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Rebecca Ibarra: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC I'm Rebecca Ibarra, the local host and producer for NPR and WNYC's Consider This filling in for Brian today. Earlier this month, the Texas A&M transportation Institute released a study that found traffic in the New York Metro area was the worst in the country. It even surpassed Los Angeles for the first time in almost 40 years.

According to the report, the average New York area driver wasted 56 extra hours in traffic last year. Citing this report, my colleagues in Gothamist write that despite the fact that most New York City households do not own cars, the Metro Area leads and every single measure of congestion tracked by the Transportation Institute and New York ranked number one in the commuter stress index up from 14th in 2019. Just reading this is giving me shoulder knots.

One of the reasons for this spike in traffic, according to the report was the pandemic. Commuters in our area were wary of going on public transportation and getting sick, so they turned to cars. Last summer, the news website, the city reported that New York City residents registered almost 40,000 cars in July, 2020. That's the highest for that month in recent history.

Here to talk about the spike in cars and congestion is Sam Schwartz, aka Gridlock Sam at the daily news where he's a columnist. Sam is former New York City traffic commissioner, President and CEO of Sam Schwartz engineering, which is a transportation planning and engineering firm and author of No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future. Sam, welcome back to WNYC.

Sam Schwartz: Thank you very much, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Listeners, have you noticed that even more terrible than usual traffic in our area lately? And how is this affecting your life or your commute? We want to hear from you 646-435-7280. If you do drive to work, especially if you're driving to Manhattan, is this a new thing because of the pandemic? Is your plan to keep driving? Again, 646-435-7280. Lastly, if you're a regular car commuter, will the congestion pricing law when it goes into effect, if it goes into effect, change your habits? Again, 646-435-7280, or tweet us @BrianLehrer.

Sam, you've been making the rounds, talking about this Texas A&M transportation Institute report lately and you've said, if you feel like there's so much more traffic in our area lately, you are not imagining things, it is that. How bad is it?

Sam: Yes, it's very bad and it's likely to get much worse. I've been monitoring these statistics. First of all, I've been pumped during traffic statistics for New York city for over 50 years when I started at the old traffic department. The statistics are quite alarming. You hit upon it in the opening, in the fact that a lot of people were afraid of transit, afraid of getting the virus in transit and therefore switching to cars.

We did quite a bit of research with virologists, epidemiologists, tracers from around the world, as well as many other public health officials that looked at transit as a vector and it was not a vector. It is what you were doing at home. It is how your lifestyle, what you're doing at work, it's whether you're wearing a mask or not. It's not the subway, but that doesn't matter it seems because the numbers are still way down on the subways.

We are now inching to 50%, but car traffic is over 95% for regular car traffic, but truck traffic is well over 100% and each truck counts as three cars. The reality that feels like there's more traffic, there is more traffic. To give you some stats, I monitor the highway system and if we look at the BQE, which is a pretty good barometer from the Verrazano bridge to the Long Island expressway, in 2019, it took that 12-mile trip on average from during the peak 4:00 to 7:00 PM, period took 37 minutes.

During the COVID period in 2020, it took 22 minutes. Today, it's the same 37, 36 minutes. Going the opposite direction, it took 46 minutes in 2019, to go from the LAE to the Verrazano, during COVID 34 minutes. Now it's even longer 48 minutes. You are seeing worsening traffic congestion, particularly on expressways. Why on expressways? Because they allow trucks, truck volumes a higher than normal, because we are demanding that the trucks deliver our toothbrushes to our homes. We are demanding so much from the truckers and instead of going to a Midtown Manhattan, they're bringing all of our supplies to wherever we live and that's creating a major traffic problem, and people are showing up also in cars in much greater numbers.

Rebecca: I want to mention what you said about those delivery trucks, because lawmakers have been trying to come up with creative solutions to congestion and for the congestion by delivery trucks for example, State Assemblyman, Robert Carroll, who represents parts of Parks Slope and Windsor Terrace, revived a proposal to raise money for the MTA by charging a $3 fee for every package delivered in the five boroughs. Now that was in December of last year, as far as I can tell it has gone nowhere. What do you think of a proposal like that?

Sam: It may hurt the lower economic classes on the packages and it may hurt some people that really can't go out. It's not that I'm against pricing, I'm absolutely for pricing in terms of congestion pricing, because it's the lower income people tend to benefit, the money goes into the transit system on it, but there are other things that we can do. One thing is, in many ways we're unfair to the truckers. We don't provide enough curb space for them.

