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Congestion Pricing Flashback
By Arun Gupta and Julie RaskinApril 7, 2008 | Posted in IndyBlog | Email this article
So, congestion pricing — the plan to charge drivers $8 for entering Manhattan during peak hours– is dead. Back in the summer of 2007, here’s what two Indypendent writers had to say about Mayor Mike’s plan.
Arun Gupta wrote: “Now, some sort of levy on rush-hour traffic should be implemented, but Bloomberg’s proposal is full of bad ideas.
Foremost, Bloomberg is plotting to incorporate the license-plate readers used to track cars in a smothering security grid known as a “Ring of Steel” to track the daily activities of New Yorkers. Congestion pricing advocates such as Transportation Alternatives have been unconscionably silent about the dual-use nature of these cameras.”
But Julie Raskin fired back: “When you look at those numbers it becomes hard to see congestion pricing as unfairly targeting the lower and middle classes, as its critics claim. That false assertion is perhaps the biggest piece of misinformation circulated by critics.”
April 8th, 2008 at 4:13 am
In promoting Congestion Pricing as a panacea, Mayor Bloomberg continues the irrational policies of his PlaNYC and the MTA by omitting non polluting street level boarding light rail as a remedy for improving the environment and lessening vehicle gridlock. Light rail, the solution successfully adopted by forward-looking cities including Charlotte, Baltimore, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and Portland, Oregon, has proven to be the 21st century answer for reducing traffic congestion and air pollution.It is shocking that the Camaign for New York’s Future and Transportation Alternatives did protest the ommission of Light Rail from PlaNYC.
Moreover, the Mayor and the MTA are promoting two excessively costly Manhattan mega-projects which threaten to absorb not only all available transit funding and but which may require further subway, bus and toll bridge increases. Moreover, the $4.65 billion, 1.7 mile three station first phase Second Avenue Subway is not expected to be completed until 2015 and construction of the $2.1 billion one station 42nd street number 7 line extension has not yet begun.
Substituting street level boarding (excellent for senior citizens and the disabled) light rail on 1st, 2nd and 3rd Avenues for the Second Avenue Subway and the uncomfortable polluting articulated buses now used on those thoroughfares would cost less than $500 million and the MTA could easily construct river to river light rail on 42nd street for less than $300 million. Studies have shown that European and North American motorists are willing to abandon their cars when provided with state of art light rail as an alternative for their daily commute. There is enough money already committed by Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC and the MTA to the aforementioned Megaprojects to make major improvements such as light rail and bus rapid-transit plus improved subway signaling equipment throughout the five Boroughs without the economically harmful Congestion Pricing scheme.