Student journalists should only take stances which they are qualified to defend—there’s a stance for you.
But now that we’re on the subject of the proposed congestion pricing plan for New York City, here are a few more words from the hip.
Opposing the pricing plan by suggesting that it would create a regressive tax for low-income families that “would still most likely do so by car,” as one Statesman writer wrote, is not an opposition to Bloomberg’s method, it is resistance to his goal. That is, if the plans for the funds specify a large supply of express buses to the outer boroughs (367 new buses, actually), and one’s response is that commuters will either pay the toll or park outside the pricing zones, that response is not that the pricing plan is a worthless venture, but that commuters are either reluctant to change their travel habits or ignorant to mass transit’s benefits.
Commuters unwilling to use public transportation in a city with the third largest population density in the country are not only selfishly dismissing to the societal benefits of increased mass transit, but are seemingly ignorant to the opportunity for a cheaper, faster and more relaxed commute.
The critiques of Bloomberg’s plans are unfounded. Since a similar plan was introduced in London in 2003, emissions of the principle greenhouse gas, carbon-dioxide, decreased an exciting 15% percent. Vehicle speeds in their business district have increased 37%. In talks about the plan, the expense of congestion has been much ignored in regards to the current system; estimates at the cost of shipping delays, service tie-ups, and wasted fuel are as high as $13 billion annually.
But even if all the evidence didn’t point towards a successful launch, and even if all the evidence didn’t suggest the plan would be a fiscal success ($4.5 billion in investible capital over five years), opponents of the pricing plan would be acting, at best, picky, and more likely, shallow and self-absorbed.
Anyone with even a remote historical perspective of the greatest city in the world is well aware of the link between an effective mass transit system and New York’s fiscal and cultural prosperity. The recent defeat of Bloomberg’s plan is just a win for a 66-year-old Assembly Speaker, and a squandered opportunity for a more efficient city, cleaner air and forward thinking.
The Stony Brook Press
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I wrote an op-ed in opposition to Congestion Pricing last year, which was published in the Stony Brook Independent: http://www.sbindependent.org/node/1875
However, many of my arguments were not the ones commonly heard in the media or commonly repeated by the outer-borough positions which championed the anti-congestion pricing line.
In essence, comparing London and New York is like comparing apples and oranges. The layout and historical development of the two cities is remarkably different, which leads to a rapidly different probability of success for congestion pricing. London, for one thing, does not have the physical barriers that New York has, in long rivers that separate Manhattan (where traffic is centered) from the outer boroughs and the suburbs on all sides. And yet, the way the road (and transit) system is set up in New York is very Manhattan-centric. To head from Long Island to New Jersey or vice versa necessitates a drive through Manhattan, unless one is willing to go through the BQE, Verrazzano Bridge, Staten Island, and one of the Staten Island-NJ crossings.
Additionally, the outer boroughs are not well-served by public transportation of any time. And before one makes the argument that the monies raised via congestion pricing would go towards implementing mass-transit improvements, I ask: what improvements were actually proposed? What plan did Bloomberg actually present, other than the Second Avenue Subway (work on which has begun without congestion pricing, after 70+ years of planning), and the much talked-about extension of the 7 line to the far west side of Manhattan? New York City has an entire borough that is not connected to the rest of the subway system (Staten Island), and its second largest borough in population (and largest in land size), Queens, is very inadequately covered with subway service, which does not reach almost any part of Eastern Queens.
Service to the suburbs is not much better, as Stony Brook students who take the LIRR are aware. Having commuted to Stony Brook over the years both by train and by car, I can attest that during non-rush hour periods, it is far quicker to drive than to take mass transit, to get to or from Stony Brook to Queens or Brooklyn. Public transportation should be a viable alternative, not an inconvenience.
Other cities around the world, including London, have managed to build elaborate transit systems (bus, subway, light rail, commuter rail, tram, trolley, etc.) without the aid of congestion pricing. Look at the transit systems in such cities as London, Paris, Moscow, Athens, Madrid, Berlin, Barcelona, Tokyo. These are systems that truly reach most parts of their respective metropolitan areas, are for the most part inexpensive (except for London), and which are undergoing continuous rapid expansion. Athens built an entire three-line system in just about one decade, and is continuing to expand the system, including addition of a fourth line, to this day. Though part of that project is funded by the EU, most of it is funded by the Greek government, in a country that is among the middle of the pack in terms of wealth within the EU.
Before I conclude my rant, let me point out that for many, many decades, politicians in the city and state and honchos in the MTA have done nothing to make any substantial improvements to the region’s transit system. If anything, New York City is one of a very few cities which has seen its transit system truncated instead of expanded, as several elevated train lines were torn down up until fairly recently (1980) while trolley networks were abolished before most of us (or our parents) were even born. These developments seem to point towards a city that was car-centric in its development, and yet, numerous road construction projects (admittedly some of which were ill-advised, but not all) were proposed, some even begun, but never completed, all leading to a road network that is just as inadequate as the transit network for the amount of people it needs to serve on a daily basis.
One last point I’ll make about congestion pricing is that the elitist way in which politicians like Bloomberg has presented the plan is a major turn-off. The plan was touted as beneficial for the environment, but I don’t see how this would be the case when, rather than preventing traffic, congestion pricing would in many cases redirect traffic to other parts of the city that would not be within the congestion zone. Many of these areas, incidentally, are low-income areas with high incidence rates of asthma and other respiratory afflictions that would undoubtedly be exacerbated by the increased traffic and pollution congestion pricing would cause in their neighborhoods, as traffic is redirected from midtown and downtown Manhattan. The plan also seems to assume that only Manhattan suffers from traffic woes (and the pollution that results from it), when the outer boroughs have traffic problems that in many cases rival those of Manhattan. Don’t believe me? Take a drive onto the LIE, Van Wyck, BQE, Gowanus, Staten Island Expressway, Cross-Bronx Expressway, Major Deegan, Bruckner Expressway, Belt Parkway, or Jackie Robinson Parkway or through crowded local roads like Main Street in Flushing during most hours of the day, and surely your opinion will change in short order.
I do not believe it is in the interests of most New Yorkers to support congestion pricing. After all, changing the rules, the economics, means many people will have to make a decision whether to spend more money on tolls or make an adjustment in their commute. You have to give people something in order to make them give it up. The so-called promise of a better, faster, commute and some sort of cost-savings is not persuasive given that most of the government in New York City and State is either incompetent, lazy, or out of touch with the people. We have little to no assurance that after the tolls are raised (the first and the easiest thing to do), everything else that needs to be done for conjestion pricing to work (whatever that means) will actually get done. For all we know, nothing else will get done, and the result will be the flight of middle to upper class residents. Those are some things that must be thought through, and we need to know that it is being thought through.