Biggest Setback: After being approved by an unprecedented civic coalition, the mayor and New York City Council, congestion pricing -- the one policy measure that simultaneously reduces traffic congestion while raising money for mass transit and livable streets -- died in an Albany backroom without even a vote.

Lobbyists of the Year: Walter McCaffrey and the Committee to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free (below). It turns out New York City government is controlled by a handful of Queens Democrats, suburban state legislators and the Automobile Club of New York.

How Not to Lobby a State Legislator: Brooklyn State Senator Martin Malave Dilan's car is towed during a congestion pricing meeting with city officials.

Most Sociopathic Elected Official: Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein nearly crushes a cyclist with his black Mercedes and then tells him, "Get your hands off my car, you f*#king a55hole." Unfortunately for Sen. Klein, this particular cyclist happens to run a pretty robust media operation.

Most Disappointing Elected Officials: During the congestion pricing debate, three State Assemblymembers stood out for their enormous potential to exert leadership and their utter inability or unwillingness to do so. Deborah Glick, Joan Millman and Hakeem Jeffries all represent districts that would have overwhelmingly benefited from New York City's congestion pricing plan. Yet, Glick could only find reasons to oppose it. Millman decided she supported it -- two hours after the proposal was killed by her Democratic Assembly colleagues. And Jeffries had the gall to demand increased subway service on the G line three weeks after helping to eliminate the revenue source that might have paid for it. If only New York City were represented in the state Assembly by an aggressive, attentive, self-aggrandizing politician like...

Elected Official of the Year: You've got to hand it to Westchester Assemblyman Richard Brodsky -- he works hard for his constituents and supporters. Unfortunately for New York City's traffic-choked neighborhoods, beleaguered transit riders and asthmatic kids, his constituents are the metropolitan region's wealthiest car commuters and his supporters own a bunch of parking garages in Manhattan. While New York City's legislators rolled over and played dead, Richard Brodsky worked his butt off to make sure that New York City's congestion pricing plan -- a plan approved by the Mayor, City Council and a state commission -- died a quiet death in the Assemly's Democratic conference. Brodsky did incredible damage to New York City in 2008 but he also showed us what effective representation in Albany might look like.

Worst Elected Official: Rochester Assemblyman and transportation committee chairman David Gantt continued his decade-long effort to deny New York City the ability to deploy automated traffic enforcement systems on its streets. He loosened up a little bit though. This year he introduced legislation that would allow counties outside of New York City to use red light cameras -- as long as they purchased the technology from a Swedish firm represented by one of his cronies. Shocking? Not really. Just another day in Albany.

Most Opinions Fewest Solutions Award: From now on, this will be called the Anthony Weiner Award.

Most Moronic Idea From Albany: State Senators Jeff Klein and Eric Adams put on their serious, fighting-for-the-people faces and proposed suspending tolls on New York City bridges and tunnels and giving drivers a $200 gas tax rebate ahead of Memorial Day weekend. Not planning to burn lots of gasoline for your summer holiday? These two have nothing for you.

With higher gas prices pushing drivers onto the city's trains and buses, the Daily News today blasted Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly Dems for passing up the billions of dollars that congestion pricing would have brought to MTA coffers. 

The trends prove that the theory of congestion pricing was valid: When the cost of driving rises, people actually do switch to mass transit.

Had Silver and the Assembly passed congestion pricing, as the City Council did, the MTA would already be using that $354 million in federal aid (which has now been disbursed about the country) to make more bus and subway seats available.

Then, the congestion fee would have given the MTA a half-billion dollars a year to pay for big projects like completing the Second Ave. subway and extending LIRR service to Grand Central Terminal. When that money vanished, the MTA's building plan was eviscerated.

The agency does not have the money it needs to keep the transit system in good repair, let alone to expand. Gov. Paterson has asked the estimable Richard Ravitch, a former MTA chairman, to hunt up cash.

He'll find no easy fixes. Option 1: Raise taxes. Option 2: Raise fares. Option 3: Congestion pricing.

Pricing foes must be waiting for Ravitch to make the next move, because we've heard virtually nothing from them since the plan was smothered behind closed doors over a month ago -- other than demands for improved transit service.

But what of Brodsky, Glick, and Weiner? Or Bearak and McCaffrey? Where are they now that their storied working class drivers, priced out of their cars, must rely on a beleaguered transit system that doesn't have the fiscal boost promised by congestion pricing?

