Streetsblog New York City

So John Liu has managed to take an excellent idea — tolling the East River bridges — and turn it into a policy disaster.

The key component of Liu’s plan, which he says would raise $410 million annually, isn’t the tolls — it’s the exemption for city residents. Here’s what Liu said at an Association for Better New York event today:

To get that money, we would toll the East River Bridges for non-city residents. It’s something that’s been talked about before, and I think certainly makes sense, and is more realistic than a restoration of the commuter tax — that I would love to see, but I’m not sure how open Albany would be.

Of course, Albany is just going to fall in love with a toll plan where Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester pay, while New York City doesn’t.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release that accompanied the release of the ”People’s Budget” — an overall fiscal plan that Liu released in his capacity as comptroller:

Tolling the East River Bridges would mean that membership — or in this case, residency, New York City residency — has its privileges. Non-residents commuting by car can and should contribute to the upkeep of our city’s infrastructure.

By exempting motorists who live in the five boroughs, Liu’s plan would not solve the city’s transit funding problems — the next MTA capital program will still have a gaping hole. (Compare Liu’s $410 million to the $2.8 $1.5 billion projected net revenue from the Sam Schwartz plan.) While Liu suggested devoting revenue to “infrastructure,” he also mentioned that it could be used for “offsetting increased city contributions to the MTA,” which might just lead to tolls that pad other areas of the city budget.

It’s somewhat baffling why Liu would propose a non-starter like this. Exempting millions of motorists negates the value of tolls as a tool to meaningfully reduce congestion, and it undermines the notion that motorists should pay for using roads. Let’s hope this idea doesn’t infect the other campaigns.

As of this weekend, driving over the free East River bridges will be a bigger bargain for drivers, adding to NYC's traffic dysfunction. Map: Sam Schwartz

In case you missed it, Crain’s ran a good piece today wherein “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz explained one of the less-publicized effects of the MTA fare and toll hikes slated to take effect this weekend. NYC’s already-dysfunctional road pricing system is about to make even less sense.

With tolls on the MTA’s East River crossings going up in each direction, the incentive for drivers to take the free Queensboro, Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges is about to intensify. Schwartz told Crain’s to expect a lot more toll-shopping drivers on streets that are already choked by traffic:

“Today I would estimate 50,000 cars, trucks and buses [crossing the free bridges]. On Monday, I’m estimating 60,000—another 10,000 will switch, and only aggravate the situation at the free bridges,” Mr. Schwartz said. “They vote not with their feet, they vote with their tires.”

“What we have is a bridge like the Ed Koch-Queensboro Bridge sandwiched between two toll crossings—the Queens Midtown Tunnel and the Triborough Bridge,” he said. “And every time there’s a toll increase, more and more drivers hop off the Long Island Expressway at Van Dam Street to avoid going straight ahead to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and then they just saturate the streets of Sunnyside and Long Island City, snaking their way to the lower level or the upper level of the Queensboro Bridge.”

To add to the Queensboro Bridge example, in addition to the western Queens neighborhoods that have to put up with all the extra congestion, exhaust, and honking on their streets, bus riders will get the short end of the stick. Every day 16,000 bus passengers ride over the Queensboro Bridge. Their trips are going to get more sluggish and unreliable after this weekend.

Until the governor and other electeds step in to fix NYC’s broken road pricing system, the dysfunction will only get worse.

MTA workers pump water out of the L train tunnel last Monday. Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Patrick Cashin

MTA Love. Two words that have never before been paired have been practically joined at the hip during the recovery from Superstorm Sandy. To wit:

• The “enthusiastic round of applause” accorded Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Joe Lhota at last week’s Association for a Better New York breakfast by real estate magnates and other civic power brokers who have watched the MTA’s dedicated workers and managers safeguard the transit system and return it to service.
• The New York Times front-page headline on Friday, “Subway Repairs Border on the Edge of Magic” (quote courtesy of transit watchdog Gene Russianoff), captured the awe inspired by the “quicker than almost anyone could have imagined” restoration of subway service.
• Times transit reporter Matt Flegenheimer later elaborated: “The workers have gotten a ton of credit, the management’s gotten a ton of credit, people really think that this was sort of a minor miracle, that subway service came back as quickly as it did.”

