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Deface subway ads with printable cold sores

While we're talking about the upcoming Eyebeam exhibit, here's my new favorite subway poster hack: printable cold sores. Print out the downloadable sheet on and stick 'em on!

(Via Boing Boing)

Does TV contribute to autism?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today about a Cornell economist, Michael Waldman, who has done some fancy math linking TV use to autism [orig. paper here]. Whether Waldman is on to something remains to be seen. His statistics don't come close to proving that early TV watching causes autism. He has only found that rates of autism diagnosis tend to be higher when kids are raised in periods of heavy rain and snowy weather, and in places where cable-TV subscriptions are high. And his paper is unpublished. Still, it's good to see someone with a brain like his asking questions.

Unfortunately, many autism experts disagree. That they doubt the merit of Waldman's research is natural and fair; his work is as-of-yet untested. But they actually seem to resent the fact that Waldman is even raising the TV question.

"Whenever there is a fad in autism, what people unfortunately fail to see is how parents suffer," says [Ami] Klin [at the Yale Child Study Center]."

"This is junk science," says Alison Singer, parent of an autistic child and serior vice president of Autism Speaks. "Autism is a genetic disoder. The only thing the parents do wrong is they have bad genes."

And:

"I think this is irresponsible," says Klin. "We should not provide clinical advice unless there is scientific evidence to substantiate it."

But, really, what's the clinical advice here?  Don't let your toddlers watch a lot of TV? Perhaps someone should tell Dr. Klin that the American Academy of Pediatrics long ago established guidelines recommending no television for kids under 2 (and substantial limits on TV-time for older children). 

MIND AND MATTER
Is an Economist Qualified
To Solve Puzzle of Autism?
Professor's Hypothesis:
Rainy Days and TV
May Trigger Condition
By MARK WHITEHOUSE
February 27, 2007; Page A1

In the spring of 2005, Cornell University economist Michael Waldman noticed a strange correlation in Washington, Oregon and California. The more it rained or snowed, the more likely children were to be diagnosed with autism.
[Michael Waldman]

To most people, the observation would have been little more than a riddle. But it soon led Prof. Waldman to conclude that something children do more during rain or snow -- perhaps watching television -- must influence autism. Last October, Cornell announced the resulting paper in a news release headlined, "Early childhood TV viewing may trigger autism, data analysis suggests."

Prof. Waldman's willingness to hazard an opinion on a delicate matter of science reflects the growing ambition of economists -- and also their growing hubris, in the view of critics. Academic economists are increasingly venturing beyond their traditional stomping ground, a wanderlust that has produced some powerful results but also has raised concerns about whether they're sometimes going too far.

Ami Klin, director of the autism program at the Yale Child Study Center, says Prof. Waldman needlessly wounded families by advertising an unpublished paper that lacks support from clinical studies of actual children. "Whenever there is a fad in autism, what people unfortunately fail to see is how parents suffer," says Dr. Klin. "The moment you start to use economics to study the cause of autism, I think you've crossed a boundary."

Prof. Waldman, who thinks television restriction may have helped rescue his own son from autism, says many noneconomists don't understand the methods he used. His paper recommends that parents keep young children away from television until more rigorous studies can be done. "I've gotten a lot of nasty emails," he says. "But if people aren't following up on this, it's a crime."

Such debates are likely to grow as economists delve into issues in education, politics, history and even epidemiology. Prof. Waldman's use of precipitation illustrates one of the tools that has emboldened them: the instrumental variable, a statistical method that, by introducing some random or natural influence, helps economists sort out questions of cause and effect. Using the technique, they can create "natural experiments" that seek to approximate the rigor of randomized trials -- the traditional gold standard of medical research.

Instrumental variables have helped prominent researchers shed light on sensitive topics. Joshua Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has studied the cost of war, the University of Chicago's Steven Levitt has examined the effect of adding police on crime, and Harvard's Caroline Hoxby has studied school performance. Their work has played an important role in public-policy debates.

But as enthusiasm for the approach has grown, so too have questions. One concern: When economists use one variable as a proxy for another -- rainfall patterns instead of TV viewing, for example -- it's not always clear what the results actually measure. Also, the experiments on their own offer little insight into why one thing affects another.

