By the way, it’s deeply disturbing how backwards the Democrats, especially the New York delegation, is on transportation and environmental issues. They talk the talk on global warming, but look at the evidence:

Opposed to congestion pricing: Silver, Brodsky, Weprin, Weiner, Marshall, among others. Even Peter DeFazio, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit (D-OR)

Opposed to California’s tighter emissions standards: Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), Rep. Rick Boucher(D-VA) (these are senior Democrats with leadership positions in the House)

Opposed to higher fuel economy standards: Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Shame, shame, shame, shame…

As chair of the Queens County party organization and a regular motorist (I saw him behind the wheel on Memorial Day), Crowley could easily have taken a windshield perspective and supported Weprin, Marshall and Weiner. By supporting the concept of congestion pricing, Crowley gave cover to Quinn and to John Liu and hopefully will allow others like Eric Gioia, Cathy Nolan and Marge Markey to support the plan.

But pedicabs and mayoral politics aside, Quinn should get credit for doing this. She and Spitzer are among the only important New York Democrats to support congestion pricing. The opposition is all from their colleagues: Silver, Brodsky, Weprin.

She thinks pedicabs cause congestion because they are slower than cabs. It makes sense if you ignore the environmental impact part of congestion pricing and pretend that pedicabs area serious source of slow moving traffic (they aren’t.)

That all said I’m happy she’s on board for this one. Woo hoo, and there was a poll that just came out that said most people support the plan. I think when we all see the results most people will ask “why didn’t they do that sooner?”