View Single Post
Old 06-08-2007, 04:49 PM   #1 (permalink)
QuasiMondo
Wise-ass Latino
 
QuasiMondo's Avatar
 
Location: Pretoria (Tshwane), RSA
Congestion Pricing in New York City

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
__________________
Cameron originally envisioned the Terminator as a small, unremarkable man, giving it the ability to blend in more easily. As a result, his first choice for the part was Lance Henriksen. O. J. Simpson was on the shortlist but Cameron did not think that such a nice guy could be a ruthless killer.

-From the Collector's Edition DVD of The Terminator
QuasiMondo is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360