The proposal to charge motorists a fee to enter Manhattan south of 60th street during daytime hours, popularly known as "congestion pricing," died after a year long debate and intense lobbying by the Mayor and a coalition of business, civic and environmental organizations. The plan failed when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver concluded he did not have enough votes to pass the enabling legislation. But the underlying reasons for the plan’s failure was a far more complex set of factors– factors that had to do as much with political chemistry and personalities as with the substantive merits of the pricing proposal.
The demise of the congestion pricing plan was publicly mourned by many, but quietly celebrated by probably just as many. Secretary Mary Peters issued a terse announcement calling the decision "deeply disappointing" while preparing to distribute the money originally intended for New York City to other aspiring congestion-fighting cities. Mayor Bloomberg blasted the state legislature for its "cowardice" in not willing to stand up and be counted. "It takes true leadership and courage," he said, "to embrace new concepts and ideas and to be willing to try something...Unfortunately, both are lacking in the Assembly today..."
Kathryn Wylde, President of the Partnership for New York City who lobbied tirelessly for the Mayor’s plan was more restrained. Echoing Secretary Mary Peters who said in her statement that congestion pricing is "an inevitable solution, even if not in the next few months," Ms. Wylde took the long view and concluded that congestion pricing will ultimately prevail because it is the only long run answer to New York’s twin challenges of reducing traffic congestion and raising new revenues for mass transit.
The New York press corps was largely on the side of Mayor Bloomberg and against Speaker Sheldon Silver whom they singled out as the chief reason for the collapse of the congestion pricing plan. "Rarely does one man have a chance to do so much harm to so many," editorialized the New York Times. But the truth was far more complicated than the editorial writers would have us believe.
Why Congestion Pricing Failed to Win Approval?-- A Post Mortem
What emerged from our conversations with opponents as well as advocates of the plan, including several state legislators from both parties, is a complicated tale of a bungled strategy to steer a complex and politically vulnerable proposal, in an election year, through an alienated state legislature that was predisposed to treat the mayor’s initiative with skepticism.
To be sure, the plan was strongly opposed by the residents of the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx on the grounds that the congestion fee would pose a hardship to low income commuters who had no option but to drive. The elected officials from these boroughs viewed the proposed congestion fee as a regressive measure enacted on the backs of their low-income constituents and small businesses to benefit affluent Manhattanites. "The word ‘elitist’ came up a number of times" noted Queens Assemblyman Mark Weprin and a longtime critic of the proposal in describing the discussions among his fellow Assembly Democrats. He estimated that opinion among them ran four to one against the plan.
But to the extent that the debate veered from the issues of traffic mitigation and environmental benefits to transit financing, the proposal generated additional objections. Suburban officials from New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester County, whose constituents would have born much of the cost but would have reaped little benefit from Manhattan-centric transit improvements such as the Second Avenue subway, saw little reason to support the cordon fee. The more congestion pricing became publicly associated with the need for a steady stream of revenue to support the financially strapped MTA, the more it appeared simply as a commuter tax in disguise. The issue of interregional equity came to a boil when New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine threatened to take legal action if the City went ahead with the Council proposal to charge Manhattan-bound New Jersey commuters an extra $3 on top of the $8 toll they already pay to cross the Hudson. The governor’s warning was followed by a letter from New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez asking the federal government to deny New York City the promised $354 million grant on the ground that the proposal creates an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce.
Issues of fairness and equity, however, were not the only factors that made the plan vulnerable and undermined its credibility. Many of the operational problems raised during the year-long debate remained unresolved or were treated only in the most superficial manner. Among them were the problem of dealing with commuter parking at subway stops on the periphery of the congestion zone; the challenge of absorbing the diverted commuters by a transit system that is already overburdened and running at peak capacity; the mechanics of providing the proposed tax credit to low-income commuters; the provision of adequate transit access to subway stops in the outlying areas of Queens and Brooklyn; and the question of how to ensure that the collected congestion fees would remain fully dedicated, as promised, to mass transit improvements. An additional unresolved problem arose when the City Council demanded late in the game that the Port Authority pay an extra $1 billion/year for the city’s mass transit or else collect an added $3 fee congestion fee from New Jersey commuters.
Many legislators felt that the proposed legislation needed to be amended to address these outstanding issues and restore the plan’s original intent to conduct a three-year pilot project (the project morphed into a permanent program without a sunset provision so as to enable long term bond financing for capital projects.) However, the mayor appeared to reject the idea of any further negotiations. Said the Mayor: "The time for changes has long come and passed." Such a display of inflexibility was not the way to gain allies and influence the legislative process in Albany.
Moreover, many critics felt that the traffic mitigation benefits of the plan were oversold. Even assuming that the congestion fee would result in measurable reductions in the number of vehicles entering Manhattan, many of the underlying conditions causing traffic congestion in Manhattan would have remained. These include double parked vehicles, truck deliveries, lane-blocking utility repairs, taxicabs discharging and picking up passengers, rampant violations of the block-the-box prohibition, and pedestrian-vehicle conflicts at street intersections.
Lastly, and probably most decisively, Albany lawmakers were offended by what they felt were heavy-handedness and strong-arm tactics on the part of Mayor Bloomberg. An example was the mayor’s behind-the-scenes support of a political action committee whose objective was to defeat lawmakers who did not support the plan. "All politics is relationships and...the mayor just does not know how to approach the Legislature," said Manhattan Assemblyman Michael Kellner (quoted in the New York Times article, "Bloomberg Tactics Were High-handed, Lawmakers Say," April 8, 2008). Making a bad situation worse were the high pressure tactics of persuasion and intimidation used by the Mayor’s surrogates. "If you are against [the plan] you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do," one senior aide was quoted as threatening the legislators in Albany. What may have been tolerated coming from the boss was resented and considered arrogant and offensive coming from the Mayor’s minions.
The Wider Implications
The defeat of the congestion pricing plan has been a severe blow to the Mayor Bloomberg’s political legacy. But how much of a setback has it been to the concept of congestion pricing and its future application in other jurisdictions? Probably not much. Numerous other candidates for the $354 million in grants that New York City has forfeited are already eagerly lining up according to officials in the U.S. DOT.
It also should be pointed out that the New York City proposal did not involve congestion pricing, strictly speaking. The fee lacked the element of variability that is thought to be essential to effectively control the level congestion. The proposed NYC "congestion charge" was more in the nature of a conventional toll charged at the point of entry into the cordon area –not unlike the tolls already in existence at the trans-Hudson bridge and tunnel crossings. (The only distinction being that the NYC plan would have allowed multiple daily crossings of the cordon at no extra charge –a distinction without a difference except for delivery trucks that might need to make multiple daily trips into and out of the charge zone).
Conventional road tolls are already well accepted by the public and state legislatures as evidenced by the substantial number of jurisdictions planning to introduce tolling on newly built lanes, roads and bridges. It is doubtful that the New York City experience will throw a damper on other states’ decisions to move forward with their toll projects.
The lesson of the NYC experience is not that tolling and pricing are politically unacceptable but rather that they require a convincing showing of benefits to those who are being asked to pay.
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