"There's a saying that ignorance is bliss," says James Heckman, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who won a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on statistical methods. "I think that characterizes a lot of the enthusiasm for these instruments." Says MIT economist Jerry Hausman, "If your instruments aren't perfect, you could go seriously wrong."

By suggesting that something within parents' control could be triggering autism, Prof. Waldman has reopened old wounds in the realm of autism research, which is littered with debunked theories linking the disorder to the family environment.

"This is junk science," says Alison Singer, parent of an autistic child and senior vice president of Autism Speaks, a nonprofit founded by former NBC Universal Chief Executive Bob Wright. "Autism is a genetic disorder. The only thing the parents do wrong is they have bad genes."

The term "autism" describes a spectrum of diagnoses with symptoms that may include impaired language skills, difficulty understanding social cues, and an obsession with routine or repetitive actions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that as many as one in 150 children in certain parts of the U.S. have some form of autism.
[Autism]

Studies in recent decades have shown the proportion of children with autism growing, though researchers aren't sure the disorder has actually become more prevalent. Greater awareness, broadening definitions of the disorder and the availability of special-education programs may have made parents more likely to get their children diagnosed.

Over the years, attempts to understand the affliction have been tough on parents. One of the earliest, the "refrigerator mother" theory, blamed autism on a lack of maternal affection. Popularized by celebrity psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the theory survived from the 1940s until the late 1960s, virtually demonizing mothers of autistic children until more-careful studies failed to support the idea. More recently, a scare about measles vaccinations stirred anxiety, but large studies have shown no link to autism.

Most researchers now recognize that heredity plays a central role in autism, and they are making progress in identifying the genes responsible. They're also looking into the possibility of interaction with environmental factors, both in the womb and after birth.

Some experts think that in reaction to the discredited theories the pendulum has swung too far away from the family. "The discussion of the role of the family, and social interaction within the family, is virtually taboo," says Anna Baumgaertel, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She says some of her autistic patients have been heavy video and TV watchers since birth -- a factor she thinks "may lead to autistic behavior in susceptible children, because it interferes with the development of 'live' auditory, visual, and social experience."

Prof. Waldman, a recognized expert in the field of applied microeconomics, doesn't pretend to be an authority on autism. He became engrossed in the subject in the fall of 2003, when his 2-year-old son, David, was identified as having an autism-spectrum disorder. Hoping to eliminate any potential triggers, Prof. Waldman supplemented the recommended therapy with a sharp reduction in television watching. His son had started watching more TV in the summer before the diagnosis, after a baby sister was born.

Prof. Waldman says his son improved within six months and today has fully recovered -- a surprising result, given that autism is typically a lifetime affliction. "When I saw the rapid progress, which was certainly not what anyone had been predicting, I became very curious as to whether television watching might have played a role in the onset of the disorder," he says. He tried to get medical researchers interested in the idea, to no avail.

In late 2004, he decided to look into the subject himself, ultimately putting together a research team with Cornell health economist Sean Nicholson and Nodir Adilov, a professor of economics at Indiana University-Purdue University in Fort Wayne.

In principle, the best way to figure out whether television triggers autism would be to do what medical researchers do: randomly select a group of susceptible babies at birth to refrain from television, then compare their autism rate to a similar control group that watched normal amounts of TV. If the abstaining group proved less likely to develop autism, that would point to TV as a culprit.

Economists usually have neither the money nor the access to children needed to perform that kind of experiment. More broadly, randomized trials seldom lend themselves to studying economic questions, particularly the more traditional ones. It would be unfair to randomly subject some people to a higher tax rate just to see how it affects their spending.

Instead, economists look for instruments -- natural forces or government policies that do the random selection for them. First developed in the 1920s, the technique helps them separate cause and effect. Establishing whether A causes B can be difficult, because often it could go either way. If television watching were shown to be unusually prevalent among autistic children, it could mean either that television makes them autistic or that something about being autistic makes them more interested in TV.