Oh, right. They're stuck in traffic.

Graphic: New York Daily News 

After the jump, Azi gets a response from Michael O'Loughlin of the Campaign for New York's Future.

Azi has another video in which Weprin explains that the City Council actually doesn't support pricing, despite last week's 30-20 vote.

Last Friday, in a story about the Committee to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free stepping up its lobbying efforts, the Daily Politics blog published this gem of a rallying cry from pro-congestion lobbyist Walter McCaffrey:

"You are in the driver's seat. Put the brakes on congestion pricing now before it goes to Albany."

Which means, of course, it's time to launch the Congestion Pricing Populist Soundbite Contest. Paul White at Transportation Alternatives gets us started with the following:

"Diiiiing Dooong. You are in the subway seat. Tell your state legislator not to hold the doors on congestion pricing."

Here's mine: 

"You are walking across the street. Put the brakes on congestion pricing opponents before one of them runs you over in his Buick Skylark."

I'm sure you can do better...

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.

The Daily News reports:

State and city officials are hashing out a plan to ensure congestion pricing money pays for mass transit upgrades -- and mass transit upgrades only, sources said Wednesday.

Under the developing plan, net proceeds from new tolls for motorists entering a large section of Manhattan would be put in a "lock box" administered by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, sources in City Hall and Gov. Spitzer's office said.

The fund could only be used for transit projects that meet specific criteria, which would be spelled out by state legislation, sources said.

A member of Gov. Spitzer's administration confirmed that Spitzer will include the creation of the MTA account as a line-item in the proposed budget he unveils next week.

At a Congestion Mitigation Commission hearing yesterday at Hunter College (which saw the notable emergence of a pro-pricing coalition of advocates for low-income transit customers), Regional Plan Association President Bob Yaro testified that similar measures have successfully earmarked transit funds for decades.

The MTA's revenues at their bridge and tunnels in excess of operating costs is guaranteed by formula set by the State Legislature for use by the MTA for transit since 1968. Taxes such as the mortgage recording tax, petroleum business tax, corporate franchise tax and sales tax have also been reliably dedicated to transit since the early 1980s. It should not be difficult to establish a mechanism for congestion pricing revenue that would do the same, while requiring the use of the funds by the MTA on the projects agreed to by the MTA and the City.

Yaro also rebutted opponents' claims that the Traffic Commission's alternative pricing plan is worse than the Mayor's because it gives Manhattanites a free ride. Yaro said:

The inclusion of increased metered parking rates and a taxi surcharge within the zone, as well as the elimination of the resident park tax exemption [in the Alternative Plan] ensure that residents of the charging zone pay their share.

As key arguments against pricing are dismantled, and as the MTA and its working-class ridership finally find their collective voice, congestion pricing's impact on neighborhoods just outside the zone remains a focus of the vocal opposition.

Studies of London's congestion pricing plan showed "no adverse impact" or major parking problems on the outskirts of the congestion pricing zone. The Department of Transportation is responding to the park-and-ride concern by putting big resources into a second round of citywide neighborhood parking workshops starting next week. And, of course, Mayor Bloomberg recently announced a major crackdown on government employee parking placard abuse.

The question is whether any of that will be enough for legislators like State Senator George Onorato, who rallied a recent town hall meeting in Astoria, Queens with the cry, "We would be the parking lot for all the Long Island commuters."

Of course, this isn't helping either.

Taking the stump for pricing were Kathryn Wylde of the Partnership for NYC and Michael O'Loughlin of the Campaign for New York's Future. Arguing against were Congressman Anthony Weiner of Queens and Walter McCaffrey of the Coalition to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free. The standing-room-only crowd of more than 120 people -- most of whom came from the Upper East Side and East Harlem, judging by the post-debate Q & A -- appeared to favor Weiner and McCaffrey by a noticeable, though not overwhelming, margin. Wylde and O'Loughlin scored their share of applause, but Weiner was the only speaker to draw vocal cheers.

