Manhattan, Paris, Ferndale and why we can’t have nice things

Manhattan’s famous gridlock.

Let me start with a general positive observation that, as a resident Ferndalean, I love how easy it’s becoming to get around town and run errands by bicycle. Thanks to our well-developed network of bike lanes, I have multiple options to ride safely, protected to varying degrees from automobile traffic, wherever I am headed. I work from home and am without access to a vehicle during the daytime, so I appreciate this facet of living here all the more. It’s pleasant and fun and it feels good and it helps to keep me sane. 

So please indulge me as I compare our Fabulous Ferndale to the Big Apple and the City of Light. I promise it’s in service of a larger point.

First, New York City. The announcement by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that she would be indefinitely postponing congestion pricing, the plan to begin charging drivers who enter Manhattan south of 60th Street that had been years in the making, was a major bummer. If you’ve been to Manhattan on a weekday, you know that its streets are basically a parking lot cacophony, a Frogger-like obstacle course for crossing on foot. Traffic scarcely moves, and blaring horns echo off the buildings. If you need to get somewhere, it’s best to either walk or descend to the subway, where you take your chances with the aging system’s unreliable service (more on that below). 

On the other hand, you might be aware that Times Square has been closed to cars since 2009. Or that 14th Street is closed off to all vehicles except buses and bicycles for most of the day. Both of those initiatives today are widely considered successful.

Both of those initiatives share many of the same goals as congestion pricing program: ease gridlock, lower greenhouse gas emissions (all those idling vehicles!) and improve quality of life for New Yorkers. Toll revenue, estimated at $1 billion a year, was supposed to fund $15 billion in badly needed repairs, modernizations and upgrades to the city’s mass transit systems. Now that funding is in jeopardy.

From The New York Times: 

This program was mandated by the New York State Legislature in 2019 following delays during the so-called transit Summer of Hell. Four years of study and analysis followed before it received federal approval. Hundreds of public forums were held and 100,000 public comments were submitted. The M.T.A. has already spent over $500 million building out the infrastructure. Now this suspension gives critics the chance to upend the whole undertaking.

Hochul is rightly taking fire for this gutless move, which is widely seen as caving to political pressure from suburbanites, the governor of New Jersey (who has sued to stop the program), and influential Democrats in Congress, including minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who reportedly urged her to pause the program because it imperiled several Democrat candidates running for closely contested seats this November. Her rationale was that she feared it would hurt a city still struggling to recover economically from the pandemic.

Backlash against change

Regardless, this development got me thinking about similar proposals to offer alternatives to car dominance and do less harm to the climate. About the successes and failures of urbanism, which is increasingly intertwined with climate action, across the planet. And how discouraging it is that changes like this — small when measured against the scale of what is needed to prevent the planet from becoming a Hieronymus Bosch triptych — are meeting with such intense pushback. 

If we can’t enact a toll to help ease traffic congestion, reduce CO2 emissions and raise badly needed funds to encourage people to once again ride the subway, what hope do we possibly have against climate change? 

I think about this when I ride around Ferndale on my bike, using what is becoming a well-developed network of bike lanes blanketing our modestly sized city. 

A cyclist’s perspective of the Woodward Avenue bike lanes during afternoon rush hour.

I love the new Woodward Avenue bike lanes — they’re not perfect, but they absolutely serve their purpose. Just as important as their utility for mobility, I believe, is the statement they make to motorists traveling along Detroit’s de facto Main Street: Welcome to Ferndale. We do things a little differently here. Slow your roll, watch out for one another and have a good time.

And yet, most of the online chatter about the new setup is bitter complaints: 

It’s a waste of taxpayer money. I don’t see anyone riding in them. 

They’re as twisty as a slalom course. What a joke!

It’s confusing to park with them.

People are going to die being struck by drivers who can’t possibly watch for bicyclists among all their other responsibilities. 

Etcetera.

