Congestion pricing paired with a significant taxi surcharge would speed cab trips and boost Manhattan's transit funding contribution. Photo: Bill in STL/Flickr.

A side benefit is that the discouragement of taxi use due to the surcharge should cause travel speeds in Manhattan to rise, saving time for car and truck drivers and bus passengers. With some taxi trips switching to subway or bus, transit farebox revenues will go up as well. But the surcharge is so slight -- around 5 percent of a typical fare -- that these gains will barely be perceptible: a mere 0.1-0.2 percent rise in Manhattan travel speeds and a $2-$3 million-per-year rise in transit revenues, according to the BTA. And any increase in taxi cruising to make up for the lost fares would cut into the minuscule improvement in traffic.

While the press bewails the surcharge's impact on taxi users, the people likely to suffer the most are the drivers, who on average can be expected to turn 1½ to 2 fewer fares a week. Losing $20-$25 in weekly revenue may not seem like much, but it's a bitter pill for drivers who can barely pay off their medallion leases as it is. Indeed, the taxi surcharge, enacted by the legislature as an afterthought to the "mobility (payroll) tax" last spring, may do to drivers what the new taxi credit card payment system reportedly has not: drive them to the wall, economically.

Does this mean that surcharging taxi fares to pay for transit is categorically a bad idea? Decidedly not. I'm prepared to argue that a taxi surcharge a good deal larger than 50 cents per ride is essential to the political and logistical success of congestion pricing. At the same time, congestion pricing is essential to making a taxi surcharge fair for taxi drivers and passengers. With, and only with, a cordon toll, will Manhattan traffic improve sufficiently that cabbies can book more fares per shift, not fewer. Moreover, the same speedup will enable users to save valuable time, partially compensating them for the surcharge and ensuring that the taxi sector stays robust.

To grasp these synergies, consider a variable toll to drive into the Manhattan Central Business District of $3 to $9 on weekdays and $2 to $4 on weekends, with the revenues used to cut transit fares roughly in half. Residents of Queens and Brooklyn would pony up 45 cents of every dollar in new toll revenue, because of tolls on the East River bridges. Manhattanites would contribute less than 7 cents of each dollar, less than residents of Nassau County, Staten Island and the Bronx, yet would reap most of the benefits of quieter and safer streets, cleaner air, and faster bus service.

Such a plan would be DOA in Albany. Indeed, I would argue that this very imbalance between beneficiaries and benefactors helped doom the Bloomberg cordon fee in 2008 and the Ravitch bridge tolls this year.

Now take the same toll plan and add a 33 percent taxi surcharge -- yes, a one-third increase in the mileage rate, the waiting time rate and the "drop." Instantly, Manhattan residents -- who comprise an estimated three-fourths of medallion taxi users -- would see their payment share nearly quadruple to 25 percent. Brooklyn and Queens residents' share would shrink from 45 percent without the taxi surcharge to 28 percent with it. The borough-inequity argument largely disappears.

Not only that, the taxi surcharge revenue, a cool $400-$500 million according to the BTA, could allow transit officials to eliminate bus fares. Free buses would be a particular boon in distant precincts where subway lines don't reach. As well, the rise in the taxi fare would offset the fall in the "time cost" of taxi service due to the decrease in auto traffic, and keep new taxi trips from inundating the CBD. Total use of medallion cabs would stay roughly constant under this integrated plan, with the reduction in gridlock enabling drivers to handle an extra 15-20 fares per week without booking more hours.

As for the effect on taxi users, the BTA indicates that the integrated plan outlined here would add $2.16 to the price of the average CBD cab trip while shortening the ride by 1.8 minutes. In other words, passengers pay $1.20 per minute saved -- a steep rate, for most of us, and it would be steeper for trips that venture outside the CBD, where the travel time savings would be smaller, percentage-wise. Even with a cordon toll, then, taxi surcharges can't be sold to riders as an unalloyed win-win, although riders could help themselves by cab-pooling and prioritizing their taxi use.

Of course, taxi surcharges are still justified as a means of internalizing the "social delay" costs of vehicle traffic on congested streets. They're most fair and effective, though, when coupled with cordon tolling.

Photo: cunningsue/Flickr

MTA chief Jay Walder floated the idea of off-peak discounts in an interview in today's New York Times. While Walder didn't offer quantification, the Balanced Transportation Analyzer software model I've developed with Ted Kheel can estimate the effects of time-varied subway fares -- not just how ridership might shift from peak to off-peak periods, but indirect impacts such as the shift of auto trips to transit and the resulting changes to car travel speeds.

The results look promising for this prototype fare structure that I tested with the BTA:

• 1/3-off subway fare from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.
• 1/6-off subway fare from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.
• 15 percent higher subway fare from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. (Although Walder referred only to off-peak discounts, the model suggests that forestalling an increase in ridership during the two peak hours, when the system is strained beyond capacity, could require raising fares at those times.)
• No fare change during the "shoulder" hours of 7:00 to 8:00 a.m., 9:00 to 10:00 a.m., 4:00 to 5:00 p.m., and 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
• 1/4-off subway fare at all hours on weekends and holidays.
• 1/4-off bus fare at all times (not mentioned by Walder but assumed here to preserve overall fare parity).

Here are the results:

• The average price of a subway ride drops by 23 percent, equivalent to a $210 annual savings for a typical straphanger who takes 12 trains a week.
  
• Notwithstanding the overall discount, however, peak-hour subway users who could not change their commute times would pay $100 a year more in fares.
  
• Annual savings of $230 for bus riders, due to the assumed 25 percent drop in bus fares.
• Subway usage increases 3 percent, even as morning and evening peak hour ridership drops by 1 percent and 3 percent, respectively, slightly easing crowding during those critical times.
  
