Is it hard to convince people that building more housing downtown will alleviate congestion?
Isn’t that counterintuitive? Here’s an example: In the campaign, when I talked about the subway to the sea, or investing in public transportation, I’d get little applause. When I talked about smart growth, even less. When I talked about ending construction during the rush hour, I’d get a standing ovation, and yet as soon as we did it, people barely noticed, because that’s really not the core of the problem. As long as we’ve got so many people in single-passenger automobiles, we’re going to have gridlock. We have to change driving patterns. Is building more roads an option? Given the density of the city, it’s not viable to build more freeways. If building a freeway involves knocking down a neighborhood, it’s not going to happen. It will be more cost effective to invest in public transportation. It’s where we’ve got to go, it’s where great cities around the world have gone, and we’ve just taken a little longer in realizing that. Is there any real hope that congestion in the city will act
