by Jeffrey M. Zupan, Senior Fellow for Transportation, RPA
Those of us who supported the New York City congestion pricing program may be in mourning, yet there is some good that has come from the sturm and drang of the prolonged debate over the last 11 months since Mayor Bloomberg first proposed his pricing plan. This was a sentiment echoed by New York City DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn and Traffic Mitigation Chair Marc Shaw at RPA's Regional Assembly last week.
Those of us who supported the New York City congestion pricing program may be in mourning, yet there is some good that has come from the sturm and drang of the prolonged debate over the last 11 months since Mayor Bloomberg first proposed his pricing plan. This was a sentiment echoed by New York City DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn and Traffic Mitigation Chair Marc Shaw at RPA's Regional Assembly last week.
The silver linings in the debate - and the notion that congestion pricing may one day rise again - fall mostly into three categories:
First, all sides agree that traffic in New York is a mess; it creates delays that cost our residents and businesses mightily and adds to the stress of living and working in New York. This agreement has led to wider discussion of ways to ease congestion on our streets and highways. While these ideas would not have the same wide effect as a congestion pricing program, they can help. These include the #1 priority on everyone's list - a crackdown on illegal, unnecessary and often counterfeited parking placards that entitle some City employees to park for free on City streets where others cannot. These placards are abused and represent a breakdown in the law, in some cases by many who are pledged to uphold it.
Other traffic actions include more taxi stands, more traffic agents to enforce traffic laws, more parking meters with higher rates, the elimination of the parking tax exemption for Manhattan residents, and the redirection of delivery trucks at less congested times. No matter what one's position was on congestion pricing we can all join together and work with the City to make these happen. None are a traffic reduction panacea like congestion pricing, but all are worth pursuing.
Second, the debate demonstrates the great thirst for more and improved transit. New Yorkers instinctively understand that transit is necessary for their daily lives. Fix subway stations, provide more and faster bus service, express buses and trains, more transfers between stations, more City service on commuter lines and more ferries. At every public hearing held by the commission set up by the legislature to examine traffic congestion there was as much comment about the need for more service as there was about the pros and cons of the congestion pricing proposal.
Third, there is a heightened awareness that the transit system is far short of the money it needs to meet short and long-term needs, particularly in light of the expected growth of population and jobs, both in New York City and in surrounding areas like Long Island and Westchester. Speaker Silver pointed this out during the congestion pricing post mortem and Governor Paterson immediately established a blue-ribbon panel for transit funding headed by former MTA chief Richard Ravitch, who worked with Albany to create the funding that began the MTA turnaround back in the early 1980s. The success of this panel will be measured by its ability to create the revenue stream to avoid the delay of key projects or the decline of the reliability of the system from disinvestment in their upkeep and maintenance. It will be a task for everyone to get across the fact that the transit system is critical to the economy of the City and by extension the State.
What is in our future? Congestion pricing may be gone for now but it is far from dead, as both Shaw and Sadik-Kahn said last week. It is an idea whose time will come again. Technology will make charging easier and more sophisticated in the future by allowing for time of day, day of week and level of congestion pricing. There is a growing movement nationally to charge drivers more directly for the use of the roads. The MTA funding gap will be difficult to meet solely by other means. I cannot help thinking of the last lines of the most quoted film in history, Casablanca. "You may not thank me now, but you will later. It may not be in two years, or even five, but you will thank me." And finally, the closing lines, "this is the start of a beautiful friendship." Let us hope that in five years we can look back at this having been the beginning of congestion pricing rather than the end.
@RegionalPlan
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