drivers circling their neighbourhoods looking for a space. You must do this at least twice a week even if you aren’t going anywhere, to make way for street cleaning.
Which means having a space in a garage, even if it requires a degree of wealth. I now pay more each month for the luxury of renting a garage space than I do to lease the car. Something is definitely out of whack with that.
Developers of new apartment towers in Manhattan have cottoned on to the problem and are offering indoor parking spaces for sale. But this is where Manhattan’s car-nomics really go crazy.
The average price for a single space for a car is $165,000 ([pound]80,500), or about $1,100 per square foot. The average per- square-foot price for a new apartment in New York is exactly the same, but at least it comes with walls, windows, maybe cherry wood floors and a stainless steel fridge. What do you get with a parking space? Zero, nada, zip. Bare cement, no facilities. Yet someone recently paid a record $225,000 for a single space under a new building on West 17th Street. Elsewhere in this country, you could buy a decent sized house for less.
I should qualify one thing about Fire Island. All those homes need looking after. When Monday comes and the weekend crowds have ebbed, the service people surface, delivering propane tanks, checking on chemical levels in pools, emptying overflowing dustbins or simply cleaning and laundering. Because some things can’t be carried by hand, they buzz about on little motorised wagons.
Even they can create enough traffic to be a hazard. One day, a pool-man leaves a house across the way. He guns up his wagon, starts out and, oops, he has vanished with a thump and a slight sound of crunching vegetation. Startled but not seriously hurt, he had driven clean off the boardwalk. Why, I am not sure. Perhaps he had been distracted by a rampaging deer.
Copyright 2007 Independent Newspapers UK Limited. All rights owned or operated by The Independent.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
¶ 7/14/2008 08:17:00 pm The husband snores loudly, emits foul gases, salivates, rolls about… while the wife’s eyelids have short-circuited and refuse to shut.
The husband is an analogy for the citizens, while the wife is the government that is constantly tortured wide awake by its own people and its own problems.
Yeah, the husband has bad habits, but the wife still loves him. Maybe these characteristics even expand the appeal of this man, so thinks the wife.
Yeah, motors are dirty, they cause jams and pollute the environment, but you still gotta love them. They’re indispensable where public transport fails to take the grit, and you’ve got to ride on your own two (or four) wheels.
What about the wife suffering insomnia from the husband’s atrocious sleeping habits? Governments are always caught in the middle with regards to dealing with the car problem – a right and left turn are both booby traps. They’ve got to walk the plank the divides two crocodile enclosures precariously.
I felt inspired to write the above post after chancing upon the following article. My reading: the writer takes an ambiguous stand about cars. The avoidable-indispensable debate (love-hate is too generic to afford usage here).
(I think the ‘London solution’ mentioned in the article has to be the electronic road penalty, abbreviated ERP – which, taking one step further, comes from where else but Singapore. Singapore is proud to introduce another twenty more gantries to show the world that it can do it – and so can you!)
The madness of owning a car in Manhattan
By David Usborne
B-Net website; originally from The Independent (London), 23 Jul, 2007
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20070723/ai_n19387592?tag=artBody;col1
I am on my way home after a week spent a long away from New York. It has been the perfect summer break - books, no newspapers, only an occasional, reluctant glimpse at the television news and hours watching the ever-changing palate of the ocean from the deck of our rented house.
Best of all, we have been in a place without roads and, therefore, without cars. I have not missed them and I am not looking forward to returning to a Manhattan that I know will be more tangled in motorised mayhem than ever thanks to exploding steam pipes not far from my home.
It has always been a wonder to me that Fire Island, a sand barrier off the southern edge of Long Island, could seem so far from the city when the distance is just 50 miles. The last part of the trip is by ferry, which is when you leave your car behind. Once there, you find a community of wooden homes in the dunes connected by wobbly boardwalks. The only thing that could run you over is a deer.
The Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has spent much of the last few months trying to sell a plan for a congestion charge for Manhattan, more or less inspired by London. But it’s going to be a long slog. His proposal has some genuine difficulties, such as the suburbs becoming parking lots and a mass transit system that is bursting at the seams.
Beyond that, you know how Americans are about their cars - roughly as they are about guns. You don’t mess with their right to own them and drive wherever they please. A congestion charge also sounds a lot like a tax and new taxes are taboo in this country, however sensible they might be.
You’d think that if any city in the US would be interested in following London’s example, it would be New York. It’s the most pedestrian-friendly large city in the nation and hardly anyone I know has a car anyway. OK, I do. Owning a car in New York has its benefits, like being able to flee it, to Fire Island for instance. But then there is the murder of parking. Someone recently calculated that a quarter of the emissions from cars in the city come from drivers circling their neighbourhoods looking for a space. You must do this at least twice a week even if you aren’t going anywhere, to make way for street cleaning.
Which means having a space in a garage, even if it requires a degree of wealth. I now pay more each month for the luxury of renting a garage space than I do to lease the car. Something is definitely out of whack with that.
Developers of new apartment towers in Manhattan have cottoned on to the problem and are offering indoor parking spaces for sale. But this is where Manhattan’s car-nomics really go crazy.
The average price for a single space for a car is $165,000 ([pound]80,500), or about $1,100 per square foot. The average per- square-foot price for a new apartment in New York is exactly the same, but at least it comes with walls, windows, maybe cherry wood floors and a stainless steel fridge. What do you get with a parking space? Zero, nada, zip. Bare cement, no facilities. Yet someone recently paid a record $225,000 for a single space under a new building on West 17th Street. Elsewhere in this country, you could buy a decent sized house for less.
I should qualify one thing about Fire Island. All those homes need looking after. When Monday comes and the weekend crowds have ebbed, the service people surface, delivering propane tanks, checking on chemical levels in pools, emptying overflowing dustbins or simply cleaning and laundering. Because some things can’t be carried by hand, they buzz about on little motorised wagons.
Even they can create enough traffic to be a hazard. One day, a pool-man leaves a house across the way. He guns up his wagon, starts out and, oops, he has vanished with a thump and a slight sound of crunching vegetation. Startled but not seriously hurt, he had driven clean off the boardwalk. Why, I am not sure. Perhaps he had been distracted by a rampaging deer.
Copyright 2007 Independent Newspapers UK Limited. All rights owned or operated by The Independent.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