Claiming that "we are buying a pig in a poke," Weiner made several arguments familiar to Streetsblog readers, adding a few rhetorical flourishes worth noting. Among his main points:

• The current plan is "not fair" because suburban drivers from LI and NJ won't pay any fee in addition to the existing tolls on the Hudson River crossings and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.
• Commercial truck traffic in Midtown is increasing faster than car traffic, so a priority should be placed on mitigating truck congestion.
• The number of people who switch to mass transit because of congestion pricing will impose costs on the transit system that significantly outweigh the revenue pricing will generate.
• Republicans support congestion pricing because it "bolsters the idea that municipalities should pay for their own transportation enhancements," as opposed to the idea that transit improvements should be paid for from a federal pot of gas tax revenue.

Weiner built up this last point quite dramatically, painting congestion pricing as a wedge issue that has played into the hands of "Texas conservatives" by dividing people who share a concern for the environment. "There's a reason that George Bush likes this plan," he said, insisting that "there are smarter and more progressive ways to do this."

Weiner then outlined his own three-point plan in broad strokes, saying he would 1) charge trucks to enter Midtown during peak hours, 2) offer businesses tax incentives to remain open for late-night truck deliveries, and 3) charge private motorists, but only those from outside the five boroughs.

Wylde attacked Weiner's emphasis on trucks, pointing out that only eight percent of the vehicles in the zone below 60th Street are trucks, while 40 percent are private, single-occupancy cars. She also argued that the mayor's plan would not pit people who live in the congestion zone against people from the outer boroughs, because "Manhattan is the magnet that creates excess traffic throughout the region, and reducing traffic below 60th Street will reduce traffic throughout the region." Her repeated references to 60th Street as the northern boundary of the congestion zone may signal that the TCMC will ultimately propose shifting the boundary south from 86th Street.

Also, in response to an East Harlem resident who expressed concern that her asthma-stricken neighborhood would become even more overwhelmed by vertical parking lots, Wylde hinted that the TCMC proposals would pay "very serious attention" to the issue of parking in peripheral districts.

O'Loughlin, in his rebuttal to Weiner, argued that New York can't rely on Congress -- especially representatives from Texas -- to raise the gas tax and set aside sufficient cash to fund the city's transit system. "Just because the Bush administration is willing to give us $354 million doesn't make this a bad idea," he said. He cited support from the Drum Major Institute and the Central Labor Council as evidence of pricing's progressive bona fides, pointing out that it will be "especially good for low-income New Yorkers, who are more likely to rely on transit."

While waiting for Walter McCaffrey to send over an official version (he sent it -- download it here), we managed to get a hold of a bootleg copy of the executive summary of the Committee to Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free's new report. Willie Neuman has a write-up of the report in the Times today as well.

The Committee's report aims to offer up alternatives to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal, many of which are ideas familiar and appealing to regular readers of Streetsblog. The executive summary itemizes eight specific traffic mitigation ideas and calculates that, together, these could reduce VMT, or vehicle miles traveled, between 7.6 and 11.5 percent south of 86th Street (table above).

New York City's $354.5 million federal grant is dependent on a plan that reduces VMT by at least 6.3 percent. The grant, however, is also dependent on the City implementing some form of congestion pricing technology as a part of that plan, so it's not at all clear if any of the suggestions above would allow the city to keep that money.

Hugh O'Neill, the president of Appleseed, the economics consulting firm which wrote the report, acknowledges that his numbers are soft. Neuman reports:

Altogether, the study says, such measures could reduce traffic volume by 7 to 11 percent. Mr. O'Neill said, however, that the estimate was very rough.

"I would fully acknowledge that those numbers are speculative and would need to be subject to further analysis," he said. "I think what the numbers legitimately show is that there are real options, real world alternatives, many of which are much simpler to implement than what the city has proposed."

The report does not include an overall estimate for the cost of putting its proposals in place, but it says it would cost far less than the mayor's congestion pricing plan.

In addition to a "speculative" analysis, the report offers no price tag for its proposed changes. Some ideas, like increasing the cost of on-street parking and reforming the city's government employee parking abuse problem, are almost certainly net revenue earners, though come with their own set of costs and political challenges. Other suggestions have a universally appealing but vaguely expensive ring to them; for example, this one: "Major transit improvements."

In addition to the eight congestion pricing alternatives listed in the table above, the executive summary offers these as well:

Options that reduce VMT, congestion or both (2008-2009)

• Reducing congestion caused by black cars and non-yellow for hire vehicles.
• More effectively regulating the use of streets for construction projects.
• Modernizing traffic signal systems.
• Implementing 511 (A system to notify drivers of real time traffic conditions).

