Bridge Tolls
Advocacy Project

Democratic mayoral candidates debate congestion pricing

Mirabile dictu, a ray of relevance pierced the fog that has been NYC's 2005 mayoral campaign, when the four leading Democratic candidates were grilled on congestion pricing and East River bridge tolls during their August 16 debate. Disappointingly, none of the four seized the chance to voice support for either East River tolls or London-style "cordon" pricing of the Manhattan Central Business District. Accordingly, none presented a credible plan for reducing chronic NYC gridlock. Here are their remarks, as transcribed by the NY Times (thanks to TSTC for forwarding), with our (BTAP) comments. The diligent questioner is Andrea Bernstein of WNYC.

Q. I, too, have a question for Mr. Ferrer. Former-Borough President Ferrer, the mayor of London not too long ago launched a program charging every vehicle that enters that city's center about $10 during peak times. It has widely been seen as a great success at easing traffic congestion. Early in his administration Mayor Bloomberg considered a similar idea for tolls on the East River bridges but never pursued it. Good government groups say such tolls would be an important new revenue source and would also help solve Manhattan's traffic problems. Has the time for so-called congestion pricing arrived in New York City? And if so, what's your plan? If not, why not?

FERRER. Well, there are some dissimilarities between London and New York City. One of - The obvious one is that they drive on the wrong side of the street. The other obvious one is it's not as big as New York City, not as complex as New York City.

Now look, I'd like to get more cars off the roads of Manhattan, especially off of cross-town traffic, where it's quicker to get cross town walking - no, it's quicker to get cross town walking slowly than by car -

Bridge Tolls Advocacy Project: Of course, London isn't smaller than NYC, the two are identical, population-wise, with 8 million inhabitants each. It's true that Manhattan's Central Business District, from 60th Street down to the Battery, is several times larger than the central cordon now being charged in London, but so what? The logistics of administering an entry fee on the Manhattan CBD are no harder than what London has been doing successfully since 2003. Still, if necessary a Manhattan cordon charge could start out with a smaller area within the CBD. Tolling the East River bridges with E-ZPass is child's play, of course since there would be no toll plazas; cash-only drivers could use MTA crossings.

Another point evidently missed by both Ferrer and Bernstein: bridge tolls would reduce traffic tie-ups on the approaches to Manhattan. Indeed, in our "The Hours" report we found that almost 60% of the total time savings from bridge tolls. thinning of traffic would be on Brooklyn and Queens streets and highways; just 20% would be in Manhattan, with 20% on the spans themselves.

Q. It sounds to me like you're saying the time for congestion pricing has not arrived in New York. Why is that?

FERRER. No. No. I think asking for higher tolls on bridges and tunnels, as the M.T.A. has begun to do, is the appropriate thing to do. But putting tolls on the East River bridges, even Mike Bloomberg walked away from that because he knows one other thing: There are people in this city who work hard every day who depend on their vehicles to make deliveries or get in to work. We've got to find a way to get them to use mass transit. But I'm not going to be the one to say they can't earn a living in New York City.

BTAP: Ferrer is okay with charging drivers $4.25 to use an M.T.A. bridge or tunnel but zero for equivalent use of an East River bridge? Strange.

Contrary to Ferrer, Bloomberg "walked away" from bridge tolls not because he feels that drivers who "depend on their vehicles" are entitled to subsidized free (hence, gridlocked) travel, but due to three political factors: (i) not a single other "elected" spoke up for bridge tolls; (ii) he never tried to win over opponents or fence-sitters with promises to apply toll revenues to improve transit and social services; and (iii) he had exhausted his political capital on other contentious initiatives like the universal smoking ban. In retrospect, toll advocates (including ourselves) should have tied bridge tolls to near-term transit upgrades in Brooklyn and Queens as a way of disarming borough-based opposition.

Note how Ferrer conflates making drivers pay eight or ten dollars a day in tolls -- a sizeable but manageable amount for most commuting professionals and tradesmen -- with keeping them from earning a living. Nor does he mention how being stuck in traffic, a condition that bridge tolls could alleviate, cuts heavily into earnings of tradespeople and others reliant on vans and trucks.

And how will Ferrer "find a way to get [some drivers] to use mass transit" without making them pay to use the city's precious road space? He doesn't say. There is none, of course.

Q. Mr. Miller, where do you stand on so-called congestion pricing. Do you think it's a good idea to reduce traffic in Manhattan? And if you don't think it's a good idea, what do you think is the way to reduce traffic in Manhattan?

MILLER. Well we have some congestion pricing, as you know Andrea, by encouraging E-ZPass and making it a slightly less expensive way to come across our bridges. And I think that we should be looking at those sorts of incentives for trucks and for other kinds of traffic. But in the end I don't think we should put tolls on our East River bridges.

And I think the real solution is to fix our subways. You know, this is an administration that has been silent about this issue, completely silent. We have signals in our system that are from the Prohibition Era. And the M.T.A. plans to fix them by 2030. Don't worry, 25 years from now you'll get good service. This is a serious crisis that the mayor has to address. And I'm the only candidate up here who has said exactly how I would fix the guts of our system and pay for the expansion: by bringing back an expansive commuter tax on people that work in New York City but don't live in New York City, and devoting that money directly to fixing our subways and our buses and making them run once again. I can't tell you how many people come up to me every day and say: Just get me to work on time. That's it. Just get me to work on time.

That's what a mayor's supposed to do and that's what I'll do when I'm mayor.

