Streetsblog New York City

I nearly spit out my coffee when I saw that Adriano Espaillat had signed on in support of the Inwood slow zone application.

See, while he endorsed Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan, the state senator from Upper Manhattan adamantly opposes placing tolls on Harlem River bridges, preferring that Inwood remain a bypass for toll-shopping motorists bound for the Bronx and Westchester.

Public remarks indicate that Espaillat is well aware of the added burden on the neighborhood, but he believes it’s worth it to keep motorists’ expenses down. He also claims that most local residents, the vast majority of whom don’t own cars, feel the same way.

So now that he’s helped make sure there will be plenty of rat-running traffic through his constituents’ streets for years to come, Espaillat is concerned about those drivers putting lives at risk as they whip past the schools, parks and playgrounds of northwest Inwood.

I can hear the horns as I type. Thanks for the assist, senator.

The New York State Senate voted for a “gas tax holiday” yesterday, moving to eliminate the three state taxes on fuel for the busy Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day weekends this year. The estimated loss of revenue would be $60 million.

The 48 state senators who voted for the gas tax holiday wanted to ensure that drivers didn’t have to pay for the environmental and social costs of their actions — a misguided enough goal — but their desperate attempt to pander wouldn’t even have been a success on those grounds.

As economists from across the political spectrum have stated, a summertime gas tax holiday wouldn’t reduce the price at the pump. Oil companies would charge the same rate and pocket the difference. The libertarian Cato Institute, no friend of taxes, called gas tax holidays a “holiday from reality” in 2008. If we really must pander to motorists, surely we can all agree that New Yorkers deserve better panderers.

Those state senators, however, are savvy politicos. They can’t deliver the goods, but they know their audience. That’s where the gas tax vote is especially revealing.

Even if a gas tax holiday worked as promised, reducing the price at the pump instead of increasing Exxon’s profit margins, it’s a sure thing where the money comes from: the state’s transportation budget. If the gas tax holiday costs $60 million, that’s $60 million in new revenues needed for the MTA and state DOT, or $60 million more in cuts to things like education. While only drivers would even theoretically benefit, everyone else would pay the price.

Voting for a gas tax holiday means you’re worried about appeasing drivers in your district and not too concerned with sending everybody else the bill. That’s probably good politics if you’re Patrick Gallivan, the Western New York senator whose district has a 96 percent car ownership rate according to Streetsblog’s analysis of Census data. More outrageous is the fact that many New York City senators seem to agree.

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Five candidates vying to become Upper Manhattan’s next state senator met in the 168th Street Armory last night to make their case to the car-free voters of Riverdale, Inwood, Washington Heights, West Harlem, and the Upper West Side. At a debate sponsored by Transportation Alternatives and WE ACT for Environmental Justice, important differences emerged over how best to solve the MTA’s budget crisis and make streets safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

Democrats Adriano Espaillat, Miosotis Muñoz, Mark Levine, and Anna Lewis were joined last night by Green Party candidate Ann Roos. Whoever wins, the victor’s first term will be dominated by the ongoing budget crisis afflicting the state of New York, which affects transit quite directly. State legislators made the MTA’s funding crisis even worse last December by stealing more than $100 million in dedicated transit taxes to plug gaps in the general fund. The debate began with a revealing discussion of how each candidate would secure adequate funding for transit given the current fiscal climate.

Assembly Member Espaillat, considered the front-runner due to an advantage in name recognition, strong fund-raising and prominent endorsements, began with a warning: “It would be irresponsible of me to say there’s not a deficit that’s going to hit across the board,” he said. Without new revenue, the legislature will be forced to make impossible choices between priorities like education, health care, and transportation.

Though he didn’t make a specific revenue proposal during the debate, afterwards Espaillat told me that “congestion pricing is certainly something that we must bring back to the table.” He argued against cobbling together a piecemeal funding scheme for transit, saying that “the main engine of economic development in our community” needs a “solid revenue stream.” Even so, he maintained his opposition to any tolls over the Harlem River bridges, which carry torrents of toll-shopping drivers through the district.

Mark Levine, considered to be a close second to Espaillat, also argued that congestion pricing would be the best solution. “I also support, short of that, a plan to toll the East River bridges,” he explained. Harlem River bridge tolls were conspicuously absent, however, a stance that he earlier explained to Streetsblog by characterizing those bridges as essentially local streets.

The other two Democrats, Muñoz and Lewis, each suggested reinstating the commuter tax to raise revenue.

