Seen in the New York Times:
Democratic members of the State Assembly held one final meeting to debate the merits of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan and found overwhelming and persistent opposition. The plan would have charged drivers $8 to enter a congestion zone in Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak hours.[...]
“The congestion pricing bill did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference, and will not be on the floor of the Assembly,” Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, said after the meeting.
The plan’s collapse was a severe blow to Mr. Bloomberg’s environmental agenda and political legacy. The mayor introduced his plan a year ago as the signature proposal of a 127-item program for sustainable city growth that helped raise his national profile. Without approval from Albany, the city now stands to lose about $354 million worth of federal money that would have financed the system for collecting the fee and helped to pay for new bus routes and other traffic mitigation measures.
I realize that the congestion plan pricing was extremely unpopular among non-Manhattanites who regularly drive into the city…but wasn’t that part of the point? Traffic in the City is mind-boggling, and one can get high just thinking of the level of emissions spewed by vehicles sitting in city traffic.
In short, folks heading into the City need to make greater use of public transportation…and public transportation needs to be able to support that level of demand.
If a few folks would have been obliged to pay a few bucks for the privilege of driving into the city (to avoid associating with the hoi-polloi on the trains), to help fund those enhancements…well so be it.
(And before anyone asks, yes, I do go into the City rather frequently. Normally I take the train in, unless my wife is coming with for some reason. Then we drive, since public transit isn’t particularly friendly towards mobility-limited folks….another squeaky wheel that gobs of financial grease could be used to address.)