• Bus usage increases 5 percent.
• 15,000 fewer cars enter the Manhattan CBD on weekdays, raising average speeds there by 2 percent.
• Car and truck drivers save six million hours of travel time worth an estimated $230 million that they now lose to gridlock each year -- with a majority of the savings occurring outside the CBD.
• A rise in cycle and pedestrian commuting due to lower traffic, with the resulting increase in physical activity translating into health and longevity benefits worth an additional $116 million a year.
• Fewer crashes and less pollution, with health and related benefits close to $100 million a year.
  

The downside of this program is an estimated $300 million drop in farebox revenues: $134 million on the subways, $162 million on buses.

The logical place to make up the shortfall, congestion pricing, is a subject Walder will obviously want to avoid until he is on even firmer political footing. The synergies are strong from a technical standpoint, since differential subway pricing would help the subways absorb car drivers whom a cordon toll would induce to switch to transit. The political synergies could be strong as well if differential fares help expand the constituency for congestion pricing.

[A] cordon-pricing plan … which doesn't charge center-city residents could result in an increase in those residents' automobile use. If the streets are free of outer-borough traffic, more of my Manhattan neighbors might drive to work, or simply make extra automobile trips within the cordon that without CP [congestion pricing], they would have made by subway or taxi.

Jonathan's right: Any Manhattan cordon-pricing scheme will lead to an uptick in car trips that start and end within the charging zone. It's one of those "rebound effects" that congestion-price modeling needs to account for, and which I've taken pains to incorporate in my Balanced Transportation Analyzer pricing model.

Indeed, I daresay that the BTA handles just about every issue ever raised on this blog about congestion pricing. How many transit users will switch to cabs? Will variable tolls really flatten rush-hour peaks? Won't faster roads lure back the trips killed off by the toll (Owen's conundrum)? And many more.

Technically, the BTA is a spreadsheet. But I think of it as a vast mansion, whose 46 interlinked "rooms" (worksheets) are stocked with precious data and ingenious algorithms for cracking open questions like these:

• How does congestion on weekends compare with weekdays?
• How sharply do traffic speeds rise as volumes fall?
• Which boroughs and counties stand to pay the most with congestion pricing?
• Will a cordon toll lead to more bicycling, and will that improve public health?
• Can decommissioning vehicle lanes increase congestion pricing's benefits?
• Which will boost transit use more: lower fares or better service?
• How many fares does a cabbie get in a ten-hour taxi shift, with and without pricing?

Multiply that list a hundredfold and you get a sense of the BTA's hidden treasures.

I say "hidden" because, except for a few mavens like "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, who calls it "the best [modeling] tool that I have seen in my nearly 40 years," the Balanced Transportation Analyzer remains largely untapped by advocates. To me, it's as if we're all starving while this rich storehouse next door goes to waste.

Which prompts me to ask: Why is the BTA so underused? Is our community missing out on a valuable tool? What should we do about it?

Let's make this an open thread, with emphasis on what can we do together to make the BTA more accessible and useful to New York's livable streets community. (The model is adaptable to other cities, so those of you not from NYC are also invited.)

As for Jonathan's question: the BTA shows that over the course of a typical weekday, 72 percent of all vehicle miles traveled inside the Manhattan Central Business District are by cars, trucks and buses that have crossed into the CBD, either at 60th Street or across the Hudson or East Rivers, and thus would pay the congestion toll. The remaining 28 percent of VMT is mostly by medallion taxicabs (22 percent). Cars and trucks that stayed within the cordon zone and couldn't be tolled accounted for just 6 percent of all CBD traffic. (All this is derived and shown in the table at the bottom of the BTA's "Cordon" worksheet.)

This tells us that: 1) Even if "intrazonal" traffic rises sharply, as Jonathan fears, it will add relatively little VMT because it's such a small share of overall cordon traffic to begin with; and 2) rather than fret over the free pass for intrazonal trips (which are impractical to toll with current technology), congestion pricing needs a strategy to stop a surge in taxicab use from filling the newly freed road space.

The plan currently advocated by Ted Kheel and myself does just that. It combines a 33 percent surcharge on all three taxi-fare components -- mileage, waiting time, and the "drop" -- with time-variable car tolls of $3/$6/$9 on weekdays and $2/$3/$4 on weekends (trucks pay double, reflecting their greater bulk, while medallion cabs are exempt from the toll but pay the surcharge). Under this Kheel-Komanoff Plan, intrazonal VMT is predicted to rise by approximately 120,000 miles a day -- 40,000 by cars and trucks, 80,000 by taxicabs. But cordon VMT by vehicles coming from outside, and thus tolled, falls far more, by 450,000. This yields a net drop in cordon travel of 330,000 VMT, an 8 percent decline that, the model predicts, will boost average travel speeds within the CBD by around 20 percent.

The point of this post isn't to advocate for a particular plan, however. It's to show that rebound effects and other asserted congestion-toll pitfalls can be modeled and, with the right plan, accommodated.

The figures are based on 2007 traffic levels. Current volumes are probably slightly less. While a decrease in "baseline" traffic cuts into the benefits of congestion pricing, both the saved time and new transit revenue predicted for Kheel-Komanoff are still striking. And, yes, if you want to test our pricing plan (or your own) with reduced baseline traffic, the BTA even has a switch to adjust the volume.

Photo: The Wall Street Journal

For some reason Owen has taken a dislike to congestion pricing, and it has led him to construct an elaborate Rube Goldberg argument to prove that congestion pricing leads to more driving:

If reducing [congestion] merely makes life easier for those who drive, then the improved traffic flow can actually increase the environmental damage done by cars, by raising overall traffic volume, encouraging sprawl and long car commutes.

What a lovely paradox … and how ridiculous, as Owen could have discovered by giving London’s congestion pricing experience (or Stockholm’s or Singapore’s) more than a cursory glance.