It’s not hard to imagine the pushback Ferndale City Council members, or the previous or current mayor, have faced over the Woodward bike lanes, but all credit to them for blocking out the haters and sticking with their conviction. I have been to enough local government meetings to basically pre-write the script for John Q. Taxpayer and his indignant and angry plea to stop wasting taxpayer money, we’re taxed enough already and we can’t afford anything nice. But our city officials absolutely did the right thing and put Ferndale on the right side of history.

New York’s congestion pricing may yet live; in fact I suspect there will be lawsuits to get the process unstuck and moving again. But this was an act of political cowardice, a complete and total capitulation, and for what? Charging drivers $15 to enter lower Manhattan will affect delivery vehicles, yes, and that may well have an adverse effect on the prices of goods and even restaurants. But it also applies to commuters and tourists who today arrive in Manhattan and quickly find themselves stuck in gridlock and ponying up exorbitant fees to park their cars for the day. 

Other cities take the lead

Pedestrians walking the streets in Paris.

The worst part about New York’s failure is that congestion pricing has been done successfully in other cities, including London, Stockholm, Milan and Singapore, and proved popular.

In Paris, the city has increased parking fees for SUVs, done away with parking spaces altogether, added hundreds of miles of bike lanes, permanently closed streets in front of schools and banned automobile traffic altogether from wide swaths of the city. As a result, whole neighborhoods in the central city are now quiet, as bicycle traffic replaces cars, the streets full of life. I have no doubt the added foot traffic has delivered an economic jolt to businesses, including many that likely feared they would suffer from the loss of cars and parking spaces. 

These are cities, incidentally, that also have excellent and well-maintained public transit systems, plus comprehensive rail service to other cities and nations. By contrast, the U.S. has millions of miles of crumbling roads. And we have Amtrak, which in Michigan shares tracks with freight operators and frequently is forced to stop to let an oncoming freight train pass. Our bicycling infrastructure, at least, is coming along — provided you live in a progressive city — but by many measures, the rest of the developed world is leaving us in the dust. 

On one of the Ferndale Facebook groups I saw a thread where people were losing it over a proposal to redevelop a vacant single-family bungalow in my neighborhood into an eight-unit residential building, despite being right across the street from a much larger apartment complex. The supposed added traffic and lack of adequate parking devoted to the project, people said, made it critical to convey opposition to the Planning Commission. It will lead to zoning changes, and kill the character of the neighborhood, they said. 

This is what you find on our online communities — NextDoor is no better — that is, when you get past the incessant bitching about the bike lanes. The status quo must be maintained, no matter how indefensible. 

My point here is we’ve become a nation of turtles, held hostage to our own petty grievances, trapped in our dreadful routines and unable to imagine a better world. What happened to our ability to dream? Why are we so scared of change? Do we fear we will lose the financial and material assets, however meager, we’ve worked so hard to cobble together? Or are we so spiteful we simply cannot accept Black and brown people, or the poor, gaining a leg up? 

Have we collectively given up hope? 

What does it say about us as a civilization — especially our ability to face the existential challenges we face on a crowded, warming planet — when the idea of making it easier and safer to ride a bike, or charge vehicles more proportionately for the many damages they inflict on society, provokes such uproar? 

America has lost the ability to dream big and do great things, and I frankly don’t know how we get it back. Maybe young people now coming of age, who are less interested in obtaining drivers licenses and who face major obstacles to home ownership, will take us in new directions, seeing no viable path forward in the status quo. Lord knows we need it. 

I recently heard an interview with Amy Dickinson, the retiring “Ask Amy” advice columnist, in which she explained her view on finding happiness. “You become a miniaturist,” she said, focusing on small things that bring you joy. 

Maybe that’s what I’m doing here. I’m incredibly grateful to live in Ferndale because of the changes it’s making — bike lanes but also being welcoming to LGBTQ people, embracing transit and growth, and enacting climate-friendly policies. I don’t take it for granted whatsoever.

But Ferndale is a 4-square-mile city of 19,000. Our nation really needs to see bold ideas like congestion pricing happen in places like New York, our biggest and best city, to truly begin changing mindsets. 

Creative Commons photos via Travis Rothwell and Gilbert Sopakuwa.