New York’s Movement Crisis

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/opinion/new-york-transport.html

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Oprah 2020. Oprah Winfrey’s speech at the Golden Globes last night has led to chatter about whether she would run for president.

She’s never shown interest before, but she would be probably the most formidable of all the possibilities. A recent Quinnipiac poll question, well before her speech, found that almost one third of self-identified Democrats hoped she ran in 2020, as Nate Cohn noted.

Oprah aside — she’s impressive in many ways — I don’t think the ideal situation for the United States is a succession of presidents whose initial qualification is celebrity.

Stuck. Great cities depend on movement, on the ability of millions of people to travel every day from home to work and elsewhere. New York is now suffering from a movement crisis.

The subway is in miserable shape, with delays common. Above ground, the average speed of vehicle traffic in midtown Manhattan is a mere 4.7 miles an hour, down from 6.5 miles an hour five years ago.

My column this morning explains that New York’s transportation crisis is a version of “the tragedy of the commons.” Fortunately, though, tragedies of the commons have solutions. If New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo are truly committed to fixing the situation, they can do so. It will take leadership — and the willingness to forgo political pandering.

For more on this issue, I recommend Jonathan Mahler’s New York Times Magazine piece, “The Case for the Subway,” and Winnie Hu’s recent story on the comeback of congestion pricing.

Finally, if you’re a New Yorker or a regular visitor, my column recommends a simple game to give you a sense of how bad the traffic problem has become.

China’s rise. I dedicated one of last week’s newsletters to the rise of China in the age of Trump. If you’re interested in the topic, make sure not to miss my colleague Edward Wong’s farewell piece, after almost a decade as a China correspondent. He focuses on China’s preference for hard power, as opposed to the American tradition — abandoned under President Trump — of soft power.

The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Charles Blow on the latest, book-induced chaos in the White House.