Transportation Alternatives

 

After nearly a year of personally advocating for congestion pricing, I shared my fellow Streetsbloggers' frustration as the current round ended not with a decisive vote, but with the clock running out on a federal funding deadline. As this great New York political battle fades into memory, I hope future historians will not remember this as a Bloomberg second-term failure along the lines of the West Side stadium fight with Speaker Silver and Assembly Democrats. Rather, I hope they recognize this as a case of Albany legislative dysfunction undermining pretty much all of the major civic, environmental, transportation and labor organizations. In fact, organizations like Transportation Alternatives, Partnership for NYC and Citizens for NYC lead this initiative from the beginning and got the mayor to sign on last year as part of PlaNYC.

The City Council has voted 30-20 to approve the home rule message sending congestion pricing to the state legislature. Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives gave us the full roll call, after the jump.

The Committee on State and Federal Legislation has voted in favor of the congestion pricing home rule message. Tonight, the full City Council will decide whether the state legislature can vote on the real bill. Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick is on the scene and providing us with updates. The Daily Politics is getting the news out pretty quickly too. Here's the roll call:

From StreetFilms' Elizabeth Press: 

Taking aim at the richest irony of the faux-populist case against congestion pricing, Transportation Alternatives has released this ad [PDF], coming soon to a newspaper near you. The copy reads:

With a congestion pricing bill now on the table and the days to get it passed quickly winding down, here is a snapshot of where a handful of electeds, including heavy-hitters like David Paterson and Sheldon Silver, stand.