Streetsblog New York City

Streetsblog commenter and Brooklyn Councilmember Lew Fidler adds a tenth plank to his 9 CARAT STONE transportation plan: Sidewalk parking! In today’s Daily News:

Brooklyn Diary

Where in the world can an elected official park these days without earning the wrath of his fellow Brooklynites?

A silver Infiniti belonging to Councilman Lew Fidler — a vocal congestion pricing critic — was spotted last Thursday parked
on a pedestrian plaza near Borough Hall that has become something of a
go-to spot for law-bending city employees.

But it wasn’t the only time last week the unlucky Canarsie
politician stumbled into a parking problem. Just a day earlier, Fidler
was slipped an angry note on his windshield after parking directly
above a nearby subway grate.

"I did it," said a flustered Fidler after our spies caught the pol.
"I’m not going to apologize for it. I thought it would be better than
parking on the subway grate."

Crain's Insider has the most detailed look yet at the odds that the City Council will pass a congestion pricing bill [PDF]. The good news is that pricing stands a decent chance of getting through committee, thanks in part to some maneuvering by Speaker Christine Quinn. As things progress, expect to hear more about uncommitted council members like Larry Seabrook (right), who may cast the deciding vote in committee. Via The Politicker, here's the scoop from Crain's:

Congestion pricing's first test in the City Council will be a vote this month by the State and Federal Legislation Committee, chaired by Maria Baez, D-Bronx. Speaker Christine Quinn, a pricing supporter, gave the measure a boost by assigning it to Baez's panel instead of the Finance Committee, chaired by pricing opponent David Weprin, who had requested it. Quinn added two members to Baez’s committee last fall, improving the plan’s chances for passage. But committee member Lew Fidler, D-Brooklyn, says the nine-member panel is split. He pegs the uncommitted Larry Seabrook, D-Bronx, as a potential swing vote.

Seabrook is one of 20 council members to sign the letter requesting "fairer" fees be assessed on New Jersey drivers as part of any congestion pricing plan. He is also one of eight council members to officially endorse PlaNYC last June.

Crain's also notes that Fidler predicts a close vote in the council as a whole, while John Liu believes pricing will pass after some tinkering to make it easier for Albany to swallow.

Move over, Ted Kheel. On the eve of the Congestion Mitigation Commission deadline to sign off on some form of congestion pricing, Lew Fidler tells the Observer he will introduce his own 9 CARAT STONE plan to his colleagues on the City Council tomorrow.

The Fidler Tax'n'Tunnel proposal, for those who've somehow forgotten, would avoid congestion pricing by, among other measures, increasing parking rates and traffic violation fees, building $18 billion in tunnel infrastructure, removing one-way truck tolls, moving city agencies out of Manhattan's Central Business District, and convincing the federal government and/or automakers to develop hydrogen cell vehicles. It would be paid for through a one-third of one percent regional payroll tax.

Fidler says his support is diverse. "I want to be very clear," he told me. "I have co-sponsors for elements of this plan that are ardently in favor of congestion pricing, ardently against it, and people who haven't yet committed. But even if they're in favor of congestion pricing, and they put their name next to one of my resolution points, they think that point is a good idea, and some of them [the resolutions] survive with or without congestion pricing."

Fidler said it's not likely his proposal will go to a vote before congestion pricing, since in addition to the mayor, the City Council Speaker supports congestion pricing. "What's wrong is my plan isn't part of the debate," Fidler says.

Fidler's plan was analyzed by Environmental Defense and the Pratt Center for Community Development last year, who concluded that it, along with proposals by Congressman Anthony Weiner and Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free, would promote driving.

Photo: Lila Glogowsky

On balance, speakers at last night's traffic mitigation hearing in Brooklyn delivered a pro-pricing message -- a strong one if you discount the politicians who said their piece and left the auditorium before their constituents got to the mic.

About 60 people came to Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights and weighed in on the five options presented in the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission's interim report. It quickly became clear that the evening was really a referendum on the two pricing proposals in the report; none of the other options were viewed as viable. By the time it was over, half the audience had testified before commission members Elizabeth Yeampierre, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, and Gene Russianoff. (Richard Brodsky, who came to the Brooklyn hearing instead of the one closest to his Westchester district, left before it ended and missed several pieces of testimony.)

