Maybe you have a differnt personal experience. My experience is that once people have the sunk expense of vehicle ownership they are going to drive. Not to midtown, clearly. But a lot of people live in Bay Ridge, work in Long Island, Staten Island or Jersey.

No, I agree with you there. I was mainly responding to your statement, "the reverse commute is almost impossible by transit." It is for many job-home pairs, but for many others it's very straightforward.

You're absolutely right about the costs people sink into their cars, and there's also the prestige factor. In general, it seems that people from all over the city will drive to work in the outer boroughs and suburbs, and the factor that makes the difference is the relative inconvenience of driving and parking in Manhattan vs. the relative inconvenience of transit in the suburbs. If you could somehow create giant swathes of free parking throughout Midtown Manhattan, you'd get people driving all the time, and conversely if you could somehow charge Manhattan rates for parking on Long Island, you'd get people taking transit.

And now I understand a bit better how the anti-pricing feeling seems to be so widespread. If you look at the Tri-State factsheets, most of the anti-pricing politicians have a majority of car-owning households among their constitutents. Many of them have at least a quarter of their constituents driving alone to work outside of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. I think that the pricing proponents assumed that people who drive to the suburbs wouldn't be opposed to CP, but they are, by and large. Maybe they can imagine getting a new job in the city and would want to be able to drive there.

Unfortunately, pro-CP people have largely failed to get it across to transit riders how CP would benefit them. Although not completely. I'm always amazed at how politicians can make blanket statements about how "Queens is against this," when support for CP has never been below 30% in the polls. Thirty percent is far from a majority, or even a force to be reckoned with, but it's also far from the unanimity that these statements imply.

Since 44% of NYC households have a car, and the newest immigrants don't, your bet that 50% of voters are car owners is probably low. We could probably crunch it out based on income/car ownership and income/voting shares. Though a thing to consider is that voting participation is more affected by age than income and lots of old people in NYC dont have cars, but its a good bet that lots of 50-65 yr olds do. (Age may also be a partial surrogate for recent immigrant/non-immigrant since recent immigrants are younger.)

Build CP-New Urbanist political clubs to support Quinn now. Hope she runs with the ball but it doesn't look good to me.

With you Pie -- don't see Silver as saying anything new here. Reporter who wrote this is putting an optimistic spin on this non-event.

Back in July, he agreed to a commission that was heavily weighted on the pro-pricing side. Now he may be letting the Assembly off the hook and making it easier for pro-pricing advocates, who would have to focus only on the Council (not that that's any joy and easy lift either) for a plan's approval.

Congestion pricing is like the farm bill in the sense that non-drivers (as non-farmers) don't see it as something that affects them personally. New Yorkers as a group may oppose congestion pricing, but that reaction comes out of affinity with driver friends, aspirations to the driving class, or a gut opposition to any new tax. People don't see congestion pricing as something with any benefits other than to those who could afford the fee.

I don't own a car but am about to buy one. Why? I have free parking in Stamford, why not?

I might end up driving once a week tops into the city (saves about 20 min in the morning, it's about flat in the evening) but I'll stay on the train for the most part. You can't chat with friends and have a beer in a car and the train saves a lot of aggrivation.

If the farm bill is an accurate analogy, then the future does not look so bright, because agricultural subsidies are hugely destructive and show no sign of slowing.

they are voters who own cars, often drive them to work and will continue doing so for the rest of my life regardless of the price of oil and the effects on the ozone layer.

Well put.

Maybe you have a differnt personal experience. My experience is that once people have the sunk expense of vehicle ownership they are going to drive. Not to midtown, clearly. But a lot of people live in Bay Ridge, work in Long Island, Staten Island or Jersey. Thats just one neighborhood, but you could cite Marine Park, Fresh Meadows, Rosedale. What percentage of those neighborhoods commute to Manhattan? All of them you can get a pretty good shot into Manhattan by mass transit, most people take it and they would be foolish not too. On the other hand, they aren't abandoning the labor market along the peripheral routes. If you live in Bay Ridge and work in Farmingdale it is 45-75 minutes depending on when you drive. Try it by transit. And how many Farmingdale jobs are near the LIRR stop? There used to be a couple. Even so its a couple hours at best. You are right about suburban land use patterns, however you can't just erase those parking lots and run buses. How you could muster the political will of all those office park developers and drivers when you can't even get the upper east side behind congestion pricing is completely beyond me.

You can look at all those people as being foolish and not understanding the complex harmonies and counterpoints of congestion pricing if you want. Thats OK with me. I think they are voters who own cars often drive them to work and will continue doing so for the rest of my life regardless of the price of oil and the effects on the ozone layer. I think those votes have been counted by Weiner.

