New York City Congestion Pricing

¶ … New York City Congestion Pricing Plan

Recently, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had provided strong support for the city's congestion pricing plan that would have unfairly burdened working class New Yorkers, particularly those residing in the outer boroughs who commuted by car to Manhattan daily for work. Congestion pricing was intended to reduce automobile exhaust emission rates into the environment and would have triggered $500 million in federal public transportation funding and increased public transportation fees generated by those who switched from driving to mass transportation to avoid the fees (Diaz 2008).

The idea was initially suggested by the relative success of similar plans in other cities plagued by significant traffic congestion, most notably, in London, England. The pricing plan would have imposed an $8 fee to enter midtown Manhattan, amounting to as much as $2,000 annually for the very segment of the working middle class least able to afford such an expense. In principle, the idea was to "disincentivize" the use of personal vehicles for daily transportation and motivate greater compliance with suggestions to use mass transportation instead. The plan would not have effected the most affluent of the city's residents, most of whom reside within the fee zone.

Furthermore, while the burden would have fallen on the shoulders of New Yorkers, it unfairly benefited commuters from New Jersey who would not have been affected by the toll (Diaz 2008).

Critics pointed out that fewer than one-quarter of New Yorkers living in Manhattan owned vehicles, precisely because public transportation is so widely available in New York City, as opposed to cities like Los Angeles, where no comparable option exists for daily commuters. For that reason, most of those commuting to the city instead of availing themselves of public transportation do so because their jobs require them to do so, such as in the case of commercially licensed skilled workers like plumbers, electricians, and office workers with toddlers whose companies provide on-site day care, for several typical examples (Berger 2008).

New Yorkers who must drive to work already endure horrendous traffic congestion conditions and exorbitant parking fees because legal on-street parking spots are extremely scarce, particularly in the midtown area and the financial district.

Similarly, commercial businesses that use delivery vehicles have no option but to drive into the city every day and the congestion pricing plan would not have exempted them.

In many cases, implementation of the plan could conceivably have threatened their continued commercial viability to continue in business.

Critics also pointed out that the plan would not necessarily have achieved the carbon emission reductions initially claimed by it proponents, and that the other main justification, reducing congestion within the fee zone in Manhattan, was equally spurious. More recent studies demonstrated that most of the reduction in traffic and congestion would have occurred in the suburbs along the main routes traveled by commuters from North of Manhattan in Westchester and Long Island and Queens from the East rather than within midtown Manhattan (Berger 2008).