PlanNYC unveiled by Mayor Bloomberg this past
earth day contained 127 initiatives. One of
the most interesting-and certainly the one that
has received the most attention-was found in
the transportation section and is called Congestion
Pricing.
In the most simplistic terms Congestion Pricing is the notion that you can relieve automobile congestion in NYC by charging cars and trucks to enter Manhattan during commercial hours.
What should we do? Let's start by blaming Canada.
Or specifically a Canadian born economist named
William Vickery who while a professor at Columbia
University, came up with the idea of using economic
incentives to effect social behavior. To him
we all owe a great debt, and some of us might
soon also be owing him a smaller debt starting
at $8 a day for cars and $21 for trucks to enter
or leave Manhattan south of 86th street and
$4 for cars that start their trips in the zone.
The good news about Congestion Pricing is that a long overdue and necessary conversation about reducing automobile use in New York is finally taking place.
The bad news however, is that the plan as presented is not the right plan for New York.
Most Politicians have called the mayor's Congestion
Pricing plan bold and visionary except for the
one that counts, Speaker of the NY State Assembly
Sheldon Silver. Apparently NYC needs Albany's
permission to relieve congestion. Speaker Silver
said that he wants to talk to people about it.
He has admittedly taken a lot of heat for not
reflexively following the herd mentality of
his colleagues by suggesting that congestion
pricing is not something that we should rush
into without a serious discussion.
Silver may be talking about it, but he's certainly
not involving the public in the conversation.
This is unfortunate as there is a lot to talk
about. The plan, which represents the biggest
change to NYC streets since the removal of our
beloved Trolley system is being sold simplistically
as "you are either for it or against it"
when a productive public conversation, could
be, well, so much more productive.
Everyone seems to be behind the mayor's plan.
The press, Good government groups, Even the
Drum Major Institute, defenders of the middle
class. Problem is, this isn't really the Mayors
plan.
The plan that is widely credited as the mayor's
plan is actually the plan of the New York City
Partnership, a group that represents the city's
most powerfully business interests. The lens
that the plan uses for making the argument about
congestion pricing is an economic one. The Partnership
for New York City has spent hundreds of thousands
of dollars on a report to determine that congestion
is bad in NYC, and costs business money. Then,
they hired an engineering firm who estimated
the cost of congestion at about 13 billion dollars
a year. While there is nothing wrong with looking
at things through an economic lens, money has
been known to obfuscate vision.
Not surprising their solution requires a multi-hundred
million dollar engineering infrastructure for
"a contractor yet to be determined"
and also requires ringing the city with a network
of surveillance cameras.
While the partnerships report is well intentioned,
it also contains vague financial categories
and some assumptions that we're not so sure
about, that massive proposed change is being
based on which reminded us of something else
professor Vickery had said.
"Much of the conventional economic wisdom
prevailing in financial circles, largely subscribed
to as a basis for government policy and widely
accepted by the media and the public, is based
on incomplete analysis, counter factual assumptions,
and false analogy."
At Citystreets our focus is a little more human,
literally. What keeps up at night is worrying
about pedestrian safety, which we see as a public
health threat. We think the fact that 14,000
pedestrians are hit and injured by drivers of
cars and trucks and about 150 killed every year
is a more pressing "transportation"
problem that needs to be addressed than the
time it takes to cross town in a car. We also
don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of
dollars to model the cost of this carnage and
tell you the public health cost is significantly
larger than the cost of congestion, both in
real dollars and quality of lives. We also are
wary of a plan that seeks to speed up cars in
Manhattan without first thinking about how this
will effect pedestrian safety and the accompanying
public health issues around vehicle and pedestrian
collisions.
What the mayor has added to the plan, and why he can claim it as his own, is the formation of a transit financing authority. Called the Sustainable Mobility And Regional Transportation Authority, it is literally SMART. Considering planNYC contains 50 billion dollars in transportation capital needs, SMART is a smart way to have a funding source so that the city can issue bonds to pay for the proposed transit improvements.
