Screeching Halt

I tuned in to Fox news at ten o'clock on Monday night to find out the fate of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing plan. I meant to write sooner (it's Wednesday as I write, and I'm at the airport), but I've had a busy time of it. I got back from Provincetown on Monday, and as I was heading down the F.D.R. at a little before six I was mindful of the possibility that this might be a historic last free entry into Manhattan below Sixtieth Street. I was beginning to believe that I could stay under the radar of congestion pricing. Afer all, I am one of those extremely lucky people who are already in Manhattan below Sixtieth Street. Surely I could arrange to enter before 6 A.M. or after 6 P.M. If I didn't want to pay eight dollars to come down the F.D.R. at twenty to six, I could stop and dawdle, and possibly end up paying twenty dollars for a lobster somewhere in the Bronx.

I dropped off some friends, then headed to my neighborhood, planning at first to go straight to my block, put a quarter in the parking meter (I had one), go upstairs for three more quarters, and worry about the car in the morning. But of course I had to just see if there was a spot on K Street, four blocks away. There was not, so I drove down to where my car had been so conveniently towed to last Thursday in the predawn hours and found a spot there. But the Muni Meter was in effect until 7, and once more I had only a single quarter, so I couldn't buy even fifteen minutes to run to St. Dunkin Donuts for change.

So I started her up again and went on my rounds. If I had stayed there, I would have had to be at the car and looking for a spot at 9 A.M. anyway. And the spot I eventually found was good till 11:30 on Thursday: perfect.

I felt a little sorry for Mayor Bloomberg, though, whose legacy now, it turns out, will be only for eliminating smoking in bars. But it is not as if this were the last chance for congestion pricing. What I think the problem was was this deadline for receiving federal funds. I know it was a lot of money, but there is nothing that makes me more suspicious than a deadline. It's like when you're at a resort in Mexico and they are selling time shares and tell you that a certain price is good only until breakfast tomorrow. Do they really expect you to rush into a lifelong financial commitment with that kind of threat? If congestion pricing is going to come to Manhattan, it should be considered with no pressure, on its merits.

While I was going down the F.D.R. I had a kind of aural hallucination of the money being totted up on the civic cash register as the cars piled in--ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching . . . It would have been an obscene amount. And I was going against traffic.

[Typed on Friday in Vernazza, Cinque Terre.]

Cold Snap

Quick before it thaws, I have to complain about the cold. It was freezing in the car yesterday morning. My breath and the steam from my coffee fogged up the windshield, and I finally turned on the defrost (but not the engine). When I arrived, there was a delivery of MX 19 Uprights in progress. MX 19 Uprights are not pianos or military ordnance but construction equipment: mobile scaffolds the size of fork-lift trucks, with a platform on an accordion-like riser. They were bright blue, and a man was backing them down the street one at a time into a garage-size elevator across the street.

Amazingly, there was a spot available behind me, and it was still available at 7:35, after the broom came. Just goes to show that you should always check your favorite spots, because you never know. Across the street, on the Tuesday-Friday side, was a black pickup truck whose owner, like me, had found his spot on New Year’s Day. I know because as I was waiting sedately in the right-hand lane for the light to change so that I could make a right turn and look for a spot on this highly desirable block, the black pickup, coming from the opposite direction, made a squealing left-hand turn before the light had changed and, in a maneuver worthy of a stunt-car driver, zipped into a spot that I hadn't even seen yet. I felt like an amateur.

After the broom passed, I relocated to be last in line, leaving the free spot in front of me. (It's an advantage to be first or last in line, because you can't get parked in.) Now this huge candy-apple-red Dodge van with New Jersey license plates lucks onto the spot, but the guy (and it does turn out to be a guy) can’t parallel park to save his life. He begins his approach from way out in the middle of the street, instead of the standard foot or so away from the car in front of the spot. It’s torture to watch, and I repent my end-space strategy, but now there’s a garbage truck double-parked next to me and I can’t move until he leaves. As soon as the garbageman has squeezed back into his cab and driven away, I pull up into the space I started out in, leaving myself a little room in front, because this van is gigantic and this guy from New Jersey is clearly challenged, and he manages to back into the space behind me.

'Tis the season of Christmas trees in the garbage. The guy in front of me, in a black Chevy pickup, leaves his vehicle, but only to get coffee. For a minute, I thought he knew something I didn’t know—something about the new, “simplified” Alternate Side Parking rules. Could it be? Would they have the sense? Surely it’s clear that after the street sweeper has gone by, there’s no further need for us to be sitting in our cars, freezing our asses off. It would just be a matter of the cops' knowing that the sweepers had gone by. I suppose this would be difficult to coordinate, block by block, but if the cop can’t tell that the street is cleaner, maybe there was no point in the sweeper’s having come anyway.

Meanwhile, the Mayor and the Department of Transportation have bigger things on their minds. The Times reported today that as part of the congestion-pricing plan some city employees will be losing their parking permits. These permits, regarded as a perk of the job, have been fairly easy to obtain since the advent of the color Xerox machine—I even had one once (it expired, and anyway I was afraid to use it). If the Mayor thinks that the police are going to give up the privilege of parking their private cars near the precinct house (and anywhere they damn well please, because who is going to issue a ticket to a fellow police officer?), he is in for a surprise. The cops are probably chuckling over their doughnuts even as I write. The Times quotes Ed Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, sounding not so benevolent: "I think we're going to get into all kinds of issues if they start saying cops can't have parking places."

If I had such a permit—and I have a good friend, not a cop, who does—and it was taken away from me, I would be aghast. I would go on strike. I would be tempted to quit my job. I would definitely be part of the problem, not the solution. So I guess it's just as well that I don't.