People from Westchester, Connecticut, and Long Island would have only paid an additional 2 dollars—do you really think that would have discouraged anyone from those environs from coming to Manhattan? The plan’s costs fell disproportionately on those from the outer boroughs, and there was no guarantee that those who bore the lion’s share of the costs would have received the benefits.

We’ve already been through this here. Nobody ever offered any proof that the toll bridges and tunnels were disproportionately used by people from Westchester, Connecticut and Long Island.

Cam, if you’re so convinced that some kind of cordon tolling can be put into place, you should be able to convince (a) someone with an ideological commitment to cordon tolling, like Carolyn Konheim, Charles Komanoff or Sam Schwartz, and (b) someone with the power to get the “skeptics” in the Assembly behind an initiative, like Shelly Silver or Richard Brodsky, to support it. We welcome your efforts in this area. Please let us know when you’ve got it lined up.

Both PlaNY 2030, and the Urban Partnership Agreement between the MTA, NYSDOT and NYCDOT sought a 6.3% reduction in VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled), and the Mayor admitted that his plan would probably not produce that much of a reduction—so where on earth did you come up with a reduction in VMT of 15 to 30%? That’s just wishful thinking.

And I disagree that I’m focused on the wrong things. Traffic, transit, pedestrian safety, pollution and law enforcement are all closely tied together, and a GOOD plan should be defined as one that comprehensively addresses the roles that each plays in relation to the whole, and benefits all city residents.

Your 2 to 3% number is wrong. Congestion, or time spent waiting in traffic, would have been reduced by 15 to 30% in and around Manhattan extending as far out as Flushing. About 120,000 cars/day, conservatively estimated, would have been taken off the streets.

More important, you’re just focused on the wrong things. The focus among advocates needed to be: Get as good a system up and running as possible. Not a perfect system but a politically palatable system. Period.

Once that’s done and we have a mechanism in place that could be honed and adjusted over time. If $8 wasn’t doing enough to reduce traffic over the Hudson River bridges, fine. We could raise it to $12 or whatever. The system’s in place.

Now there is no pricing system in place and there probably never will be. You’re not getting better transit and less traffic. You’re going to be desperately trying to maintain what you’ve got with outer boro idiots complaining about gas prices.

I mean this report:

https://www.nysdot.gov/portal/page/portal/programs/congestion_mitigation_commission/minority-report

It is not clear who signed it; I’ll have to re-read it. And the unsubstantiated claims were that traffic would be significantly reduced in the outer boroughs, and that the MTA can be trusted to dedicate congestion pricing to capital improvements—where’s concrete evidence for that? I never claimed congestion pricing doesn’t work, only that the implementation you and others are so fond of was poorly thought out and would not have reduced traffic or improved subway service to the extent predicted by its proponents.

People from Westchester, Connecticut, and Long Island would have only paid an additional 2 dollars—do you really think that would have discouraged anyone from those environs from coming to Manhattan? The plan’s costs fell disproportionately on those from the outer boroughs, and there was no guarantee that those who bore the lion’s share of the costs would have received the benefits.

Whether or not you choose to admit it, that’s a legitimate criticism.

If the plan had been approved, traffic might have declined by 2-3% at the most, we would have gotten 300 new express buses that would still be stuck in traffic, minor improvements to 3 subway lines, and not much else. We’d still be paying the greatest percentage of operating costs of any transit agency in the country. All New Yorkers deserve better than that.

http://bettertransitny.blogspot.com

Do you mean that document that only had Richard Brodsky’s name on it, that Vivian Cook and Denny Farrell didn’t even sign on to?

Cameron: There was a majority consensus as to how to proceed. Your state legislature chose not to enact it and rejected the concept of an entry, congestion or cordon fee for motorists.

The claim that congestion pricing works is highly substantiated. It’s substantiated in practice in London, Stockholm, Singapore, the Battery Tunnel and Hudson River crossings. We know that pricing impacts driving decisions.

There is still much we can do, but the first order of business should be to put an end to this stupid bickering, and to produce a MAJORITY consensus as to how to proceed.

Commissioner Sadik-Khan has not given up, and the Federal DOT has said that money could still be made available.

An entry fee is not impossible, is fairer to all city residents, and the cost would be borne not by a minority of outer-borough residents, but by the majority of drivers who enter the city; who, incidentally, have per capita incomes that are approximately three times greater than those who live in the city. Why did you prefer to tax your fellow city residents for completely unsubstantiated claims? What proved to you that was the only way to proceed? Those aren’t criticisms, they’re honest questions to which I would like answers. Saying, “You’re just wrong about that.” is just contentious, and doesn’t help us to move forward.

http://bettertransitny.blogspot.com

First off, the pricing plan did a lot to reduce traffic congestion outside of Manhattan. You’re just wrong about that.

