State KO's Manhattan Tolling Plan
The failure of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to win legislative approval for his controversial plan to reduce Manhattan traffic highlights the long odds of making tolling a significant component of battling gridlock nationwide.
Bloomberg scrambled yesterday to gain support for the plan in time to keep it eligible for up to $500 million in federal funds, but he lost when the state Senate came up short of votes to pass the measure and the state Assembly declined to reconvene to take it up at all. The setback means New York City will most likely be ineligible to receive a share of $1.2 billion in federal grants available for new proposals to reduce traffic.
The mayor's congestion pricing plan--to charge cars $8 and trucks $21 to enter Manhattan below 86th Street--was announced by Bloomberg in April. The promise of cleaner air and a reduction in traffic in the country's worst commuter city (in terms of mean travel time to work) won the support of the City Council and New York Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The proposal also drew the eye of the Department of Transportation, which has been looking for locations to demonstrate the effectiveness of such pricing to reduce traffic. Pricing methods could include so-called HOT lanes, in which a varying toll is charged to keep some highway lanes at capacity without becoming overfilled, or "cordon tolls," such as the one proposed for New York City and already in place in London and Singapore.
But, as U.S. News explored in a May cover story, increased tolling has been a tough sell. Cities have less autonomy in setting transportation policy than they do in other areas, and large changes often require coordinating state and local governments with different sets of priorities. In Virginia, lawmakers grappled for a generation before finally passing a new statewide transportation plan in April, with all sides conceding that the bill will not fully address the needs of the car-choked Washington suburbs.
In New York, politicians from the outer boroughs voiced concerns that their residents would be unfairly affected. City Councilman David Weprin, who represents a portion of Queens, released a report suggesting that the plan would increase already high asthma rates outside of the pricing zone by encouraging drivers to take their cars to transit stops rather than commute into Manhattan.
"It'll just basically be transferring the congestion from one part of the city to another," says Weprin.
Getting the public onboard for changes can be even more challenging. Anger about the decision by Indiana GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels to lease the Indiana Toll Road for 75 years to a private company, which led to a toll increase, contributed to the Republican loss of a House majority in the state in November. And unlike private leases, congestion pricing has not been tested in the United States.
A WNBC/Marist poll found that 61 percent of residents of New York City and the surrounding suburbs opposed Bloomberg's plan, while 48 percent supported the plan in Manhattan. Paul Steely White, executive director of the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives and an advocate of the pricing plan, worried yesterday that the rush to get legislative approval by the deadline damaged the chances of passing a pricing plan at all.
"It's created a terrific opportunity for us to really jump-start the program," he says of the federal funds. "But it's been a trade-off where we haven't been able to do as much of the medium-term education on the issue."
By Will Sullivan