NYC congestion pricing one step closer.
Living in Los Angeles, we’ve kept a close eye on New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to enact congestion pricing in Manhattan. This proposal got another boost yesterday when the city council approved a measure urging the State Legislature to adopt the plan.
As we noted in a previous post, some of the highlights of the plan include: charging all drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street an $8 fee between the hours of 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., requiring the revenue (estimated at nearly half a billion a year) to be reinvested into mass transit, and providing cost breaks for the poor.
The only hurdle left is State Legislature approval, which if given, will allow congestion pricing in Manhattan to begin as early as March 31, 2009.
It is our feeling that this system will substantially increase the quality of life in New York City. Of course, congestion pricing is somewhat controversial because it takes a public resource (roadways) and charges a fee for their use. Fortunately, New Yorkers are used to paying for roadway access. (Just work backwards from the West Coast term “freeway.”) Therefore, imposing another toll on New York drivers would not be an unnatural concept.
As for the argument that it unfairly discriminates against the poor, who have less money to spend on tolls, the answer to this criticism is contained within the proposal itself. By reinvesting the revenue generated into mass transit, poor people (who rely more heavily on mass transit than the rich) should reap much of the benefit.
In attempting to apply congestion pricing to a city like Los Angeles, these two points, unfortunately will not be quite as applicable. First, most California drivers have never paid a cent for roadway access (aside from a handful of bridges and private roads). Convincing them to pay for something that has been, up to that point, completely free, will be difficult.
Second, unlike New York, Los Angeles has a horrendous public transit system. The way to reinvest any revenues from congestion pricing is not nearly as clear as in New York, which has a fully developed and integrated public rail (and bus) system. Nonetheless, as we noted recently, mass transit in LA is possible (and once was amazing), so maybe the windfall revenue from congestion pricing would be the catalyst needed to finally get a real solution implemented.
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