Posted by: Xanthe Matychak
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Comments (3)
Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to implement a congestion charge on vehicles entering NYC during peak business hours got stalled by state lawmakers in Albany and he is pissed (from the NYTs):
"New York City is today poorer because of Albany's inaction yesterday," the mayor said at a news conference this afternoon. "I can tell you who lost yesterday: The people breathing the air, the people trying to do business in this city, the 95 percent of people who use mass transit to commute into the city and who are going to have to pay more. Those are the people who lost yesterday."
and:
"[The State Senate doesn't] read the mail or they don't read the newspapers," he said, adding that it would be difficult "to not know about congestion pricing if you can read."
Ouch. Well, maybe lawmakers can't read, but design-outlaws sure can. We also know that congestion pricing is just one of many ways to smarten-up urban design. Find out more here, here, and here.
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Comments
Streetsblog has had a lot of good coverage of the congestion pricing debate. [http://www.streetsblog.org/category/issues-campaigns/congestion-pricing/]
yes i would have loved to see this bill passed, however my beef is this, while congestion pricing in its proposed form as applied to nyc is a great idea on many levels (ie greener ny, more money circulated into public transportation, hybrid taxis etc...) who knows where this immense amount of money in the govt's pocket would have really gone, how mta riders commutes would be affected and last (in my mind most importantly) how many people who do frequently commute via motor vehicle this would truly dissuade from doing so. After all the people who do commute by car must be fairly wealthy...
All we have to go on is the information provided by the city and even though it was before my time, weren't there millions of tax dollars devoted to building a tunnel under "West St." after they took down the decrepit highway...
Right. We don't know for sure how the collected tax would go back into public transportation. But these details can never be discussed if the state senate won't even consider the proposal. We've got to start somewhere on minimizing traffic in our cities. No plan is perfect. But a congestion tax would be a promising start.