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One would be hard pressed to find a more broadly drawn constituency in the city than that of state Senate District 31, which spans from the Upper West Side to Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood before hopping the Harlem River into Riverdale. But in spite of vast differences in culture and income, most district residents have at least two things in common: they don't own a car, and they rely heavily on trains and buses to conduct their day-to-day lives.

Eric Schneiderman has represented District 31 since 1998. Though he has distinguished himself as a progressive who lauded PlaNYC and publicly blamed Albany for abandoning transit riders, Senator Schneiderman has basically been a no-show when it comes to the current MTA budget crisis. Now that Schneiderman's bid for state attorney general has opened up the seat, transit-dependent voters in the district's Democratic primary will have to choose from a field of candidates with varying views on providing the MTA with adequate, long-term funding -- though none are calling for road pricing to shift part of the burden to drivers entering their neighborhoods.

Among District 31 aspirants, Adriano Espaillat is probably the most widely known. That is, the Assembly member is known to be inconsistent when it comes to supporting stable revenue streams for the city's transit system. Espaillat was a vocal supporter of congestion pricing. But a year later he came out strongly against tolling the "free" bridges of Upper Manhattan, and never mind that some 80 percent of households in his Assembly district do not own a car. Espaillat also lambasted the MTA for its plan to cut student MetroCards, insisting that Albany had done its part to shore up transit finances. (Full disclosure: Espaillat, like Schneiderman, represents part of Inwood, where I live. In addition to covering Espaillat's maneuvering for Streetsblog, I posted the occasional related rant on my now-defunct neighborhood blog. Espaillat once accused me of making false statements about his record, but did not respond when pressed for specifics.)

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When Albany slapped a Band-Aid over the MTA budget hole last spring, no one except the architects of the plan pretended that the transit system was actually on sound financial footing. As yet another day of reckoning approaches, lawmakers continue to go to bizarre extremes to avoid admitting that their slipshod funding package has failed.

Brooklyn Senator Marty Golden (flanked by City Council congestion pricing opponent Vincent Gentile) recently participated in a protest against reductions in bus service now planned for Bay Ridge. Here's the Ravitch rescue plan detractor as quoted by the Brooklyn Eagle: "This is a serious threat by the MTA to get the state legislature to act. MTA, we’re not going to take these cuts!"

In describing proposed cuts as "a serious threat by the MTA to get the state legislature to act," Golden seems be acknowledging, in a weird, circular manner, that it’s up to him and his colleagues to properly fund the transit system. But beyond his plan to "call a town hall meeting," what has he brought to the table that would help his constituents who rely on MTA buses and trains?

In the arena of head-spinning nonsensery, Golden has to take a back seat to Adriano Espaillat. As reported in the Manhattan Times, at an event to promote those free student MetroCards that Albany chose to stop funding -- hosted by City Council member, protege, and fellow road pricing critic Ydanis Rodriguez -- the senator from Upper Manhattan unloaded this whopper:

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We wondered a few months back why Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, a supporter of congestion pricing, would side with the usual suspects in opposing Ravitch-backed East and Harlem River bridge tolls. At the time, Espaillat told Streetsblog readers that new tolls would place an unfair burden on his district, and blamed MTA financial woes on "contemptible bookkeeping and abject failure to control spending."

Espaillat didn't make his true views on MTA deviance and recklessness known a year earlier when, joined by Lee Sander, he called pricing -- which, of course, was also intended to provide much-needed transit funding -- "a rational, practical solution to a very serious problem." But now he's reading from a different script, going so far as to claim that Upper Manhattanites prefer higher fares and reduced transit service to bridge tolls.

At a "town hall" meeting in Inwood last Thursday, Streetsblog reader Peter Brinkmann again found the assemblyman indifferent to concerns about auto-inflicted quality of life issues. Writes Peter:

In response to my question about distorted traffic patterns caused by car commuters who take the Broadway bridge [into and out of Inwood] in order to avoid paying the toll for Henry Hudson Bridge, he launched into his usual routine about how East River bridge tolls would be a regressive tax on families; he didn't address the issue of a residential neighborhood serving as a bypass for a major artery. When asked about possibly repaving 218th Street, he seemed to be in favor, in part because 218th Street draws a lot of traffic from drivers who want to avoid Henry Hudson Bridge. In other words, he's aware of distorted traffic patterns and doesn't seem to have a problem with them.

