THE VINE APRIL 7, 2008
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
An ambitious plan to implement congestion traffic pricing in New York City met a quiet death today. The initiative would have taxed drivers into parts of Manhattan $8 in an effort to reduce the number of cars on the road. The project, considered a keystone of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC sustainability program, would have garnered an additional $350 million in federal subsidies earmarked to rehab and expand the city’s public transport system. Never mind the precedent New York could have set for the numerous American cities (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, DC) with two-hour lines of cars stretching past the horizon daily. A three-fourths wave of opponents representing outer boroughs and suburbs of the city claimed their constituents resent the “elitist” tax on those wishing to come into Manhattan. The rest of the assembly just failed to think the reduction in driving was a good idea. This makes Bloomberg’s failure to close here a matter of political salesmanship. For a clear analog, see California’s Proposition 87, which would have imposed a tax on oil producers in order to create a massive renewable energy fund. Prop 87 drowned at the ballot box last year—victim of a backlash alliance between polluters and lower-income voters more worried about gas price increases than glacial flow. Despite a $40 million ad campaign backed by Silicon Valley and Hollywood greens, consumers weren’t told a compelling narrative about the savings inherent to future energy efficiency. The fear of marginal cost increases was enough to sink both plans. Nonplussed borough legislators, convinced the New York tax was also regressive, felt equally free to ignore Bloomberg’s “open skies” approach. Today’s flameout reinforces the need for other reform-minded local governors to focus on pocketbook issues in pursuit of environmental progress. The common cause is there. As Van Jones put it in an open letter on the California failure: “The polluters will organize everyone we exclude.” --Dayo Olopade
9 comments
Too bad. They did it in London, and it was great for the city. It wouldn't be elitist because you could still ride into Lower Manhattan on public transportation. It's actually anti-elitist.
(My only question is the practicality of it. Would they have put up big gates across 60th St?)
- achester99
April 8, 2008 at 1:26am
Dayo is right that it's a defeat not only for Manhattan but for the country. The precedent would have been powerful. Too bad Gore didn't throw some of his advertising budget Bloomberg's way. The defeat is a troubling omen that should give the lie to all the sunny talk about the dawn of a green economy in which we will get rich while painlessly saving the world. Can we solve it? Not without sacrifices and sacrifice doesn't sell. What now are the alternatives? Tax credits for good behavior won't raise the revenues needed to improve public transportation.
- Nippers
April 8, 2008 at 9:43am
There should be no surprise here. It's difficult in democracies in general, and this country in particular, to rally people to difficult adjustments for problems that they can somehow put "over there" or "in the future." Democracy encourages people to act in narrow self-interest.
Going after issues like this requires leadership and legislation at the Federal level, to provide both incentive and cover for local initiatives. It is admirable - and to me a bit unexpected - that states and municipalities are stepping up to the degree the are (witness the California carbon standards for cars), but at the end of the day, unless the President and a majority of Congress are willing to lead, even at some risk to their popularity, local initiatives will run into the kind of buzz-saw that prop 87 did.
- sdemuth
April 8, 2008 at 10:10am
It's depressingly frustrating and funny that a vast majority of people think driving your car around is equated with a God-given right ensured by the Constitution in this country. Quite frankly, the Mayor should have just signed the bill and passed it instead of letting folks outside of Manhattan dictate the fees to drive in to NYC. I mean driving from DC to NYC isn't cheap by car. You factor in the 4 hours, dealing with traffic, toll fees a the bridges and tunnels and then le pièce de résistance is the cost of gas at those union operated filling stations in New Jersey. So these folks already pay fees to drive into Manhattan.
Quite frankly, you'd have to be elitist and insane to think you can drive your car into Manhattan and find a parking space for free when you don't pay property taxes to maintain infrastructure to begin with.
Bloomberg should just hike all the toll fees then. If people want to drive into Manhattan they pay for the privelege.
As to whether or not Federal action could have been better, I'd have to say don't count on Congress unless you have a President that will back it up with his / her weight. The prior time that CAFE standards were being debated, the auto, oil and libertarian think tanks and lobbyists came out with disingenuous commercials that implied the government would take away your pollution spewing SUV that you use to pick up groceries in 3 miles away. When in reality it affected future manufactured cars not the shit-heap in your driveway.
Until the next President pushes for a National Green Initiative on a scale with the space race challenging Americans to give up some things for the betterment of all Americans, our environment, the natural environment and all the species that get short shrift in our march towards progress.
