Editorial: Still Waiting for a Congestion Pricing Alternative
May 12th, 2008
A month has passed since congestion pricing died in Albany, slowly suffocated by those who believed the plan would come down too hard on the outer boroughs and suburbs. There will be no $8 fee for driving into midtown Manhattan, no cameras on the streets to record license plates, no new authority to collect the money and redirect it into the deeply troubled MTA.
The opponents had their say, and they have their victory. What they do not have, though, is a real, detailed plan to help solve the city's ever-mounting congestion problem, now that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's has been dismissed. So far, no one has given any indication that devising one will be a priority.
Everyone has an interest in reducing traffic in the city and state's financial center. Those who fought to defeat congestion pricing have a responsibility to lead the way in figuring out how to do this.
By making Manhattan a less pleasant place to do business, traffic threatens billions of dollars annually in private sector profits and tax revenues. Congestion, like just about anything that involves transportation engineering, is hard to put into perspective. That four-second delay caused by a car briefly stuck in an intersection is barely noticeable to the driver or even those honking their horns to get him out of the way. But those four seconds can quickly add up to more and more minutes of delays, until a traffic jam is born. A small cost to the individuals can be a large cost to the city as a whole. Congestion pricing tried to turn this principle on its head: a cost to individuals could have had a major benefit to the city.
But the plan is dead, and there is no use crying over its demise any longer. Congestion is still with us, and with a million more people headed this way over the next 20 years, the need for action grows each day.
Problems like these only have farsighted and large-scale solutions. Congestion pricing fit this bill. Other proposals might, too. Creating a system which charges commercial vehicles for deliveries made during peak hours but not at night is a possibility to be considered. Increasing ferry service and quickly expanding bus rapid transit are both now essential, though they have always been, and money must be found to fund them. And there is no better time to revive the cross-harbor freight tunnel to link Brooklyn straight to New Jersey and remove so many trucks and their exhaust from the city.
With all the resources of his administration at his disposal, no one is better equipped than Bloomberg to come up with a new plan. New Yorkers should hope that he is neither too bitter nor too exhausted from the fight over what should have been his legacy project to devise a new solution—and perhaps one which will not require Albany approval this time.
The real burden, though, falls on all those who attacked congestion pricing and railed that there must be some other way. A month has passed. Now that their victory has been secured, they have an obligation to New York City and State to start crafting the next plan.
That is the difference between politics and government. That is the difference between leadership and pandering. For the sake of New York, for the sake of all the people living here and for the sake of not passing the buck to the next generation of those in government, the congestion pricing opponents should start demonstrating that they know those differences.
The opponents had their say, and they have their victory. What they do not have, though, is a real, detailed plan to help solve the city's ever-mounting congestion problem, now that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's has been dismissed. So far, no one has given any indication that devising one will be a priority.
Everyone has an interest in reducing traffic in the city and state's financial center. Those who fought to defeat congestion pricing have a responsibility to lead the way in figuring out how to do this.
By making Manhattan a less pleasant place to do business, traffic threatens billions of dollars annually in private sector profits and tax revenues. Congestion, like just about anything that involves transportation engineering, is hard to put into perspective. That four-second delay caused by a car briefly stuck in an intersection is barely noticeable to the driver or even those honking their horns to get him out of the way. But those four seconds can quickly add up to more and more minutes of delays, until a traffic jam is born. A small cost to the individuals can be a large cost to the city as a whole. Congestion pricing tried to turn this principle on its head: a cost to individuals could have had a major benefit to the city.
But the plan is dead, and there is no use crying over its demise any longer. Congestion is still with us, and with a million more people headed this way over the next 20 years, the need for action grows each day.
Problems like these only have farsighted and large-scale solutions. Congestion pricing fit this bill. Other proposals might, too. Creating a system which charges commercial vehicles for deliveries made during peak hours but not at night is a possibility to be considered. Increasing ferry service and quickly expanding bus rapid transit are both now essential, though they have always been, and money must be found to fund them. And there is no better time to revive the cross-harbor freight tunnel to link Brooklyn straight to New Jersey and remove so many trucks and their exhaust from the city.
With all the resources of his administration at his disposal, no one is better equipped than Bloomberg to come up with a new plan. New Yorkers should hope that he is neither too bitter nor too exhausted from the fight over what should have been his legacy project to devise a new solution—and perhaps one which will not require Albany approval this time.
The real burden, though, falls on all those who attacked congestion pricing and railed that there must be some other way. A month has passed. Now that their victory has been secured, they have an obligation to New York City and State to start crafting the next plan.
That is the difference between politics and government. That is the difference between leadership and pandering. For the sake of New York, for the sake of all the people living here and for the sake of not passing the buck to the next generation of those in government, the congestion pricing opponents should start demonstrating that they know those differences.