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It was a little surprising to see Upper Manhattan Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat, one of the few state electeds to support congestion pricing without reservation, come out so strongly against the Ravitch MTA rescue plan, and the tolling of East and Harlem River bridges in particular. Now we have this recent post from an e-mail list for Inwood parents:

I spoke to Espaillat's office. They insisted that people in the area would rather have higher subway fares and reduced service than tolled bridges. They said the merchants in the area and the car services oppose the bridge tolls.

When MTA doomsday service cuts go into effect, residents of Espaillat's district [PDF] will lose the Bx20 and M18 buses, will see reduced service on the M100 and M2, and will face longer wait times on the A and 1 trains. As an Upper Manhattanite myself, I find it very hard to believe that most of my neighbors -- roughly 80 percent of whom don't own cars -- are willing to accept more crowded buses and trains, which will be fewer in number and cost more to board, so drivers from Westchester can continue to drive through Inwood and Washington Heights for free.

It seems that either Espaillat really has his finger on the pulse of the public, or the merchants and car services have Espaillat's ear. We have a message in with his office in hopes of confirming which is true.

Some residents of Inwood aren't happy with Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat's vocal opposition to bridge tolls on East and Harlem River bridges. On the neighborhood blog Inwoodite (maintained by yours truly), Espaillat constituents sounded off last week, with one pointing out the assemblyman's illegal parking habit -- as illustrated by the photo above, snapped last December by another Inwood blogger.

Meanwhile, Espaillat's Upper Manhattan colleague Herman "Denny" Farrell, the outspoken (and uninformed) congestion pricing foe, recently made news as the lone Assembly member to report zero personal use of his state-provided vehicle. Has he eschewed his car keys for a MetroCard? Not exactly, as NY Politics reports:

Farrell’s office said the lawmaker never drives his state car for personal use, preferring to tool around in his own convertibles. 

Good to know.

Last March, Assembly Member Adriano Espaillat stood with Mayor Bloomberg in Fordham Plaza, celebrating the announcement of the city's inaugural Select Bus Service line. In the thick of the battle over congestion pricing, its fate to be determined within days, Espaillat was one of few state pols to vocally support the mayor's proposal. Flanked by Bloomberg, Elliot Sander, Janette Sadik-Khan and other pricing advocates, the Northern Manhattan rep did not mince words.

"This [congestion pricing] is not a bogey monster," Espaillat said. "This is a rational, practical solution to a very serious problem."

Nearly a year later, Espaillat stands with Rory Lancman and David Weprin in opposing East and Harlem River bridge tolls. Espaillat, one of 20 state lawmakers to sign an anti-toll letter delivered to Sheldon Silver this week, says he favors a proposal by comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson to increase vehicle registration fees -- a plan that has no traction in Albany and would do nothing to cut congestion in Northern Manhattan.

Though just 20 percent of households in Espaillat's district own vehicles, the area is burdened with heavy auto traffic -- a "very serious problem," as Espaillat used to say -- much of it on its way to and from free bridges. Yet rather than get behind a viable, long-overdue plan that would both reduce cut-through driving and spare the majority of his constituents from crushing transit fare hikes and massive service cuts, Espaillat has joined the crowd that wants to keep the floodgates open to Westchester County.

More traffic, more asthma, and a transit system in collapse. What's rational and practical about that?

All the gnashing of teeth over East River bridge tolls has for the most part drowned out discussion of the Ravitch Commission's proposal to charge motorists for Harlem River crossings as well. Though the tolls would be substantially lower -- matching the (currently) $2 transit base fare -- it's still too much for two officials from the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.

From Thursday's Daily News, reporting on Richard Ravitch's testimony to state Assembly members:

At Wednesday's hearing, Assemblymen Adriano Espaillat (D-Manhattan) and Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) worried about the impact tolls would have on constituents already struggling to make ends meet.

"As a legislator from the Bronx, you have to understand that the tolling of the bridges is a tough one," Heastie said.

Ravitch agreed, but said drivers would see significant improvements, including expanded bus service so they could consider ditching their cars, less traffic as drivers switch to mass transit and less pollution.

The commission also recommended discounts for drivers not crossing during rush hours, he said.

Not exactly fire-and-brimstone oratory from the Assemblymen, to be sure. Still, Espaillat and Heastie, both of whom backed congestion pricing, know that hundreds of thousands of their constituents are "already struggling to make ends meet" while paying up to $4 each workday for round-trip transit service -- service that will suffer without new MTA revenue streams. Bronx Democratic boss Heastie must also know that "free" Harlem River bridges are an invitation to suburban drivers to trek through his borough.

After the jump, thoughts from a South Bronxite tipster on the plague of the toll-shoppers.

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