Who could support a plan that creates a regressive tax on middle-class and working people from the Bronx and the outer boroughs?

Jeffrey Dinowitz on the possibility of eliminating the Bx34, February 2009:

"The fact that they would come up with such a boneheaded idea with this bus reflects really poorly on their ability to run this agency."

Here's hoping that residents of the Bronx, most of whom rely on transit, decide for themselves who the real boneheads are.

The Times reports that about a dozen lawmakers, including Bronx Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, are refusing to complete the NYLCV's candidate questionnaire, and have notified the league preemptively to say they don't want its endorsement.

What has irked some lawmakers is what they saw as a threat in the cover letter accompanying the questionnaire. In the letter, the league said it would use its new political action committee, Climate Action, to support candidates who advanced the group's agenda. Some legislators said they viewed that as a veiled warning that the league would use the money it raised through its committee to defeat candidates who opposed Mayor Bloomberg, above, and his congestion pricing plan.

The league or its political action committee "has the right to contribute to any candidate it wants," wrote Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democratic assemblyman from the Bronx, "but I am deeply troubled by the very clear implication that a candidate will be rewarded or punished based upon a legislator casting a specific vote the way you would want it cast."

Yes, assemblyman, an interest group basing its support on a candidate's record is indeed troubling. Oh, wait ... 

For the league's part, NYLCV Chair Charles S. Warren says lawmaker positions on congestion pricing will not be a "litmus test," but adds, "we’re going to look for concrete accomplishments in furthering the environmental agenda.”

Mr. Warren, who said he did not know how many legislators had responded to the league’s questionnaire, added that the league was dissatisfied with the Legislature’s environmental record lately. “There’s a frustration on our part and on the part of a lot of other environmental organizations,” he said.

The Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, whose job it was to evaluate Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, has succeeded in only making a bad plan worse.

... it seems this new version has raised more questions than it has answered.

But rather than raising more questions, Dinowitz, for the most part, simply restates the same asked-and-answered arguments we've come to know by heart. Still, at the risk of repeating ourselves, we thought we'd answer them again, one by one, for old time's sake.

Who could support a plan that creates a regressive tax on middle-class and working people from the Bronx and the outer boroughs while giving an exemption to drivers from New Jersey who are more likely to be able to afford such a tax?

According to census data, less than five percent of New Yorkers drive into Manhattan's central business district for work. An analysis by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the Pratt Center for Community Development shows that in all but one state Assembly district in the city, households with a vehicle are 50 percent wealthier than those without. In nearly half of the districts -- including Dinowitz's -- average income is twice as high. So actual figures suggest that the popular "regressive tax" cry is so much faux-populist bluster. Further, nearly all of the "middle-class and working people" Dinowitz and other pricing opponents claim to be speaking up for are now relying on a transit system that will benefit from congestion pricing.

As for the toll credit "exemption," New Jersey drivers would pay $8 to enter the CBD, same as everyone else, even if the money doesn't go into the same pot. Are New Jerseyans really "more likely to be able to afford" a fee than New Yorkers? If so, Dinowitz offers no data to back the claim. Even if he did, the argument itself is a red herring intended to put New Yorkers on defense against "the other" -- just as Dinowitz and his fellow pricing opponents have tried to cast the "Manhattan elite" as the beneficiaries of a plan designed mainly to improve access to Manhattan from outside the borough.

Also among my chief concerns is the fact that there have been no assurances that the money generated from the plan will actually be spent on improving mass transit.

Dinowitz must have missed out on the opportunity to get with McCaffrey and City Council Member David Weprin when they called a January press conference to raise this same issue. Thing is, state and city electeds were already working on a "lock box" to secure pricing revenues for transit, and the TCMC plan includes such a "dedicated transit account." Has Assemblyman Dinowitz actually read the commission recommendation?

There is no guarantee that the revenues generated by the plan will be as much as the city is claiming, and there is also no guarantee that the expenses involved in setting up and running this project won't be even more costly than they expect.

This is technically true, but the same can be said of any government plan -- or any business model, for that matter. What is known is the cost of doing nothing would be catastrophic for the MTA. Just ask Elliot Sander.

Furthermore, it is important to remember that in the initial MTA proposal, there was not a single improvement recommended for mass transit in the western half of the Bronx.

Though the city says there will be increased service on the 1 train and funding for Bus Rapid Transit service on Fordham Road, and there are references in PlaNYC to making better use of Metro-North and exploring new ferry service, Dinowitz has a point here. But instead of expending so much effort assailing a plan that would fund improvements to transit infrastructure that almost fifty percent of his constituents depend on, perhaps he could use his position as a state lawmaker to expedite and augment those upgrades. Of course, if the relative lack of transit options in the western Bronx mattered all that much to him, he probably would have been doing that already.