Compare this MTA love with the scathing criticism of underperforming Con Ed, the Long Island Power Authority, the Port Authority, and the region’s gasoline suppliers, and you can sense a long-overdue reversal underway in the public’s view of the region’s primary public transportation provider: from “rathole” to miracle worker — or at least, after the hubbub dies down, to workmanlike, dependable, and indispensable.

If permanent, that would be a big shift, indeed. And it brings up three questions:

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Governor Cuomo has the opportunity to build a smarter and more resilient regional transportation network. Photo: Daily News

“Climate change is a reality… for us to sit here today and say this is a once-in-a-generation, and it’s not going to happen again, I think would be short-sighted… I’m hopeful that not only will we rebuild this city and metropolitan area but use this as an opportunity to build it back smarter.”

– Governor Andrew Cuomo

Amen Governor Cuomo. Hurricane Sandy should be the massive bucket of cold water needed to rouse New York’s political class into making the multitude of changes required for New York City to survive the rising ocean, and remain a leading global city.

The inconvenient reality is that the water is rising, and New York is a city built on islands. According to New York City’s Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, New York Harbor has risen about a foot since 1900, and will rise at least another three feet in the next century. If polar ice caps melt — which appears to be happening — harbor waters will rise six feet or more.

There is an enormous amount of work to do. New York needs expansive new flood defenses, including the vast expansion and restoration of storm surge-absorbing wetlands and oyster beds. These “soft edges” will have to be accompanied by some “hard edges,” including sea walls and, possibly, massive surge barriers like London’s Thames Barrier. The debate over the right mix of “soft” and “hard” approaches is now underway, even as some New Yorkers still huddle without power or water in darkened apartments.

Beyond debate is that our vulnerable electrical and transit systems have to be made more resistant to flooding. However, our century-old transit system is creaking along under a huge debt, the next transit capital plan is completely unfunded, and there is no money for flood defenses. Meanwhile, our downstate road network is burdened by a totally backward and unfair toll system that causes costly traffic jams, wastes time and consumes big tax subsidies for bridge and road repairs.

New York can’t have “smart rebuilding” and a dumb, broke transportation system. One of the pillars of Governor Cuomo’s rebuilding plan for the New York City area must be tolling the East River Bridges and access to the Central Business District, and reducing overpriced tolls on outer bridge crossings. New toll revenue from this common sense plan should be dedicated to rebuilding the downstate transit and road system, and toughening it against floods. This “bridge swap” toll plan, first proposed by transportation engineer Sam Schwartz, will also free up hundreds of millions in general tax revenue currently spent on roads for new flood defenses.

Hurricane Sandy was a dire message that New York cannot afford the luxury of political dysfunction and irrational governance. In this crisis, there is a clear opportunity for Governor Cuomo to build a new, smarter, tougher transit and transportation system that can serve as the backbone of his efforts to rebuild the region.

In case you missed it, today the Staten Island Advance rounded up outraged quotes from local politicos in response to the MTA’s proposed fare and toll hikes. Big emphasis on “toll hikes” — it’s the prospect of paying more to cross the Verrazano Bridge that has State Senator Andrew Lanza vowing to somehow defeat the proposal in Albany, while U.S. Representative Michael Grimm pledged to do the same through an act of Congress.

Just putting this out there, but there’s a more productive way to represent Staten Island commuters, including the substantial number who take transit, than bashing the MTA. Sam Schwartz’s Fair Plan [PDF] would ratchet down the tolls on the Verrazano — from the current $5.76 for local E-ZPass holders and $13 cash toll to $4.60 and $8, respectively. At the same time, the plan raises funds for transit (and roads) by putting a price on the crossings that are most congested. Here’s what that looks like on a map:

Image: Sam Schwartz

No act of Congress required, but Albany will have to get on board.

