Maybe it is, from the perspective that even a decade ago it likely wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.

I hate to sound too cynical, but I feel like the opinion of people who regularly drive over the currently-free bridges doesn’t really count. It’s basically akin to taking a poll of a kindergarten class about whether they should get free ice cream.

4/5 boroughs disapprove, even when adding the context on reducing other tolls and spending money on mass transit. If you take that part away, support is much lower. It’s disingenuous to say this plan would just take a bit of wrangling by Cuomo to pass and he’s ignoring the public.

(SORRY THIS IS THE WRONG IMAGE).

If you take that part away, you’re not describing Move NY. When pollsters describe the actual proposal you get results that suggest a winnable fight. No one said it would be a gimme.

I’m not sure how easy it is to quantify this, but I still feel like there has been a sea change in attitude somewhere. I feel like a decade ago “free bridges” to Manhattan would have meant a lot more to SI (or to anyone, not just SI).

It is not true to say public opinion improves after implementation of road pricing. The Stockholm referendum was limited to those inside the proposed zone and excluded everyone outside but who travelled into the area for work.

As for Manchester and Edinburgh, there was no pricing introduced after the referendums as public support was very much against.

If you want to see why road pricing is promoted, follow the money and see who benefits.

What’s f#%*’d up is that it is cheaper to drive from Westchester into Manhattan than to take the train, even off-peak. Somehow, we have to change that simple calculation.

I suppose that’s a fair point. Even so, the overall premise of this post seems to be “Cuomo is incorrect when he says that public opinion does not favor toll reform” and I think the poll shows that he is correct to say so. It’s not by a huge margin, certainly, and maybe even within the margin of error, but I would hardly find the poll results shown to be worth hanging my hat on if I were trying to prove that there is popular support for toll reform. Certainly not enough support to make Cuomo care.

Sure it is, but if there’s evidence he wants to make any contributions that he can’t take full credit for, I haven’t seen it yet.

I would put the hate taxes part in context. In the EU taxes are much higher but the antitax sentiment is much lower. The reason is unlike here in the US, where a lot of our taxes go for debt service, the military, or questionable programs, in Europe a lot of the taxes go for things people use, like health care or great transit systems. People don’t mind paying taxes so long as in their minds they’re getting something equal in value. Here in the US we spend very little on important things like infrastructure. We misspend a lot of health and education dollars on broken systems (insurance companies, unionized public education) which cost more and do less than a directly government run program. On top of all this, we undertax the wealthy, with the resulting deficit spending making debt service an increasingly large part of the budget. Debt service provides zero benefit to the average taxpayer but it costs them a lot of taxes.

The MoveNY plan shouldn’t be equated with a tax. Rather, it’s a user fee which you can choose to avoid paying by not driving where the fee is charged. Those for whom the fee will be worthwhile will mostly be people who drive for a living. Time is money. If you can squeeze in a few more deliveries by paying $50 in fees it’s worth it from a business standpoint. The only people who won’t like it will be those who don’t really value their time.

Joe, I agree with just about everything you wrote here, except I’d like to point out that European teachers are generally unionized, just like American teachers. I see this mistake frequently in progressive online rants: I’m nodding my head in agreement with the commenter, until seemingly out of nowhere they identify unionized teachers as a waste because they don’t know any better. There is plenty of waste in American education, stemming mostly from corporate influence of education spending and an obsession with standardized testing. But at this point teacher’s unions are one of the few things holding our education system together. Don’t let anyone misinform you on that.

the various arms of the national security state add up to 10% of GDP

There was a way to pay for the pension increases.

http://www.amazon.com/Dow-2008-Different-This-Time/dp/1893958701

This guy had to be right.

Whether it is or isn’t at least they have a much better system to show for it.

If it’s on other things which indirectly benefit drivers (like improved public transit) then yes. On the specific case in that article, I might say no except for the fact the Thruway tolls don’t even come close to covering the damages heavy trucks do to the road. If tolls covered those and then some, there would be a valid case. As things stand now, the truckers are being subsidized even if they don’t see it that way.

We already have highways. There’s no room to build any more. And they wouldn’t benefit cyclists unless you also build a bike lane on the highway. If anything highways tend to encourage more car use. These cars ultimately eventually end up on local streets. Besides that, as you know the best way to get cars off the streets isn’t to build highways but to make it harder to park. Or to just outright ban them from certain areas. Neither costs money to do. In fact, doing either saves a ton of money given all the issues motor vehicle use causes.

The math wouldn’t work out anyway. You would have to charge each cyclist tens of thousands of dollars per year to get enough money to pay for highways.

The math only works out (sometimes) to get road users to pay for other projects because there are a lot of road users, and as a group they’re a lot wealthier than cyclists. Also, as a group they cause negative externalities. In fact, that and covering operating costs are really the only rationales which should be using for imposing user fees. Someone cycling or walking arguably imposes few or no externalities. They cause just about negligible road wear. So what’s they point of charging them anything?

Except there is no indirect benefit because more highways wouldn’t take cars off the streets, assuming you even had the room for them in NYC, which you don’t. Now I might support some type of fee (a sales tax maybe) to build huge underground parking garages at highway exits, the idea being you can only drive in NYC on highways. Once you get off the highway, you park in the garage, and take some other mode to your final destination. Everyone would benefit from this—bus riders, cyclists, and pedestrians. That’s why I would fund it from a broad-based tax like a sales tax, not a fee imposed solely upon cyclists. In fact, any plan to get cars off the streets would benefit a broader group than just cyclists, which is why everyone should pay for it.

The thing is how much tax would you get from cyclists, and more importantly how would you collect it? A sales tax on bikes or bike parts is something I might be OK with, given that it’s unobtrusive, plus it would be maybe some tens of dollars annually. Anything else would be unworkable. And if this fee existed, I would be very adamant that highways would have to have a parallel, non-stop bike route. That’s a direct benefit I’m more than willing to pay for.

I personally would have liked to see some enhancements to the MoveNY plan. Time of day pricing as you said is one. I would also like to have seen some progressive cordoning, such as a modest fee (i.e. a few dollars) to enter city limits during peak times, a higher one once you get roughly past the midpoint of the outer boroughs, and finally a hefty fee to enter Manhattan during peak times. You could reduce or eliminate some of these fees off-peak or on weekends.

And yes, a big no to bonding out the revenue. Governments are far too eager to spend money before they even have it. If the plan works better than expected, meaning a lot fewer people choose to drive and pay the tax, then the projected revenues may not materialize. Then again, it may be a wash because the city would spend less on negative externalities.