The ideal instrument is a variable that is correlated with A but has no direct effect of its own on B. It should also have no connection to other factors that might cause B. If data in a study nonetheless show that the instrumental variable is linked to B, it suggests that A must be contributing to B.

Take a question Prof. Angrist of MIT sought to answer: Did service during the Vietnam War have a negative effect on people's future earnings? It wouldn't be enough to say that people who served ended up poorer. Perhaps a lack of opportunities in the civilian world made them more likely to enlist in the first place.

As an instrumental variable, Prof. Angrist chose the draft lottery, which made some people more likely than others to serve in the Vietnam-era military, but didn't have any connection to their initial circumstances. On average, white men whose low lottery numbers made them draft-eligible had much lower earnings many years later. (The data on nonwhites were inconclusive.) In a seminal 1990 paper, Prof. Angrist concluded that conscription had a detrimental effect on future earnings.

"Economic research is becoming more empirical and in some ways more like clinical research in medicine," says Prof. Angrist. "I think it's a wonderful thing. It's a sign of the extent to which economics has become more of a science and less of an exercise in formal abstraction like philosophy or mathematics."

Chicago's Prof. Levitt tackled police staffing and crime. That's an issue where cause and effect are hard to disentangle because cities with many criminals are likely to have more police, but that doesn't mean an excess of officers causes crime. Prof. Levitt took advantage of the fact that mayors and governors tend to put more police on the streets in election years. Using election cycles, he concluded in a 1997 paper that adding police reduces violent crime.

Prof. Waldman and his colleagues had such studies in mind when they approached autism and TV. By putting together weather data and government time-use studies, they found that children tended to spend more time in front of the television when it rained or snowed. Precipitation became the group's instrumental variable, because it randomly selected some children to watch more TV than others.

The researchers looked at detailed precipitation and autism data from Washington, Oregon and California -- states where rain and snowfall tend to vary a lot. They found that children who grew up during periods of unusually high precipitation proved more likely to be diagnosed with autism. A second instrument for TV-watching, the percentage of households that subscribe to cable, produced a similar result. Prof. Waldman's group concluded that TV-watching could be a cause of autism.

Criticism quickly arose, illustrating some of the perils of the economists' approach. For one, instruments are often too blunt. As Prof. Waldman concedes, precipitation could be linked to a lot of factors other than TV-watching -- such as household mold -- that could be imagined to trigger autism. At best, his data reflect the effect of television on those children who changed their habits because of rain or snow, not on those who did it for other reasons such as a desire to watch educational shows.

"It is just too much of a stretch to tie this to television-watching," says Joseph Piven, director of the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center at the University of North Carolina. "Why not tie it to carrying umbrellas?"

Also, Prof. Waldman's findings do nothing to explain the mechanism by which television would influence autism, a gap that instrumental variables are inherently unable to fill. That's one reason many autism researchers think he shouldn't have publicized his results or made recommendations to parents. "I think this is irresponsible," says Dr. Klin of Yale. "We should not provide clinical advice unless there is scientific evidence to substantiate it."

To those who wonder about the autistic children who never watched TV or who had clear problems before they started watching, Prof. Waldman responds that his hypothesis isn't meant to be all-inclusive. "Even if we are correct, there are likely other triggers and possibly some children become autistic even in the absence of any trigger," he says.

David Card, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has done influential work on the minimum wage, fears that the fascination with the instrumental-variables technique "leads to interest in topics that economists are not particularly well-trained to study."

Those who favor the method say it's just one tool among many -- all of which have flaws -- and is intended to help fill in the picture. Prof. Angrist, for example, readily acknowledges his Vietnam study applies only to those whom the draft forced to serve in the military, not to those who signed up voluntarily, and needs to be looked at in tandem with other work on the economic effects of military service.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron has started a project to test Prof. Waldman's methods and results. Prof. Waldman welcomes the scrutiny, saying he hopes his work will also provoke autism researchers to conduct clinical trials.

"Obviously this is an unusual thing for an economist to be looking at," says Prof. Waldman. "Maybe I was overconfident. We'll see."

