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- Notes - 5.22.25
Notes - 5.22.25
Recent work and other updates
Ned Resnikoff
May 22, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
More than one year in, this newsletter finally has a real name and a proper URL! Welcome to PUBLIC COMMENT, which can now be found at publiccomment.blog. You may also notice a subtle redesign to these missives which I hope will make them a little sleeker and easier to read.
I’ve been meaning to do something like this for a while, but I struggled to come up with a name that stuck. “The Bristlecone” (the name of this newsletter back when it was hosted on Substack) never felt quite right. Then somehow I got stuck on “Neditorials” — which I hated, but couldn’t dislodge from my mind, like a bad song.
Anyway, we’re PUBLIC COMMENT now. A real, regular, professional newsletter.
I have a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning about congestion pricing, a topic near and dear to my heart. New York, after a lot of gubernatorial flailing late last year, finally switched its license plate cameras on in January. Sam Deutsch has described the results, with some justice, as a “policy miracle.”
Why a miracle? Well, the program has without a doubt accomplished its immediate goals: reducing traffic congestion in Midtown/Lower Manhattan and raising much-needed revenue for the MTA. But it’s also done a lot more than that. The argument of my piece is that it is aiding New York’s long recovery from the COVID-19 slump, and that San Francisco should similarly implement congestion pricing to help revitalize its downtown.
I write:
To start, the program is reducing congestion: compared to the historical baseline, there are now 2 million fewer car trips per month into the city’s central business district. But people aren’t simply staying home; transit ridership is up on city buses, subways and regional commuter rail. Reduced vehicle traffic and greater transit ridership, in turn, are making the city safer. Subway crime was down 36% in January 2025, compared to the same month last year, and the tolled congestion zone had fewer than half as many crashes in early January 2025 as it did during the same period in 2024.
Despite the predictions that fewer cars would lead to less commercial activity, business seems to have improved in the relief zone. Broadway attendance, restaurant reservations and retail sales have all risen in the central business district since congestion pricing was implemented.
Meanwhile, New York’s congestion fee raised $159 million in the first three months since its implementation. The city’s transit agency projects half a billion dollars in revenue over its first year. That money will largely go toward shoring up the city’s struggling public transit network and closing its $3 billion deficit.
Some Other Links and Recommendations
Henry Farrell on Brian Eno’s theory of democracy.
The Mirror and the Light, the death-haunted second and final season of the BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall books. (Mantel is one of my favorites and the Wolf Hall trilogy, in my view, ranks among the best contemporary fiction about political power.)
Nolan Gray on how Proposition 13 broke California’s housing politics.
Banal Nightmare, Halle Butler’s latest viciously funny novel.
Lastly: I recently discovered a Japanese ambient album (in what is called the kankyo ongaku or “environment music” tradition) called Urban Planning. The tracks all have names like “Public Open Space,” “Infrastructure,” and “Social Welfare.” Obviously I love it.