And a mistaken one, at that. Accounting for the carpooling effect that this will have on people who continue to take personal cars to work, congestion pricing is in their interests as well. QC’s neighbor pays $27 now to get work? With pricing and a two-person carpool, they each pay $17.50 and benefit from a less traffic. Get with the program, people.

How many people would continue to drive and pay the fee?
How many would take the 7 train instead? The E, F, R, J, N?
How many would take the LIRR? How many people from Long Island would switch to the LIRR?
How many would take express buses? Local buses? How many more people could we expect to see on the Q60, for example?

Another thing I’ll add, Crapper, is that the Planyc transportation report details several improvements that can easily be put into place before congestion pricing, like bus lanes on Queens Boulevard and the Queensborough Bridge. It’s broken down by neighborhood, and I’d be interested to know if any of those improvements would help your commute.

As soon as pricing is installed, traffic delays to buses crossing the East River and using Qns and Northern Blvd will improve. Yes, more buses should be added to those lines anyway,and subway station helpers should also be added. But the number of people who will shift from car to transit from pricing is very small compared to the exisiting number of transit riders. Another arguement for pricing is that lots of bus riders will benefit versus small number of solo commuters affected. Anyway, it won’t be a tidal wave of humanity switching to transit.

Point is that pricing allows for more and better bus service in Qns. This is the lesson from London.

I hear you. I lived in Astoria/LIC for seven years and worked in Midtown. It’s why I became a bike commuter. Door to door bike was 20 minutes, train an hour. Walking was an hour. That was 15+ years ago. A couple times I got stuck with jury duty in Kew Gardens in the middle of dark, wet winter. It was a total nightmare getting there — I had no car. All this said, because things stink in Queens now seems like a good reason to support pricing, not oppose it.

Also, how about calling the Queens politicians on the bogus chicken/egg statement in which they call for implementing massive transit improvements before installing the pricing needed to generate funding for those same improvements.

Doc: that was me being facetious. I realize that doesn’t come across well in internet posts.

I would not be opposed to congestion pricing if the subways and buses were currently running half empty. But they are crowded to point where you have to allow 2 or 3 to go by before you can squeeze onto one at certain points. If one is delayed, fuhgeddabout getting to work on time, even if you give yourself extra time to arrive at your destination. Maybe the city should offer incentives to some businesses to start their work days an hour or two later in order to more evenly spread out the number of commuters utilizing the system at any given time. Or maybe they should offer carpool staging areas as they do in many towns outside the city. Why should anyone who lives within city limits face a 2-hour commute to Manhattan? It’s simply ludicrous to suggest that people who live in areas underserved by public transit spend 4 hours or more per day to get to and from work. My aunt lives in Suffolk county and can get home faster on the LIRR than I can taking the train and bus at times. Sound insane? It is. And it’s reality for a lot of people in Queens.

of course really improving bus service would require dedicated bus lanes which would take road space away from cars… but the spatial efficiency of a bus carrying 100 people versus a private car carrying even 4 people (but more likely to hold 1 or 2) is pretty compelling.

True – any more than you can speed up cars on a congested road way.

But what proved true in NYC in the Moses years – the “if you build it they will come” growth of both highway miles and cars using those highway miles – probably holds true for the subways, no?

If you build more subway lines, especially in neighborhoods that are underserved, you will get more subway riders. Maybe not less crowded cars, maybe not increased commute times, but more people as an aggregate will use trains than other methods.

Look at a map of Queens with the subway lines overlaid (not the MTA map – too distorted). The coverage is pathetic. If this city had the wherewithal and the desire (it lacks both) to push the E, F, G, V, R, 7 etc. deeper into Queens, instead of servicing 10021 with ANOTHER train line, or create new lines, branch lines, whatever, that would do wonders.

http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2007/05/john-liu-wants-to-tax-you.html

I’m an avid bicyclist and have made many phone calls to state pols to tell them to implement congestion pricing.

However, QC reminds us once again that even in America’s most urban city, public transit is of third world quality. The MTA is no RAPT or Deutsche Bahn. Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin and even London have transit systems that are vastly superior to ours. Fast and gleaming trains, quiet buses with low floors and ergonomic seats, modern trams, integrated schedules, low fares and efficient service characterize those systems, but not the MTA.

To correct this we need massive new investment in our system with changes driven by efficiency, good design and ease of use.

These observations are not “pro-car” or “anti-congestion pricing.” They call for a major reinvigoration of the city’s transit infrastructure.

Yet another reason to support congestion pricing and the hundreds of millions of new revenue it will generate for transit. QC’s on our side.

Well, define “many”. The vast majority of outer borough residents take mass transit, so we are already talking about a minority of people.

Research shows a number of things, including that MANY of the people who drive only do so because they have free or subsidized parking. It also shows that some people who drive do so not because it is a “big” burden to take mass transit, but simply because they prefer driving. For some of those who do drive by car to Manhattan, the trip on mass transit wouldn’t take any longer, but it wouldn’t afford them the privacy of an automobile.

Nobody is arguing that cars should be banned from driving into Manhattan altogether. There will always be people for whom driving will make sense — like carpoolers. I also don’t think there is really any question that we have to reduce automobile congestion. And I don’t see that there is any other way to do so other than congestion pricing.

It’s what he opened himself up to by reporting his own experiences on his own weblog. But yeah these suggestions are getting a little weird. We should probably be glad that he supports congestion pricing and move on; Queens residents who understand that it takes money to fix congestion, and are willing to pay it, are very good news for getting it implemented. (Especially since so many ignorant transit users taking surveys released this morning don’t seem to get it.)