As any student of urban traffic now knows, London’s cordon pricing scheme cut traffic within the charging zone an average of 15 percent, raised travel speeds 30 percent, and greatly expanded bus ridership and cycle commuting — with little increase in traffic outside the zone or other negative effects. Nearly seven years on, the reasons are fairly obvious:

• Raising the price to drive into the center of London made car commuting less attractive.
• The gain in driving speeds attracted some new trips but not so many as to cancel the lost ones.
• Bus transit benefited from a virtuous cycle in which improved speeds attracted riders, further reducing traffic and also financing service improvements which attracted still more riders, further reducing traffic, etc.
• Ditto for cycling, though here the synergy was via safety in numbers.

All this was intuited back in the day by Transport for London staff, including Jay Walder, who has subsequently become the new MTA chief. The only uncertainty was the extent to which new car trips attracted by the time savings would undercut the reduction in trips from the congestion charge.

As it happened, some “induced traffic,” as Owen might have termed it, did materialize, but at far less than the one-for-one rate he assumed in his article. Without it, the drop in traffic might have been 20 percent or more. But the actual equilibrium, a settled 15 percent reduction in cordon traffic, was robust enough to achieve the desired results: faster travel by every mode, greater use of transit, and less VMT (vehicle miles traveled). Congestion pricing is indeed green.

To trace Owen’s error, look no further than his hypothesis: “If reducing [congestion] merely makes life easier for those who drive …”

Emphasis added; the “merely” is quite important. When the reduction in traffic is caused by a congestion charge, life is not just easier for those who continue driving but more costly as well. Yes, there’s a seesaw between price effects and time effects, but setting the congestion price at the right point will rebalance the system toward less driving, without harming the city's economy.

What's that right price point, then? It's not quite rocket science to figure it out, though it does take some thinking (not to mention continual tinkering if exogenous reductions in road capacity erode the original congestion benefits, as TfL reported recently). It's a subject Ted Kheel and I have in fact been thinking about for quite a while now, and if you would like to do some thinking about it too, start with our Balanced Transportation Analyzer and contact us with questions or criticisms (email: kea AT igc.org).

In his piece, Owen linked former Londoner and current MTA honcho Walder with the idea of congestion pricing. One can't help wondering whether he or the Journal intended it as a pre-emptive strike against a possible renewed push for congestion pricing in New York City. Whatever the motivation, it’s disappointing to see a writer who has rightly urged Americans to “live closer” peddling the defeatist — and false — notion that the price of urban virtue is eternal gridlock.

John Liu and David Yassky might be headed for a run-off in the comptroller race.

If you're a little unclear about what these positions do, here's the short version: The comptroller is the city's financial watchdog, and the public advocate is the watchdog for everything else, evaluating the effectiveness of city policies and sometimes serving as a check against mayoral power. Whoever holds these positions will wield important oversight powers for the next four years, and we'll probably see one or both of the winners make a run for mayor at some point.

In the right hands, both offices can advance the cause of livable streets. We'll review the comptroller race first and then take a look at the public advocate contenders later today.

The comptroller can't cast a vote in Albany for a transit funding package, but he or she can certainly help frame the debate. Democratic mayoral contender Bill Thompson could have used his comptroller's pulpit to reinforce the Ravitch Commission bridge toll plan this year. Instead he opted to push for vehicle registration fees as an alternative to road pricing, giving the State Senate additional cover for its watered down transit funding package.

The race to succeed Thompson, which will effectively be decided in the Democratic primary, pits four City Council members against each other: David Yassky of Brooklyn, and John Liu, Melinda Katz, and David Weprin of Queens. Neither Katz nor Weprin cleared the most elementary livable streets hurdle during their council tenures, with each siding against congestion pricing in last year's vote. So let's review the intriguing Yassky-Liu rivalry.

Liu's inconsistencies have been well-documented here on Streetsblog. His "yes" vote on congestion pricing in 2008 somehow morphed into vocal opposition to bridge tolls this year. He lectured on pedestrian safety from his post as transportation committee chair, but when DOT actually improved safety with its Midtown reclamation projects, he scolded the city for "expropriating" street space. And when the Bicycle Access Bill came before the City Council, Liu looked ready to scuttle the historic legislation until the last minute. As a comptroller candidate, he has turned to standard-issue MTA bashing as a staple of his campaign.

In addition to sponsoring the Bike Access Bill and shepherding it through the council, Yassky has consistently supported a car-free Prospect Park and helped secure funding for the Bedford Avenue bike parking swap. An early supporter of congestion pricing, Yassky has not made transit funding a signature campaign issue. But in his response to the TA candidate survey, he gives some promising indications that he will use the comptroller's office to highlight the necessity of funding transit with road pricing.

Pledging to "set up in-depth assessments of the economic impact congestion has" and to "advocate and support policies like congestion pricing," Yassky says his office will "provide a solid platform from which to advocate change." A comptroller who follows through on those promises would be a valuable ally in the fight for sustainable transportation policy in the New York region.

L-r: City Council candidates Ken Baer, Doug Biviano, Ken Diamondstone, Jo Anne Simon, Evan Thies.

It was an opportunity for the candidates to show how well they understand the most critical transportation problems facing New York City by rebutting Reina with a well-reasoned argument. Traffic generated by the free price on Brooklyn's three East River bridges overruns the 33rd District, which includes parts of Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Park Slope. Congestion pricing, supported by outgoing rep David Yassky, should be as much a no-brainer here as it is in Lower Manhattan.

Only one candidate, Doug Biviano, a former campaign staffer for Kucinich 2008, came close to giving Reina what he asked for. "I'm not against congestion pricing," he said, "but I think we have to be careful about unintended consequences. Do we want to hit people with that toll? In this climate, I don’t think we want to. That would kill contractors."