Options for reducing congestion beyond 2010

• Bus Rapid Transit.
• Lower Manhattan bus depot.
• Incentives for off-peak delivery.
• Increased use of water transportation for movement of freight.
• Expanding the Lower Manhattan traffic management program to Midtown.
• Improving the distribution of information to motorists by state of the art technology.
• Encouraging greater use of bicycle transportation.
  

The Observer reported on Wednesday that Walter McCaffrey's Committee to Keep New York City Congestion Tax Free recently solicited UCLA parking policy guru Donald Shoup to do a study of curbside parking policy in New York. Carolyn Konheim, a Brooklyn-based transportation consultant and decades-long congestion pricing advocate, thinks that sounds like a great idea.

As DOT Deputy Commissioner Bruce Schaller pointed out in his 2007 study, Free Parking, Congested Streets, "free or reimbursed parking is an inducement for the majority of motorists who choose to drive to the Manhattan Central Business District rather than use public transportation or other means of travel." Despite this fact, Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 has almost nothing to say on reforming parking policy. Konheim suggests that "we need to price both roads and parking." Perhaps this is something that congestion pricing advocates and opponents might actually be able to agree on.

Here is Konheim's commentary:

The Mayor should extend the offer to Shoup. The California- based consultant concluded years ago that pricing parking can be as effective as pricing roads. The high cost of Manhattan off-street parking proves the point. Bruce Schaller's finding that half the auto entries into the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD) park for free also proves the point.

London has demonstrated that we need to price both roads and parking. Seeing parking as the low hanging fruit, London started curbside pricing first. At an NYU forum on pricing this spring, London's First Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron, congestion pricing ambassador extraordinaire, whispered away from the microphone: "I hate to be critical, but you've got parking all wrong -- you need to control it first. In London, you can't park for more than 20 minutes without a permit or you'll be clamped. If you can park, it costs 40 quid [~$80]."

Garage rates in central London run $65/day, $1,200 a month. London auto commuters have no local street parking option outside the central pricing zone because all 32 boroughs in the city limit non-resident curbside parking to two hours and deliveries and drop-offs to 20 minutes. In boroughs close to the center, a stay of two hours costs about $8. Spaces are designated in all boroughs for residents who pay a range of $180 to $250 a year for permits for one car and one visitor. Businesses can also get parking permits. Violators' tires are enthusiastically clamped by local wardens who collect fines of $300 or more for their boroughs, which use the revenues for improving roads and traffic calming. The borough of Westminster is developing an automated parking enforcement system. The borough in the center of London nets about $70 million a year in parking revenues.

New York is obviously way behind on parking management. In the core of Manhattan, there are ten times more off-street spaces than in London, and half the drivers into the CBD pay nothing for parking. Many New York neighborhoods are plagued with commuter parking, abuse of agency parking privileges and counterfeit parking permits. Meter feeding is the norm on New York retail streets, which in the boroughs typically adds up to a cost of $8 -- but is not regarded as prohibitive as the proposed $8 congestion fee.

Local civic leaders have expressed fears about the impacts on communities near subway stations that serve the pricing zone, which are not assuaged by Mayoral allusions to -- but no apparent action on -- residential parking permits. Any serious action on resident permits would reveal that they must be just one part of a comprehensive parking program that requires broad public appreciation that street space doesn't come free -- a heavy lift for champions of local parking "rights."

Mayor Bloomberg's bold pricing initiative creates an opportunity to start in Manhattan by properly pricing ALL parking within the pricing zone. The fee would deter free parkers (many on the City payroll). And parking permit fees equal to the $4/day that the Mayor proposes to charge residents for trips within the pricing zone could provide the equity he seeks by charging Manhattan drivers for intra-zone trips. Doing so would eliminate the need for the costly proposed charging network of thousands of charging stations.

As London Deputy Mayor Gavron asked: "Why would you want multiple cordons? We have enough trouble with one." A charging cordon across 60th Street and bridges and tunnels, even simpler than London's, would be far less costly and free up far more congestion revenues for better transit -- the real payoff for all New Yorkers.

While it sounds like a serious study and revision of New York City parking policy is something that pretty much everyone might be able to get behind, Schuerman points out that Walter McCaffrey's lobbying group, "Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free is supported in part by parking garage owners who would logically see underpriced on-street parking as unfair competition." The Observer reports:

The lobbying group opposing congestion pricing is considering ways to reform curbside parking as one alternative to the Mayor's plan to charge drivers $8 to enter core areas of Manhattan.