To make matters worse, it is shocking that the city has not done an environmental study for a project of this magnitude. There is no way of knowing, for example, if this plan will actually result in cleaner air for Manhattan or, even worse, perhaps more pollution for the residents of the Bronx.

Again, the commission report includes a recommendation for environmental monitoring to begin as soon as the plan is implemented, with adjustments to be made as needed. This is an especially spurious argument, since Dinowitz and other pricing foes would certainly shred any preemptive environmental study that didn't back up their position, just as they have criticized the TCMC process, which itself was initiated after complaints that the mayor's original plan was being forced through Albany. And what do you know, a revised plan approved by 13 members of a 17-member bi-partisan commission after months of public hearings isn't good enough either.

There is the very real possibility that commuters will begin using the outer boroughs as a parking lot to avoid paying the congestion pricing fee.

Surely Dinowitz is aware that the city plans to institute residential parking permits to discourage park-and-ride activity. He must know that DOT has, for the last two weeks, held neighborhood parking workshops in areas that would border the pricing zone to gather public input on same, and that the pricing plan recommended by the commission includes an RPP provision. And he must know, if he's done his homework, that the "edge effect" is a generally discredited phenomena that has not proven a problem in cities where congestion pricing is in place. In fact, research by the TCMC shows that congestion in border neighborhoods would actually decrease with pricing in effect. But reality-based evidence and research would not serve Dinowitz's purpose nearly as well as another inflammatory broadside.

Among some of the commission's other faults in their revised plan is the fact that the West Side Highway and FDR Drive will now be included in the congestion pricing zone so that someone driving from Bronx to Brooklyn would have to pay the fee, and that surcharges will be added to passengers in taxi cabs.

The commission's recommendation to expand the cordon to include the West Side Highway and FDR Drive is indeed new, and since Dinowitz is opposed to the concept of congestion pricing it makes sense that he would be against broadening the plan's scope -- though he gives no credit to the commission for recommending the zone's northern border be moved from 86th to 60th Street. As for taxi surcharges, in September Dinowitz complained that taxis and car services would be exempt, offering further confirmation that no matter how many times congestion pricing is reviewed, discussed and altered, the assemblyman and his cohorts will never be satisfied, and the possibility of yet another volley of hackneyed half-truths and outright obfuscations will always be as close as the next news cycle.

Just before Thanksgiving, Environmental Defense tallied up all of the public testimony delivered to the Traffic Mitigation Commission and found that 57 percent of the witnesses who testified "support the concept of congestion pricing." Based on the analysis, ED's Neil Giacobbi concluded:

The public hearings show that New Yorkers do in fact support the concept of congestion pricing, although they may want to see the original proposal tweaked and they want to see the revenues spent on transit improvements. Polls showing majority opposition to the original congestion pricing plan don't take these facts into account.

John DeSio sees it otherwise. DeSio (who readers may recall as the messenger for Jeffrey Dinowitz's angry response to a Streetsblog item in September), writes in the Village Voice:

The same survey also paints a grim picture of the state of civic engagement in this City, illustrating what could be described as a disturbing lack of interest on the part of the general public when it comes to voicing their opinions on a plan that would radically change the urban landscape. Just 149 individuals testified at the seven total hearings. When you subtract elected officials, civic organizations and other interested parties, you are left with just 28 percent, 42 total regular people, who felt the need to testify.

While Giacobbi agrees that the Commission's accelerated timeline has not been ideal for gathering public input, he believes that the hearings were productive, noting, "compromise, not blind support or opposition, ruled the day during the seven commission hearings." ED's analysis found that 26 percent of people testified both for and against congestion pricing, but even more speakers, 40 percent, offered suggestions to improve the policy.

Giacobbi said there are great lessons to be learned in studying the responses of the accumulated testimony, that the support for congestion pricing is not as cut and dry as polls might make it seem. "We're trying to do anything we can to demonstrate that there is more flexibility on this issue than people might believe," said Giacobbi. When people are given more than a yes or no option, he said, they tend to offer their support for congestion pricing, albeit with their own unique changes.

"Most people haven't thought about this critically," said Giacobbi. "Once you get into the details of the plan, they come around to it." Transit improvements have to come from somewhere, he added, and congestion pricing is the best way to pump that money into the system. The sooner people realize that the better off commuters will be, said Giacobbi.

"The poll says that New Yorkers do not fundamentally understand congestion pricing," he said. "If they did understand it, they would support it."

Spencer Wilking reports:

The city's traveling road show of community advocates, local politicians and concerned residents, otherwise known as New York City's Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, stopped in Brooklyn Thursday night as part of its whirlwind seven county tour.

