Three of the top items on the Livable Streets wish list for New York City are congestion pricing for Manhattan's business district, more car and truck-free streets, and "red light cameras" at busy intersections to catch speeders and prevent pedestrian carnage.

Needless to say, this agenda has been a tough sell. Congestion pricing has long been viewed as a political non-starter. Car-free streets are generally ignored by the powers-that-be as a kind of trivial, bourgeouis, environmental cause. And red light cameras have been held hostage in Albany for years. Apparently some Assemblyman in Buffalo or Rochester with a civil libertarian streak doesn't want New York City to have automated traffic enforcement, no matter the fact that they have been proven to significantly reduce speeding, crashes and pedestrian injuries and deaths.

I've long had the feeling that homeland security would be the argument that would ultimately win some of these changes for New York City. What's the connection? London's congestion pricing system is entirely camera-based. One of the reasons why Londoners were relatively comfortable with the idea of a cordon of video cameras around Central London was because they had grown used to the "Ring of Steel" surveillance system during the days of IRA terrorist bombings. As for car-free streets, Tim Tompkins, the president of the Times Square Alliance is beginning to talk seriously about how having fewer cars and trucks driving through midtown would be a great boon to security. It's really kind of a no-brainer. One of the biggest and most obvious threats to the city is a dirty bomb in the back of a generic delivery truck. Tompkins clearly realizes that City Hall doesn’t move to the beat of environmental and quality of life arguments these days. Post 9/11, it's all about security. That’s where the federal funding is as well. Let's see a pipsqueak upstate Assemblyman try to stop New York City from getting cameras on the street when the city's police commissioner says he needs them to stop terrorism and when federal homeland security funds are going to pay for them.

Well, today, the Daily News reports that New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly is ordering 505 new surveillance cameras for Lower Manhattan. Kelly even calls the system a "ring of steel." Like London's congestion pricing cameras, New York City's video system would keep constant track of vehicles' license plates, among other things.

Kelly and City Hall almost certainly have no intention of using the cameras to stop red light runners or charge drivers money to enter Manhattan at this point. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't want to admit it. The idea of a citywide surveillance system is already going to make people squeamish enough. But once this security system is up and running-- and it will be built, regardless of civil libertarians objections -- New York City will have taken significant legal, cultural and infrastructural steps closer to congestion pricing, car-free streets, and automated traffic camera enforcement. For better or worse, homeland security may very well be the Livable Streets movement's Trojan horse.

10:44 AM | Link |