Underground American Inginuity - Open City at Eyebeam (NYC)

Open City: Tools for Public Action opens this Thursday March 1st from 6-8pm at Eyebeam. The show "documents the ingenuity of artists, protesters, pranksters, graffiti writers, and hackers reclaiming the public realm." Stay Free readers should feel right at home. The show will include forms of documentation as well as the various tools and inventions (The Graffiti Research Lab's L.A.S.E.R. Tag for example) that shall, without a doubt, boggle the mind.

As an R&D Fellow at Eyebeam I've been able to get a sneak preview of some of the work in the show. I wont give it all away, but one I can't wait for others to see is a German artist, Matthias Wermke, who has expanded out from graffiti into some very poignant and entertaining directions. In one video, he hangs giant swings from various monumental and nearly impossible locations - freeway overpasses, the underside of famous German bridges, subway tunnels, public transit offices, and so on, and then videotapes himself simply swinging on the swing at heights of 50 to 100 feet above ground. It's a charming combination of child's play, acrobatics, and total disregard for authority. In another he carries around a bucket and squeegee and attempts to wash the windows of passing vehicles on street corners - but only the public busses. He then moves on to trains, then later attempting to wash the windows for subway drivers. He is met with a variety of reactions and the final two scenes in the video I just can't reveal here. The surprise is too good.  Don't bother searching the internet, these videos can only be seen at the show.

The show is up through April 7th but the opening should be quite an event. If you're at the opening say hello.

Why aren't bikes more like toilets?

Speaking of London and toilets, I have a far-out thought I want to throw out there. We had to buy a new toilet a month or so ago and, par usual, I checked with Consumer Reports [subscribers only] to get the best buy. Turns out that toilets more efficient and better constructed than those 20 years ago can be purchased for a remarkably low cost: about $250.*

Around the same time, I was also looking into buying a bike for a birthday present. With a little research (and a lot of help from co-blogger Matt Ransford), I discovered that the only way to get a decent, durable new bike is to spend at least $1,000, which strikes me as sort of ridiculous. I bought my bike -- a Specialized hybrid -- about 16 years ago and it's still in good shape. Indexed for inflation, it would cost about $300 today.** So why the huge price increase?

Honestly, I have no idea. But one important difference between toilets and bikes -- at least here in the United States -- is that toilets are used every day and represent a huge commercial market, whereas bikes are used only recreationally, by a relatively meager segment of the population.

In countries that support and promote biking as a form of transportation, the market for bikes is bound to be more competitive. Indeed, in London, where congestion pricing is now in effect, bike manufacturers are falling all over themselves to expand the market there... which is at least part of the reason why you see swank, relatively cheap rides like the A-bike -- which can fold and fit into a backpack! --  coming from across the Atlantic.

- - -
* I got the highest rated, the Eljer Titan, and am very happy with it. Gerber Ultra Flush was also highly rated. American Standard's "Champion" was a "best buy." Toto toilets, which are popular among fashionistas here, didn't rate particularly well. Kohler's were a disaster (like Totos, they look nice, but have a weak flush and are hard to clean).

** Ended up buying a vintage Raleigh cruiser for $175 on Craigslist.

You can't change me

Carrie has been reading about social engineering, so she keeps emailing me wacky products she thinks "we" need. For instance: a washing machine that encourages couples to share laundry duties by not allowing the same user to start the washing machine twice in a row.

Great. Now I'm going to have to hire a maid.

And then this: a high-tech sneaker that logs the wearer's exercise and converts it to television-time credits.

Make that two maids. How am I going to find one that wears a men's size 10 shoe?

The Mayor of London: Badass

We've written before about London Mayor Ken Livingstone's ballsy campaign against SUVs and other gas guzzlers in his city, but I didn't fully appreciate how fearless this guy is until reading of his recent expansion of congestion pricing... and this kicker:

Another of [the mayor's] environmental initiatives is to save water. The "Don't Rush to Flush" campaign, in which Livingstone encourages residents to conform to the "if-it's-yellow-let-it-mellow" school of thought.

Perhaps he could take it to the next level and start charging by the flush.

...on second thought, I couldn't with any conscience support legislation that discriminates against frequent poopers.

(Photo via flickr)

ECKO...Ecko...ecko....