In a way, this is all about drivers. They aren't just those paying. They are also the beneficiaries of less congestion, except that bus travel in Manhattan may be speeded up.

Either proposal would eliminate the incentive to travel through Downtown Brooklyn or Long Island City if the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel or Queens Midtown Tunnel is more direct. Thus, there would be a big reduction in traffic in those areas. If the cost were equal, I doubt I would every drive over the bridges.

The reverse commute is almost impossible by transit from Brooklyn, or even Queens, to most of Long Island, thats a lot of jobs.

Sorry, Nico, your analysis is usually pretty accurate, but I think you're wrong here. I live in Queens and I've commuted to jobs in Brooklyn, Long Island and even New Jersey. I have neighbors who commute to the Bronx and Westchester. All by train and bus.

When I was working on the Island, I saw lots and lots of people making that reverse commute from Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens to Mineola and Hempstead - among other places. Stand on the outbound platform at Jamaica in the morning, and you'll see hundreds of commuters from Brooklyn changing trains.

I didn't notice anyone from Queens making the LIRR/NJ Transit transfer with me, but there certainly were - and are - many people from Manhattan heading out to Newark, Princeton, Basking Ridge, Madison and other NJ job centers. And they're not all from the fancy parts of Manhattan.

I think that a lot of these people had cars already and didn't look into transit. Also, many of these suburban employers offer free or low-cost parking. That's the main thing: if you're a private employee going from Jackson Heights to Midtown, there's an incentive to leave your car at home: the exorbitant cost of parking and tolls. If you're going from Jackson Heights to Uniondale, there's no real incentive to take the train. Even so, a lot of people do.

Sad but true, one of the first things a poor person gets in New York when he gets a middle-class job (fucking miracle) is go buy a car. Sometimes, a car is a ticket to that job.

There are two New Yorks in more ways than one. The rich and the poor seem obvious. But there are also people who work in Manhattan, or along the transit routes to Manhattan, and there are people who work elsewhere. Unfortunately, if you live outside of Manhattan, and most New Yorkers do, you have a lot of jobs within a reasonable commute in the burbs, across the periphery of the city or even Jersey. A lot of people have that commute.

The reverse commute is almost impossible by transit from Brooklyn, or even Queens, to most of Long Island, thats a lot of jobs. Until the NIMBY's get off their opposition to mainline third track (see NY State Senate) it will remain so. And, a lot of working class jobs that used to be in the city have moved to the burbs and Jersey. Bloomberg's development plans, converting manufacturing districts to real estate, haven't helped.

So if you are a working class schmuck in Brooklyn or Queens there is a real good chance you actually do need a car to get to your job. Someday it won't be so. Maybe after Bloomberg's development program really takes hold changes will be made. Paris, often cited by CP New Urbanists has all the poor and working classes living in the periphery.

There is a lot of class resentment being mined by the CP opposition. Not a small part of that is rooted in Bloomberg's gentrification juggernaut. If you can sell it in the City Council you can win. 60% of City Council is from Brooklyn and Queens, sprinkle in Staten Island and you have Weiner's winning formula. What City Councilpeople from Brooklyn and Queens, besides Yassky, actually support CP?

"Great point da! "Drivers" is not a suitable synonym for "PEOPLE""

Since I make a distinction between "New Yorkers" and "Americans", I'm frequently asked how can you tell the difference?

I say it's easy: The American is the one with the car wrapped around it!

If those people "vote" mf [...] then there should be no problem. The problem here is the clear perception that they don't, or at least not in as big a numbers as their car-owning brethren.

It's a funny thing, the electeds' perception of their constituents. I don't think it's so much that they think the non-drivers don't vote. Here are my guesses:

1. They think that the non-drivers don't exist.

2. They don't see their congestion pricing stance as being anti-transit, anti-environment and anti-economy (although it's all those things). They think that it's all about rich drivers vs. middle-class drivers, and the non-drivers have nothing at stake.

3. They think that non-drivers all want to be drivers, and identify with drivers enough that we'll vote against our own interests.

4. They don't think any of these things, but they think there are enough gullible non-drivers that if they feed them bullshit like (1), (2) and (3) they'll believe it.

5. Non-drivers may vote, but what's the likelihood that any of them will be voted out for not supporting congestion pricing?

Most of these politicians won't be facing any serious opposition at all, especially in the Assembly where elections are so frequently rigged. If there is a contested election, the challenger is most likely going to be from the same smugly car-driving class as the incumbent, and have the same opinions about congestion pricing. If there is a difference of opinion about congestion pricing, it will probably be trumped by some other issue. Even if it isn't, the donors are probably mostly anti-congestion pricing.

Ugh.