At the hearing Brooklyn politicians delivered a resounding rejection of Mayor Bloomberg's plan for congestion pricing. From the Assembly (Joan Millman and Hakeem Jefferies) to the State Senate (Velmanette Montgomery and Carl Kruger) to the City Council (Vincent Gentile and Lew Fidler), to a candidate for Borough President (Bill de Blasio) they strode to the podium and railed against the plan calling it "Manhattan-centric" and bad for Brooklyn. Except for Councilmember David Yassky (who with great dexterity managed to support congestion pricing AND agree with his fellow Brooklyn politicos), endorsements for congestion pricing were left to residents and advocates. Council member Leticia James came close to supporting it but just couldn't do it, "at this time."

Brooklyn politicians voiced concern that their borough would become a "park and ride" community for those headed across the East River, clogging already crowded streets. They demanded the inclusion of residential parking permits to spurn this practice. Likewise, the usual argument that congestion pricing is an unfair tax on poor and working class families was cited more than once.

"I don't want to be known as an Assembly person from the largest parking lot in New York City," said Assembly member Joan Millman. "This will punish hardworking New Yorkers who live in the outer boroughs."

Millman, whose district is, literally, the tip of Long Island's traffic funnel into Lower Manhattan, crushed on a daily basis by regional through-traffic, went on to say that buildings, not vehicles were the true culprits of air pollution.

Instead of the current congestion pricing plan, politicians demanded better bus routes, more water taxis, advancements in the hybrid car, HOV lanes and a harbor freight tunnel for trucks. The need for improved subway service was a common lament, summed up by Council member Tish James, "For the record: The G train sucks."

Specific funding for these ventures was left mostly ambiguous, or as Council member Vincent Gentile put it: "The State legislature can find some options."

Unlike Commission members Vivian Cook and Denny Farrell, Richard Robbins' daughter was at the hearing.

Councilmember Bill de Blasio, like Millman, represents a district heavily burdened by regional traffic congestion. But he has his sights set on Brooklyn Borough Hall these days. So, after complimenting fellow Brooklyn Council member Lew Fidler's "bold" plan to raise payroll taxes, build three new tunnels, and wait for General Motors to sell hydrogen cars, De Blasio noted that Bloomberg's plan lacked guarantees and was executed in the last throes of its administration. "I appreciate the goals of congestion pricing, but there are too many unanswerable questions to move forward," De Blasio said.

As a departure from the Brooklyn party line, David Yassky pledged his support for the Bloomberg plan, but on the condition that improvements to mass transit be implemented beforehand.

Long Island Assembly member Michelle Schimel was a surprising voice in favor of congestion pricing and more livable streets. "New York must be more human, more walkable, more bikeable," she said. Schimel added that she took the LIRR and subway to reach the hearing.

The most persuasive plea for congestion pricing came from a group of young people with the United Puerto Rican Organization of Sunset Park (UPROSE), a community group who say that the Gowanus Expressway is poisoning the neighborhood. Jennifer Casamayor, 21, who works for UPROSE and lives in Manhattan, said, "many children are currently suffering from respiratory issues as their bodies are still developing."

A member of UPROSE watches testimony along with members of the Commission.

Another member of UPROSE, Joaquin Brito, 16, of Bayridge, delivered the best line of the night, "If you can afford the $8 for a tall latte and cookie from Starbucks you can afford congestion pricing."

Other residents took the pulpit to advocate for congestion pricing. Many cited the problems of air quality and the opportunity New York City has to be a leader against global warming.

Richard Robbins, who works for AT&T and lives in Manhattan, held his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter as he spoke at the podium (he insists she wasn't a prop, Mom was merely working late). "The system is broke," he said. "When she grows up they'll be a better system in place, we have the opportunity to do that now."

This was the second to last of seven public hearings on the issue. The crowd at Brooklyn's New York City Tech numbered at around a 100, leaving plenty of room in the Klitgord Auditorium.

Reporting by Spencer Wilking. Photos by Aaron Naparstek. 

One of the most oft-repeated slams against congestion pricing we heard at this week's Congestion Mitigation Committee hearings is that congestion pricing would be a "regressive tax," an unfair burden to poorer New Yorkers.

Is congestion pricing regressive? The data suggests otherwise.

As the chart above shows, even in Brooklyn Council member Lew Fidler's heavily auto-dependent district, households with a car earn more than twice the income than households without. Meanwhile, only 5.3% of workers living in Fidler's distrit drive to work in Manhattan south of 86th Street (unfortunately, Fidler is probably one of them). Fact sheets for Richard Brodsky, Vivian Cook, Denny Farrell, Jeffrey Dinowitz and other congestion pricing opponents' districts are equally revealing and very much worth a download. Cook, for example, represents a Queens district where only 3.5% of workers drive into the proposed charging zone for work.