Most encouraging for pricing advocates: Several residents without any group affiliation testified, expressing a unanimous desire for better transit, cleaner air, and safer streets. Congestion pricing, they said, was the surest means to achieve those objectives. (Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives emailed us to report that pro-pricing speakers out-numbered anti- in the Bronx and Queens as well.)

But first the elected officials spoke, leading off with Congressman Anthony Weiner. In his allotted four minutes, he repeated the canard that congestion pricing is a conservative ploy to enact a "radical change and reduction in the amount of [federal] transit funding we receive." Then Council Member Lew Fidler and Assemblymen Hakeem Jeffries, Vito Lopez, Alan Maisel, and Alec Brook-Krasny each took a turn to bash both pricing proposals (their most common refrain: "too Manhattan-centric").

The one semi-exception among electeds was Council Member Tish James...

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Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller's team at the Department of Transportation has been taking ideas offered up by Traffic Mitigation Commission members and running them through NYMTC's regional traffic model. Schaller's job is to help the Commission determine how effective each of these ideas will be in cutting traffic and reducing total vehicle miles traveled in New York City. To keep its $354.5 million federal transportation grant, the City must reduce VMT 6.3 percent using road pricing.

Schaller presented his findings at yesterday's Commission meeting. You can flip through his presentation above (though, I recommend clicking through to the Slideshare web site and viewing the larger version). Since the first and most important slide is too small to read, here is the list of the traffic reduction ideas that Schaller's team has been modeling either as alternatives, supplements or modifications to Mayor Bloomberg's original proposal (you'll note that Lew Fidler Tax'n'Tunnel plan didn't make the cut):

• Night delivery incentives
• Telecommuting incentives
• Increasing the cost of parking in the CBD
• Taxi stands
• Surcharge on taxi and livery fares
• East River Bridge tolls
• License plate rationing
• Required carpooling
• Creation of High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes
• Changing the northern boundary
• Charging to drive on the FDR and West Street
• Changing the hours / variable charges
• Changes to the toll credit policy
• Exempt hybrids.

Aside from Assembly member Richard Brodsky's continued treatment of the scrupulous, forthright Schaller as the quintessential evil government bureaucrat (Brodsky knows exactly how important it is to attack the credibility of the "Keeper of the 6.3%"), the highlight of yesterday's hearing, for me, was an exchange towards the end on government employee parking permits.

A side-by-side comparison of PlaNYC congestion pricing and alternatives offered by pricing opponents shows that the Bloomberg proposal is the only one that would have an immediate impact on auto traffic while improving transit. Further, the report concludes that plans put forth by Congressman Anthony Weiner, Council Member Lew Fidler, and Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free would actually promote driving.

Does the Rubber Meet the Road? Investigating the Alternatives to Congestion Pricing, a 14-page study (pdf) issued by Environmental Defense and the Pratt Center for Community Development, breaks it down as follows.

Anthony Weiner's Reducing Traffic and Improving Our Environment: An Alternative to the Car Tax: Many aspects of this proposal are similar to the PlaNYC's original congestion pricing scheme. However, Congressman Weiner would limit congestion pricing to trucks only and would take a series of steps to open up more existing road space for faster-moving traffic, such as reducing alternate side street parking, and increasing traffic law enforcement, that would attract more traffic in the long run. He also suggests large-scale, long-term capital investments, such as building a Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel, that while essential for long-term regional planning, cannot address traffic with the immediacy and revenue-generating capacity of congestion pricing.

Lew Fidler's 9 Carat Stone Plan: This plan to fund long term transportation projects, including three major tunnels requiring massive capital investment, essentially levies a regional payroll tax that would support the state's general fund and not be dedicated to transportation investment, unlike tolls. Councilman Fidler proposes hydrogen powered cars, which automakers and scientists agree are many years and breakthroughs away from being practical and commercially viable. He supplements these ideas with short term measures such as increased truck loading zones and enforcement of traffic laws that, while perhaps good to speed traffic flow and ensure better safety, are not likely to achieve significant reductions in traffic volumes. Other elements of Councilman Fidler's plan, such as moving government offices from Manhattan to the other boroughs, would simply displace current traffic to new locations, and to the extent that those locations are less centrally-located in the transit system, there would likely be a net increase in traffic overall.

Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free's Alternative Approaches to Traffic Congestion Mitigation in the Manhattan Central Business District: This plan, primarily supported by AAA, the Metropolitan Parking Association and the Queens Civic Congress, among others, combines several separate measures that collectively claim to meet and exceed the 6.3% vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction of the mayor's plan. In fact, many will simply make driving easier in the Central Business District, thus probably attracting more drivers over time. Furthermore, the report's additive approach for totaling VMT reduction overstates the results dramatically, double-counting many overlapping traffic reduction measures.

"Unlike congestion pricing, these alternatives would encourage driving -- not discourage it -- and as a result attract more traffic in the long term," says Michael Replogle, transportation director for Environmental Defense and the report's primary author, via media release. "They also fail to match the criteria required by the federal grant, by state law, and the reality test for effectiveness, timeliness and revenue potential."

"Alternative proposals to fund mass transit through broad income and payroll tax increases are like taking a sledgehammer to a nail because they place special burdens on low and middle income residents," says Joan Byron, Director of the Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative of The Pratt Center. "In contrast, a congestion pricing plan benefits lower-income folks most and burdens them least since the vast majority of them rely on public transportation, and do not drive into Manhattan's zone."

We probably shouldn't be lavishing any more attention on Lew Fidler's Tax'n'Tunnel proposal but Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White fired off a pretty good, concise response to the Daily News the other day:

Instead of supporting congestion pricing, Councilman Lew Fidler wants to impose billions of dollars in payroll taxes and dig three new tunnels ("Tunnel visions," Nov. 13). If Fidler truly wants to help those who rely on mass transit, he should recognize that they don't need tax hikes or holes in the ground, but the immediate transit improvements that congestion pricing would provide.

Paul Steely White
Transportation Alternatives

OK, I'll admit it. I just miss mixing it up with Fidler in the comments section. Lew, where'd ya go?

Council member Lew Fidler delivers his Tax & Tunnel plan to the Commission.

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."

Read more...

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.

On Saturday we received the following mysterious e-mail in the Streetsblog tips box:

Subject: Plan to be Revealed to go up against Mayor's Congestion Pricing

A major announcement will soon be made that will reveal a whole new plan for how NYC will handle traffic congestion, mass transit, air pollution and land re-development.  A plan so bold that it would not only give Mayor Bloomberg a run for his money, but change the pecking order of NYC's "forgotten boroughs." This supposed nine-point plan is said to be making its debut as soon as next week and is already creating a buzz within City Hall.

Well, the "plan so bold" has arrived just in time for tonight's Traffic Mitigation Commission hearing in Brooklyn and Daily Politics reports that it belongs to Council member Lewis Fidler. He is calling it the 9 CARAT STONE Plan, an acronym for, Clean Our Air, Reduce All Traffic, and Support Transportation Operations in New York's Environs. Download it here.

Fidler's ambitious plan hinges on the construction of three, massive, decades-long, multi-billion dollar transportation tunnels, "forcing the issue" of hydrogen fuel-cell miracle cars, a politically poisonous regional payroll tax hike, and a series of small-bore improvements in enforcement and street management policy. He also wants to compel all city agency employees to drive to work at far-flung offices outside the central and outer borough business districts.  

If nothing else, it's great to see everyone engaged in discussion and debate about transportation policy and traffic mitigation. And the "9 CARAT STONE Plan" goes down as one of the all-time great acronyms in New York City bureaucratic history. Now, pardon me, I need to get crackin' on the Trans-Narrow Tunnel. Here are Fidler's nine points:

1. Construct 3 Critical Tunnels: a. The Cross Harbor Tunnel. b. The Trans-Narrows Tunnel.  c. The Gowanus Expressway Tunnel.
2. Force the Issue of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles
   
3. Paying for it: A .033% one-third of one percent Regional Payroll Tax
4. Increase the number of metered parking spaces in the central business district and the cost of parking.
5. Increase the number of taxi stands in the CBD.
6. Getting Unloading Trucks off the Street: More loading zones and more off-street loading docks.
7. Increase enforcement and fines for violators.
8. No one way tolls for trucks.
9. Move City agencies out of the CBD and not to downtown districts in the outer boroughs.