Biviano was followed by Evan Thies, who played an active role in last year's campaign to pass congestion pricing as a consultant for Environment Defense and the Pratt Center. "I do absolutely support congestion pricing," he said to some applause. "Neighborhoods like this are disproportionately affected by the traffic that’s created by the lack of congestion pricing. Contractors in the outer boroughs supported congestion pricing, because instead of spending time in traffic, they’d be spending more time working for clients." Thies later named congestion pricing his top transportation priority and noted that the next City Council will need to take it up again in 2010 to fund the MTA Capital Plan.

Jo Anne Simon, an attorney who serves as Democratic district leader in the 52nd Assembly District, gave another strong statement in support of pricing. "The gratuitous traffic that comes over the bridges is just that, gratuitous," she said. "We’re a doormat. It’s costing us in infrastructure; it’s costing us in health. The challenge for us as policy makers is to convince people in the outer boroughs that congestion pricing benefits them too. It’s not just for Manhattan."

Ken Diamondstone and Ken Baer, the other two candidates at the forum, also endorsed congestion pricing. Baer took the more enthusiastic stance, noting that pricing revenues can help plug the MTA Capital Plan's $10 billion hole. Diamondstone said he "believes strongly" in the policy but thinks exceptions must be made for people with disabilities and, in a novel carve-out suggestion, musicians.

By this point in the debate, candidate Isaac Abraham was long gone.

Abraham, whose base is in Williamsburg's Satmar Hasidic community, left soon after taking a swipe at the Kent Avenue bike lane, about 30 minutes into the event. (He told the crowd of about 50 that he had a wedding to attend.) At least Abraham made an appearance, which is more than we can say for no-show Steve Levin, a protege of Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez. The day before the debate, Levin backed out of his commitment to attend.

On the question of truck traffic, the need to fund the Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel was widely invoked by the candidates, but council members can't do much to advance a project that needs billions in federal cash to get built. The more intriguing responses came from Simon and Thies. Simon raised the prospect of truck tolls on the East River bridges (you can do it with E-ZPass transponders, she said), which would put a halt to the free counterclockwise route that sends trucks through downtown Brooklyn streets, while Thies proposed giving Traffic Enforcement Agents the authority to "bust trucks for traveling on non-truck routes."

It wasn't the only question on which Simon and Thies distinguished themselves. While the two Kens showed a solid commitment to street safety measures like automated enforcement and traffic-calming infrastructure, Simon and Thies consistently displayed a broader and more current grasp of transportation issues.

Responding to a question about improving streets for walking, biking and transit, Thies was the only candidate to broach the politically difficult subject of off-street parking reform. "I'd like to prevent garages from being built in developments near subway stops," he said. "It’s bad urban planning, it brings traffic." Simon, meanwhile, made the evening's sole statement on bike-share, a project that she said "needs to be pursued."

Aside from Abraham's early turn at the mic, fireworks over bike lanes failed to transpire. One audience member did mention that she fears cyclists while driving at night, and asked the candidates if they would push legislation requiring cyclist registration and helmet use. To read what they had to say, check out "Audience Question #1" over at TA's candidate survey blog.

A poll released today by the engineering firm HNTB suggests that higher gas taxes could continue to face political headwinds from both sides of the aisle, even after the recession begins to ease.

A 10-cent gas tax increase that would be imposed only after two straight quarters of economic growth faced opposition from 64 percent of respondents, and just 16 percent said gas taxes should be raised to pay for "roads and bridges."

But the poll found strikingly strong support for tolling, particularly congestion tolling through HOT (high-occupancy toll) lanes. One-third of respondents said HOT lanes should be used for future transportation revenue, with 35 percent supporting the use of public tolling and 20 percent backing private tolls.

As with any poll, wording is everything; the above graphic depicts another poll question that referenced high-speed rail in addition to road investments. When the phrasing was changed, support for gas taxes climbed by 8 percent.

And when respondents were asked about "adding" HOT lanes with higher tolls "during rush hour," 68 percent were willing to support the move. As my colleague Ryan Avent has pointed out, however, new HOT lanes can be added without building more highway capacity by simply converting existing lanes.

If lawmakers are looking for data to jumpstart a discussion of broader toll use -- particularly on the interstates, which would deliver a blow to the road lobby -- today's poll might be a good place to start.

(The source of polls can often be as noteworthy as their phrasing. Given that, one quick note on HNTB: The firm is currently embroiled in a debate over streetcars versus light rail in Kansas City, according to local media reports.)

All told, TA has collected responses from 73 candidates. With Bus Rapid Transit routes taking shape, congestion plaguing city streets as much as ever, Robert Morgenthau stepping down after decades as Manhattan's top prosecutor, and advances in ped-bike safety provoking a vocal backlash from certain quarters, there's a lot at stake in this election. Thanks to the candidate survey, New Yorkers will be able to remind electeds of their promises on livable streets issues for the next four years. And the companion web site gives voters a handy reference as primary day approaches (September 15, don't forget).

One of the really useful functions of the survey site is that you can compare competitors' responses to the same question. Say you want to know how the mayoral candidates pledged to reduce traffic -- here are their answers. Bill Thompson, the likely Democratic nominee, supports time-based tolls on the MTA crossings but, true to form as a Ravitch Plan foe, says nothing about putting a price on free bridges. Bloomberg, meanwhile, gives no indication that he'll renew the push for pricing if he wins a third term.

For some unambiguous statements in support of pricing, check out the Public Advocate candidate responses to a similar question -- especially former Public Advocate Mark Green and, rather surprisingly, current Council Member Eric Gioia.

So, now we have many candidates on the record regarding pedestrian safety, bike infrastructure, transit investment, and traffic enforcement, all in one place -- it's a lot of information to digest. Streetsblog will be sifting through it in the weeks before primary day, highlighting the citywide races, the Manhattan DA contest, and the key showdowns for City Council seats.

Last night at the Council District 1 candidates debate, in the "lightning round" (one-line answers), a question was "Grand St. bike lane: good or bad."