The group, Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free (which now has a Web site), even approached Donald Shoup, a parking guru at the University of California at Los Angeles who advocates for higher metered rates, to commission a study. But the lobbying group seems to have dropped the idea after Mr. Shoup wrote back with an ambivalent answer.

"They asked me and I wrote back," Mr. Shoup told The Observer via telephone recently. "I told them I'm a great fan of congestion pricing."

Still, Mr. Shoup said raising metered rates makes a good deal of sense, and would be a necessary prerequisite for congestion pricing. His theory is that rates should be raised high enough to discourage idle trips. That would free up one or two spots on every block, creating a so-called "Goldilocks effect" that would reduce the number of cars trolling for spaces.

"I think that [New York City] has done everything wrong in terms of getting something done soon," Mr. Shoup said. "It doesn't make sense to introduce this very expensive congestion pricing system and keep curb parking free. It is easy to charge a parked car. It is hard to charge a moving car."

Walter McCaffrey, the lobbyist for the anti-congestion pricing group, could not confirm that his team had reached out to Mr. Shoup, but said that it was looking at parking policy.

"In some places, you could end up having an ability to remove meters to allow for a better flow of traffic depending on the width of the street, or you could temporarily remove the meters on a street where there is construction going on," Mr. McCaffrey said.

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.

Walter McCaffrey's Committee to Keep New York City Congestion Tax Free has torn a page from StreetFilms' book and put out its very own propaganda video.

The quiet, elegant two-minute SubFilm shows crowds of people using New York City's subway system with quotes like, "Here come the sardines," mixed in.

The producers clearly intended this video as an argument against Mayor Bloomberg's traffic relief and transit improvement proposals but it's hard not to come away from it thinking: Yes, subways are crowded. Let's get congestion pricing up and running to pay for new transit capacity.

Clarence, you might want to call Walter and offer your services.

The Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free Coalition will argue that the proposal is unfair to Queens residents, says group spokesman Walter McCaffrey, the former city councilman. Two-thirds of the borough's inhabitants who need medical treatment travel to Manhattan, he says, especially for high-quality cancer and heart care.

"Especially for seniors, this becomes difficult to bear," Mr. McCaffrey says.

In subsequent weeks, opponents will argue that stores like Macy's and Bloomingdale's in Manhattan will probably pass higher delivery costs on to their customers. As a result, New Jersey residents will shop locally instead of traveling to the city, Mr. McCaffrey claims.

The coalition is also expected to argue that the initial cost -- $8 for cars and $21 for trucks driving within Manhattan below 86th Street during business hours -- will rise sharply. They note that London, the model for the New York plan, began congestion pricing with a fee of roughly $8, which was quickly increased to about $16. Now, the city is considering a hike to roughly $20.

 
Janette Sadik-Khan has one week to go before taking over as the city's new transportation commissioner. Not surprisingly, a public appearance Friday found her well prepared to push Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC congestion pricing program.

Pressed into service for the Regional Plan Association's day-long 17th Annual Regional Assembly, held at the swank Waldorf-Astoria, Sadik-Khan served as a panelist alongside other congestion pricing supporters and critics. Moderated by WNYC's Brian Lehrer, the panel also featured Julia Vitullo-Martin of the Manhattan Institute (undecided); Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of Partnership for New York City (pro); Walter McCaffrey of Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free (con); and Council Member John Liu, who chairs the council's transportation committee (skeptical).

McCaffrey led the attack on pricing, calling it a divisive policy that will pit the city against the suburbs. McCaffrey said two-thirds of car trips from Queens to Manhattan are for medical appointments, and that the sick will "bear the burden" of a congestion charge. While crediting the mayor for trying to solve the congestion problem, "There has to be a human face to public policy too," McCaffrey said.

Pointing out that just five percent of New Yorkers regularly drive into Manhattan's central business district, Sadik-Khan noted the resulting health burden already borne by city residents due to air pollution. While transit improvements are needed, and are planned, for underserved areas, 80 percent of Manhattan-bound motorists currently have a transit option available, Sadik-Khan said.

