Charles Komanoff

All four bedrock conditions that justified congestion pricing in the first place will almost certainly remain — yes, even after COVID-19.

It’s often said that a carbon tax is first and foremost a tax on coal. I’ve probably said it myself, and David Roberts wrote as much the other day in his useful post for Vox, "The 5 most important questions about carbon taxes, answered.

All told, a carbon tax would suppress carbon dioxide emissions eight times as much as the mileage freeze will elevate them.

Long-term climate prospects brightened somewhat in 2015. Pope Francis put climate care on the moral and political agenda. President Obama rejected the Keystone XL dirty-oil pipeline. Denialist heads of state were routed in Canada and Australia, and their brethren in the U.S. faced growing ridicule. To cap it off, nearly 200 nations signed the UN Paris accord, committing to cutting emissions. Meanwhile, U.S. coal use took another double-digit plunge. And U.S. electricity generation from zero-carbon photovoltaic solar cells continued to soar and has now grown 20-fold in just five years.

Last Wednesday in Brooklyn, the driver of a private garbage truck ignored a bicyclist riding alongside and crushed him as the truck rounded a corner, according to a preliminary NYPD investigation. Police identified the victim as Eling Rivera, 51, of East New York.

The auto safety bill working its way through Congress includes a provision with major implications for traffic enforcement and safer streets: a rule to equip new cars with "black boxes" capable of recording up to 60 seconds worth of pre-crash data.

It's the New Math: a dollar-a-trip rise in the cost of fuel for a car trip to Manhattan is cutting traffic almost as much as Mayor Bloomberg's eight-dollar toll plan would have done.

A dozen or so years ago, back when congestion pricing was a distant dream and New York City's number one transportation priority was to squeeze more transit funding from government, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign commissioned me to determine which was greater: the dollars that New York State governments took in from drivers, or the dollars spent on drivers' behalf. I spent months immersed in bookkeeping arcana, parsing revenue pots like the statewide Petroleum Business Tax and expenses like fire department equipment for prying crash victims from mangled vehicles, before I emerged with an answer.

Today's Times marked the onset of Gridlock Alert season with a paean to Fresh Direct -- the dot-com that brings New Yorkers expensive, home-delivered groceries along with idling engines, double-parking and gridlock galore.

Charles Komanoff, flanked by Marquez Claxton and Norman Siegel, at City Hall this morning.