All the candidates came out strongly against it to the cheers of some in the crowd. Only PJ Kim, the last to comment, tempered his statement with, "but we must not demonize bikers." They all either flatly opposed congestion pricing or want carve-outs for residents (pandering, hmmm?) and opposed East River tolls.

On the congestion pricing question (about 1:31:00 into this audio file posted on the Lo-Down), Pete Gleason and Alan Gerson were the two to outright oppose the idea -- although the incumbent Gerson voted for pricing last year. Margaret Chin, the only candidate to express any support for bridge tolls (check the 1:32:00 mark), qualified her answer by saying that car-poolers should be exempt.

Any exemption for congestion pricing or bridge tolls, of course, opens the door to more exemptions. The first people who will take advantage? Exactly the same placard-holders whom District 1 candidates rightly blame for clogging downtown streets.

We're talking about a district that is absolutely pummeled by bridge traffic, where about 80 percent of the households don't own a car. Those who do own one earn nearly two-and-a half times those who don't, on average [PDF]. There was a great opportunity here for a savvy candidate to separate from the pack on livable streets issues. And yet, no one chose to grab it.

Ed Fay: time-polluter and proud of it. Photo: Daily News.

I decided that I'm not going to give the transicrats another cent to get to and from work. The MTA has stuck it to all of us countless times over the years and now it was time for me to pay them back. I will personally screw them out of $1,000 over the next year.

The ironies are many. For one thing, Fay could offset that toll hike three times over by signing up with E-ZPass, but he swears by cash. For another, since straphangers are a big part of the dwindling market for the daily paper, you could say that Fay’s rebellion undermines his employer by shrinking NYC Transit's take from the toll revenues. There’s also the fact that in stiffing the MTA Fay is paying a stiff price in lost time; by his own estimate, detouring around the tolls adds 15 minutes each way to his commute. As one Streetsblog commenter pointed out, Fay implicitly values his own commuting time at not much more than the minimum wage.

But Fay’s biggest grotesquerie is his obliviousness to the consequences of his commute for other drivers. By my estimation, an average 11-mile rush-hour car trip into the Manhattan Central Business District and back out again creates three to four hours of aggregate delays to all the other people trying to get around in cars, trucks and buses on the same roads at the same time. (With the recessionary drop in traffic, that figure is currently somewhat lower, but it’s also higher in Fay’s case if most of his return trips take place in the p.m. peak.)

By choosing to car-commute daily into the CBD, Mr. Screw-the-MTA is mostly screwing his fellow drivers.

And this is true whether Fay drives on local streets or ponies up the $3 bridge toll ($2.09 with E-ZPass). To be sure, those three to four hours of delay are spread among thousands of drivers, no one of which loses more than 10 or 20 seconds queued behind Fay’s automobile at each stoplight or highway ramp. And his contribution to traffic delays is no greater than that of anyone else who drives in the same places at the same time.

What’s different is Fay’s glee. He’s spewing pollution, not so much from his tailpipe (autos rank relatively low in emissions these days), but "time pollution," by stealing precious minutes and seconds from his fellow New Yorkers. And he’s proud of it:

Each night I add $6 to the pile. And when the pile gets to $1,000 -- about eight months from now -- I'll take my family out for a spectacular dinner and raise a glass toasting the bloated bums at the MTA and the toll increase that sent me over the edge.

Fay's bluster notwithstanding, I’ll wager that after the big blowout he'll tire of rat-running and revert to the toll bridge. After all, even if he makes “just” $100,000 a year at the News and values his commute time at only half his imputed hourly pay, he’s still trading $12.50 worth of time each day to save a measly $6.00. But that return to sanity won’t solve the systemic dysfunction by which anyone choosing to make a single car-trip to and from the CBD can impose $100 in societal delay costs but pay just $5 or $10 in tolls themselves.

What Fay confronts us with is nothing less than the moral imperative of congestion pricing. Decisions that impose large delay costs on others demand commensurate charges. These need not begin at full-price. Congestion fees on the order of one-tenth of the full cost, as Ted Kheel and I propose (with revenues allocated to benefit transit), would be an excellent start. Let Ed Fay, time-polluter, pay.

Photo: berk2804/Flickr.

But maybe you had your doubts. Maybe the "It's just for tourists!" argument seemed like it might gain some traction. Maybe fears of Carmaggedon would win out.

Today's Q Poll settles the question: Car-free Times Square is a hit. Fifty-eight percent of New Yorkers think it was a good idea to close Broadway to cars and give more space to pedestrians, compared to 35 percent who don't. A surprisingly high number of New Yorkers -- 44 percent -- say they've seen the new Broadway for themselves. That translates to about three and half million people.

When it comes to transformative regional transportation policies, however, advocates still have a steep hill to climb. Majorities oppose East River bridge tolls and congestion pricing, even when the question explicitly states that funds would be used to limit future transit fare increases. Skepticism about the MTA's ability to deliver mega-projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the 7 line extension is very high.

Perhaps most importantly, among transit riders who think the quality of service has declined recently, blame falls on the MTA more than the state legislature. Much more, in fact -- 59 percent to 19 percent. This is troubling.

For the time being, it looks like Pedro Espada and company can rest comfortably in the knowledge that they won't be held accountable for shortchanging our transit system.

But if you're one of the optimists, here's something to build on. Overall support for congestion pricing stands at 40 percent. Okay, that's pretty sobering, but it's significantly higher than the 29 percent support for bridge tolls (maybe labels do matter). It's also higher than the level of public support for congestion charging prior to implementation in Stockholm. And back when congestion pricing was all over the news, we saw this number swing up and down rather dramatically, depending on the phrasing of the question.

We know the needle can be moved. The next time pricing comes up in the legislature, will advocates mobilize a broad enough coalition to move Albany along with it?