A couple of months back, I received in the mail a shrink-wrapped issue of Complex. I was unfamiliar with the magazine, which described itself as "A Marc Ecko Production" and "The Men's Guide to Consuming Culture." One of the mailing lists I'm on probably decided I was in the correct demographic for this publication. A sheet visible within the packaging offered me some sort of free subscription if I would just mail back the attached card. I don't know the exact details because I never quite got around to opening the shrink-wrap.

Don't get me wrong, I like magazines. I love them, in fact, and make my living from them. And I like free stuff. But, I don't know, I didn't open it. Maybe I wanted to stay faithful to the magazines I already read. Maybe I'm not that interested in gadgets and extreme sports. Perhaps I don't actually know who Marc Ecko is. (Was he the bad guy in Wall Street?) Still, I figured I'd at least rip open that plastic and flip through it. Skim, if you will. But other mail got piled on top, and it just never happened.

Last weekend I was doing a little cleaning in anticipation of a rare visitor to Casa del Silbert. I finally tossed out that still-wrapped issue of Complex. I brought the trash to the curb. The local sanitation crew picked it up and took it away.

Tonight, I arrived home, only to find in my mailbox…the hot-off-the-presses February/March issue of Complex.

I can't eckscape.

Murderers, Bank Robbers and... Xbox Modders?

Jason Jones, 35, used to run the Acme Game Store out here in Los Angeles. It was next door to Gallery 1988, which hosts the annual 8-Bit Show that Stay Free's Jason Torchinsky mentioned last year. When Acme closed, I assumed it was because Jason simply wasn't pushing enough games to afford his lavish space. But no. As this post on LAist.com explains, Jason was arrested by federal agents for allegedly selling "modded" Xbox consoles. He is now serving time in a halfway house with decidedly more violent offenders. That's your Digital Millennium Copyright Act at work, folks!

Speaking of transit

While I'm on the transportation kick, I thought I'd also reblog this timely and succint summary of what Robert Moses got wrong in planning New York. Originally from the Regional Plan Association's Spotlight on the Region newsletter:

It all comes down to capacity. Like many people of his generation, I’m convinced, Moses essentially didn’t understand the different capabilities of different modes of transportation, despite his learning and education. A freeway at top capacity can move only a few thousand vehicles per hour, and all those vehicles have to be put somewhere once they arrive where they’re going. That means many lanes of freeways and many parking lots and garages chewing up prime real estate.

By comparison, a subway or commuter train can move tens of thousands of people per hour, and they all arrive without the need to store a vehicle. This essential fact is why Manhattan can have dozens of skyscrapers, which not incidentally produce millions in salaries, profits and taxes, crammed right next to each other without any parking lots.

Moses' vision of New York, if he had completed it, would have essentially downsized large parts of the city. At the MCNY exhibit, there's one artist's conception of what Soho would look like after the highway was cut through it. It essentially looked like Dallas or Houston - a broad boulevard lined with Edge City style office buildings. And whether you love or hate Dallas, it's a far less productive city than New York, when calculated on a per square foot basis.

This is what happened to much of Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, which are still recovering from the damage Moses did.

(Via Streetsblog)

Solving New York's traffic problems

My new favorite blog, Streetsblog, recently posted a fantastic video interview with transit guru Sam Schwartz (aka "Gridlock Sam"). Do wider roads create less congestion?  How reliant are New Yorkers on cars? How much traffic congestion does closing roads create? Schwartz punctures a lot of myths in just under a half hour.

I loved this interview so much that I transcribed it. You can read the full edit below the fold.

- - -

Interview by Mark Gorton of the Open Planning Project.

Q (Mark Gorton): Could you talk about how things have changed at the Department of Transportation since you were there?

A (Sam Schwartz): The traffic department came out of the police department around 1950. There was no profession in traffic until the 1960s and 1970s. It was mostly cops and some engineers. I joined in 1971. Around 1975 the mayor's wife got caught in a traffic jam around the Upper East Side and complained, so we were told to open Central Park to cars. At the time it was closed from 10am to 4pm. I was given the assignment to justify the change, and I came back not exactly justifying it. One of the senior engineers at the time tried to explain my position. He said, "You have to understand Sam. He lives in the city and rides the subway." They were all suburbanites driving to work. 

