Cap’n — points taken. Your blog post makes a good argument.

I’ll stop complaining about the PA tolls – I just have to shift my viewpoint from trying to deter NJ traffic from today’s commuting patterns to accepting that today’s traffic are already existing in a deterred state and we are now waiting for the NY side to catch up. I would love to see less traffic on the GW/HT/LT rather than maintain the current heavy volumes, which I consider unacceptable in terms of congestion and pollution, but so be it.

As for PA spending on mass transit, if the situation is that there will effectively be two separate pools of CP funds (city and PA’s internal one), both of which are spending money on transit, fine. I happen to have worked with the PA and do not trust them as far as I can throw them, but we’ll just have to hope for the best. If that toll money ends up developing Stewart Airport instead of a fantasy tunnel, that’s the risk we take.

Nice job, folks! On to Albany!

Responses:
#28 I agree, the fee should be inflation adjusted. As it is, it will have no effect on the 30% who now pay $8. But according to Jeanette Sadik-Khan, any increase would require legislative approval and s repeat of the current ordeal.
#39 – An $8 fee one way, split among three motorists, = $1.33 each way, much less than average $1.76 Metrocard fare. Since half the auto entries have 2 or more people, there’s no price incentive for them to change. Since the SOVs mostly come from the fringes where the only options are $10/round trip express buses or $12/round trip commuter rail lines, there’s no price incentive for them either.
#47 – Agreed. The cost at all entries must be uniform and should be all inbound to avoid the current distorted traffic patterns, but we’re starting out with the base (cash) toll on MTA crossings at $10. And it may not be apparent to drivers that they can’t evade an outbound $4 MTA toll by exiting over a free bridge because, I am told, that the $4 credit will only be deducted when they pay the exit toll.

Thank you Bill de Blasio for sticking up for taxpayers. Congestion pricing is a sham and you were intelligent enough to realize it. Thank you.

People from NJ already have to pay tolls to drive into city, and certainly trucks and other businesses do. The only people who can access Manhattan without paying tolls is certain people coming off Queens and Brooklyn.

But if you can afford a car in NYC, and if you can afford gas drive around with today’s gas prices, then that means congestion taxes may not deter anyone from driving.

I’m told from someone from London that congestion polls did reduce traffic in London initially, but then it went back to it’s originally level.

It will be the same in NYC. All this does is give the MTA additional revenues. An $8 per day charge is 40 dollars a week. Most drivers spend a lot more than that on gas, and you cannot charge really high taxes because a lot of vehicles must enter the city (trucks and all) for business purposes. Also, certain messenger services need cars. I worked on a film set, and that equipment has to be moved around by car or van.