
DOT's Dani Simons and City Hall's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, Rohit Aggarwala, at a joint hearing of Manhattan Community Boards 4, 5 and 6 on July 9; one of many public hearings where Bloomberg Administration officials have met with communities to discuss congestion pricing. Tonight, Brooklyn Community Board 6 hosts a similar public forum.
Here is the fourth and final installment of Streetsblog's congestion pricing Q&A with Rohit Aggarwala, New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. Click these links to find Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Add your questions to the comments section and we'll see if we can get Aggarwala or someone else in city government to try and answer them for you.
Aaron Naparstek: Should the mayor's congestion pricing plan be submitted to an Environmental Impact Statement process?
Rohit Aggarwala: I don't think so. And the reason is simply that an EIS would be no more valuable for the decision of whether or not to go forward with congestion pricing, and what to do to mitigate its impacts, than the analysis that we've already done, and the analysis that the commission will be doing. The problem with traffic congestion is that it is so difficult to model.
That's why we've proposed a three year pilot. The pilot itself effectively will be the Environmental Impact Statement. Keep in mind congestion pricing is very different from building something you can't tear down. We can turn this system off whenever we want. If it turns out that the environmental impacts are negative, then by all means we'll want to turn it off. We're pretty convinced that the impacts will be wildly positive, and any specific impacts that might take place that are negative are things that we would be able to adjust.
AN: What exemptions do you foresee or would you like to have or not have?
RA: The mayor's plan has a few exemptions. First of all, yellow cabs and radio cars. Second, handicapped license plates. Third, mass transit and emergency vehicles. The reason for the third is kind of obvious, As for the handicapped, although we have Access-a-Ride, if you have a disability but you can still drive, there are large parts of the transit system that don't really work that well for you.
The reason for yellow cabs and radio cars is that we believe those pretty much function as an extension of the transit system. If you take a subway into Manhattan and you're going to the far west side, you may want to take a taxi or you may want to have the option to take a taxi home at the end of the night if you work late or something like that. Similarly, because it can be difficult to find a yellow cab, particularly parts of the outer boroughs, we want to keep the ability for people to use radio cars. I don't think we want to force people out of taxi cabs. A taxi is actually very efficient use of the street. It never circles for parking and, particularly at rush hour, you have very high utilization of taxis, as we all know since it's hard to find one that's unoccupied.
Black cars and limousines would be charged in the mayor's plan. Frankly, those are corporate trips that, number one, can bear the cost, and number two, we want those people to think, "Well, couldn't I just take the subway it would be faster and cheaper?"
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