In testimony before the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign argued the point. From this week's Mobilizing the Region:

Some anti-pricing politicians seem to have dressed up for Halloween as populists defending “working stiffs” from a “regressive tax” on driving. But an analysis of Census data by TSTC and the Pratt Center for Community Development shows that, in all but one State Assembly district in NYC, vehicle-owning households are 50% wealthier than households without a vehicle; in nearly half of districts, average income is twice as high.

Furthermore, only a small minority of commuters drive alone to the proposed congestion pricing zone (CPZ); this is true not only in Manhattan but in the outer boroughs and the surrounding suburban counties. For example, only 5.1% of workers from Rockland County drive alone to the proposed CPZ. In Westchester, 3.4% of workers drive alone to the CPZ. In Nassau and Suffolk Counties, the percentages are even lower.

Fact sheets containing a breakdown of commuting patterns by mode and destination, vehicle ownership statistics, and the average incomes of vehicle-owning households and non-vehicle-owning households are available online. The fact sheets cover counties and City Council, state Assembly, state Senate, and U.S. Congressional districts in the New York metropolitan area.

Erik Shilling reports:

Though many agreed that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to charge cars and trucks to enter parts of Manhattan could be tweaked, a majority of those who spoke in last night's Traffic Congestion Mitigation hearing in the Bronx expressed their support.

The theater at Hostos Community College was quite a bit less than half full, and traffic outside later in the night was light. Many at the meeting said turn out was low because of Halloween. Marc Shaw, the chairman of the Congestion Mitigation Commission and the leader of the hearing, said that another Bronx hearing would be held because of the turnout and the holiday, though he did not name a date.

The Commission sponsored the hearing, one of seven around the city, to field public comments about the mayor's plan.

The strongest opposition came from the night's first speaker, State Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz. He argued that the plan was discriminatory, that it would exacerbate the Bronx's parking problems, and that there were better alternatives.

He also suggested that instead of raising money for public transportation with congestion pricing, the city should consider higher car registration fees, or even an additional gas tax. "I know that's not popular," Dinowitz said, "But this plan needs to be rejected."

Both Dinowitz and City Councilman Oliver Koppel both vehemently rejected the plan's toll credits for bridge and tunnel fees already paid to get into the city. They both said this was an unfair benefit to commuters coming from New Jersey and other places outside the city. Koppel has said that he is "leaning for" congestion pricing in past remarks.

Though Halloween may have dampened turnout, the night's testimony was surprising for the number of supporters that spoke.

Sandy Noel, a Bronxite, student, and working mother, said she strongly supports congestion pricing.

"Charging drivers makes good sense to me," Noel said. She attends college in Lower Manhattan, and said she "feels like Ms. Pacman everyday just to get to school on time."

Others argued the health benefits of congestion pricing.

"Congestion pricing can help people realize better air," Ya Ting Liu, a spokeswoman for the American Lung Association said. She also said that car and truck emissions were a leading cause of asthma in the city.

The most colorful speaker of the night, Mel Peffers (above), a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health, donned a grim reaper costume, replete with a sickle, to drive home her message of the lasting health benefits of congestion pricing.

"Traffic pollution is killing us," Peffers said. "Right now, we're paying for it with our health." Even among the supporters of the plan, however, many said they wanted assurances that revenues from congestion pricing would in fact be reinvested in subways and buses.

"This plan is in fact a visionary plan," Richard Gans, who represented Transportation Alternatives, said. "But we need to be sure that we can, in fact, guarantee that this money will be used for public transportation."

Under PlaNYC, only one new bus line is proposed for the Bronx, though cleaner stations and more trains running along the 1 line have been promised. Among other things, many at the meeting pointed this out, and many also demanded more Metro-North stations, as well as an extension of the proposed 2nd Avenue subway up into the Bronx.

Others who didn't explicitly oppose the plan offered different alternatives, like more water taxis and a ferry service.

Ari Huffnung, President of the Jewish Community Council in the Bronx, said he was working to create a ferry line from Riverdale to Lower Manhattan, on which, he said, commuters could expect a 35 minute ride into the city.

Aside from Chairman Shaw's brisk speaker announcements, Commission members stayed silent throughout the three hour hearing. They appeared impatient near the end, and, when it was over just before 9pm, a few could be seen heading quickly to the exits.

Reporting and photos by Erik Shilling. 

Megan Chuchmach reports:

The auditorium at PS 24 in Riverdale was packed Tuesday night, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his commissioners entertained an estimated couple hundred Bronx residents at a town hall-esque style meeting organized by the Northwest Bronx Democratic Alliance and the Riverdale Community Association.

There was no dancing or singing, but the Mayor did crack a couple jokes and laughed off the possibility of a run for President. All jokes aside, Bloomberg did what he came to do: answer questions and discuss issues ranging from community to city levels.