Q: You mentioned Central Park. Central Park is still an issue, with people fighting to open it to traffic and others fighting to close it. What if you did open it?

A: Most of the park is closed to cars most of the time. You have to have patience. Around 1978 and 1979, there were three-car lanes around the park. I went around with a fellow named David Gurin to [Brooklyn's] Prospect Park, which is very much like Central Park, and I told him we could take a lane away from cars and use it for bikes and runners. We did that in Prospect Park and then followed suit in Central Park. People who are fighting the battles now don't see how much we've gained.

Q: What about the concern that if you close the park to traffic, it'll cause congestion elsewhere?

A: In the very beginning whenever you close a road, there's congestion as a result. Every time Central Park is closed for various races or museum events you see increased traffic volume on 5th Avenue and Central Park West. But what happens over time, if it's permanent, is that people adjust. They chose different routes, they drive at different times, or they chose different modes. One of my first assignments was racing out to the West Side Highway [formerly Miller Highway] when it collapsed; this was an elevated platform that fell to the ground. We were hired to measure the impact on traffic. I put traffic counters all across the avenues and traced the diversion; it went to the FDR Drive and to the West Side avenues. But over time, we didn't see any increase in traffic: the other avenues absorbed it and we weren't able to trace it.

Q: So a big highway disappears and the traffic increase on other streets was barely measurable?

A: Yes, a highway carrying 80,000 vehicles a day collapsed and... nothing. We couldn't even measure a change in speeds!

People make so many decisions when it comes to traveling. They'll choose mode, so they could decide to take the train. They chose the route, so they could decide to drive a different way. And they choose the time. When we look at peak-hour traffic over the last 30 years, that hasn't changed. But people are now traveling at 6 and 7 am--they're adjusting to the conditions. A decision was made post-Moses not to add any capacity in Manhattan. Turns out that was a good decision. Had we added capacity we would have had short-term improvement but ultimately more traffic.

If you look at New York City history, peak at transit ridership was in 1947 and 1948. More people rode the subway then than at any other time. Over time, from the 1940s, we did a lot of highway building, we encouraged people to spread out and to own cars. So when you look at 1948, the number of people coming into the central business district was 3.7 million. In 1998, 50 years later, it was almost the exact same number. But between 1948 and 1998 the transportation that people rely on changed. In 1948, two-thirds of people came in by public transit. In 1998, only one-half did. In 1948, 18 percent came in by motor vehicle; in 1998, 33 percent did. It's only been in the last couple of years that we've seen an increase in the number of people in the central business district but we're moving people differently. We could move more people if we had the transit numbers we had in 1948.

Q: So the policies of the past have encouraged people to drive cars. Is that still the case today?

A: Yes. On a federal level, we're doing very little to get people out of their cars. The biggest outcry is from high gas prices. In 1978, I thought it was wonderful to see long lines of people getting gas because people were finally getting out of their cars to ride transit. We need to get a message out that we can't rely on gas or private automobiles. It's like giving everyone in the Sears Tower in Chicago their own private elevator. Sixty percent of cars coming into Manhattan central business district are driver-only.

II

Q: How could New York be different with the transportation system that you envision?

A: First off, New York is different than any other city in the United States. During the peak hours, we have 80 to 90 percent of people coming into Midtown and downtown business districts by public transportation. The nearest city like that in North America is Toronto. Mexico City is the other. New York is the U.S. city least dependent on the automobile. We are, however, very dependent on shoes--we walk a good deal. The subway and other rail are also dominant modes of transportation.

The car accounts for very few people in total. There's a misperception because cars use so much space that we think so many people are using them. It's like the Yogi Berra quote, which in this case is very true: "it's so crowded nobody goes there." When I looked at Canal Street, I found no one goes there anymore. Traffic volume is very low, even though it's so crowded and filled with cars. All cars are doing is providing seating for people to view Chinatown.

