Congestion Pricing

Is Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, a regressive tax, unfair to New York City's poor and working class?

Move over Walter McCaffrey and Ken Klinger.

At a press conference today, a group of Bronx and northern Manhattan elected officials have signed on in support of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing effort. They are:

Given some of the unfathomable declarations floated in the name of opposition to congestion pricing ("We have to do something about the pedestrians"), it's hard not to wonder what goes on in the minds of those who so passionately reject any perceived infringement upon their "right" to clog the streets and poison the air for "free."

From WCBS-TV via Second Ave. Sagas:

In the fall of 2005, prior to Mayor Bloomberg's second term election victory, I began working on a story for New York Magazine about the broad-based coalition that was coming together to push for congestion pricing and a whole array of new urban environmental policies for New York City. While that story never quite came together as a big magazine feature, it eventually inspired the creation of Streetsblog. Ultimately, I used some of my reporting to write this longer piece about the numerous failed efforts over the last four decades to create some sort of congestion pricing system for New York City.

The Campaign for New York's Future has released a new poll, a glossy mailer that'll go out to 380,000 families, and a television advertisement focusing on the health benefits of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030. The Daily Politics has a nice write-up:

At the end of last week it appeared Mayor Bloomberg was on the verge of pulling it off. Having scored a congestion pricing bill in the state Senate, coaxed a cautious endorsement from the governor, and all but securing a near half-billion dollar pledge from Washington, Bloomberg sailed into Friday's state Assembly hearings on a wave of green apple-fueled adulation.