We do this bizarre thing in this city in which we've given out 300,000 parking placards for people to usurp private citizens who work for the city or state to usurp truck loading zones. The trucker’s double park, and they get tickets, they cause congestion. There are innovative things that some of the truckers are trying, which I encourage. Having trucks stationed at one location, and then having hand carts deliver rather than move to location-to-location, but we could do other things also.

We could start encouraging people to stop delivering at home, go to those stores. Our local stores need it. It's not the trucker that's the necessarily the villain here. It's a system-wide problem. We have too many for higher vehicles, meaning the Uber's and the Lyft's, they're coming back at a much faster rate than taxis. We have too few taxis out there. We only have one third of the taxis that have returned to work whereas two thirds of the Ubers and Lyft's have returned to work. We need a comprehensive solution.

A year ago, the mayor asked the whole group of people, including myself, a comprehensive solution. We presented it to the mayor and nothing happened. There is something on the books for a comprehensive plan for dealing with us, which included congestion pricing. If things get really bad, occupancy restrictions and also return to traffic science or traffic enforcement now rests with the police department back when I was traffic commissioner, it rested with the traffic department and which is now part of DOT.

We have professionals that worked on the absolute science of where to post personnel, where to enforce rules and regulations and that resulted into a big improvement in traffic speeds.

Rebecca: Let's go to a caller. We have Kirsten, I believe. Correct me if I'm mispronouncing your name, who's calling from Manhattan, but I believe drives in from New Jersey. Thank you for calling WNYC.

Kirsten: Hi, can you hear me?

Rebecca: Yes, I can and am I pronouncing your name correctly? Kirsten

Kirsten: It's Kirsten.

Rebecca: Kirsten. Thank you for calling WYC Kristen. What's your comment?

Kirsten: Hi. I live in New Jersey, but work on the Upper East Side, actually at the Park Avenue armory, which Sam Schwartz helps with our traffic plan. I am still driving in because private commuter bus lines have not returned to 100% of their pre-COVID schedules. If you miss the short-time slot in the morning or evening, you get stuck driving in still. I just wanted to add that to the factors in promoting driving in the city.

Rebecca: Kirsten, thank you for calling. Sam, any comment for what she just said.

Sam: Sure, yes and thank you Kirsten for now bringing that Armory. Yes, Kirsten had a real important point here and I go back to the equity issue. Immediately after COVID hit, we hailed all of our essential workers as heroes and then we screwed them. We cut back on the service that they needed, transit service to get to work. Even the stock exchange banned people that rode transit from using the main floor there.

Transit, as Kirsten points out, has not returned 100%. The subways are having trouble getting enough people to run the subway system. That has to be priority number one, get transit back up to 100%.

Rebecca: What are the effects Sam, of congestion on the people of the city, not just the drivers, but people who ride bikes and walk?

Sam: It adds so much to the tension. For one thing, it's showing up sadly, in traffic deaths. Traffic deaths are way up this year. It's going to be the highest numbers in all likelihood if this trend continues. During the De Blasio administration, who boldly announced Vision Zero when he came into office, we're probably going to go back to 2013, the year before he even announced Vision Zero.

Some of that is anger. When you have a lot of congestion, people are angry. They want to get to their destinations, and they can't get to that. It also leads to lots of health risks. In addition to the crashes, the more time we spend in cars, the less activity we get, the greater likelihood of certain inactivity diseases, including obesity, including some cancers, including cardiac disease.

We also add to the noise pollution, which has an effect on all of our health. Of course, we accelerate global climate change, and we add to the pollution. There are so many costs here, and we're on a track right now. One of the analyses that I did that if 75% of the people returned to the central business district, Manhattan, south of 60th Street, but 20% who are transit riders switch to cars, there's going to be a 30% jump in the number of cars coming into Manhattan, which translates into 200,000 more cars trying to come into Manhattan.

Rebecca: Wow.

Sam: Now, there won't be enough parking for them. People have said Carmageddon is coming, and it's quite possible that it's on our way. We need to head it off right now, and we have to head it off with a number of strategies. We may have to go back to something that we did during the 1980 transit strike, after 9/11, after Superstorm Sandy, and that's occupancy restrictions for part of the day.