An RPP program, which would establish districts within the city where car owners must display permits to park legally in most on-street spaces, needs Albany's assent to become law. Assembly Member Joan Millman and State Senator Daniel Squadron have introduced bills in their respective chambers, with the details of the permit system left up to the city. Council Member David Yassky is carrying the banner for RPP at City Hall.

This is not the first time lawmakers have turned their attention to residential permit parking. Most recently, RPP got a serious look during last year's congestion pricing debate, when DOT devised a plan to assuage fears that car commuters would cram on-street parking spaces just outside the cordon zone.

That version of RPP included only nominal permit fees -- just enough to cover the cost of running the program. This time around, the bill's sponsors are touting permit fees as a new revenue source for the MTA. Separated from congestion pricing, however, an RPP system won't pack quite the same punch. Reports the News:

A Transportation Department spokesman said permits alone aren't enough to solve parking problems, and should be accompanied by a congestion pricing plan.

"Without such a plan, we don't believe this bill will actually solve neighborhood parking problems," said Transportation Department spokesman Seth Solomonow.

The city was slated to receive about $350 million in federal transportation funds to implement the plan, but it was was stalled by State Assembly Democrats in Albany.

LaHood said the money is still there if lawmakers change their minds.

"The money that was going to be provided for that particular project is still at the Department of Transportation," said LaHood. "If New York got its act together around that kind of opportunity, I think we would look at it."

Most of that $354 million would have gone toward transit enhancements targeted for areas underserved by subways. Citing, in large part, their distrust of the MTA to spend congestion pricing revenue wisely, state legislators turned down the offer from George W. Bush's DOT and killed the proposal last April.

Here we are a year later, and Albany just passed a toll-free MTA financing package that leaves the agency's capital plan largely unfunded. Congestion pricing would go a long way toward filling that gap, and self-styled watchdogs Malcolm Smith and Richard Brodsky say the new bill will make the MTA "transparent and accountable" to their liking. So if Barack Obama's DOT comes back with that $354 million offer, would NYC's state legislators still walk away from all those transit improvements for their constituents?

Hike 1, the 10-12 percent rise in subway, bus and rail fares set to take effect within a month, is a fait accompli. But Hikes 2 and 3, set for 2011 and 2013, are fair game. With municipal and state elections in the offing this year and next, the timing couldn't be better.

Hikes 2 and 3 are each intended to net $400 to $500 million annually. A geographically balanced traffic-pricing plan can replace that, no sweat. The MTA rescue plan I laid out in March, featuring a time-varied ($1-$2-$3-$4-$5) price to drive into the Manhattan CBD (charged inbound only) along with a 20 percent taxi fare surcharge, would bring in $1 billion a year. The plan can be ratcheted up as need warrants and politics allow.

I know, I know -- tolls have already failed, twice. But the Bloomberg and Ravitch Plans were grossly skewed, with a Jersey exemption and a Manhattan free pass, among other failings. The messengers, through no fault of their own, were flawed as well.

Rather than a billionaire mayor or another permanent-government state commission, we need a popular movement made up of straphangers, bus riders, truckers and tradespeople (who will easily make up the CBD toll in saved time), business interests, pedestrians and cyclists -- a true New York majority. And we should start posing the question now, as the 2009 municipal elections get in gear: Which should the MTA toll -- transit users or traffic?

It is true that the recession has eased traffic congestion. By how much is hard to say, but if vehicle volumes are down 5 percent, the drop in gridlock -- time stuck in traffic -- may be as great as 10 percent citywide and 20 percent within the CBD. When the Albany deal was revealed this week, a policy savant told me it demonstrated "the lack of political support for reducing traffic congestion." He may be right, but I believe that as fare hikes and a general economic recovery restore car use to prior levels, gridlock will again matter.

The German social thinker Wolfgang Sachs drilled to the heart of gridlock several decades ago:

Once a certain traffic density is surpassed, every driver contributes involuntarily to a slowing of traffic. The time that the individual driver steals from all the others by slowing them down is greater many times over than the time he or she might have hoped to gain by taking the car. (emphasis added)

Sachs’ "theft of time" can now be quantified. Using the Balanced Transportation Analyzer computer model I’ve developed with transit advocate Ted Kheel, I estimate it to average almost three hours per weekday car round-trip into the CBD and back home. Meaning: each additional weekday drive into the Manhattan Central Business District imposes aggregate delays on all other motor vehicle users totaling nearly three hours (more for peak-period trips, less for off-peak). Applying an estimated per-vehicle cost of $35-40 per hour spent in NYC traffic (a blend of costs for 18-wheelers, plumbers’ vans, private cars, etc.), the societal "time cost" imposed by each car trip into and out of the CBD is around $100.

(Note: figures in the previous paragraph are derived in the BTA worksheets, "Delay Costs" and "Value of Time," and were revised by the author in August, 2009 to reflect modeling refinements following the May 7, 2009 appearance of this post.)

This “theft of time” by auto trips into the CBD should form one moral basis for our transportation reform campaign. The other, of course, is the need to prevent any further burdening of hard-pressed working people with the MTA’s financial failings.

Ted, who turns 95 on Saturday, has said that if he were younger he would run for mayor on this platform. Here’s a Plan “B”: The advocates who fought valiantly for the Ravitch Plan unite behind a new, effective and equitable approach such as the traffic-pricing plan outlined here -- one that breaks, finally, the triple hell of spiraling fares, traffic gridlock, and the legislature’s tyranny over mass transit. Candidates run for City Council and state legislature on this plan, and we elect them.

Where's the Assembly's eco-warrior when you need him?

The MTA rescue package does not, in fact, fall under the purview of SEQRA, even though it's probably the most important piece of climate policy that the state legislature will consider this year. The Senate's latest stab would keep the trains and buses running for a few more months, but it's an eco-stinker compared to the Ravitch plan and any other package that includes road pricing or tolls on currently free bridges.

