Improve Transit Before Congestion Pricing
There are 24 transportation proposals in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plaNYC, but one is getting all the attention: a pilot program to test congestion pricing.
The political battle is heating up over whether to impose a charge on motorists both to discourage driving in car-clogged Manhattan and to yield the money needed for big-ticket investments like the Second Avenue Subway and East Side Access. The plan's transportation list also features smaller, less expensive improvements that could and should be implemented now, without waiting for congestion pricing.
We Have The Technology, But…
According to his own plans, the mayor has about two years to put congestion pricing in place. In all likelihood, it will take even longer - for technological reasons as well as political ones. The mayor's plan is modeled on London's geographic system: Vehicles entering the central zone during designated business hours must pay a flat fee. The proposal sounds simple: Charge every car $8 and every truck $21 for coming into Manhattan south of 86th Street between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on weekdays. But first, all river crossings, including those that are now free, and all southbound avenues at 86th Street, will have to be equipped with EZ-Pass readers. Cameras will have to be installed to find and fine violators, as in London.
And a number of details, while sensible, will complicate implementation:
-- Drivers will be credited for tolls paid at bridges and tunnels to and from Manhattan, requiring a new, system to reconcile fees collected by various charging entities, including the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
--Since moving a vehicle already within the zone will incur only half the fee, sensors and cameras will have to be installed throughout the business district, not just at the boundaries.
--Because cars moved for alternate-side-of-the-street parking will not be subject to the charge, the system must be able to distinguish among types of vehicle movements and trips.
--Many vehicles, including emergency vehicles, buses, taxis and cars with handicapped license plates - will be exempt from the charge, meaning the system will need to be able to recognize them.
All of this is technologically feasible. But information technology projects nearly always exceed the time and money budgeted by proponents.
Money for Transit
The city needs $2.7 billion for the first two phases of the Second Avenue Subway, $2 billion to connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, and $175 million to reopen the defunct rail line along Staten Island's North Shore. Another $10 billion is needed to bring subway infrastructure and roads and bridges to a state of good repair.
The administration is anticipating state and federal contributions, but congestion pricing would be the most important local source of funds. Without congestion pricing, argues the mayor, the big projects cannot be built, nor is there money to complete repairs to existing transportation infrastructure anytime soon.
But Will It Reduce Traffic?
To get off the ground politically, congestion pricing cannot be seen as just a new source of revenue. New Yorkers have to believe that it will help reduce traffic.
The administration expects congestion pricing to decrease vehicles entering Manhattan by 6 percent and increase speeds within the charging zone by 7 percent. In other words, the traffic improvement in Manhattan would be modest.
However, the program will surely reduce congestion in neighborhoods like Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City that have long suffered from through-traffic. The different costs for the various East River crossings have demonstrated for decades that tolls do affect driver behavior. The free Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Queensboro bridges, as well as their feeder roads, are clogged, while traffic flows more smoothly to and through the tolled tunnels. The mayor's proposal would correct this pricing irrationality by crediting drivers for the cost of their tolls. The price for a round-trip using E-ZPass through a tolled East River crossing is $8-exactly the same as the automobile congestion charge proposed for the pilot.
Many New Yorkers will welcome the news that the administration plans to step up traffic enforcement. In addition, The administration's plan to install Muni-Meters (modern, credit-card-friendly parking meters) should ease traffic problems related to curbside parking in business districts outside Manhattan. There are projects to expand ferry service and promote cycling.
But one of the most important potential reforms has gone unmentioned-doing something about the excessive amount of free parking in the city, especially for government employees. Because they often get unlimited free parking at a wide range of designated areas, government employees drive to work in the Manhattan central business district at just about twice the rate (27 percent versus 14 percent) of private-sector employees. To demonstrate its commitment to reducing congestion, the Bloomberg administration should eliminate free parking privileges for city employees-and urge other employers to do the same.
Make The Improvements Now
But the single most important thing the mayor can do to convince New Yorkers to give his congestion-pricing pilot a shot is to implement transportation improvements first. London increased bus service before implementing congestion pricing - and that was one of the keys to London's success.
In his "A Greener, Greater New York" speech, the mayor announced that transportation upgrades for underserved areas would begin right away, and plaNYC features a chart of improvements for 22 neighborhoods with concentrations of Manhattan-bound drivers. These include adding bus routes (College Point, Jackson Heights and Woodside/Sunnyside), adjusting bus routes (Bay Ridge, Canarsie and Cambria Heights), improving connections between bus and subways (15 of the 22 neighborhoods, including Co-op City, Soundview and Flatlands), changing traffic signals to favor buses (Schuylerville, Flatbush and Sheepshead Bay), and improving access to subway and rail stations (Clinton Hill, Kensington and South Ozone Park).
Starting these improvements now-transportation services that should already exist - will correct a long-standing wrong and make Mayor Bloomberg's ambitious vision more achievable.
Hope Cohen is deputy director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Rethinking Development.
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Taking on the Traffic
There are powerful economic reasons for adopting Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing policies. Thirty five years ago, I wrote a plan for the Lindsay administration that included tolls across the East and Harlem rivers. But to avoid the political heat of instituting tolls, our congressional leaders proposed to meet federal Clean Air Act's requirements to reduce auto use by making a serious commitment to capital financing for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. However, the investment of $40 billion in transit has demonstrated that transit improvements alone do not sufficiently curb auto use.
