Rich Kassel's Blog
Congestion Pricing enters the stretch
March 6, 2008
Posted by Rich Kassel in Curbing Pollution , Environmental Justice , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Coming to work today, I was enraptured, as I often am, by the sights and sounds of this great city of New York.
On my subway ride, a group of mariachi singers played a few numbers for tips, a local version of Mexico City’s Plaza Garibaldi. Walking up Sixth Avenue, the guys at Rafiqi's food stand were busy grilling their gyros to get ready for the lunchtime rush, while a mom was pushing her stroller, talking on the phone, and listening to her Ipod all at the same time. When I looked uptown, the Empire State Building was gleaming amidst an intensely blue sky that we get when the air is brisk.
What an amazing city, I thought.
Now at work, my to-do list is all about how to ensure that the City is ready for the next million people who will call it home. That the region is ready for the next three million people who will live in the region and come into the City for work or their play. That the transit system will be ready for the twenty percent increase in ridership that these new people will represent.
It’s a great time to be thinking about all of this—and a critical time. Here’s why:
By March 31, the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature have to act on legislative proposals to create a congestion pricing for the central business district of Manhattan. The leading proposal would charge drivers and taxi riders south of 60th Street, and would generate roughly $500 million per year, which would generate roughly $6 billion in bond revenue for the region’s transit system over the next five years, if it is all dedicated to the system’s capital rebuilding and expansion projects (rather than operating costs). For more on the details of the congestion pricing plan, read my article over at Gotham Gazette.
These transit investments—and the congestion pricing plan that will help fund them—are critical to reducing congestion and improving air quality now—and they are equally critical to preparing the City and the region for all these new people.
Earlier this week, I listened, as MTA chief Lee Sander outlined a 40-year vision for the region in his first “State of the MTA” speech.
He answered the critics who have been asking what transit improvements could be expected in the near term, thanks to congestion pricing, when he said:
“In the Bronx, congestion pricing will fund more frequent service on the 1 train and three new express bus routes.
“In Brooklyn, congestion pricing will create three new bus routes and increase the frequency of service on four routes. F trains will run more frequently, and the C train will be extended to a 10-car train from an 8-car train.
“In Queens, it will immediately increase service on the E and F lines before and after rush hour. Congestion pricing will also underwrite six new bus routes and increase the frequency of service on 13 routes.
“In Staten Island, congestion pricing will increase service on most of the express bus routes serving the borough.
“In Manhattan, congestion pricing will increase the frequency of 16 bus routes and improve service on the 1, C, E and F trains.
“Congestion pricing will also enable us to implement several transformative improvements in the regional transportation network.
“New York City Transit will install Communications-Based Train Control on the No. 7 and Queens Boulevard / Hillside Avenue subway lines – which are the primary transit corridors in Queens…
“The congestion pricing funding will also enable us to begin the next phase of [building the] Second Avenue [Subway], bring Metro-North into Penn Station and improve the LIRR Atlantic Avenue Branch.”
If you aren’t a New Yorker, all of the above is probably too detailed to have much meaning. But if you are a New Yorker, you can easily see that straphangers throughout the City will benefit with more service—and that means more elbow room on their morning commutes.
And, the MTA speech also covered a range of longer-term investments that would add many miles of new subway, bus and rail lines throughout the region to meet the commuting and travel needs of millions of future New Yorkers.
The ides of March will soon be on us, and with the March 31 deadline approaching, it’s time for all of our City and State leaders to take a stand—to stand up for better transit in the City and region now—and for funding the long-term investment needs of the region’s transit network for years to come, by supporting the congestion pricing plan.
Note to Switchboard readers: Stay tuned for more posts on congestion pricing as it moves towards the March 31 deadline. I’ll be blogging regularly on the details of the debate in the days and weeks to come.
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- Rich Kassel
- Senior Attorney and Director, Clean Fuels and Vehicles Project
- New York City
- I came to NRDC in 1991 on a three-year grant, and never left. Over the...
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