- singlespeed
April 8, 2008 at 10:48am
I'm looking into finding the chain the revolutionaries used to block the Hudson during the Revolutionary War, and in an act of guerilla-ness, string it along 60th st, legislature or not!
Tax cars in NYC! Clueless Clowns with their sense of entitlement. TAX TAX TAX you to oblivion, take the train, take the subway, get out of your car, which you drive by yourself to the city!
Give me Congestion Pricing, or Give Me Death!
- tkozal
April 8, 2008 at 12:34pm
Spare me from "reform-minded" politicians and environmental correctness. Any of you folks live in NY? Congestion pricing, as laid out in Bloomberg's nonsensical, good-for-rich-folks "plan," was going to be a mess. The technical feasibility was dubious, and there's no way it can be implemented fairly. The major impact would have been on small businesses and on lower- and middle-class people in Manhattan and in the other 4 boroughs, to say nothing of the Interstate Commerce Clause issues raised by Corzine as it affected New Jersey.
Tha't not even getting into the very likely pollution problems likely in neighborhoods outside the congestion pricing area as people would've been looking for parking before getting onto mass transit for their extra-crowded trips on subways and busses below 60th St.
And of course, as always with these stupid, anti-people plans, there's no, given past MTA (that's our unfriendly mass transit bosses for those of you who don't live here) was gonna use that $350 million from the feds to "improve" the trains and busses. They haven't in the past -- why would they start now? To say nothing of the fact that in this context $350 million is chump change...
Look at London: the impact was overwhelmingly negative for businesses serving normal people: 22% drops for retail chains and 57% for independent stores. Expensive places did fine.
Bloomberg is better than Giuliani -- anyone woud've been. But he has this arrogant rich man's approach to government and may be more in bed with our gentrifivation-minded real estate overlords than previous mayors.
- LISAH
April 8, 2008 at 4:09pm
achester99, the method is one of chief reasons that I as a New Yorker vehemently opposed this measure.
No new tolls were planned and in fact the method of collection was avoided in all discussions of PlaNYC. What vague answer we could get was that "enforcement" of the Congestion Pricing would be managed through a combination of in-car transmitting (using a new version of the EZPass toll transmitters) and cameras placed all over the city below 60th Street. What Green advocates constantly fail to address is the real issue of how a particular green policy may impact our civil liberties.
In some European countries green advocates have supported measures that would impose driving consumption taxing, where all cars were mandated to have tracking systems and citizens would then be taxed at different rates depending on how much/where they were driving. This directly conflicts with fundamental American liberties, and moves in this direction should be seen with the same levels of concern as the National ID card or requiring a passport to cross state lines.
- erkade
April 8, 2008 at 4:35pm
Not sure how I feel about the issue either way. On one hand, something really needs to be done about the ridiculous traffic in the city. On the other, I'm always one for the free hand of the market (gas prices up, traffic slow = less cars as more people take subway).
London's congestion pricing model really hasn't changed much. It's just an extra tax on the working class (most of the rich live in London/NY proper anyway and don't need to drive). Aren't they up to approx. $50/day per car? Yet there are still traffic problems.
As for the technical aspects, there wouldn't be giant gates at 60th. It'd be E-Z pass sensors throughout the metered area. You'd be charged once a day as soon as your car passes these sensors. Not too hard for today's technology.
- jwl2672
April 8, 2008 at 5:50pm
On a somewhat related note, I just have to vent about the MTA absolutely being THE WORST quasi-public corporation in the US. They've mismanaged the subway system in the extreme. London has nice clean modern trains on the Tube. Paris has the same in the Metro. NY's system is still circa 1880.
Where are the automatically driven trains? The electronic timetables telling us when the next train is arriving? Up until 2 years ago, the speakers were still uttering garbled jibberish. I've heard that the MTA has borrowed so much money that revenue from fares is barely enough to cover salaries and the interest on the loans they've taken out. Forget buying new trains or new systems. And all the while, the damned transit union is milking them for as much money as they can, anytime there is a bare surplus.
We can all forget about the new WTC station. Or the Second Avenue line. Pipe dreams.
Mark my words, this will all come to a head in the next 10 or 15 years. When Tokyo implements its levitating robotic trains and we're still in cattle cars, heads will eventually roll.
- jwl2672
April 8, 2008 at 5:55pm