Liu, at times appearing to struggle with his own thoughts, said he finds it difficult to oppose congestion pricing ("It even sounds like a cold medicine"). To win wider support, he said, Bloomberg should set "a clear objective" for beefing up transit in the short term. He cited ferry service to the Rockaways and inner-city access to commuter trains as two relatively simple improvements.

McCaffrey -- who at one point (wrongly) declared himself outnumbered on the dais and therefore deserving of more mic time -- wondered if the city was "about to go to war with Long Island," and accused pricing backers of ignoring regional commuters. Sadik-Khan countered that congestion pricing is, in reality, designed as a regional transportation revenue source, while Lehrer chimed in to say that Nassau County Chief Executive Tom Suozzi is in favor of pricing, and that tolls would be deducted from the congestion charge.

McCaffrey then warned that the proposed $8 fee for private autos is "nonsensical," "delusional," and would be raised "instantly." Again acknowledging that congestion is an issue, he suggested alternative solutions, including enforcement of box-blocking laws at intersections and the "significant problem" posed by those who are not driving. "We have to do something about the pedestrians," McCaffrey said.

While Liu said he is concerned about the creation of another bureaucracy -- i.e. the SMART board that would allocate revenues generated by congestion pricing -- he admitted he does not know how else the city can afford needed transit improvements. However, Liu said the city should be willing to ensure that all New Yorkers have a 30-minute transit commute with or without congestion revenues. People aren't going to care about cleaner air "if it hurts them" financially, he said, adding: "I think we have to get down to earth."

The congestion pricing panel followed a speech by Mayor Bloomberg, who received a standing ovation after urging New Yorkers to use their political clout to see the proposal past state lawmakers during the remaining weeks of the current legislative session. "The time to do it is right now," Bloomberg said. "The stars are aligned."

Also during the speech, the mayor jokingly threatened the incoming DOT commissioner -- and, indeed, the entire city -- by reminding her that newly-retired Iris Weinshall is still close by should Sadik-Khan "screw it up."

"He says that to all new department heads," Sadik-Khan said afterward.

Janette Sadik-Khan photo: Brad Aaron 

Three specific proposals to reduce New York City's ever-increasing traffic congestion emerged from a highly anticipated Manhattan Institute forum this morning. One seeks variable prices on cars driving in to central Manhattan, with express toll lanes and higher parking fees to keep things moving. Another seeks to get rid of tolls on less-congested bridges in car-friendly parts of town and replace them with congestion charging technology in gridlocked, transit-friendly sections of the city. A third plan relies entirely on enforcement of existing parking laws.

The forum, organized by the Manhattan Institute's Center for Rethinking Development, opened with Partnership for New York City president Kathryn Wylde setting a collegial but urgent tone two days after releasing a report that put a $13 billion price tag on New York City's traffic congestion. The Partnership's analysis, she said, found that 48 percent of all motor vehicle traffic delay is "excess traffic congestion, beyond what we ought to put up with."

"Why do you think construction prices are going up one percent a month?" Wylde asked. It takes crews too long to get to job sites, and once they get there they spend valuable work time waiting for deliveries. "Manufacturing, an industry we have been hemorrhaging" is leaving New York City, in part, because of the difficulty in moving people, supplies and products, Wylde said. "A person who might go to a restaurant" in Manhattan will skip the trip if she's staring at brake lights.

The problem Wylde says, is "How do you attack traffic without making commercial deliveries or taxis suffer?" London achieved a 15 percent "mode shift" moving approxmately 60,000 commuters from cars to other forms of transportation with its congestion charge. How can New York achieve similar results?

Bruce Schaller, who released a major new study on New York City traffic congestion this morning, presented the first and most detailed answer to that question. He proposed a combined system of congestion charges, highway express lanes and parking reform, emphasizing that the plan can't just be about getting rid of cars or punishing motorists. It has to be about "making New York the kind of city that New Yorkers want."

Schaller pointed to the results of a Tri-State Transportation Campaign survey showing that 44 percent of New Yorkers feel that congestion pricing is "a good idea" versus 45 percent against. It is worth noting that congestion charging starts with much higher approval ratings in New York City than it had in either London or Stockholm.

Schaller ran focus groups to test three ideas: London-style congestion charging, highway express lanes with tolls, and increased parking fees. He found that New Yorkers, in fact, are quite sophisticated in their thinking about the city's traffic congestion problem and possible solutions.

