As long as enforcement is dependent on cops ticketing and towing other cops, enforcement will always be spotty at best.

If, however, you make these same cops pay a congestion fee via ruthless electronic payment with no human intervention, you’re going to reduce the number of them driving in to work every day and, in turn, reduce the number of them parking illegally on city streets. Congestion pricing with no govt employee exemption is what Chinatown ought to be fighting for.

The other smart thing Chinatown residents and merchants could push for would be to convert many of the streets down there to car-free streets.

Converting many of those nice little streets into car-free places would be a huge boon to Chinatown business, parents, kids, visitors, you name it. It’d be the surest way to return Chinatown to its status as a major NYC destination. It would help lift Chinatown out of its post-9/11 economic doldrums.

While I sympathize with their plight, I truly hope we start to see and hear some more vision and creativity from Chinatown activists, politicians and business owners beyond this single-minded demand for ticketing and towing cop cars.

I thought that maybe marking swaths of the city no-placard zones would be a solution. Enforcement would be an issue but there has to be a way to end the abuse.

I support CP but am totally cynical about its intention or ability to reduce traffic.

You call this a fair deal for NJ? This is “fair and balanced” the way Fox 5 gives the news.

“As expected, one of the first points to come up was whether drivers from New Jersey will contribute anything to the congestion pricing revenue stream. Turns out they will.” [Only if they pay CASH and do not have E-Z pass]

As has been pointed out on other threads, cash toll payers generally have lower incomes statistically, so WHO is targeted here for the extra $45-million/year?

Regarding the Residential Parking Permit Study – I’ve checked it and it is rushed and bogus; check the DOT website. Downtown Brooklyn, with quantitatively some of the worst placard abusers, will be an absolute nightmare with CP. And, placard abuse is barely mentioned in this Residential Parking Permit study. Downtown Brooklyn is in for a shock and awe parking permit problem if CP is implemented.

“Asked by Staten Island Council member Michael McMahon whether police and firefighters would be granted congestion fee exemptions, Sadik-Khan responded: “That’s not our intent right now. The exemption route is a slippery slope.”"

Yeah, you know what “the slippery slope” means, it means the first amendment to the CP bill, if it is sadly implemented, would be to grant EXEMPTIONS to government sector placard holders. There is no COMMITMENT here at all to dealing with the placard abuse problem. I can’t believe anyone buys this, especially in view of the DOT’s track record of umpteen years of “exempting” the government sector from any parking permit violations.

Dave, been to Brooklyn lately? Like, since WWII? Even my neighborhood, which has a higher proportion of single-family homes than some, also has plenty of 50+ unit apartment buildings, many of which are co-ops. New buildings are sprouting up all over, from Williamsburg to Crown Heights to Flatbush, and these are mostly 12+ unit condo buildings. Their residents pay the same high property tax that you do. Most of us weren’t lured here by a big-ass house; we moved here to buy an affordable apartment, and we already take transit.

I live in Manhattan and work at the Newark Int’l Airport. I own a car and could drive to work (I essentially garage my car in the employee lot at EWR). It costs me $15 each way to take NJ Transit to work (cheaper but longer using the PATH and NJ Transit bus). If it was free for me to drive through the Holland Tunnel, I probably would. But it costs $8 (in addition to gas, etc.) – and that disincentive convinces me not to drive (there are other factors as well, but that’s a big one).

The congestion pricing plan on the Holland Tunnel works on me – there’s one less car. And no, the reduced traffic in Manhattan isn’t going to suck me back into an auto-commute.

Just another unfair element of this system that they have refused for over a year to address.

Lew

Why does NYC think it has to reinvent the wheel? You take a longer flight, busride, trainride, you pay more. Why shouldn’t it be the same in the subway.

And I disagree that a long commute is a disincentive: espcially if you thought you could get the bigger house/apartment further out and drive into the city for free.

Now the situation changes and you’re not happy, but why should I subsidize your hours-long commute?

Dave, surely you are joking. The long commute times themselves are as much or more of a disincentive to live further from work than the cost of the commute.

I feel very safe in saying that neither I nor most of my neighbors could afford to live anywhere near midtown Manhattan at this point. Maybe two or three decades ago the decision was a matter of personal preference, but that has not been the case for many years. What sort of zone charge could possibly close the gap between housing costs in midtown Manhattan and those in Central Brooklyn? Or Southeast Queens?

By the way, co-op owners in “the rest” of NYC pay property taxes too (so do renters as part of their rent), and our buildings don’t have the benefit of sky-high commercial rental income, which will subsidize Manhattan co-op owners even more with the phasing out of 80/20 rules.

We will find out, in my generation and after.

And what, no mention of my shout out to Streetsbloggers regarding my request for legislation on cameras for bus lane enforceme4nt?

It sounds like you outlasted our reporter, Lew. Sorry we missed it. Bus lane enforcement cams would be a big help….

Larry, you assault on people’s ertuirment pensions is in my view meritless. First, most of us hoping to retire someday will have CONTRIBUTED from i\our income to our retuirements, pension funds included. Second, in the absence of such, how many people would wind up on some govt program or another out of abject poverty.

third, my tax on wages is a one third of pne percent tax on business owners. Hardly a job killer, it would be equitable in that affects taxpayers in the surrounding counties as well.
I could live with the Assembly’s millionaires tax too, btw.

And for those that continue to repeat repeat repeat the BLARNEY that Hydrogen cars wont be here until 2050, WAKE UP. White Plains just entered into an agreement with an auto manufacturer to open a hydrogen fueling station and to start using test cars in their fleet. See the NYTimes article on the same…..I don’t know how to do links, sorry. but it there. OR the Sunday Auto section from November in the Times dedicated ENTIRELY to Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles, in which two manufacturer’s have said they will have hydrogen fuel cell models available in their showrooms next year.

In your zeal to pass the morbidly flawed CPplan, your collective need to shoot down an idea that would do more to clean our air than any otehr thing opn the table astonishes me. BUT it will not happen until and unless we encourage the infrastructure to support it. Or the change really WILL take until 2050. Mass production will reduce costs. Zero emission automobiles. It is NOT a dream.