Public opinion swinged in favour as people learned that the benefits from reduced congestion far outweigh the low ($1-3) fee per passage. Especially delivery truck drivers and heavy commuters turned around and favoured the concept.

Compared to their neighbors who don’t drive to work via an East River bridge, bridge commuters earn, on average, $14,300 a year more — enough to cover a solo driver’s annual bridge tolls almost ten times over. See Section 7.

Steve (O'Neill) and I broke down East River bridge commuters by borough but no further. Here are numbers for Queens:

# of adults (ages 18-80): 1,617,000. Of whom 1.4% (23,400) currently commute into Manhattan (i.e., travel more or less daily) on a free E Riv bridge. (Another 0.7%, 11,900, are passengers in those 23,400 vehicles.) Not included in the 1.4% are Queens commuters who use tolled MTA facilities.

This is from our Who Will Pay? report, in 2003.

Amazing, isn't it, how such a tiny slice of the population can exert such a hold on politicos and government.

BTW, I was impressed that no electeds from Brooklyn were in the City Hall photo. Could that be a hopeful sign?

I'd love to know how many of Weprin's constituents drive into Manhattan each day and what they're average income is.Would the Komanoff/O'Neil bridge-toll data give us some insight?

Who is the most important outer-burough politician who supports congestion pricing?

Who is the most important Mayoral candidate in any burough who supports congestion pricing?

Even when all of NYC is together on an issue it is very difficult to push through Albany which must be done because city residents rule really very little of their home.

Get on the keyboard to your elected official and challenge them to start the CHALLENGE to eliminate multi-vehicle accidents, halve vehicle insurance, eliminate traffic congestion, and raise average passenger miles per gallon above 50 pmpg with a net decrease in everyone’s transportation expense by 2020.

If you aren’t already aware that we have the technology, ask a few visionary Intelligent Transportation Systems experts (not the ones still hung-up on drive-by tolls or automated signs). If you want to know how to organize a CHALLENGE ask the Defense Acquisition, Research, and Procurement Agency (DARPA). For more specifics google ‘V2V GM’ or ‘Guardian Angel Cars’ or ‘Car2Car’ or ‘Vehicle Infrastructure Integration’ or “DARPA Urban Challenge.”

This technology is happening anyway, but many more of us will die (43,000 Americans per year)and it won't be safe for pedestrians and bicycles unless you convince elected leaders to run the CHALLENGE.

Lack of parking is bad for a local business that depends on customers driving to the business; it is bad for the residents who have adapted to the status quo on public parking. Many of these residents have cars because they don't always want to go to Manhattan.

I am not making any comment about the net effect, nor about how many commuters who formerly drove into the congestion-priced region will go that far instead of driving to a commuter rail station nearer to them, just pointing out the downside that is perceived by those neighborhoods. Key phrase: "our streets"

And this is BAD why?!

Speaking of parking enforcement and congestion, I learned today that New York City already has a congestion pricing plan of sorts: the "Commercial Collections" and "Stipulated Fine" programs of the Department of Finance.
Under these programs, commercial parking violators may violate certain lesser parking laws with impunity, and more serious ones for as little as 25% of the cost you or I would pay, in return for agreeing in advance not to contest tickets they do receive. The effect of these programs is that the city sells to private businesses the right to create congestion with unlawful parking--analogous and more objectionable than the goal of the proposed congestion pricing program now under debate, under which the city would sell the right to create congestion through lawful entry onto the local streets of midtown and lower Manhattan.

Here is the relevant page at Department of Finance:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/parking/park_commercial_fleet.shtml

Under the programs, the parking violations of a participant are classified as "amenable," "partially amenable," or "not amenable" to adjustment, based on the type and severity of violation (no details are provided). DoF explains:

"In lieu of contesting their tickets, participants in the program receive the following benefits automatically:

- All amenable violations are dismissed.

- Partially amenable violations are reduced by about 75% of the scheduled fine.

- Nonamenable violations are reduced by about 15% of the scheduled fine."

The DoF further states: "This program requires participating companies to make good-faith efforts to comply with New York City Traffic Rules. . . ." But while the program application requires the applicant to certify a number of things, the applicant's agreement to "make good-faith efforts to comply with New York City Traffic Rules" is NOT one of them. Perhaps NOTHING is done to foster general compliance with traffic rules among program participants.

It seems to me inevitable this this program encourages certain types of routine parking violations--whichever have been classified as "amenable." those violations come at zero cost to the participant (there is no cost to joint the program and no apparent processing charge or other "transaction cost" for a dismissed ticket). Thus program participants are given an incentive to commit violations instead of, say, paying $0.25 to park at an available metered space. My guess is that the cops know which are the "amenable" violations, and refrain from ticketing any commercial driver for them in the first place on the assumption that if the violator is a program participant, the city is paid nothing.

I wonder how "amenable" certain violations are, such as vanilla double-parking, double-parking in a bike lane, or parking in a crosswalk is. I have written a letter to DoF about this; let's see what they say. In any event, it seems clear that the city is already selling the right to congest the streets UNLAWFULLY; so how can there be principled opposition to a program to sell the right to congest the streets lawfully, through congestion charging?