Congestion Pricing

Assembly Member Rory Lancman from Fresh Meadows, Queens has sent a three-page letter to his fellow legislators soliciting their support for a legislative alternate to Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal and long-term planning ominbus bill, Sewell Chan reports. 

Then: "Honk No" to Mayor Bloomberg's plan. Now: Stop honking and pay $8. Bloomberg's West Side stadium foes are now his congestion pricing friends.

Sounding frustrated, Mayor Bloomberg said in his radio address this weekend that it would be "absolutely ridiculous" for state lawmakers to leave hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to another city by rejecting New York City's congestion pricing plan.

Westchester Democrat Richard Brodsky has emerged as the State Assembly's leading critic of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan. Later today Brodsky will release a report on the steps of City Hall characterizing the Mayor's congestion pricing plan as a regressive tax that puts most of the burden on poor and middle-income drivers (and ignoring the fact that only 4.6% of New York City residents drive to work in Manhattan's Central Business District and most poor and middle-income New Yorkers use transit).

City Hall and the New York State Assembly may be headed to the biggest showdown since Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton met on the dueling grounds at Weehawken (crossing the river back then was free but you had to use a row boat). Erik Engquist and Anne Michaud report in today's Crain's Insider:

State Assembly Member Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) is releasing his report on Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal on the steps of City Hall today at 2:00 pm. Billed as "the first thorough, independent, and fair-minded" analysis (Apparently, the Partnership for New York's two-year study wasn't thorough and Bruce Schaller's massive body of research wasn't independent enough for Brodsky).

Supporters of congestion pricing rallied yesterday in Times Square, urging state lawmakers to act by July 16 on Mayor Bloomberg's initiative or risk losing $500 million in federal funds. "The time is now," said the mayor, according to the New York Post. "We cannot walk away from this opportunity." 

The Tyee, an independent online pub in British Columbia, weighs in with the first in a series of editorials making the case for free transit in the province.

Finally, we get to see just how much former executive director Jon Orcutt was tamping down the high-powered talent at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The latest issue of Mobilizing the Region is jam-packed with good articles. Here are some highlights (and, yes, I'm kidding about Orcutt but serious about this week's MTR being really good):