Nine Bklyn Councilmembers Vote Against Congest Fee

While I am for the idea of a disincentive to auto access in NYC, I have major concerns with the transparency of the MTA as the agency which gets the revenue. The MTA has a terrible track record of transparency and accountability. Bloomberg has promised significant improvements in mass transit but in reality has little control over whether or not those improvements actually happen. The MTA made significant promises to improve service at the end of 07 in exchange for the fare increase but now has put improvements on hold. I believe for this plan to be anything but a exclusionary slush fund, the MTA must be more accountable to the public. We must increase the transparency of this “authority” and we should do the same with the Port Authority and the TBTA. These organizations have vast income but little transparency and accountability. Without such changes I have grave doubts that congestion pricing would have positive effects on Manhattan.
P.S. Why don’t we extend the zone to include the entire city?

How is this about class? If the arguement is that people driving in are less affluent than those taking the train, then I’d like to see the data supporting it. I pay about a $1,000 a year for my monthly metro card. I also have a car and know that I pay almost twice that amoutn for insurance alone. My guess is that people who drive in are more affulent than those taking the train.

10:45. Local deliveries need to be delivered, of course. What we don’t need is freight moving in from Jersey to supply all of Long Island going through our neighborhoods and clogging our streets and highways locally (and visa-versa). Remember, Brooklyn and Queens are just the access point for an island that is 150 miles long. It’s called “Long Island.”

Want people to take mass transit? Fine, then upgrade mass transit FIRST, THEN institute congestion pricing. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but the trains are bloody crowded. At rush hour you’re lucky if you can sandwich yourself into one like a sardine.

And don’t spin the old fairytale about how congestion pricing will pay for a mass transit upgrade. I mean, does anyone actually believe this will happen?

Congestion pricing will only result in worse mass transit conditions. In other words, lower quality of life for the working people of this city and improved quality of life for the lucky few who can afford to hang their hats in Manhattan. That really is the long and short of it.

It’s not about the environment. It’s about class. It’s about money.

Since most of Manhattan is now residential, almost everything has to be trucked in. In the grand plan to make the island below 60th street a huge enclave of the rich, our city planners have eliminated most of the industry, and most of the kinds of businesses that make the city work – meat, produce, fish, and other food deliveries, not to mention furniture, clothing, and everything else we depend on for modern and convenient life. Manhattan is not self sufficient, it’s truly an island.

Having been in a business where I’ve occassionaly had to deliver goods to customers, it’s a bitch. Our company car has commercial plates, so we can park some places, like the garment center, but can’t use the FDR, residential plates can’t park anywhere to deliver anything. Most of the truckers I see are small guys with vans and small trucks, struggling just to get gas, which is almost impossible to get below 60th street. They all have addresses in other boroughs, and making daily multiple deliveries is going to kill them. If they are able to pass it along to customers, that only means it gets passed back to us, in terms of higher food costs, restaurant costs, general delivery costs.

In other words, whether we drive or not, we will be paying for this.