The night seemed to get off to a good start, beginning with a first question addressing Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal, which has received a cool reception in the northwest Bronx neighborhood.

Bloomberg said the plan intended "to raise money to give people the mass transit that is the alternative to them driving their cars." When another audience member raised the issue of limited Riverdale parking, the pro-mass transit Bloomberg responded that fewer parking spaces mean less people buying and driving cars. Period.

Bloomberg admitted the issue of tolls was highly contentious in the plan, but said he didn't want to leave office without at least attempting to fix the City's gridlocked transportation systems.

"I don't know better than anybody else how much people will change their driving habits," Bloomberg said. "But I do know how much money it will bring in." The proposal, he said, brings in $354.5 million alone from the federal government, which chose the City as a pilot city to test the plan.

And, besides, he added, "If we're going to do something about the air that we breathe, then we've go to do something."

Other audience members raised the issue of ever-increasing Croton Filtration Plant problems, which Emily Lloyd, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said was a result of a soft dollar and intensive New York market.

Lloyd blamed the cost hike -- which, she admitted, has increased by about 130 percent -- on the rising prices of labor, copper and equipment.

"No, I'm not happy about the rising costs," Bloomberg said, before suggesting that a substantial part of the problem is people who neglect to pay their water bills.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a vocal anti-congestion pricing advocate who had been rumored to be hosting an anti-congestion pricing rally before the meeting but did not, characterized the excuses as baseless.

"Prices have gone up, but they haven't gone up that much," Dinowitz said after the meeting. "Labor has not doubled. Materials have not doubled. Nothing has doubled." He said Commissioner Lloyd failed to tell audience members the truth: Her Department is "incompetent to deal with the investigation." In September, Dinowitz similarly accused Bloomberg of lying about the federal government's deadline for congestion pricing funding.
Other residents voiced concerns about small businesses being driven out of the area by big box and chain stores and a lack of gifted and talented programs in the school district. They were part of the lucky. Six audience members' questions were randomly drawn. Bloomberg assured everyone that their other questions would be returned via phone or email very soon.

"Everyone will get a response," Bloomberg repeated.

Dinowitz said that wasn't enough.

"I don't like when you screen the questions," Dinowitz added. "It's not as open."

That didn't bother Marilyn Turner and Matilda Cascio, two longtime Riverdale residents who came after seeing a flyer in their buildings announcing Bloomberg's visit.

While Cascio voiced concern over Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal, she admitted the Mayor made it sound "very plausible." Her friend agrees.

"He's the only honest politician in the country today," Turner added.
"He's socially conscious and he seems to want to leave the world a better place than he found it."

While Bloomberg's well-rehearsed responses to the issues raised were to be expected, Turner, who had never seen the Mayor live before, voiced surprised at something else.

"He's much warmer than he comes across on television," she said smiling.

-- Reporting and photo by Megan Chuchmach

Filed by Megan Chuchmach:

Parking at the Riverdale Temple in the Bronx was at a premium Thursday night, with cars lining Independence Avenue in front and packing the lot out back. Inside, the owners of those cars, for the most part, raised a stink about Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan.

"Something needs to be done about the traffic, but not the way it is in its current proposal," Riverdale resident Helen Morik said at the event, a pricing forum hosted by Bronx state Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz.

That was the common theme among residents of the 81st Assembly District, clearly mostly motorists, who came to listen to Kathryn Wylde speak for and Westchester Assembly member Richard Brodsky speak against Bloomberg's proposed plan to combat Manhattan traffic problems. Wylde and Brodsky are both members of the Congestion Mitigation Commission.

Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, argued that people who drive cars from the Bronx into Manhattan shouldn't be exempt from helping ease the plague of traffic congestion.

"We all need to share the burden," Wylde said. "The only solution is to figure out how to discourage people from driving into Manhattan." She said the city is laden with a $13 billion a year price tag for excessive congestion, which is exhausting the economy and costing jobs.

Brodsky, Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, shot back that the pricing plan is "sticking it to the middle class and the poor." He said he is fighting the principle of charging taxpayers for access to public goods, not the $8 itself.

Dinowitz, a frank critic of the congestion pricing plan, argued that Bloomberg's proposal would make the Bronx a huge parking lot, forcing Bronxites to suffer extra traffic, extra parking and extra fees.

"It just shifts traffic outside the congestion zone," Dinowitz said, adding that drivers from the suburbs would park in the Bronx and take public transportation over to Manhattan.

"What's the incentive for our community?" he asked. "The tax is not only regressive, it's discriminatory."

Traffic relief advocates weren't out in strong force and, if they were in attendance, were trounced by angry drivers.