Second and more important, you can have as many good ideas as you want but this isssue is done and it’s not coming back.

Maybe you didn’t like the specifics of the Traffic Commission plan but now there is no plan, Anthony Weiner is your next mayor, and no one is going to expend any more political capital on this issue any time soon.

There will be no entry fee or pricing mechanism to control NYC traffic. There will be no new resources for automated traffic enforcement. There will be no big systemic changes at the MTA.

The pricing policy was the context in which those changes could have happened. If we had won then the plan could have been honed and improved over time. We lost and now we’re left figuring out how to raise taxes to fund the MTA and where we can reclaim bits and pieces of street space in Manhattan.

It’s amazing to me that people who consider themselves supporters of transpo policy reform don’t see this. All you folks who were busy fighting for your own little idea here or there, the Kheel plan, or whatever — you arguably did more to help us wind up with nothing than Richard Brodsky.

The opportunity to do this big reform is dead and gone. Pricing will not come back for at least a generation.

It seems that many of you wanted this plan or no plan, and, ultimately, that’s what killed it.

There were insufficient disincentives to discourage motorists from Connecticut, Westchester, New Jersey, Long Island and Pennsylvania from driving in; most would have only paid an additional $2.00, while outer-borough residents, who are, after all New York City residents and New York City taxpayers, would have paid the lion’s share of the cost. Coincidentally, New York City residents constitute the smallest percentage of drivers in the city.

All indications are that the Bloomberg plan would not have provided the relief from pollution desired by most residents, and that revenues would have been much lower than projected.

Now is the time for advocates to get together and produce a more comprehensive and more palatable plan to reduce congestion and pollution, to make streets friendlier and safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, and provide for much improved mass transit.

Just because the state legislature killed Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing scheme doesn’t mean the issue is dead. My alternate proposal, presented to the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission in 2007, consists of three parts. I’m sure this proposal, too, would be nitpicked by all, but we need a continuing dialog—and an implemented plan.

1) An entry fee.
The entire city, not just Manhattan, suffers from nightmarish traffic. When I recently had occasion to return a rental car to Manhattan from my home in Bensonhurst, the trip took two and a half hours, for a journey of ten and a half miles. There was no accident clogging the roads, they were just jammed, as usual. This is typical for vehicular travel within the five boroughs.

So, rather than congestion pricing, which will only alleviate traffic in Manhattan, and which will only produce limited revenues, charge a daytime entry fee to New York City, a twenty-five dollar surcharge to all drivers entering the five boroughs, with a reduced fee for through traffic, and let those funds be dedicated to public transportation improvements, with a percentage set aside for road and bridge maintenance. This alone would have an extremely beneficial effect on traffic throughout New York City, and produce vastly higher revenues than Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing alone.

There are those who will object and say that such a fee will hurt business in the city—nonsense. The city is (at least for the time being) the economic engine that drives prosperity throughout the region—if they have a genuine need to drive, they will continue to come, and many will move to mass transit, a desired outcome.

New York City residents will be exempt from this fee, and could be identified through special EZPass devices, and by special New York City license plates. This would also remedy another source of revenue loss—many city residents now register their cars in other states—Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, etc., to obtain lower insurance, and to take advantage of lower registration fees. Under this plan, they would have an incentive to register as New York City residents, producing another revenue stream, and with reduced traffic will come reduced accidents and insurance rates.

2) Driver and enforcement reform.
We must step up enforcement as well. The vast majority of moving violations do not result in any sort of fines or penalties; they go unnoticed. This needs to be addressed; increased enforcement will produce more revenue, and a percentage of that revenue, plus a portion of entry fees can be dedicated to traffic enforcement and driver reform. Many drivers in the area feel that they can break speed limits, talk on cell phones, fail to signal—even kill pedestrians. And they’re right. Review pedestrian deaths over the past few years; if a driver isn’t drunk, he usually faces no charges or fines of any sort. A casket truck driver killed a four year-old boy last year (2006) in Sunset Park; he admitted to speeding and to running a red light, actions which directly caused the boy’s death, yet he faced no charges at all. Time and again, pedestrian deaths resulting from driver carelessness go unpunished. This is wrong, and if we are a just and humane society, we can no longer countenance such behavior. Drunk driving causes forty percent of all traffic fatalities— guess who causes the rest. Careless driving must have steep penalties; our children deserve no less. Stringent traffic enforcement will change driver attitudes, return revenues, and even convince many to use mass transit, instead.