In one fell swoop, Governor Cuomo and the state legislature could drastically reduce NYC's traffic dysfunction while rescuing New Yorkers from the fourth fare hike in five years. Image: Sam Schwartz

Since the beginning of 2008 — right around the time that Albany legislators failed to enact congestion pricing — NYC subway and bus fares have been hiked three times. Now the fourth fare hike in five years is on the horizon, and with Albany lawmakers sitting on their hands as MTA revenues fail to keep up with costs, there’s no relief in sight for millions of transit-riding New Yorkers.

Today MTA Chair Joe Lhota announced four options under consideration for the 2013 fare hike. The scenarios are weighted so that the fare hike will either fall primarily on riders who buy unlimited Metrocards or on those who mainly buy pay-per-ride cards. Monthly unlimiteds could cost $21 more, or single fares could go up to $2.50 from $2.25. (The Straphangers Campaign has produced a handy chart [PDF] to see how each option would affect your expenses.)

Either way, this string of hikes puts the fare on pace to triple the rate of inflation, according to a recent report from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. While working families in New York City end up paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars more out of pocket to cover higher fares, Governor Cuomo and the state legislature haven’t shown any intention of stepping in to help. In fact, they’ve made the situation more precarious by raiding the MTA’s budget and weakening the agency’s dedicated funding.

It doesn’t have to be this way. At any point, Albany could help to lessen the burden on working New Yorkers while simultaneously eliminating a source of enormous dysfunction in the region’s transportation system: the discrepancy between the free East River bridges and the MTA’s tolled crossings, which produces debilitating traffic jams and will only get worse as fares and tolls rise under the status quo.

The solution? Cuomo and the legislature could enact “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz’s “Fair Plan” [PDF], as Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign noted in a statement today:

Blocking or reducing the fare increase is possible, if we get more help from Albany. One promising plan is to generate new revenue by both raising and lowering tolls on city bridges and tunnels in line with where there is the most and least congestion. Under this plan – developed by a former New York City traffic commissioner Sam Schwartz, known as Gridlock Sam ­– tolls would go down on some facilities (like the Throgs Neck and Verrazano-Narrow Bridges) and be instituted on others (Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.) The State would need to authorize some of the tolls.

So far, Transportation Alternatives has collected more than 15,000 signatures asking Albany to stop the next fare hike. If you sign on, I suggest adding a note about the Fair Plan.

Saturday will mark two months of non-stop acclaim for Gridlock Sam’s traffic-pricing plan. The accolades kicked off on March 5 with a gushing op-ed, “Meet Sam Schwartz,” by New York Times emeritus editor Bill Keller, and they haven’t let up. The Wall Street Journal, Transportation Nation, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, Channel 13, and Crain’s New York (a profile plus an editorial) have extolled Sam’s plan to overhaul New York’s tolling network and generate $15 billion over the next decade to improve roads, bridges, subways and buses across the city. By now, any New Yorker who professes ignorance of the plan has either been hiding under the proverbial rock or is flummoxed by its political implications.

Such an outpouring of support is unprecedented for congestion pricing proposals anywhere, and is virtually unheard of for any serious policy proposal in New York. I’ve spent a good deal of time pondering it from my vantage point as a long-time traffic-pricing proponent; as an exponent of rival but complementary pricing plans, first with Ted Kheel and more recently with the Move NY coalition; and currently as a modeler helping Sam quantify his plan’s traffic and revenue benefits. (That work is supported not by Sam but by the Kheel family’s Nurture Nature Foundation.)

So how do I explain the overwhelmingly positive press reactions to Gridlock Sam’s Fair Plan, as he calls it?

First, the plan feels inclusive, far more so than any prior traffic-pricing plan.