Kingsbridge resident Jeffrey Otto was one of the few attendees to speak in favor of congestion pricing, arguing the plan would reduce traffic on the Henry Hudson and Major Deegan expressways.

"My kids will breathe a lot easier," Otto said.

But Otto's concern over air quality and environmental pollution were dismissed by Brodsky.

"The city doesn't know what will happen to air quality," Brodsky said. "And the pollution is going to just be moved, not reduced, from parts of wealthy Manhattan to working areas of the Bronx and Queens."

This was just one of the evening's constant back and forth volleys that seemed to raise more questions than answers, with Wylde and Brodsky contradicting one another with ongoing rebuttals.

"There was never any middle ground," said disappointed Riverdale resident David Knapp. Knapp works in eastern Manhattan and drives his two children to school on the West Side because buses got too expensive.

"Tonight was just too ideological," Knapp said after the debate. "We're not getting anywhere."

Photo: Megan Chuchmach

The press release says that residents of the Riverdale, Kingsbridge, Van Cortlandt Village, Norwood, Woodlawn and Wakefield communities will be given an opportunity to ask questions and make statements on this important issue. Perhaps if you work, shop or travel through the Bronx on a regular basis, they'll also let you say a few words. You can find the details here.

It would be good for traffic relief advocates to show up. You can bet that opponents of congestion pricing will be out in force. Dinowitz has made clear that he himself is one of them. And Riverdale is identified in PlaNYC as one of 22 neighborhoods with a higher-than-average concentration of Manhattan-bound car commuters.

In recent writings, Dinowitz has been responsible for propagating many common misconceptions about Mayor Bloomberg's plan -- that efforts to reduce automobile dependence and traffic congestion are somehow "elitist in nature," that air quality benefits will magically stop at the 86th Street border, that mass transit won't improve under the Mayor's proposal, and that the federal grant deadline to fund congestion pricing was "a lie." So, all in all, it's great to see Dinowitz hosting a debate on the issue between two players who represent their sides well.

Watching the goings-on in Albany since summer I've increasingly gotten the sense that many New York State legislators must be profoundly cynical about the possibility that government can actually make New Yorkers lives better (apparently I'm not alone in that feeling).

"Troopergate," has been an absolute joke. Manufactured from whole cloth by Republican dirty-trickster Roger Stone and his mercenary Michael Caputo, the "scandal" has been little more than an excuse for Joe Bruno and his Senate Republicans to keep government out of the way by keeping it dysfunctional. Now, it seems, Albany is in an uproar over drivers licenses for illegal immigrants. At a time when polar ice caps are melting faster than even the most pessimistic models predicted, how in the world did that issue make it to the top of the state agenda?

In the context of all that, it is easy to read the Riverdale Assembly member's populist "outrage," name-calling, and accusations of personal affront as the sad, instinctive response of yet another New York State legislator who has basically given up on the idea that his job can be meaningful. Outrage is for the powerless. New York City's Democratic State Assembly members have the power to kill Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. They have the power to add new ideas to it. And they have the power to facilitate substantive public discussion on the issues. Tonight Dinowitz appears to be trying to do just that. Let's hope New Yorkers who understand the critical importance of traffic relief show up and make their voices heard.

Among New York State Assembly Democrats, that has been one of the most frequent criticisms of Mayor Bloomberg's proposal for a three-year congestion pricing pilot project in New York City. Last month, Lower Manhattan Assembly member Deborah Glick said that she and her colleagues were "confronted with a dearth of information regarding the Mayor's proposal." Bronx Assembly member Jeffrey Dinowitz made similar complaints in an editorial to the Riverdale Press a couple of weeks ago. 

In an attempt to get answers to some of the more frequently asked questions about congestion pricing, I did what I assume any state legislator could do just as easily, if not more so. I called Rohit Aggarwala and asked him for a meeting to talk about congestion pricing. He agreed.

Aggarwala is New York City's Director of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and the lead author of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030. We met for about 45 minutes on a Monday afternoon in August in a conference room at the Mayor's Office of Operations. I've divided the interview into four parts. Here is the first part:

Aaron Naparstek: How are you enjoying the job? It's been what? A year?

Rohit Aggarwala: Fourteen crazy months, actually. It was June 12th when I started.

AN: A lot has happened since then.

RA: It's been amazing. It seems like only yesterday but it's been a lot of work.

AN: I bet.

RA: Had we just written the plan, that itself would have been a lot of work, but to do so with the input that we got from the advisory board and the town hall meetings -- all of the input makes the plan better -- but it meant a lot more work too.

AN: Having gone through that public input process, what is your impression of how New Yorkers view transportation issues and the idea of congestion pricing?

