Eric Britton, from a Paris that is trying hard to green itself and every once in a while doing quite a good job of it. Come check it out for yourself. (And by the way, CP is for now at least not in the cards here.)

One glaring inconsistency I see in the report, however, is that while it cites no fewer than THREE Bruce Schaller studies (p.37) to further its case, this group continues to harp on the regressive nature of CP (p.6) with regard to hitting “the middle class” hardest. Yet, Schaller himself has put out several studies debunking this myth, showing that only 5% of CBD workers drive to work, and those that do have higher incomes than people who commute by public transit and they choose driving over other available options.

Corey Bearak, care to comment?

However, as someone above said “its all about politics”. And, the politics of this are that the Mayor has held that Federal money out there as a stick to beat his political opponents with. And, it is all out of the Robert Moses playbook and has nothing to do with good policy. Silver called his bluff on the drop dead date of the whole thing and the conoscenti got a big laugh.

The whole entire, “Oh my God you can’t let them waste the Federal money.” sky is falling aspect of it is just a political play. And, if Bloomberg wants to play that card there is little we can do about it to discourage him. Its his game. But, that he never contacted anyone in the New York Congressional Delegation to go over either the policy or the politics before he started pushing it forward has not helped him build the political momentum or center of gravity to make it happen.

No accident that Mayoral Wannabe Anthony Weiner , who has become one of the antagonists in the political battle, used to sit on the Transportation Committee and knows a little about the distribution of Federal money.

While I myself would welcome $300-$400 million in my own bank account, it really isn’t a huge amount of dough these days. And the dollars that congestion pricing would bring in when the program is running, if they are used for foolish projects like the 7 line extension, may not be worth it either. It’s not like it’s billions, anyway.

So the question really is: is the mayor’s proposal — sweetened by the money that would go for new buses and other improvements — enough to both stem traffic and help transit? And are enough people convinced of that?

So far, the idea hasn’t caught on with anyone but Manhattanites, so perhaps these additional ideas, maybe linked to fare relief and some sort of additional transit funding, are worth a real discussion as the congestion pricing debate goes on. (I also have my doubts about how willing the proponents of these other ideas would be to actually promote them, so that’s worth throwing into the discussion.)

Read my latest Room 8 Post to see where our tax dollars are going; we’ll be lucky if public education (as opposed to just pensions) exists for my grandchildren if and when I have them.

One way or another, transportation will have to pay for itself. Plus pay for the past, plus interest.

Pro-pricing supporters have made strong arguments for the environmental and economic benefits of pricing. Ideally, these would be enough to put pricing over the top. So far, they have not.

It really plays out like a glorified bribe–not to mention obscures the larger budget injustice of just how many billions Washington cheats big metro areas like NYC.

Let CP stand on its own merits. Don’t demean the city and make us out to be beggars thankful for any scraps thrown from the king’s table…