3) Reform the MTA.
PlaNY seeks to add over three-hundred more express buses, complete the Second Avenue subway, and the number 7 line extension. These improvements, while notable and desirable, are inadequate. Again, those who take express buses are still victims of what the Federal DOT calls extreme commutes—a commute of more than 45 minutes duration, one way—extreme commutes that cost more than double what other transit riders pay.

The MTA is one of the most poorly managed enterprises to ever exist. Time limits here prevent me from citing a long litany of poor performance, but we’re all aware of the many billion-dollar boondoggles attributable to this agency, ranging from their over-priced headquarters to their poorly-planned station renovations. After over one-hundred years of operations, August 8, 2007’s flooding debacle left many lines out of service more than twenty-four hours after the rains had ceased. Likewise, many sections of track, signals and switches are still in need of repair, while lavish amounts of money have been spent on executive offices and compensation, and poorly conceived cosmetic improvements, such as the granite/terrazzo tiles at the Broadway-Lafayette station, half of which are broken, due to poor installation. Slippery when wet, these tiles also cause an increase in slip and fall suits against the MTA.

It should be clear to all that small, incremental improvements will not meet our transportation challenges. If we seek to get drivers out of their Lexuses, or even their Corollas for that matter, we need a transit system that is safe, affordable, comfortable, and, most of all, one that is at least twice as fast as the system we have now. Adding some so-called express buses will not even come close to accomplishing these goals. New subway lines are necessary; lines that reach the vast stretches of Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island that have been abandoned by mass transit. BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) lines can be added in many places. In addition, standards of behavior need to be enforced; Miami has hired Wackenhut to augment the police in that regard, with an enforcement officer on every train, and with excellent results.

The twenty-first century presents us with numerous challenges; among them, population pressures, pollution, increasing political instability in many parts of the world, oil shortages and prices that are now over $100 a barrel, and the challenge of sustainability. We live in the financial and cultural capital of the world, and we must create a transportation system befitting that status.

If you dislike that plan, there are many other alternatives; Theodore Kheel’s plan has many excellent ideas.

Here are some more proposals that don’t involve a fee:

• Make all the major crosstown thoroughfares (Canal, Houston, 14th Street, 23rd Street, 34th Street, 42nd Street, 57th Street, 72nd Street, 79th Street, 86th Street, 96th Street, 106th Street, 116th Street, 125th Street, 145th Street, 181st Street, and finally, Dyckman Street) accessible to pedestrians, bicycles and buses (BRT) only.

• Do the same for every third or fourth avenue (First Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Broadway, Ninth Avenue).

• Make all deliveries requiring trucks larger than a van take place between 6PM and 6AM.

• Do the same for major thoroughfares in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx.

• Establish a dedicated force of 2,500 police to enforce the traffic laws, dedicate half of the increased fines collected to mass transit; the other half would pay for the increased enforcement.

• Eliminate at least half of the parking placards now in circulation.

• Double the parking tax; dedicate the increased revenues to mass transit.

• Triple the street parking fees; dedicate the increased revenues to mass transit.

• Eliminate city sales tax on bicycles and bike equipment.

• Make the fine for traveling over 30mph in the city $20.00 for every mile per hour above 30—and strictly enforce it.

• Ban “schooling” behavior of cabs—hundreds at a time travel up Church/Sixth Ave en masse or down Columbus while people elsewhere can’t find one. Cabbies income would rise, streets would be calmed.

• Get the cross-harbor tunnel built—we’ve been waiting since 1915!

But we need to do something, the status quo isn’t working. Please post your ideas.

Totally untrue. In London the speed of traffic went up immediately and stayed up.

In fact, if you read the early reports backing congestion pricing for London, the original motivation was to *speed up the buses* so they would run on time.
This was 100% effective. The delays to buses in the congestion zone were causing delays throughout the entire system. (Apart from eliminating the delays, the revenue mostly went to improving the buses in other ways.)

“Congestion charge” probably worked as a name in London when “Bus priority streets” or something similar wouldn’t have worked, because it appealed to the people driving and walking through the congestion as well. For NYC, apparently the politics demand a different name, though I don’t know what — the “Manhattan smog duty”, maybe?