RA: New Yorkers are keenly aware of the problem that we have in terms of transportation congestion. Whether it's on the roads, on your daily subway commute or just walking through Time Square, we all know that mobility is a challenge. Everybody wants to solve the problem. The challenge is that nobody really wants to pay for it. Everybody thinks that the other guy shouldn't be driving, but I'm driving for all the right reasons. Everybody says, sure, I want more people on transit, but not on my train because I want to get a seat. And, yeah, we need more money for transportation investment, but don't take it out of my wallet.

But thinking back to the town hall meetings, far more people were in favor of congestion pricing than anybody would have thought just a year ago. If you told a politician a year ago that when asked point blank, "Should we have congestion pricing in Manhattan," without even being told that the money would go to transit, that nearly 40 percent of New Yorkers would say, "Yes," nobody would have believed that high a number was possible.

AN: A Wall Street Journal opinion piece was forwarded to me recently that said, "Their goal isn't easing congestion at all, it's raising money. The city's plan foresees only negligible improvements in traffic density and speeds, less than 8 percent, but millions for the city to spend on other priorities." Is the congestion pricing just about raising money?

RA: If all the mayor had wanted was additional revenue, there would be far easier ways to get it than to engage in the congestion pricing debate. It would have been so much easier for us to find the money in a different way.

That quote that you just read completely misses the fact that this money isn't going to be for the city to spend. Our proposal was that the revenue goes to the SMART Fund, which the city would have only a 50% voice in. Others have proposed the money goes to the MTA. The bottom line is congestion pricing revenue is not going into the city's budget, it's going towards transit.

It's misleading to say that we're only doing this for the revenue. The reason that congestion pricing is such a powerful concept, and the reason that the mayor, who was initially skeptical about it, warmed to it and now has obviously embraced it and believes in it quite strongly, is that it solves multiple challenges at once. It reduces traffic while raising money for transit. And it gets people to think more about the personal choices they make.

Just like you get charged every time you decide to take the subway, and that makes you think about whether you want to use this scarce resource that costs money to provide, you also want a price on making the decision to drive into one of the most congested and transit-rich areas in North America. That's the goal.

I've heard time and time again, that the 8 percent increase in vehicle speeds is a negligible difference. But that's 112,000 cars a day off of the streets. That's hardly a negligible difference. What people often don't understand is that a reduction in 6.3 percent of vehicle miles traveled, or an increase in speed of 8 percent -- those are averages. Those changes make a big difference because the bulk of that speed improvement isn't going to come at 5:00 in the morning, or on one of those few streets that you can find during rush hour that isn't crowded. Those improvements are going to be concentrated on the streets that currently have the worst congestion.

But what really counts to the driver is the reduction in delay -- the reduction in the amount of time you're stuck in traffic. London found that the increase in average speed translates to a reduction of driver delay by at least a factor of two. So, an 8 percent increase in average vehicle speed translates to a 15 to 20 percent reduction in driver delay. That is sizable.

AN: Many say they are concerned that congestion pricing will hurt New York City's poor, middle class, and small business people. How do you respond to that?

RA: I think its fundamentally not true. If you look at New York City as a whole, if you look at every class of people, however you want to define class, the majority of New Yorkers rely on transit far more than they rely on automobiles. Are the relatively small percentage of New York's middle class that drives into Manhattan everyday going to be hurt by congestion pricing? Potentially. But in exchange for $8, those who continue to drive are going to get a more reliable drive, a more comfortable drive, a faster drive.

When it comes to transportation, the best thing we can do for New York City's middle class has nothing to do with what goes on on the roads, it's what we can do in the subways. That's why it's so important to use the proceeds for transit improvements.

As for small businesses, I think it's exactly the same kind of thing. Even if you assume that small businesses do rely on driving, the efficiency gains from reducing traffic by 6.3 percent translates into greater productivity. So, for a cost of $8, a van delivering flowers can make one or two extra deliveries a day with the same vehicle and the same labor costs. The reduction in traffic congestion has more than made up for the incremental increase in transportation cost. As for bigger trucks, most of them are already paying tolls.

AN: Still, if it costs more for trucks to transport goods, won't that translate to price increases for all New York City consumers across the board?

RA: London has seen nothing to indicate that that's the case. Stockholm, in some very detailed analysis of what goes on downtown, has actually seen an increase in customers to local businesses because the pedestrian spaces are that much more attractive with fewer cars clogging the roads. So, Stockholm has actually seen small business directly benefiting from congestion pricing.

Really, how much inflation can you create on an entire truckload of goods by adding $21? There were some outrageous numbers being thrown around about how congestion pricing will cause all groceries to go up by 10 percent or something. When these claims come up, do the math. If a $21 charge on a truckload of milk translates into a 10 percent increase in the cost of a gallon of milk, that means they are using an entire truck to deliver something like 10 gallons of milk per day.

There's so much misinformation that people are putting out there to scare people.