Now, 35 years later, we finally have a mayor with the insight and guts to take on the "elephant in the room" -- our failure to charge drivers more than a fraction of the costs they impose by using their cars. Motorists who gripe about raising their cost to drive don't appear to realize that car and truck travel create huge public costs-lost productivity from congestion, traffic accident costs not covered by insurance, environmental damage, air and water pollution and noise.
This is not trivial. In the New York metropolitan area, the costs related to cars and trucks total more than $40 billion annually. Every time someone drives into Manhattan it costs the rest of us $30.
The addition of the million more residents and 750,000 more workers envisioned by plaNYC will increase car and truck use by 2 million trips a day in New York City and add millions of daily riders to our subway system. Accommodating this growth will take billions of dollars of investment. It will cost even more if we are to meet the mayor's goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent.
At the same time, auto-centric mega-development like Gateway Center and Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and the Bronx Terminal Market will further clog our roads and subways. New York can do better. The plan that I proposed 35 years ago recommended creating what we then called "urban activity centers." These were to be new communities within New York City where people could live, work, shop and play within walking distance without having to drive or even depending on transit. Cobble Hill in Brooklyn is such a community. Bloomberg's plaNYC overlooks this approach to real sustainability.
The other key to a successful plaNYC is congestion pricing. While the system the administration has proposed is unnecessarily complex and costly, those features are negotiable. What is important is that we finally have a mayor with the vision and persuasiveness to embolden timid elected officials to see the true equity of congestion pricing and give it a try. This took great courage.
Motorists cannot defend getting a free ride into Manhattan and imposing huge costs on everyone else, including other drivers stuck in traffic. Congestion pricing is the only fair way to level the playing field. It is also one of the few ways left to secure funding to expand and improve public transit.
Brian Ketcham is a traffic engineer who lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
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The High Costs of Driving - and Parking
(Robert) Mosesian in its ambitious bid to establish a new transit financing authority, and (Jane) Jacobsian in its attention to the pedestrian and transit taking majority, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's sweeping transportation plan represents a welcome full frontal attack on traffic congestion and all of its attendant ills. Unfortunately, much of it depends on the state legislature. And so the mayor should take a closer look at something he can control: where New Yorkers park and how much they pay to park there.
Traffic ills -- health, economic and environmental -- are poised to get much worse. In addition to the much publicized influx of population and tourists and their attendant travel needs, the city is facing an estimated 83 percent increase in truck traffic (by 2020 over 1998 levels) and a torrent of new traffic unleashed by a bevy of major development projects like Atlantic Yards.
Despite the resurrection of Robert Moses' ambition, neither the mayor nor anybody in their right mind is proposing that we solve the problem with new roadways. The human and financial costs are too great, and new roads, we have long understood, just invite more driving.
Leaving Cars Behind
The wiser approach is to make better use of the street space we already have by switching car trips to methods of travel that make better use of our limited space. This "mode shift" forms the bedrock of the mayor's 16 green transportation initiatives. To make alternatives to the private car more appealing, the mayor wants to improve and expand bus service, enhance pedestrian access to transit stations and promote cycling with more paths and bike parking.
But two of the 16 initiatives hold by far the most potential to solve New York City's transportation problem: a $50 billion transit expansion program and a London-style congestion pricing system to help pay for it.
Congestion pricing, in addition to raising $400 million per year for the transit expansion program, would yield immediate transit benefits just by clearing away many of the cars that currently slow city buses. And by forcing drivers- especially city employees who currently drive at twice the rate as everyone else- to switch to subways and buses, the plan would significantly strengthen the political constituency for further transit improvements.
Even for the 5 percent of outer borough workers who currently drive to Manhattan (the other 95 percent take transit or drive elsewhere), congestion pricing holds benefits. Their commutes will shorten markedly, and all New Yorkers will benefit from cleaner air and less health eroding traffic.
As much sense as congestion pricing makes, its success is far from secure. For congestion pricing, and the long list of transit projects it would fund, to become reality, it must first gain the approval of a gauntlet of state legislators who with a nudge from the powerful parking and automobile lobbies could easily block it.
The Lure Of The Parking Space
Unless Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff are content to leave their legacy in the hands of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, they should pursue three parking policy reforms that would, like congestion pricing, reduce traffic and generate millions for transportation and street improvements. Unlike congestion pricing, these reforms do not require the approval of the state legislature.
Most Manhattan-bound drivers (in pdf) drive out of choice, not necessity. A recent Schaller Consulting study uncovered the reason why: Most drivers do not pay for parking. As any transportation expert will tell you, the carrot of free parking is too irresistible for drivers to refuse, even when they have decent transit options.
Government workers have their coveted (and often counterfeit) placards, and all drivers have access to a bounty of free and $1.50 per hour spaces, even if they have to circle the block for 40 minutes to find one. Because under-priced spots along the curb are always full, cruising for parking accounts for up to 45 percent of all traffic on city streets.
Three steps, used in other big cities, would enable the mayor to redress root causes of traffic congestion while generating a windfall to fund street improvements:
--Increasing the price for metered parking to a level that frees up spaces and reduces cruising;
--Charging residents for permits that would give them preferences for parking on public streets;
--Cleaning up the rampant misuse and abuse of city issued parking permits.
With a new generation of transit improvements funded by congestion pricing, Bloomberg and Doctoroff are poised to move mountains, if only they can move Albany. As a hedge, they should tackle what they can clearly control: New York City's broken parking policy.
Paul Steely White is executive director of Transportation Alternatives.
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