Schaller found that there are six factors that drive public reaction to congestion pricing and other solution ideas:

1. Will reduce traffic congestion
2. Will solve my transportation problems
3. Enhances my transportation choices
4. Fair and equitable
5. Works as intended
6. Is supported and complemented by non-pricing policies

In other words, New York City's auto dealership-supported tabloid media may not be accurately reflecting New Yorkers' apparently intelligent and nuanced thinking on local transportation issues when it blares "Traffic Tax!" headlines and reports knee-jerk opposition to congestion charging and other traffic relief measures.

Schaller's plan combines three elements: Selective road pricing, new highway express lanes, and more tightly managed and higher priced curbside parking.

Schaller's traffic relief charges would apply to anyone crossing the Hudson River, East River or 60th Street boundary into Lower Manhattan. On weekday mornings he would charge $4 to any vehicle entering the zone between 6:30 and 10:00 am. During mid-day, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, all vehicles traveling in or out of the zone would pay $4. Then from 4 pm to 6:30 pm vehicles traveling out of the zone would pay the $4.

Schaller's highway express lanes would be open to buses, vehicles carrying three or more passengers and any motorist willing to pay a fee. Times and fees would vary depending on congestion and also the State Department of Transportation's identification of "feasible corridors."

Schaller's parking plan would apply to commercial districts and selected parking spaces. To show skeptics that usage fees can influence drivers' behavior, he suggests setting up a pilot project to increase curbside parking rates with, perhaps, rates rising incrementally each hour a car occupies a spot.

To make these ideas politically palatable, Schaller added, all revenues generated by these new plans would need to be plowed back into public transport - especially in underserved areas like Staten Island, Eastern Queens and the Upper East Side.

Next up was transportation guru "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, a former city transportation commissioner. Gridlock Sam immediately went to the root: "Our road pricing stinks." He lamented a regime in which "we toll people going from Queens to Queens or from Staten Island to anywhere" but let drivers "drive across the Queensboro Bridge" without paying tolls (and without funding upkeep on that bridge). His solution: Eliminate all tolls on bridges outside the central business district and impose charges "only where there is congestion and good public transit." This approach could work politically, he said, if it is demonstrably "revenue neutral."

Schwartz also argued that Brooklyn and Queens drivers would benefit from this approach. "People from Brooklyn and Queens would have five river crossings with no tolls. If you go over the Brooklyn Bridge, up the FDR and across the Willis Avenue Bridge, you didn't set rubber in midtown Manhattan" and so you should pay no tolls, he reckoned. To make any traffic reform effective, Schwartz counseled, "we have to give Brooklyn and Queens a lot." And short of extending subway lines to Maspeth or Gerritsen Beach, the idea of a tight area for fees presumably leaves residents of those areas some latitude.

Councilmember David Weprin, who represents eastern Queens disagreed with Schaller and Schwartz. Since most people who live east of Kew Gardens or north of Forest Hills have to drive at least a mile to get to the subway, he noted, more frequent express bus service would have to complement any changes that made driving into Manhattan more expensive. He warned the audience to consider people who count on driving for their business and cited a statistic: "In London, 62 percent of businesses reported a drop in customers" after congestion charging. What Weprin didn't say, however, is that the start of congestion charging in London coincided with a nationwide economic recession and a massive Tube construction project that shut down subway service in Central London.

The political gap between Weprin and Schaller seemed large, especially when a former Queens City Council member named Walter McCaffrey, now a lobbyist heading up a newly formed group called the Coalition to Keep New York City Congestion Tax Free, rose from the audience to declare: "A tax is a tax is a tax." But there may be more room for compromise than such rhetoric might suggest. Council member John Liu, who represents Flushing and chairs the Transportation Committee, told me that he would like to see more express bus service in his district. "Nobody wants to pay new charges for anything," he said. "But if, in return, they get something like more express buses." He left the forum at about 9:50 to conduct a hearing at City Hall on express bus service.

So wheels are in motion. Mayor Bloomberg will deliver a major speech within a week outlining his sustainability plan for the city, and advisers say traffic congestion issues will be front and center. Stephen Hammer of Columbia University challenged the panel to push the New York City metro region into a broader conversation about encouraging walking, bicycling and living near mass transit. Road pricing, clearly, is just one cog in the machinery New Yorkers will have to build to make the city livable.