Congestion Pricing

Upper West Side City Councilmember Gale Brewer is emerging as City Council's top Livable Streets advocate. In April she worked with Transportation Alternatives to author Intro. 199, the Traffic Relief Bill. Today, Crain's Insider reports that Brewer now plans to introduce congestion pricing legislation:

Front row, left to right: Councilmember Melinda Katz, Councilmember Leroy Comrie, Councilmember Helen Sears, Councilmember David Weprin, Keep NYC Congestion Tax Free spokesman Walter McCaffrey,  Ray Irrera from the Queens Chamber of Commerce is behind McCaffrey, Joe Conley of Queens Community Board 2 and John Corlett from AAA. (Photo: Aaron Naparstek)

Going through my morning headline round-up I clicked on ABC Channel 7's story, Should There be Tolls in Manhattan? While my eye was being drawn to the giant, red "Lukoil: We Love Cars" ad banner (What genius came up with, "Traffic: Sponsored by Lukoil?"), an animated little Gen Y hipster wearing a Toyota.com t-shirt jumped out in front of the text urging me to click him to hear more about Toyota's gargantuan new FJ Cruiser. The automobile and oil industry ad assault was so aggressive, I never even got around to reading the news story about how New York City is losing billions of dollars every year due to overwhelming gridlock. Is anyone still wondering why traffic reduction is a tough sell?  

Study Discovers $13+ Billion in Annual Costs Due to Traffic Congestion (PFNYC)Region Loses as Many as 52,000 Jobs Every Year Mayor Says Fee on Peak Traffic Is Not Likely (NYT) Fees To Ease Midtown Traffic Jams May Get a New Look From City Hall (Sun) Drivers get brake on congest tax (News) Choked Streets Cost City … Continued

This morning, the Partnership for New York City publicly released its long-awaited study, Growth or Gridlock: The Economic Case for Traffic Relief and Transit Improvements for a Greater New York. London's congestion charging initiative was kick-started, in large part, by a similar report published by London First, that city's version of the Partnership. From today's report: 

Though many New Yorkers are learning about congestion charging for the first time this week, the transportation policy community has been working to sell this idea to a resistant public for more than three decades. What happens when Nobel Prize winning theory meets bare-fisted New York City politics? A heavily condensed version of this story ran in this week's New York Magazine:  

Car-Free lunchtime on Madison Avenue, April 19, 1971. New York City policy-makers haven't seriously considered traffic reduction since the Lindsay Administration. (Image courtesy of Jeff Zupan)

The Partnership for New York City releases its long-awaited congestion charging study today. Stay tuned.

The congestion charging policy roll-out is officially on the move. Today the Tri-State Transportation Campaign released the findings of a detailed telephone survey conducted last spring in an effort to learn more about how New Yorkers feel about traffic congestion and the idea of making motorists pay more to drive in to the most gridlocked parts of the city. Download TSTC's report here (PDF). See an excerpt below.