The New York Times-20080124-The Answers to Gridlock- -Editorial-
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The Answers to Gridlock; [Editorial]
New York has long treated traffic gridlock like it does the weather -- as something outside of its control. It isn't, though. London proved as much when it adopted congestion pricing, charging drivers to use certain streets. Traffic moved faster, tailpipe emissions went down and the fees collected went to improve public transportation. New York is right to want the same results, and this month, congestion pricing took another welcome step forward.
For a long time, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had the only plan on the table. It called for charging most cars $8 and trucks $21 to drive on the city's busiest streets during weekdays. He got a promise of more than $350 million in federal aid, which could do a lot to expand public transportation. Now, a 17-member commission has come up with four alternative proposals. Some would improve on the mayor's vision, while others should simply be discarded.
One of the proposals makes the sensible suggestion of shrinking the congestion zone to the area where traffic is worst: extending from the southern tip of Manhattan only to 60th Street, rather than 86th Street, which is the border in Mayor Bloomberg's plan. It would not charge drivers who stay within the zone. That is fair, and it would be expensive to extract fees from those already there. It would make up lost revenue by charging taxi riders an extra $1 per fare, increasing the cost of parking meters in the zone and taking away parking tax exemptions for people who live in the zone.
Another proposal makes the unworkable suggestion of rationing entry to the city each day based on the last digit of license plates. There are other duds, including the idea -- sure to die in Albany -- of putting tolls on toll-free bridges over the East and Harlem Rivers. An $8 surcharge on taxi rides, part of another proposal, is another nonstarter. We do like that proposal's call to limit the number of parking permits given to city workers.
The commission's proposals go to Albany next week. Legislators will have until the end of March to pass a plan that sufficiently reduces gridlock, or face the loss of those promised federal funds. New York needs to keep pushing congestion pricing forward -- and it needs to do it right.