We cannot handle much more traffic and a lot of people are enjoying lots of the roadways being used for restaurants or bike lanes or bus lanes or just play areas. This is a different city in 2021 than the one we left in 2019, and we need a master plan on how to go forward with this. A group of 30 or 40 people appointed by the mayor came up with such a plan and largely ignored.

Rebecca: I want to talk about congestion pricing, but first, I want to get to a caller because you did mention parking. Let's go to Peter in Brooklyn who actually has a comment about parking. Peter, thank you for calling WNYC. What's your comment?

Peter: Hey, thanks so much. I just want to reiterate the double parking issue. There isn't a street that I go down nowadays that doesn't have two or three cars double-parked. We have people reversing back into intersections because full streets are blocked, we have delivery drivers turning three-lane roads into one lanes, and honestly, I think it's really scary for bikers as well. I would love to own a bike and bike around this city, but why would I want to do that if all the bike lanes are full of delivery drivers and Ubers?

Rebecca: Peter, thank you for calling, and thank you for your comment. We actually have a comment from a user on Twitter. His handle, I believe, is Bike to the Mets, who says, "The traffic has made cycling feel more dangerous than ever. All major roads crowded, cars and trucks using the paint-only bike lanes as lanes, drivers taking road rage out on us." I suspect a lot of people feel like Peter and like that Twitter user, huh Sam?

Sam: Yes, and I go back to the point. Remember, as I said, in the '80s, I had over 2,000 uniformed people doing traffic enforcement. With the police department, it's understandable that traffic is at the bottom of their assignment. No cop goes to the academy to want to work on traffic duty. Whereas in the traffic department, our people went up the ranks and really cared about traffic.

They cared about the bicycle lanes, they cared about the bus lanes, they cared about the double parking. When you go into the police department, it is largely how many tickets are you going to write, but are those tickets really doing anything? I found there were good quality tickets where a car was blocking a bus lane. That's a good quality ticket. Giving somebody extra ASP tickets and expired registration, and then a little something blocking the license plate on their car, a lot of those are garbage tickets that looks good.

They write a lot of tickets, but there is a science to enforcement. One of our recommendations to the mayor was to move traffic enforcement back to the people that are the traffic experts.

Rebecca: Sam, let's talk congestion pricing because in 2019, the state legislature finally passed a congestion pricing law. They've been trying to pass some surcharge since, I believe, 1933. First, remind us what exactly that congestion pricing law was supposed to do, and why is it stalled?

Sam: It was passed in 2019, and it defined an area and the area is Manhattan, south of 60th Street. Every vehicle entering that area would face a congestion charge. There were a couple of loopholes. One, if you stayed on the Henry Hudson Parkway, West Side Highway, went straight out the Battery Tunnel or vice versa, there was no toll. If you stayed on the FDR Drive, and you're tired, never set foot on the central business district or you went straight up to, let's say, the hospital zone from the Brooklyn Bridge, you weren't charged.

Very little else was defined. Low-income people, there were some exemptions for low-income people and for vehicles moving people with disabilities. Beyond that, it said that there would be a Traffic Mobility Board that would decide on what the prices would be. That Traffic Mobility Board could not be appointed until after the state election in 2020. 2020 came and for some reason, one, there was an environmental statement that they were still waiting on the feds, but it looks like really a stall tactic to me.

The Biden administration has now said it doesn't have to be a big environmental impact statement, just an environmental assessment that can be done in months. If I'm going to be cynical here, I would say there's a state election in '22, and therefore, we're not going to see congestion pricing until after the state election. I hope I am wrong because we need it now. I saw Adams was pushing-- People presume he will be mayor pushing for congestion pricing. I'd love him to also push for clearing our curbs with all the placard parking that's there.

Congestion pricing can be implemented in the next six months, but right now, the scuttlebutt that I hear that's all unofficial is everybody is slow-footing this until we're in an election year. Once you're in an election year, nothing gets done. The panel to decide what congestion pricing is, hasn't even been appointed. No one's been named to it, so we don't know if it's a $10 charge.

We had someone from New Jersey calling, people from New Jersey are screaming, "Well, I already paid at the Holland Tunnel. Why should I have to pay again?" They may be right. None of that has been decided, whether if you've already pay, you should be exempt from it. Right now, it's on hold. There's an environmental assessment being prepared. There's a reaction that we're expecting to get from the Biden administration.