Let's go back to the spring of 2008. Remember all the carping from Richard Brodsky and other state legislators about congestion pricing not going through the SEQRA process? That was regarding a policy projected to take 112,000 cars off the road each day. Now we have an MTA funding plan getting serious consideration that would create worse traffic bottlenecks and more incentives to drive, but so far not even a peep about environmental consequences from Albany.

Not only will the piecemeal funding approach likely have the MTA begging again within months, but these particular funding streams will make the city's traffic woes even worse, all while forcing New York City businesses and the city's car-free majority to shoulder much of the burden. It's a poor substitute for the Ravitch plan or congestion pricing. Here's why:

1. Raising tolls on MTA crossings while keeping East and Harlem River bridges free gives car commuters and truckers even more incentive to detour across city streets to the free crossings. Neighborhoods like Downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, Williamsburg and the Lower East Side that are already pulverized by traffic will see things get worse.  
2. Raising fees on car ownership through higher registration and licensing fees does nothing to discourage car use, and may actually encourage people to drive more in order to get more bang for their buck. Using tolls or congestion fees to price driving would have the opposite effect.
3. Raising the cost of car sharing, rentals and taxis makes it tougher to live without a car. And, like higher ownership fees, increasing these one-time charges encourages renters to maximize their driving. Congestion pricing or tolls are far superior.
4. Unlike private motorists taxi drivers faced with higher fees will increase their driving. Why? Since passengers will choose to ride less, given the higher fare, cabbies will have to drive more to recoup the flat fee they pay to operate a taxi.
5. Using cab fees to pay for highway and bridge projects outside of the city transfers wealth from the dense, environmentally sustainable city to the car-dependent suburbs. If anything, taxes on cabs should fund the city bridges and streets used by those cabs.

1. East and Harlem River bridge tolls of $2.16 each way with EZ Pass, $2.50 without.
2. 50-cent taxi fare surcharge.
3. A higher tax rate on parking in Manhattan.
4. Revenue from (2) and (3), an estimated $150 million, to fund “toll mitigation rebates,” with details decided by a new commission to be established by the legislature.
5. (Unchanged: a regional payroll tax of 33 cents on each $100 of earnings.)

I figure the net take from the tolls at around $600 million, or a few hundred million less than from the original Ravitch proposal of $5 East River and $2 Harlem River tolls. The higher tax on lots and garages portends more cruising for parking, and, what's worse, that new Toll Mitigation Entitlement Commission would establish a bad precedent: bureaucrat-approved rebates for "deserving" bridge commuters.

It’s tempting to lay the blame for these moves on Albany, particularly the handful of senators who torpedoed the original Ravitch tolls and their colleagues who then backed away from the heart of the transit rescue package: the payroll tax being counted on to generate $1.6-$1.7 billion a year for the MTA. But in the past month, the Ravitch Commission has taken a pass on two proposed amendments that just might make its plan politically palatable.

One is to modulate the payroll tax rate so that the suburbs pay less. A source close to the Ravitch Commission estimates that lowering the tax rate to 22 cents per $100 for businesses in Nassau and Westchester and to 11 cents for the five exurban MTA counties (Suffolk, Putnam, Rockland, Orange and Dutchess) would reduce the tax revenues by just 13%, or $215 million. That’s a giveback that wavering lawmakers could sell as a win but that doesn’t torpedo the plan as a whole.

The other amendment would replace the Ravitch bridge tolls with a traffic-pricing plan that does three things the Ravitch tolls don’t do: (1) make Manhattan (and New Jersey) residents pay, (2) give drivers choices, and (3) save drivers time. Here’s how it works:

• One-way tolls of $1 or $2 or $3 or $4 or $5 to drive into the CBD (Manhattan south of 60th Street); the toll rate varies with time of day and weekday vs. weekend (nets $690 million a year).
• No cordon toll for taxis, but a 20% surcharge on all medallion taxi fares (nets $300 million, after assigning one-tenth of the surcharge revenues to drivers and owners)

(Click here for the Balanced Transportation Analyzer spreadsheet showing details.)

Why might this toll plan be a winner? First, drivers get a toll choice, and their round-trip toll averages less than the proposed East River bridge tolls -- around $3.50 versus $4.50. Second, drivers get valuable time savings: the estimated 10% speedup in traffic within the CBD means that on a typical peak-period (weekday 6-9 a.m.) trip into the CBD, a driver whose time is worth $45 an hour saves enough minutes to more than offset the $5 toll. Third, “outer borough” residents and Long Islanders see their toll burdens drop by a quarter to a half, while Manhattan residents’ contribution to the revenues almost quadruples, from under 7% to 26%, and New Jersey’s rises from 1% to more than 10%. Tourists chip in too, through the taxi surcharge.

Neither the graduated payroll tax nor the traffic-pricing proposal is exactly revolutionary. Indeed, both fit perfectly with the overall Ravitch conception of rescuing the MTA through a three-part program of fare hike + payroll tax + traffic tolls.

Pointing fingers at retrograde legislators has been cathartic and by all means let’s hold them accountable. But it’s time to also offer a better Ravitch Plan.

Using the Balanced Transportation Analyzer (BTA), I estimate that the fare hikes and service cuts which begin June 1 will:

• Add an average of 6 percent more waiting and travel time to bus and subway commutes; which will...
• cause 40,000 more autos to pile into the Manhattan Central Business District each day; which will...
• slow traffic by an average of 5 percent in the CBD and 1-2 percent across the City; costing...
• drivers, truckers and bus riders $600 million in lost time annually within the CBD, and probably $1.5 billion or more citywide.

The one-two punch of higher fares and less frequent service can be expected to shrink subway use by around 8 percent and bus ridership by 6 percent. This is a calamity not only to our city's vitality but for the MTA as well, since it cuts deeply into the very revenue these measures were supposed to generate. Indeed, the BTA model projects that the real gain in farebox revenues won't even reach $500 million -- well under half of the projected $1.2 billion deficit.

