Rich Kassel's Blog
Congestion Pricing Update: Yesterday in Albany, and What's Next?
March 12, 2008
Posted by Rich Kassel in Curbing Pollution , Environmental Justice , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment , U.S. Law and Policy
So everything is now up in the air. Governor Elliot Spitzer just resigned a moment ago, and Lieutenant Governor David Paterson is preparing to be New York’s 55th Governor.
Governor-to-be Paterson is a well-liked, smart public official, with a long resume of support for environmental issues, especially in the energy area. Hopefully, he’ll tackle the MTA’s proposed $29.5 billion, 2008-2013 capital plan and congestion pricing right away as an opportunity to make his mark in the Governor’s mansion. Given the March 31 deadline for a vote (and the $353 million in federal funds that New York will lose if the vote is delayed), we certainly hope that the transition does not delay New York’s decisions on the MTA capital plan and the congestion pricing proposal.
Yesterday, I was in Albany to talk to legislators about the MTA plan and congestion pricing. It was a surreal day to be in Albany, given everything that had been going on. Ironically, it was also a good day to talk to legislators and staff. Many were waiting for news that never came, which meant that many had extra time to talk to our group about the MTA’s proposed capital plan and the role that congestion pricing would play in fully funding this critical program.
We had an extremely diverse group walking the halls, which demonstrates the wide support for congestion pricing in the business, labor and civic communities. I spent the day with allies from the General Contractors Association, the New York State Laborers Union, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the NYPIRG/Straphangers Campaign, the Regional Plan Association, and others. It’s not every day that the State’s contractors, construction workers and NRDC lobby together, and policy-makers usually take note of unusual, diverse coalitions like this one.
Mostly, we focused on the Assembly members who are either opposed or undecided about congestion pricing. So, as you can imagine, we had many conversations about broad policy implications of changing the economics of driving to encourage more transit use, lower congestion, improve air quality and reduce global warming pollution.
But, at the heart of their concerns are questions about whether the MTA plan will really result in added transit benefits for their constituents, once congestion pricing is in place. They’ve been in Albany a long time—and they have seen, far too often, promises of services that never quite materialize. So, we heard over and over again the request for more, detailed information about the specific transit benefits that their constituents would receive.
After seventeen years of NRDC advocacy, I don’t hear this as ironclad opposition—instead, I felt that many members wanted to support the MTA plan. And, I felt that they were open to congestion pricing as a financing mechanism, so long as they received enough assurance that their constituents would benefit from the new transit investments. That seems reasonable to me, since their jobs rightly depend on delivering better services to their constituents.
So, one of our tasks, as lobbyists, is to get them that information, as quickly and as accurately as possible. Indeed, thanks to our friends at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, much of that information has now been collected. Legislators seemed really appreciative when Kate Slevin, Tri-State’s indefatigable executive director, gave them district-specific information about commuting patterns and proposed transit investments.
Another key issue that we addressed was a concern about whether the program was regressive, i.e., a tax on poor and working people. If there was one benefit to our lobbying, it was making the case that this issue is a canard, at best. In office after office, we explained to legislators that only 3 – 5 percent of their constituents actually drove into the central business district of Manhattan during business hours (i.e., would be charged under the new system). And, that these are drivers who can already afford the $40-50/day parking fees that midtown and downtown parking garages already charge.
In other words, their lower-income and middle-income constituents already take the subway, train or bus to work, and it’s their upper income constituents are the ones who drive to midtown and park during the day.
So, we explained how the 95-97 percent of their constituents who take transit to work would receive the transit benefits of the proposed capital plan, thanks to the $4.5 billion or more in bond revenues that should follow the implementation of congestion pricing. If anything, we explained, congestion pricing in New York is exactly the opposite of regressive—it’s a program that charges a small percentage of mostly upper-income drivers and spreads the benefits across the entire City and region’s transit services. Little by little, legislators and their staffs are starting to realize this.
All in all, a good day of lobbying on behalf of NRDC and our members.
Of course, with the news today, the congestion pricing debate will enter a new phase, and I’ll keep you all informed.
Stay tuned.
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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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