Congestion pricing was necessary in London because the streets were too narrow for bus lanes, and had too much local delivery traffic to make them bus-only, etc.

In NYC, you could achieve the same elimination of congestion for buses by having dedicated bus-only lanes on *every* street on which a bus route runs — they’re all wide enough, I think. Of course you’d have to enforce them by severe fines for cars in the bus lanes.

That wouldn’t reduce congestion for cars or trucks of course.

Still, keep in mind that about 80% of the anti-pricing comments were all posted by one commenter, nrafter530, and almost all the others by mad cow. The pro-pricing comments represented more individual commenters. So while we have work to do, don’t mistake comment volume for public opinion.

That was parody, Damien. What I really think: practically everyone here has had a chance to live with the great American automobile at some time; the “immutable lifestyle” perspective is not special or helpful, and (of course!) non-voting Dems must be held accountable. If nothing else, the pricing effort gave us a snapshot of their political priorities: the automobile or public transportation? The automobile or the environment? The automobile or public health? Even if I believed that misgivings about the government charging an income-blind use fee were the reason they chose the automobile, I’d still vote against them for making that misgiving their top priority.

But like Greg R said, back to the topic: it is going to be slow going nationally, where the Democratic surge is largely propelled by anger over high gas prices. Democratic presidential candidates try to top each other in taking the macho stances against “big oil,” as if that would lower prices and as if lowering those prices were a good thing. I scoffed my way through this story about Obama’s silly oil commercial and Clinton’s silly response, followed by over 150 comments from people that call themselves progressives ranting about the price you pay at the pump (what?), and only one or two daring to mention that cheap gas is unambiguously bad for the environment:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/new_hillary_ad_obama_only_take.php

The Democratic party is far from facing the automobile problem, or even knowing what “livable streets” means. But as new generations move to cities and gas becomes literally too expensive for their constituents to afford (and hands-on-hips are shown to have no effect on the international oil market), a lack of alternatives will force them to finally act to advance public transportation and energy conservation. Unless Republicans beat them to it, as with congestion pricing.

I think what paulb is getting at is that the goods were packaged ineffectively. I agree, and would humbly suggest that “Congestion Pricing” is not a name that worked. It doesn’t imply anything about air, or transit, or safe streets, or global warming.

The only way to prove CP’s promised effect on traffic was to implement it. Are you really asserting that I must be wrong because I don’t take at face value some predictions of planners and advocates? And if you’re also arguing that the impressions/opinions/skepticism of my acquaintances (and the ones I am talking about are born New Yorkers who are reasonably well informed) are irrelevant because they aren’t “experts,” then, if that attitude is shared by CP’s advocates, I’m not surprised they lost.

http://www.e-benchmarks.com/congestion/factsheets/queens/council/cc_gioia_26.pdf

I’d like to see increased funding for transit, but my support for the plan has mainly rested on the prediction that congestion pricing would reduce all the unnecessary bridge traffic in my neighborhood. An additional selling point was the increased efficiency for vehicles driving crosstown in Manhattan. If I didn’t believe that, I’d have been looking for another way.

How knowledgeable are these people you know personally? Can they show me why I was wrong?

If this was really an “alternative transportation” or “redesigning urban space” or “greenhouse gas reduction” or “public transit capital improvements” or whatever plan, it should have been presented in those terms.

http://www.observer.com/2007/richard-brodsky-public-hearing-advocate

This is Richard Brodsky, a feisty, erudite legislator who can be by turns passionate, principled, self-aggrandizing and brash. A self-described progressive known for having a point of view on pretty much everything, he is also emerging as a key player in the battle over congestion pricing, Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge $8 to drive in core Manhattan on weekdays. Mr. Brodsky does not like it.

I think some of this was about helping Bloomberg succeed in any way. I don’t think progressives like Bloomberg very much, and wanted to kill the plan as a final way to stop any political success he might achieve.

Almost NO ONE understood the argument of drivers paying what it actually costs to support their use of private autos. There was an assumption that there was some huge amorphous lump of funding out there ‘somewhere’ and anything not arising from a more progressive income tax was part of an insidious war on working people.

The whole experience has been very discouraging. If progressive enviros can’t find solidarity with the concept that driving is not a God Given right, how are we going to get anything paid for??

Much like the Kennedys who oppose wind power off of Cape Cod. Actually, lots of Obama supporters on “progressive” Air America take similar positions.

Its hard for our political culture to negotiate a useful balance of socialism and capitalism when our people know so little about both.