The Biden administration said they want a robust public process. I haven't seen evidence of it. It's really up to the state, the MTA to now get the ball moving, but there may be some elected officials that are saying [unintelligible 00:19:34] an election year.

Rebecca: I want to mention that Adam thing you said, but first, I'm going to do a quick station ID. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Netcom, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. This is New York and New Jersey Public Radio. We have a minutes left, but you mentioned Eric Adams, he actually tweeted about congestion pricing after this big storm that flooded the subway stations uptown.

He said, "This is what happens when the MTA makes bad spending decisions for decades. We need congestion pricing ASAP to protect stations from street flooding, elevate entrances and add green infrastructure to absorb flash storm runoff. This cannot be New York." Then that led to this response from Mayor de Blasio when he was asked about it earlier this week. We have a clip here.

Mayor de Blasio: I want it to be as fast as humanly possible. I think it would be tremendously helpful at this point. Reducing congestion, obviously people turn back to their cars intensely during COVID, we need to get people back into mass transit and we need the support for mass transit.

Rebecca: Sam, during the mayor's press conference, just now actually, he said again, that congestion pricing must happen as soon as possible to reduce traffic and pollution and fund the MTA to make the transit system better and get ridership back to pre-pandemic levels. He just called on the MTA to convene the traffic mobility review board, which must meet before congestion pricing takes effect as have you've said and just announced his one nominee to the board, Finance Commissioner, Sharif Suleman. I might be mispronouncing his name and I apologize. Any thoughts on that, Sam?

Sam: Oh, boy. I'm glad both men. One today's mayor. He hasn't been as forceful as I would've liked in the past on congestion pricing, but it's really wonderful. I do know Sharif and he sat on some panels with me and he does know the issues. I think that that is a good choice that we have one out of six. Now, we've got to get the other five and we've got to get the ball moving. I think the mayor is punting it to the Governor or the MTA to make the appointments. We have to keep pushing. I'm glad those two men are pushing but we need to hear from the State.

Rebecca: I feel like I know the answer to this, but is there more that local politicians should be doing instead of just punting? Because you said that this could be passed pretty much as soon as possible.

Sam: Yes. The study has to be completed. The study should have been completed. The work on the study started sometime in 2019. It doesn't take two years to do the paperwork. A document should be coming out and I may be wrong, maybe it's coming up tomorrow for all I know, but a document should be coming out. The panel has to be convened, public hearings have to be held. It really takes the appointment of State officials to make that happen.

Rebecca: I want to go back to that report that we started with because in August, 2019, pre-pandemic, obviously, Gothamist published an article saying New York city streets more congested than ever. Clearly Sam, this isn't a new problem. Is it just that traffic is part of city life?

Sam: No. That's defeatist and accepting the fact that what really happened, let's go pre pandemic, is traffic volumes to Manhattan in the decade of 2010 to 2020 actually went down significantly by more than 100,000 vehicles. How could traffic get worse? The traffic got worse because we had all these for-hire vehicles. We were caught flat-footed with Uber and Lyft and Via and Juno and Get and also the increase in micro deliveries.

Traffic reached its nadir sometime 2017, 2018 when midtown Manhattan was moving at less than five miles an hour, essentially at walking speeds and that was average. There were days, it was at three miles an hour. This all preceded COVID, it's not-- We have to get a handle on the for-hire vehicles. In 2019 the first surcharges on the for-hire vehicle South of 96th street went into effect.

The TLC came up with another recommendation for the for-hire vehicles to be priced when they're unoccupied and they're circulating around. Again, I point to the fact that a comprehensive plan was put forward for the Mayor that included freeing up a lot of cab space, the trucks and for other reasons the 300,000 placards, applying better traffic science to this, there is so much more that can be done. We shouldn't just accept massive traffic congestion as a way of life.

We shouldn't accept all the injuries that we're seeing, the deaths that we're seeing, there are design elements that could be installed, there's enforcement elements that could be installed, there are cameras that have worked and have been shown to reduce the number of crashes. We need a comprehensive plan and we haven't seen one.

Rebecca: I've been speaking with Sam Schwartz, also known as Gridlock Sam at the Daily News where he's a columnist. Sam is former New York City Traffic Commissioner, President and CEO of Sam Schwartz Engineering, which is a transportation planning and engineering firm and author of No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road to the Future. Sam, thank you so much for coming again on WNYC.

Sam: You're quite welcome. Anytime.

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