New Yorkers generally are not aware of Department of Transportation NO PERMIT AREAS. One of the areas is downtown Manhattan below Canal Street – this includes Wall Street, Tribeca, and Chinatown. It is vital for the press and media to publicize No Permit Areas as designated by the DOT. With increased public awareness, illegal permit abuse, which occurs thousands of times everyday, would be greatly diminished, and in turn would greatly lessen traffic congestion. Hell, NYC has already lost $300-million to illegal parking by 150,000 government sector COMMUTERS since 9/11 – when will New Yorkers wake up? We don’t need this congestion tax, just nix illegal permit abuse – all at no added cost the City!

Nix,

Your numbers are way off.

If we solved the government placard abuse problem we’d remove about 19,000 cars off the street per day, not 150,000. Check out the Bruce Schaller study from about two years back. He did a great job on that one.

While removing 19,000 cars/day from Manhattan’s streets would help, it’s only a fraction of the 112,000 daily car trips that are expected to be eliminated via congestion pricing.

Also, as JF points out, by itself, eliminating placard abuse does nothing to help ensure that thousands of new private vehicles replace those government drivers.

Finally, if you think congestion pricing is a heavy lift politically, try getting the cops to lay summonses on their own cars. One of the biggest benefits of a camera-based congestion pricing system is the potential for automated enforcement against permit abusers. No one has ever been able to get the cops to enforce against each other on this issue and, yes, groups like T.A. have been trying for more than a decade.

Solving the placard problem should be a part of whatever plan the Commission comes up with for traffic mitigation, but by itself, it really won’t get us where we want and need to be.