Consider what it offers residents of Queens, the city’s most car-dependent borough after Staten Island: dollar fares on MTA buses in subway-less areas; Bus Rapid Transit service on the Long Island Expressway; and, most spectacularly, a halving of current tolls on the borough’s five MTA bridges, from the Throgs Neck in northern Queens to the Gil Hodges and Cross Bay Blvd. Bridges in the Rockaways. These benefits are palpable — the MTA bridge discounts alone will save Queens residents $100 million a year — and they are integral to the plan, in accordance with the precept of charging premium tolls to drive into the congested heart of the city. Other boroughs are slated to get similar discounts and benefits including BRT on the Belt Parkway and the Bruckner Expressway, a widened Staten Island Expressway, and highway expansions intended to take trucks off Brooklyn streets.

Second, Sam’s plan feels egalitarian.

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At a distracted driving event yesterday, Andrew Cuomo dodged his own responsibility for the politics of transit funding. Image: Brigid Bergin/WNYC

Andrew Cuomo knows he’s the governor of New York, right?

You couldn’t tell from this exchange about congestion pricing yesterday, via Transportation Nation:

Q: Have you seen Sam Schwartz’s revised congestion pricing plan? Do you support it?

A: I have not seen it. We’ve talked about congestion pricing for many years. We’ve tried to pass it in the past. It hasn’t passed. I don’t know that anything has happened to change that dynamic. I just don’t know if you have the political support to pass it.

That’s the kind of detached punditry that might be appropriate coming from Chris Cuomo, TV journalist, but not the governor. Andrew Cuomo, for better and for worse, practically defines political support in this state.

Let’s look back at one of Cuomo’s signature achievements, passing a law allowing same sex marriage in New York. Two years before Cuomo signed that bill into law, gay marriage didn’t have political support either. It died by a vote of 38-24 in the State Senate. That’s significantly less support than bridge tolls had in the same year, which only needed votes from four more state senators.

Cuomo didn’t sagely nod his head and tell New York’s gay couples that he didn’t know if there was enough political support for them to marry. He launched an all-out effort to, in his words, change the dynamic.

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In late 2008, then-Governor David Paterson stood with Richard Ravitch and Michael Bloomberg to announce his support for tolling the East and Harlem River bridges. Will Paterson continue to serve as a voice for road pricing and transit funding on the MTA board? Image: Seth Wenig/Associated Press

As first reported by the Daily News this morning, Governor Andrew Cuomo has nominated former Governor David Paterson to serve as the newest member of the MTA board.

Paterson is an unusually high-profile pick for the board — he will have nominated some of his fellow board members — and it’s not yet clear what the political implications are of Cuomo selecting his predecessor. Will Paterson’s status, for example, lend him more leeway to speak freely on transit issues than other gubernatorial nominees?

For transit advocates, there’s a lot of promise in the possibility of David Paterson turning his attention to the MTA. What the system needs right now is money, and there aren’t many public officials who know that better than Paterson.

It was Paterson that helped pass the payroll mobility tax, which brought in well over $1 billion a year for the MTA. That measure, unpopular with suburban lawmakers, has been absolutely critical in keeping the transit system afloat, though it wasn’t enough to prevent Paterson from presiding over an unprecedented series of service cuts and fare hikes. Now, the payroll tax is under attack. Just last December, Senate Republicans won a deal to eliminate part of the tax, removing $320 million from the dedicated funding stream Paterson helped establish and forcing the MTA to depend on unreliable annual appropriations from Albany.

Moreover, Paterson knew at the time that even the payroll tax wasn’t enough to pay for the aging transit system, and was perhaps the most important supporter of instituting tolls on the East and Harlem River bridges. Paterson first appointed Richard Ravitch to find a solution to the MTA’s fiscal woes, then backed the resulting plan, including bridge tolls. “It’s either going to be fare hikes or it’s going to be tolls and a combination of payroll taxes, but it’s the only way,” said Paterson in 2008.

