NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, with the backing of Governor Eliott Spitzer is now going full steam ahead with his plan to institute congestion pricing in Manhattan. Loosely based on the plans instituted in London a few years back, it would charge all drivers a fee to enter Manhattan anywhere below 86th Street. The aim of all of this is to reduce the amount of daytime traffic in the city. The hope is that by charging these fees, it would encourage commuters to use alternate means to enter the city. I hate fees. And tolls. And anything resembling fees and tolls, so naturally I had problems with this proposal in two main areas.
1. New York's mass transit system is bursting at the seams. Anybody who's used the subways during rush hour knows the hell of trying to find space to even get on, much less find a seat. Even though the Second Ave line is (finally) under construction, and there are proposals to extend the #7 train, and a project to link the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station (currently it stops at Penn Station, 8 blocks south of Grand Central), none of this will be completed in years.
While the plan is to use the revenue generated from these fees to improve the city's mass transit system, I have no faith in this being accomplished by the MTA, a dysfunctional organization that has the amazing ability to celebrate record ridership, revenues, and profits, while at the same time announce a fare hike to cover projected budget shortfalls. It doesn't dissuade me from my opposition when the MTA announces a proposal to raise subway and bus fares by 2010, while New Jersey Transit announces their own fare hike. Bottom line: Everybody wants folks to use trains and buses more, but nobody wants to put more buses on the street or more trains on the tracks, but they sure want to pull more money out of your pocket, whether you're behind the wheel or being a straphanger.
2. Most people who commute into Manhattan don't drive to begin with. Only 33% of people who work in New York City get here using their own cars. The rest get here through a combination of trains, buses, ferries, bicycles, motorcycles, or walk. The real traffic? That's cars going
through Manhattan, not into it. Up to 30% of Manhattan traffic is drivers just trying to get from New Jersey to Brooklyn or Queens (and vice versa), for traffic below Canal Street (to include use of the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Willamsburg Bridges, and the Holland and Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels) it can reach as high as 40%. For these cross-town commuters, there is no alternative for them to easily get from New Jersey to Brooklyn/Queens. It's either go all the way north and go through the George Washington Bridge, and enter Queens from the Bronx, or go all the way south and enter Brooklyn from Staten Island. The Cross Bronx expressway is a perpetual parking lot, and trying to go around through Staten Island using the Verrazano and Goethalls Bridges is not much of an alternative either, as the Goethalls bridge is very narrow and has very little traffic capacity, and it is so far out of the way that more time is spent taking either route versus crawling along Canal Street (it should also be mentioned that drivers taking the Verazanno into Staten Island pay a $9.00 toll, one way). By the way, it hasn't been discussed yet whether drivers who pay a toll from New Jersey, whether it's across the George Washington Bridge, or through the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels will be double tapped for this congestion charge.
Bottom line: Drivers in London have ways of getting from one side to the other and avoid getting charged. The local geography leaves New York drivers a bit short in that department.
I never liked the idea of hitting people in the wallets to change their behavior. Enough money is take out of my paycheck in federal income tax, state income tax, medicaid, social security, unemployment insurance, retirement savings, medical insurance, plus cost of living expenses, and now you can add this to the list of things.
Granted, this only affects people who live in New York City for now, but rest assured officials in other congested cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orlando, Miami, Washington, D.C., etc., have their eye on this plan. I have little faith in this plan except for it's ability to collect lots of money to be used on something other than public transportation improvements. Years from now, traffic in midtown and lower Manhattan will still be a mess, but you'll be paying out the nose, no matter what form of transportation you use to get to work.
http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20060306/5/1780
http://groups.google.com/group/misc....f31186d20e71dc