When the Mayor of Money lost his battle to bring congestion pricing to Manhattan, he did not allow the idea or his enthusiasm for it go gently into that good night.
Rather he started sticking "pedestrian plazas" at some of the busiest intersections in Manhattan and expanded bike lanes, taking away precious driving space for buses, trucks, cabs and cars and making Manhattan driving an even bigger nightmare than it already was.
Bloomberg says he's just pursuing pedestrian, biker and tourist-friendly policies, but I see something else in this effort: it's a rather aggressively passive aggressive way to get his way on congestion pricing by slowly eroding driving spaces, blocking streets and making traffic in the borough worse and worse by the year.
Now I'm no car guy - I don't own a car, I wouldn't drive in Manhattan if you paid me and I am generally in favor of policies that favor pedestrians over cars.
That said, the mayor's policies have struck me as another example of his authoritarian dictatorship ways - beaten by Shelly Silver in Albany a few years ago, he's coming back around with the congestion pricing thing after log-jamming traffic all over Manhattan with his pedestrian plazas.
That's why I thought it was extraordinary that he actually was forced to back down on the latest logjam attempt on 34th Street - until I read further and realized, he wasn't backing down at all. The city was simply SAYING it was acknowledging community concerns and would roll out a new version of the proposal in the near future.
You can bet the new version of the plan won't look all that different from the old one.
Maybe it will have a new name or something. But that's about it.
Time and again, that's what the Little Mayor does - picks and picks and picks at every issue until he gets his way.
Sometimes he SAYS he's changed on something, even as he continues with his original plans.
Don't be surprised Manhattan isn't pedestrian-plazaed over by 2013, congestion pricing (and all the cameras they'll use to enforce it) isn't re-introduced into the city, the Jets don't have a West Side stadium, and the Eva Moskowitz School System hasn't replaced the old DOE.
That's how this guy operates.
Other people's wishes or feelings?
Who cares - only the billionaires matter.
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