Our policy is dysfunctional. If you want to get in your car or truck and go on the expressways, go over the Verrazano Bridge over the Staten Island Expressway, out the Outerbridge to New Jersey, we're going to charge you $40. These thruways are designed for heavy traffic. But if you're in a truck and travel across the Manhattan Bridge, bounce along Soho and Tribeca, spewing exhaust fumes into all of those buildings, and go out the Holland Tunnel, we're not going to charge a penny.

I'm encouraging city officials to consider congestion pricing. In 1980, I introduced congestion pricing in New York, got it implemented as law and then was sued by the Garage Board of Trade and the Automobile Club. In April of that year, there was a transit strike, and we reduced traffic dramatically by placing occupancy restrictions on cars coming into Manhattan. If every car has an occupancy of two or three, you can reduce number of motor vehicles dramatically. It worked well and we were hailed as heroes. So the mayor asked, "What can we do to keep this momentum going?" By September, we had our law. It said any driver-only car must use a toll facility to come into Manhattan. But we were sued and lost the lawsuit, which argued that the city didn't have the authority. And there was no state official willing to step up to the plate.

Q: It seems like there are solutions out there, so it's not so much a lack of know-how as a lack of political will.

A: Yes. The far-right and far-left agree that the most capitalistic solution and the most socialist solution is the same solution: congestion pricing. On one hand, it's pure capitalism. We've got a precious resource in the city and we're going to price that space according to supply and demand. If you want to come in the city at Christmas and show your family the Christmas tree in your SUV, we'll let you, but you're polluting the air and consuming space and so it'll cost you $50. The socialists on the left-wing say it's wonderful because the money raised will go toward public transportation. There's a marked skew between people in subway and cars. A study found that people in cars make $14,000 more on average than people in subways. Congestion pricing would move wealth to the less wealthy. Plus there are other benefits: the air will be better and the streets, quieter. But there isn't a politician ready to step up to the plate.

Q: Why isn't this being done?

A: Opponents use the word "tax" and "toll" to describe this. It's a killer in an election. We have to be smarter than a soundbite. We need politicians who can go beyond the soundbite. Ken Livingstone in London implemented congestion pricing--and he was reelected!

Q: One thing you can do to regulate traffic is to regulate parking. If people can't park, they can't drive.

A: True, but there is a percentage of people who are always going to drive. "Choice riders" are the people we should go after. To make congestion pricing agreeable to people in Brooklyn and Queens, I would give those drivers something. I would price the entire central business district but I'd remove the tolls from the Rockaways.

You need two things for congestion pricing: congestion and good transit. Only the central business district of Manhattan has strong public transportation.

III

Q: When people propose changing roads, they use traffic modeling, and the results they get depend on the assumptions they make. Is there a way to make those models more predictive?

A: The models we use now are very limited. They help with traffic volume and light timing, but they won't make any judgements in terms of traffic that might shrink. Those are the kinds of things you have to manually input. You have to have the courage to stand up and say 5 percent of traffic won't be there. I'm in battles like that right now. On the West side of Manhattan, the boulevard being built between the World Trade Center and the World Financial Center has plans for ten lanes of traffic. That's way too much for New York City. I proposed three lanes in each direction and one for turning, so that's seven lanes instead of ten, which is 36 feet less for a pedestrian to cross. The signal timing would allow pedestrians to get across in one cycle. The current model has it in two cycles, which means it would take 5 minutes to walk across the street and New Yorkers aren't going to stand for that. They're going to try to run across and it'll create a dangerous situation. But the state model says you have to include every single vehicle there and that what I propose will create massive traffic jams.

Q: So the state model says you have to count every car. Even though the Miller highway disappeared and all of those cars disappeared, they're saying cars don't disappear?

A: That's right.

Q: Does the state have official guidelines for how you're supposed to do this?

A: Yes, they have massive manuals, with rules saying you must include every vehicle and do a worst-case analysis. To provide more service, you need more lanes. That's the rule.

The problem is that the model applies to cars and not pedestrians. Walking is the dominant mode of transportation downtown. But when the calculations are being done, calculations for pedestrians are almost nonexistent. Every book has been written about traffic engineering, so I'm writing a book about pedestrian engineering.