What is also smart is how the mayor talks about
the plan. He speaks with passion and with intelligence
and urgency. He talks about congestion pricing
as a way to clear the air. We're 100% with the
mayor and we want to see less cars in our city
and breathe cleaner air too. Precisely why,
we feel the need to clear the air about this
plan. Below are thoughts, suggestions, questions
and insights based an analysis of the Congestion
Pricing plan as it exists today and years of
thinking about transportation in urban environments,
specifically NYC.
How will we know if the plan is going to
accomplish what it promises if we don't know
what it's goals are?
Our initial criticism of the plan and one that we find deeply troubling is that the plan contains no strategic goals for vehicle reduction, emission reduction, or pedestrian safety. Except for an anecdotal comparison of the results in London there are also no estimates for the amount of congestion the plan will mitigate nor are there any estimates for the reduction of vehicle emissions. We feel that not to have a benchmark is unacceptable and propose establishing the following benchmarks.
Set clear goals for the decrease in number
of cars coming into NYC. Our opinion on
this is that the time for incrementalism is
over. If the point is to reduce congestion in
New York, lets get down to it and do it. If
it's not, then find another less complicated
funding source for capital projects. If we are
finally talking about reducing cars, let's also
be honest and admit that allowing a million
cars into Manhattan has been a decades long
mistake and that it's too many cars. While we're
at it let's also acknowledge that Manhattan
is rich in public transit options which means
many of these car trips are unnecessary and
lets establish a number that we use a goal to
change the relationships of our streets so that
the millions of people that don't travel into
Manhattan by automobile can be properly accommodated.
Set clear goals for reduction in emissions.
If the point is to clear the air. Let's clear
it. Let's build a mechanism into the plan that
works to not just reduce vehicles but reduces
the most polluting vehicles from our streets.
Set goal for reduction of pedestrian fatalities
and injuries. We believe the said goal we
should be working toward is zero pedestrian's
deaths and injuries caused by motor vehicles.
We have a long way to go and if the goal is
to speed up cars on our streets we need to be
thinking about the negative effects a plan to
speed up cars and trucks can have on pedestrians
and take steps to address this.
Set goal for reduction of heavy and large
Trucks. Since we are talking about limiting
vehicles that come into the city. Let's also
admit that certain vehicles should never be
in the Manhattan. Tractor-trailers come to mind.
There should be a plan to reduce these vehicles
on our streets. Preferably to zero.
Only in New York. That means NYC is not like
any other place in the world. So why is our Congestion
Plan trying to copy London's?
The NYC plan is modeled in many ways after the London plan so a discussion within that context seems appropriate.
Conceptually we don't like a plan that merely
copies what London has done. London and NYC
are competitors and we think we need to lead
and not follow. We want a plan that London and
the rest of the world will want to copy–and
the world is watching. This is not that plan.
On a more practical level, the obvious difference
between London and New York that the plan doesn't
account for is that Manhattan is an island while
London isn't. This is actually important as
the obvious places to charge people to enter
an island is at the place they enter the island
i.e. bridges and tunnels.
And the plan that is being suggested requires
an engineering investment in the hundreds of
millions of dollars and the building of build
a big-brother type of network with the capabilities
of monitoring all vehicles that enter the congestion
pricing zone. While this makes sense for London,
what makes sense for New York is to simply add
high-speed EZ Pass Tolls to the East River Crossings
that don't have them and then adjust the charges
to achieve the desired goals.
When I asked one of the contributors to the
partnership plan why it opted for a big brother
surveillance system instead of putting tolls
on the East River bridges I was informed that
the partnership moved to this system not because
it was the "best solution" but because
it was the one that was politically feasible
and the thinking was that putting charging points
on the bridge was a political non starter with
residents of Brooklyn and Queens.
We happen to believe that the residents of
Queens and Brooklyn are as sick of congestion
as everyone else in this city and are smart
enough to know that they are being charged to
enter Manhattan whether the point of payment
is at a bridge or an exit off the FDR, or whether
you call them charges or tolls. We also happen
to believe that the with EZ pass this is much
simpler than it might have been previously.
It's a mistake to take this option off the table.
