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Congestion Pricing

Big Builders Explain Why Congestion Pricing is Important

1:15 PM EST on November 8, 2007

In a letter to Marc Shaw, Chairman of the New York City Traffic Mitigation Commission, the New York Building Congress urged the Commission to support a congestion pricing plan that dedicates all revenues to capital improvements for the city's transit system. The NYBC also indicated their support for the MTA's propsed fare hike "as merely one element of a long-term multi-layered response to the considerable financial challenges faced by the MTA." Download the letter and here's an excerpt:

The economic health of our City and State depends on robust transit infrastructure, which has become increasingly difficult to maintain, not to mention grow, using existing funding mechanisms alone.

The wisdom of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan is that, in addition to reducing traffic and helping to clean the environment, it allows for a balanced, well-financed, long-range capital program that will encourage increased use of mass transit over the long term. With a dedicated and predictable flow of revenue, New York could reliably plan and execute complex, multi-year transportation projects.

Jason Varone
Jason Varone battles the streets everyday during a 9 mile commute on his bicycle from downtown Brooklyn to the Upper East Side. In addition to his efforts on Streetsblog, he is an artist making work related to the environment and technology. Examples of his work can be found at www.varonearts.org.

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