In his first piece Lipsky refers to all you Streetsbloggers as -- and I'll just mash up all of the descriptors into one set of quote marks -- "phony, invidious, self-righteous street corner ideologues and useful idiots." After that, Lipsky accuses congestion pricing advocates of "a level of vitriol" that is "so counterproductive" he'd almost believe it if he and Walter McCaffrey were running the traffic relief campaign themselves.

If anyone can find the vitriol in the original Streetsblog post that started all of this, let me know. 

In his second piece on the subject, Lipsky fleshes out the "useful idiots" concept and provides some pro bono strategic advice for congestion pricing advocates, otherwise known as Mayor Bloomberg's "dimwitted amen choir."

As we have said, the critics are not doing their cause much good. Over the top statements and personal invective, so characteristic of some denizens of the netroots, will only make the legislature that much more skeptical of a plan that they think needs a great deal more thought. This biting the hand that feeds you approach, which we can only hope will continue into total self-immolation, is not a very smart lobbying strategy.

Bronx Assembly member Jeffrey Dinowitz wasn't happy with Streetsblog's presentation of his Riverdale Press editorial against congestion pricing last week. Dinowitz sent a response to the New York Press. In it, he suggests that my comments about his editorial were "nasty and personal" and that some of the support for congestion pricing "is very elitist in nature." He notes repeatedly that I'm not "a Bronxite," suggests that I twisted his words, and makes a few points around the substance of the Mayor's plan as well.

I'd like to give a call or write a letter to Dinowitz. State Assembly Democrats can't be written off. They will have a vote over whatever congestion reduction plan emerges from the 17-member traffic mitigation commission. Aside from letting him know that my family has deep roots in the Bronx, how should I respond to Dinowitz? What would be the most productive approach here, do you think? Suggestions are welcome, especially if you're a Bronxite or, like hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of non-Bronxites each week, you happen to drive through the Bronx on your way to somewhere else.

In an editorial in this week's Riverdale Press, Bronx Assembly member Jeffrey Dinowitz says that if the vote on Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan were held today, he'd vote "no." Though he presents his position as a change of heart, Dinowitz was railing against the mayor's plan back in July.

Dinowitz represents and lives in Riverdale, a relatively well-heeled Bronx neighborhood where, according to the 2000 Census, only 5.2% of workers commute by car into Manhattan's Central Business District. As noted in his editorial, Dinowitz is one of them.

So, what are the Assembly member's objections to the Mayor's plan? Dinowitz's first and seemingly most passionate issues are procedural and political:

• He is "outraged" that the Legislature "had a gun held to our heads" to pass legislation before the July 16 federal funding deadline which, Dinowitz says, "was a lie." No mention of the $354.5 million grant that New York City won thanks to this outrage.
  
• Despite the formation of a 17-member commission and the opportunity we now have for months of public debate, Dinowitz is still "troubled" that the Mayor and congestion pricing supporters are trying to "ram it through with as little discussion as possible."
• The commission "appears stacked in favor of one side of the argument, putting into question its ability to be fair. The 17 members consist mostly of Manhattan residents and, it appears, no residents of the Bronx or Staten Island."
• Dinowitz says that he has raised "serious concerns" about the plan but the Mayor's people haven't "given satisfactory responses."

And what are these serious, un-addressed concerns? Dinowitz writes:

• Because their crossings are already tolled, New Jersey drivers will only have to pay an additional $2 to $4 to drive into the congestion pricing zone while "most Bronx residents" would have to pay a new fee of $8 to drive south of 86th Street on city streets. The car-commuting Assembly member, it seems, may be unaware that the vast majority of Bronx residents actually use mass transit to travel south of 86th Street -- and they pay a fare to do so.
  
• Congestion pricing's air quality benefits would only benefit "children who live in Midtown." Cleaner air, Dinowitz seems to believe, would magically stop at the 86th Street border.
  
• After complaining that it takes an hour and a half to get to Manhattan by transit, Dinowitz argues that Manhattan-bound car commuters will use his district's streets as their park-and-ride lot resulting in an increase in traffic and pollution.
  
• Taxis and car services shouldn't be given an exemption.
  
• And my favorite: The Mayor's plan fails to address the scourge of "bicyclists driving the wrong way or ignoring the traffic rules."
  

Dinowitz also raises this point:

• Mass transit needs to be improved before congestion pricing is implemented and none of the MTA's proposed bus service improvements are slated for his western Bronx district.

Despite his opposition to a plan that would provide New York City with its most realistic opportunity for traffic reduction and increased transit funding in decades, Dinowitz praises Mayor Bloomberg "for attempting to take bold steps to improve the environment" and says that he is "very open to taking major steps to reduce traffic in Manhattan and throughout the city."