BTAP: Miller mischaracterizes E-ZPass discounts as congestion pricing, and then dodges the question by beating up on subway service. As if better subways alone will unlock traffic gridlock. (Experienced www.bridgetolls.org visitors know that every car trip attracted to transit by better service will be replaced with a new car trip attracted to the less-congested roadways; only road pricing and/or putting road space off-limits to single-occupant vehicles can permanently reduce vehicle use.) As if Miller as mayor would have the clout to induce the NY, NJ and CT legislatures to restore the commuter tax. And as if commuter tax plus road pricing revenues couldn't upgrade the subways twice as fast as commuter tax revenues alone. Miller also ignores the fact that bridge toll revenues from non-residents of New York City would replace a third or more of the revenue lost when the commuter tax was repealed in 1999.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Congressmember Weiner, why is it fair that people from Brooklyn and Queens should get to avoid paying tolls, while people from Staten Island and people from New Jersey should have to pay tolls?

BTAP: A good question, though here's a sharper one: why is it fair that transit riders from Brooklyn and Queens should pay $2 for a bus or subway trip while drivers from Brooklyn and Queens pay nothing to drive the East River bridges. Never mind.

WEINER. Well why is it fair that every time there's a challenge in this city people want to raise taxes on the middle class? That's what this would be: a regressive tax on middle-class New Yorkers in Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island and, frankly, in Long Island and everywhere else.

BTAP: Contrary to Weiner, bridge tolls are progressive for two reasons. First, according to 2000 Census data, East River bridge commuters earn, on average, $14,300 a year more than their neighbors who don't commute on those bridges -- enough to cover the annual cost of bridge tolls to a solo commuter ten times over. Second, toll revenues would be invested in transit or services like public schools, parks and libraries which middle- and low-income people use disproportionately. Funny how self-anointed champions of the average Joe are often just apologists for the regressive status quo.

If you want to reduce congestion in the City of New York, I have a plan. First, we are a city of remarkable capabilities. And we're also surrounded by water. Yet compared to other major cities we don't use ferry service. We have fantastic ferry service to one community of Staten Island and none anywhere else. Well I'm fighting to change that. I'm buying the city ferries with federal transportation dollars to try to remove some of the cars off the Belt Parkway, off the Grand Central, off the L.I.E.

BTAP: More ferries are to busting NYC gridlock what a flawless third base coach would be to the Yankees or Mets -- a lovely and even helpful idea that would leave the fundamental problem untouched. Here the rub is free roads resulting in too many drivers and vehicles wanting to use them. As noted earlier, absent road pricing, present-day car trips converted to ferries will be replaced with new car trips that would-be drivers who now stay at home or use transit will start to make as soon as the roads have become less congested.

Secondly, I don't have any problem with trying to reduce the amount of truck traffic in Manhattan by incentivizing deliveries at night. You know, Joe's Pizzeria on Seventh Avenue can't get a flour delivery at night, but you know Macy's probably could in the City of New York. We have to have more New Yorkers, and frankly the entire City of New York, do what I did, which is buy a hybrid car. You know, we should reduce the amount of environmental toxins being dumped into the air as well. The idea that the only solution to New York's problems is to levy another tax on the middle class will not be the path that I follow. The middle class in New York are taxes high enough. That's why I want to give them a 10-percent tax cut on their income.

BTAP: Yes, what New York needs is for the 56% of households who don't own cars to stress their budgets and completely gridlock the City by buying cars. Thanks Anthony!

Q. Borough President Fields, congestion pricing once again has worked well in London and many businesses like it because it's very easy to get around during the day on buses and taxis. London is not a city which is surrounded by water, as is the island of Manhattan. Why should congestion pricing not come to New York City?

FIELDS. Actually, I'm open to it. I'm open to the idea of congestion pricing because it will reduce traffic at certain times of the day and it will, of course, increase revenue that can go toward better -- enabling our mass transit to be improved.

I am opposed to charging tolls for East River bridges. I think that it would be strictly unfair to people who live in this city and have to pay from Brooklyn just to come into Manhattan or from other areas. And I don't think that that is the way that we should look to improve our transportation system. We must improve our mass transportation system by investing in it. The city has not invested its share in our mass transit system since about 1993. When we do not invest, we cannot modernize the system; we cannot make the necessary improvements.

BTAP: Fields "gets it" in the first graf, particularly the transit connection to road pricing via the revenues, but then blows a golden opportunity to demonstrate courage and independence when she rules out bridge tolls. Just like her failure to support East River tolls in 2003, despite strong appeals by BTAP and others, helped doom the idea. While Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz was mobilizing his troops against tolling, with Queens Prez Helen Shulman close behind, Fields wouldn't lift a finger to rally Manhattanites in support. Her call here for the City to restore full contributions to MTA budgets, while welcome, is an empty gesture with no revenue to back it up.

So, as mayor, I will prioritize investing so that we can make the necessary improvements.

And by the way, our speaker said he's the only one who has called for reinstatement of a commuter tax. I, too, have called for the reinstatement of a commuter tax but at 1 percent and to have that 1 percent designated specifically toward the improvement of our mass transit system.

There are some other things that we can do -

Q. Thank you, Borough President Fields. Mr. Ferrer, do you have a 30-second rebuttal?

FERRER. Yes. Let's get to the heart of the matter. Everybody says we want a safe, reliable and affordable mass transit system. But the question is: What's Mike Bloomberg willing to do about it?

Look, he's spared no effort to try to get the M.T.A. board to preside over a sweetheart deal for the sale of the development rights over the Hudson Yards. And he still has yet to weigh in on the development rights over the Atlantic Yards. Getting full market value for both will ensure that the straphangers of this city don't have to take a subway system that strands them by the hundreds of thousands every couple of days, and remain affordable.

BTAP: Ferrer is right to demand full market value for MTA development properties. But the potential gain to transit coffers is barely one year's revenue from East River tolls. If full value for MTA properties could help the subways, bridge toll revenues could help ten times more!

Q. Thank you, Mr. Ferrer.