Eventually, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver endorsed bridge tolls, but the same amigos who temporarily handed control of the State Senate to Republicans also scuttled tolls in that chamber. Even after bridge tolls were officially dead, however, Paterson stayed firm in his support for them.

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Gridlock Sam's plan chops $5 off the roundtrip E-ZPass price of major MTA bridges and sets the E-ZPass price for East River crossings at a uniform $5 each way.

New York City is coming up on the four year anniversary of a moment that will live in infamy for transit riders and sustainable transportation advocates: the demise of congestion pricing, which was put down in the state Assembly without a vote on April 7, 2008. The city lost a great opportunity that day to fund its transit system while relieving the city’s most congestion-choked streets from suffocating traffic.

Road pricing has been hibernating since a plan to toll crossings into Manhattan was narrowly defeated in the State Senate in 2009. But last Sunday former New York Times editor-in-chief Bill Keller put it squarely in the public eye again, featuring the latest plan from the city’s best-known transportation engineer, ”Gridlock” Sam Schwartz.

The basic bargain in Schwartz’s plan boils down to this: Motorists pay more to enter the most congested part of the region, and pay less to travel between the boroughs outside Manhattan. He’s also added a slate of fees so Manhattanites pay more into the system, and a menu of infrastructure projects ranging from widening the Staten Island Expressway to building three new bike and pedestrian bridges into Manhattan.

The plan aims to produce both broad-based benefits and broad-based sacrifice. While the package would be a huge improvement over New York’s dysfunctional road pricing system and result in a major infusion of revenue for the financially troubled MTA, the grab bag of spending is hit or miss. Unlike the 2008 congestion pricing plan, which was supposed to be paired with surface transit improvements and shift trips away from driving all over the city, Schwartz’s plan would induce traffic in some areas outside Manhattan.

Schwartz is constantly refining the plan as he takes it to different constituencies. Here’s a look at the major pieces in the current version of the plan, which is up on the Sam Schwartz Engineering website [PDF] (note: it’s a little different than the summary we posted on Wednesday):

• $5 E-ZPass/$7 cash fee to drive into and out of the congested heart of Manhattan
• $5 roundtrip reduction in tolls on the Verrazano, Triborough, Throgs Neck, and Whitestone bridges
• $2 roundtrip reduction in tolls on the Cross Bay and Marine Parkway bridges, which connect the Rockaway peninsula to the mainland.
• End the parking tax rebate for Manhattan residents, who currently pay about half the tax rate on car storage compared to residents of other boroughs.
• $1 drop fee on yellow cab trips in the Manhattan CBD, with cabbies keeping part of the revenue.
• Reduced express bus fares for residents far from Manhattan.
• New elevated busways built over the median, Airtrain-style, on the Bruckner, the Long Island Expressway, and the Belt Parkway.
• Widening the Staten Island Expressway and the Van Wyck approach to JFK.
• Widening the Belt Parkway and allowing commercial traffic so fewer trucks are on local streets.
• Building three new bike and pedestrian bridges into the Manhattan CBD, one from Hoboken/Jersey City, one from Red Hook via Governor’s Island, and one from Greenpoint/Long Island City.
• Investment in MTA maintenance and capital improvements (specific dollar amount TBD, but it would be more than the amount spent on road projects).

According to Charles Komanoff’s Balanced Transportation Analyzer, Schwartz’s plan would raise a net of $1.26 billion annually, reducing the number of vehicles entering the Manhattan CBD each weekday by 21 percent, while increasing the number of people entering by 3.3 percent. The revenue would be bonded, allowing for up to $15 billion in borrowing that would be spent on transit investment, the roadway projects in Schwartz’s plan, and infrastructure maintenance.

I spoke to Schwartz this morning about how he’s been adjusting his plan over the last four years. Below are edited highlights from the interview.

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