"Traffic" has no inherent right to not be backed up.

If you are able to walk and you aren't carrying cargo, you should be walking. (EDIT: cyclists who can cycle at pedestrian-safe speeds are welcome, too!) The overwhelming majority of a city's residents fit into this category and the ridiculous amount of square footage allocated to car-asphalt is in defiance of this. And every able-bodied person who drives into the city for an office job should be dissuaded by geometrically increasing parking costs for increasing that unnecessary traffic load.

I live in on the edge of the suburbs and my car's gotten sixteen thousand miles on it in the last five years. Almost all of which is going to Home Depot and back or visiting people significantly outside of the city.

This is the sort of language we’re talking about: pedestrians aren’t (and rightfully wouldn’t be) “crowding” anyone. Pedestrians have been crowded onto sidewalks, to the advantage of a relatively small (and substantially less dense) class of drivers.

Driving in NYC should be a matter of necessity, not pure expedience. If and when our policies match that fact, those drivers that need to drive will find that they’re stuck in less traffic as a result.