Big changes usually happen over time – years or decades.
Which is why New York’s imposition of congestion pricing interests me so much. That and the fact that I live in the suburbs north of the city, where the pitchforks glisten and children listen to hear adults whining in the snow.
Congestion pricing – if you’re not aware of it, you probably don’t care, but I’ll describe it anyway – is a toll on vehicles entering the area of Manhattan from Battery Park to 60th Street. That includes such places as Times Square, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, Wall Street and the World Trade Center. Cars pay $9 in peak periods and $2.25 off peak.
The purpose is twofold. New York’s mass transit system desperately needs upgrading and repair. Legislators, mainly from rural and suburban areas, never fund the system adequately. So this will raise money for the work that needs to be done.
The other purpose is to relieve the unbearable congestion on Manhattan streets. Motorized vehicles were an afterthought for the city fathers of the Big Apple. So we have gridlock on many streets and the accompanying pedlock for people who have to walk around the areas.
It’s cool that NYC is trying something so different to the American experience. I can’t think of too many changes so quickly imposed – except for the pandemic when everything was shut down and most everyone was forced to stay at home.
It’ll take a few months of analyzing the data to see if congestion pricing is successful in reducing traffic, whether that helps the air quality and if the tolls are raising the money as expected.
But congestion pricing is already considered an abject failure and an insult by the people who live here in the suburbs.
The primary reason is that they want things to stay the same. It’s great for them. They drive down to Manhattan, look for street parking to avoid paying for those $50 garages, and go door-to-door with impunity.
Pedestrians are not their problem. Foul air is not their problem. Rundown subways and clogged bus lanes are not their problem.
Suburban commuters are goaded by the lame politicians they elect. As with other things in this era, they stoke anger about things that are unfamiliar or seem hostile to the status quo.
The idea that New York might impose congestion pricing has been around for at least a decade. But the only response legislators and executives in the suburbs conjured was lawsuits. That was the plan – we’ll sue the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and just the threat will force them to back down.
It didn’t work. Now what they’re hoping is that Trump, after he takes office on the 20th, will work some kind of magic to get rid of the plan.
It’s lazy, stupid – and typical for the fatasses who worm their way into office around here.
What should they have done?
I’m not denying their right to employ pet lawyers at taxpayer expense to adjudicate a grievance. But maybe, just maybe, while they were doing that, they could have come up with actual plans to help the people they represent adapt to the new reality.
Was there any effort by New Jersey or the New York suburbs to develop alternatives to driving to midtown? Free bus service, either to the city or to the commuter rail stations outside it. New park-and-ride lots – and repromotion of existing ones – to encourage car pooling or to offer shuttles to the zone. Setting up offices in the zone to promote alternatives and provide information about congestion pricing.
No. The knee-jerk solution is the courthouse. Sue the city into submission. Don’t adapt to the reality, obliterate it.
Now, I also don’t want to let this seem as though I’m putting a halo on the people who support congestion pricing. Yes, I think it’s takes some gumption to implement a plan like this. Bravo.
But maybe, just maybe, the proponents could have made people more aware of the alternatives to driving. Yes, we know about the subway, suburban buses and commuter rail. How about creating satellite parking lots near rail stations to encourage using the train? What about using all these abandoned or nearly abandoned strip malls and shopping malls to provide commuter assistance services?
And what about expanding the use of water transportation – in a zone surrounded on three sides by rivers and a bay – to get people to where they need to be quickly and more efficiently?
One other thought:
When I was walking through Midtown just after Christmas, I would count the cars at every crossing and multiply by $9. There were hundreds of dollars at every intersection, thousands – maybe even millions – of dollars over the course of a day.
It would be cool if, every day or every few days, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority disclosed how much money it took in – and then announced what, specifically, that money will be used for.
If it takes $350,000 to repair an escalator at Grand Central Station, tell people that the receipts for January 9 will be used for that. (I have no idea if that figure is even close, but I use it as an example.)
Let people see specifically what the money is being used for and there’s a chance you might at least shut up some of the numbskulls who keep saying the authority won’t spend the money on improvements.
That would be an out-of-the-box idea. Just like congestion pricing.
SUBJECTISM 