The key criteria by which New York City transportation policies are judged are driver expenses, rider expenses, driver travel times and rider travel times. The MTA and the legislature have managed to worsen three out of four -- and, for good measure, have aggravated others, such as traffic pollution and mayhem. A stopped clock could hardly have done worse.

Advocates spent four months in feverish but fruitless campaigning for a stopgap solution -- the Ravitch Plan -- that was buoyed more by Dick Ravitch's sterling reputation than by its intrinsic merits. Indeed, the plan was rife with inequities:

• Payrolls in exurban Dutchess County would be taxed at the same rate as those of transit-reliant New Yorkers.
• Most Bronx and Brooklyn drivers would pay new tolls and yet those driving in from New Jersey would not.
• Manhattan residents would garner much of the benefit from lighter traffic in the form of quieter streets and faster cab rides, yet they would pay little of the tolls.

In short, “shared sacrifice” was more rhetoric than reality. Plus, the Ravitch Plan offered no incentive to switch trips out of rush hours to less crowded travel times, in effect foreclosing on both choice and efficiency.

On the four criteria above, Ravitch offered not a single solid win. The plan was a Band-Aid, but the times demanded a major overhaul.

True, Albany is broken. Even a perfectly balanced plan would have faced tough sledding. Political reform is essential, but so too is recognizing that transit and traffic won’t get the needed makeover until they are addressed in a unified and broadened transportation vision.

Our plan rests on three powerful attributes: revenue generation, tolling equality, and sheer efficiency. We achieve these with an inclusive pricing model that asks drivers to pay a fee ranging from $2 to $10 upon entering the Central Business District with the price dependent on the time of day, and charges taxi passengers for their contribution to congestion as well.

The basics:

• Our toll plan generates $1.7 billion a year in revenue; that’s twice as much as the $800 million from Ravitch’s tolls, even though our top toll of $10 matches Ravitch’s $5 (we charge inbound only). As for Sheldon Silver’s $2 toll plan, it nets just $450 million.
• Our plan has no free riders; oops, make that free drivers. Jersey drivers pay the toll, drivers entering the CBD at 60th Street pay the toll, and Manhattanites pay the lion’s share of a 33 percent taxi fare surcharge that raises a quarter of our total revenue. Under the Ravitch and Silver plans, East River drivers who make only 36 percent of crossings into the CBD would be coughing up 60 percent of new toll revenues.
• Everyone wins something in our plan. Buses are free (paid for by $800 million of our $1.7 billion revenue pot). Straphangers get deep off-peak discounts (paid for by the rest -- though some of the reductions might need to be deferred to help stanch the MTA deficit) and a bit more elbow-room in rush hour due to peak-spreading. Drivers get a 20 percent traffic speed-up in the CBD (faster travel “upstream” too), while the variable toll offers a measure of choice.
• Free and faster-moving buses will achieve three goals. They’ll lure enough drivers and straphangers out of gridlocked streets and packed trains to ease crowding on both. By stopping drip-torture boarding that halts movement during Metrocard-swiping, they’ll traverse their routes fast enough to handle the influx. And they’ll provide a huge break to riders across the city, a disproportionate percentage of whom live in poorer, non-Manhattan neighborhoods.

Too good to be true? No, it’s real, the numbers have been checked and re-checked, the plan works.

Politically, who knows? It’s easy to shrug and say that if Albany can’t get it together to enact $2 tolls, there’s no chance for an ambitious plan like Kheel-Komanoff.

And yet … unlike the plans on the table, which impose tolls while giving little back (as did Mayor Bloomberg’s failed congestion pricing proposal), our plan is about gain, and freedom, and relief:

• Gain for the millions of transit riders who will enjoy better service and more spending money.
• Freedom from recurring fare hikes and service cuts.
• Significant relief from traffic congestion that frustrates drivers, dehumanizes our city and saps the economy.

Lately I’ve kept a low profile about our plan out of deference to Dick Ravitch and his well thought out plan that recognizes the gravity of the crisis. But Albany is so stuck, and the dialogue so stilted, that it seems time to air a bolder, more ambitious plan.

Since New Year’s, I’ve discussed the Kheel-Komanoff plan with dozens of electeds and advocates. The private response has been uniformly positive.

There may still be time to win a real hearing -- or at least infuse elements of our plan into Ravitch's. Let’s find each other now, before it’s too late.

Take it to the bank: 67 percent of households in Ruben Diaz, Sr.'s Bronx district are car-free.

"If that is in there, there's no way I'm going to vote for it and you can take that to the bank," Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr. (D-Bronx) said after the afternoon meeting.

Streetsbloggers may remember Diaz as one of the legislators who opposed congestion pricing on the grounds that it may adversely affect the environment. His district faces a slew of subway and bus service reductions [PDF] without transit funding equal to that proposed under the Ravitch plan, but Diaz is as yet unwilling to stand up for the whopping 67 percent of households that don't even own a car.

Ditto Brooklyn's Carl Kruger, another congestion pricing opponent, who has called tolling "a non-starter" and "an insult to every outer-borough resident in New York City." Kruger should check his census data. Almost half of the households in his district alone are car-free, and those who own cars have an annual income that more than doubles those who don't. Yet it seems Kruger is willing to let the non-driving half of his constituency bear the brunt [PDF]. But what should we expect from the legislator who wanted to fine pedestrians for listening to iPods and talking on cell phones.

It's still unclear where Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith stands on bridge tolls. Smith's own Queens district, where some 34 percent of households don't own cars, also stands to lose bus and train service in lieu of increased MTA funding [PDF]. Like his counterpart Shelly Silver, Smith owes it to his constituents and all New Yorkers to come out strongly in favor of bridge tolls and gain majority support.