Q: There are some models for pedestrians, but people aren't like cars. Cars just drive and park. Pedestrians can do all kinds of things: stop and talk, skateboard, drink coffee by the side of the road. The current model seems to treat people as if they're mini-cars. What happens when you observe what people really do?

A: There are lots of benefits to having pedestrians. For instance, having activity on street makes street safer. When the traffic engineers do assign levels of service for pedestrians, you're right: they treat pedestrians almost as little vehicles, and yet they don't do what they do for cars. For cars they introduce delays. For pedestrians, they never calculate the delay it takes in crossing the street.

Q: Isn't there a federal law saying you don't have to do things according to the guides?

A: Yes, there is a waiver allowing you to use engineering judgment as a substitute for a guideline. I was chief engineer so I had the authority to do things differently than federal guidelines. But there are hardly any officials who appreciate that capability or have the courage to abandon the guides. Most will hide behind the wall of saying, "What if we get sued for not following the manual?" The safest thing is to follow the manual.

Recycling in New York: Urban Myth?

At a Super Bowl party yesterday, a highly unscientific poll of attendants revealed that the vast majority of these New Yorkers worked in offices or lived in apartment buildings where recycling was essentially a ruse. That is, offices would have clearly marked bins for paper, plastic, metal, and trash, but at the end of the day the cleaning staff would come and mix everything together. A similar thing was recorded in large apartment buildings. When those polled inquired why carefully sorted materials were ultimately piled in together as trash, they were told one of two things: (a) we can't recycle here; (b) trash collectors re-sort the stuff we just un-sorted.

This poll was prompted by a lawyer friend of ours who works for the City and who said he was fairly certain that the City doesn't actually recycle -- that it's all a charade, including the (very real) fines people receive for NOT recycling.

I don't believe in such a massive conspiracy (NYC's recycling website has video and everything!), but the overwhelming number of people saying the same thing about their workplaces and apartments is strange. Businesses in New York have to use private companies for waste disposal and are required by law to recycle.  So what gives?  Do private collectors pretend to recycle?  Does ratting out offending businesses work? Or is our sample skewed? Is this all an urban myth?

Marketing Bomb

Just last week I wrote about the latest public project of the Graffiti Research Lab the Anti-Advertising Agency. I said "latest" because these guys have done their share of projects. So, what happens when you put the tools of a small, independent guerilla prankster in the hands of a marketing machine? Apparently, a bomb scare.

Steve Lambert has a great post over at the Anti-Advertising Agency explaining the background behind the advertisement-that-looks-like-a-Hollywood-explosive-from-1950. The short version? A very cool underground project to circulate ideas about the effect of advertising gets coopted by advertising itself. Not surprisingly, once moved from passion to promotion, it goes wrong. As Steve said,

Again and again, as advertisers desperately try to break through the clutter they create, they try more desperate methods. The perfect irony to this story is that advertisers can’t get it right. What attracted the attention of the bomb squad was the wiring, circuitry, and large batteries that Interference Inc. added to the G.R.L.'s original design in order to be more financially efficient. Once it was discovered as harmless, Interfrence’s next problem was the media’s derision because it was yet another desperate attempt to put advertising in front of people’s eyes.

The only thing I disagree with is the conclusion that the media "derision" was a problem for the marketer. I assume they are comfortable with the "any publicity is good publicity" - the media coverage of the bomb scare outstrips anything they would have received for the L.E.D. displays themselves. And therein lies the conundrum.

How do you criticize something without simultaneously promoting it. Even this post is doing its part to promote both the campaign and the underlying product. You can try to not mention the product - an approach taken by Tim McIntire - but unless you know the story going in, you don't know who to be mad at when it is all over. And so, you can only try to point out the offenders and hope that you convince enough people that you are right that you overcome the parasitic advertisement that hitches a ride on your critique.

And what do you do when you love the underlying product? I've been a huge fan of Aqua Teen Hunger Force since it started airing and I know people who have worked on it. I don't actually want to punish the artists behind the cartoon just because I am mad at the marketing method (even though I probably should). I am going to keep watching ATHF but I am giving the marketing imbeciles the finger AS HARD AS I CAN!