Congestion Pricing
Could Work, But
Who Trusts MTA
To Control Costs?

You can read this at your leisure, if you are interested, and/or pass it along with a quick click to someone else who might be .If we meander, it is in part because the proposal makes sense at some levels but does not work at other levels.  Start at the beginning, and see how far you get.  We appreciate your attention. All the best.

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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me for 57 years, oy vey.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and its predecessor agencies have been deceiving New Yorkers for at least 60 years.

They may have been doing it longer, but I was too young to know about it.

It began in civics class in Junior High School 52 in Upper Manhattan. We were assigned by Mr. Reisman to write essays on the issue of the day, whether the subway fare should be increased from five to ten cents. We could choose which side we would take.

The Board of Transportation, long since abolished, operated the three subway systems, IRT, BMT and IND, and some trolley and bus lines. They said that a ten-cent fare would cover their deficit and provide better transportation for the public. The kids who were against the increase said that if the fare went to ten cents, some day it would go to fifteen. They were right on that one. On the other hand, the fare had been five cents for generations, and the private subway companies which built the IRT and BMT lines had been driven into bankruptcy. The city built the IND lines in the 1930's. The IND line, whose routes had letters rather than numbers, looked very nice when it was new. So the ten cent fare was reasonable, even if the riders did not get all they were promised.

The next major transit issue was a proposed $500 million bond issue, which went to the voters in November 1951. Relying on the consumer price index, that would be $4.263 billion in 2008 dollars. The public was told that the money was needed to build a Second Avenue Subway on the east side of Manhattan. The Second Avenue elevated line had been demolished in the 1930's, and the scrap metal sold to the Japanese Empire for some purpose or other. The Third Avenue elevated was closed in 1955 and subsequently torn down. This led to the economic renaissance of Third Avenue for both commercial and residential development. It also left the Lexington Avenue subway as the only route on the east side of Manhattan. Since the population was increasing because of new taller buildings, and rapid transit had been reduced by two-thirds, there was great demand for the Second Avenue subway.

After the voters approved the bond issue to build the subway, the transit officials decided to use the money for another purpose, to lengthen local stations on all the lines so they could accommodate trains which were ten cars long. When the subways were first built at the turn of the last century, local trains had five cars and express trains had eight to ten cars. My recollection is that on Sundays there were only seven cars on express trains, but that was long ago.

After the stations were expanded, which was costly but desirable, express trains could make local stops, if needed, and local trains could be composed of ten cars rather than five. Unfortunately, the money to build the Second Avenue subway had been spent.

There is no need to recall the fits and starts over the next half century with regard to subway construction. Bits and pieces were built in various places along the route in the early 1970's, and then abandoned during the fiscal crisis. At the time, I was a City Councilmember from Manhattan, and along with my colleague, the late Robert F. Wagner, Jr., we proposed that the excavated but unfinished tunnels be used for parking, cheese or wine cellars, bowling alleys or mushroom farms. Mayor Beame did not respond to these helpful suggestions.

Now we are in 2008, and we are promised that the subway will be built if only we approve congestion pricing, which essentially means putting tolls on East River bridges that have been free for a century. There are also a plethora of other improvements, bus lanes, etc., which are offered as bait. You may recall that a few months ago the MTA offered a package of helpful innovations to the public.

Unfortunately, because tax revenues came in lower than expected, these already announced improvements have been deferred indefinitely. Anyone who takes seriously any representation by the MTA, from its forty-billion dollar expansion plan, to the smallest commitment on a bus route, deserves to have his or her head examined.

This is not a criticism of the good service on existing routes, which the MTA generally provides. Nor do we find fault with the vision of its leaders, who are optimistic about the future although they cannot even break even because of the enormous debt their predecessors have incurred, interest and repayment of which must be paid out of operating funds.

The MTA, under its former executive director, Katherine Lapp, improved transparency since the days when they kept two sets of books. The managers are honest bureaucrats, placed in a ludicrous position and grasping for any funds they can find to pour into reducing their chronic deficits.

The best argument for congestion pricing is that Mayor Bloomberg is for it. He has generated an enormous campaign, consisting of commercials, posters and advertising by a variety of organizations, some of which appear to be created for the moment. He has also been a very good mayor, and it is with trepidation that an observer says that he is not convinced on an issue. As he told me months ago, "You have a right to be wrong."  But, as he keeps count, just 640 days remain in his term, and who knows what lies ahead.

Another belief that bears on the issue is that the earth is warming, we are running out of oil, and anything done to reduce private travel in cars is desirable. Like cigarette smoking, automobiles poison the air, and kill 45,000 a year through collisions, including many teenagers.

Almost half the motor vehicle deaths are related to the consumption of alcohol. Some day private automobiles will be subject to strict restriction, or very heavily taxed. We had a taste of that during World War II, when so-called "pleasure drivers" had Class A ration stamps, which allowed you to buy three to four gallons of gas per week. With a B stamp, issued where the use of a car was considered essential to the war effort, eight gallons per week were permitted. Members of Congress received X stamps, allowing unlimited purchase of gasoline. Alcohol was not rationed.

Mayor Bloomberg's worthwhile efforts to promote public health are going beyond fighting guns, cigarettes and transfats. If the public is not yet ready to give up on cars, which for so many are an integral part of the American experience, it is a beginning to place a tax on access to commercial Manhattan, and to charge for every major bridge, even those which have been free for a century. Sometimes people resist what they consider infringement on the liberties they and their parents have enjoyed since before they were born..

The campaign began by calling the measure 'congestion pricing' instead of 'bridge tolling', although in fact the bridge tolls will be deducted from the fee to enter Manhattan.

The carrot of $354 million in Federal funds from the Bush Administration if the city and state act by April 7 is illusory. Either the city deserves the money for its mass transits needs or it does not. The practice of making Federal aid contingent on adopting a particular policy that Washington favors is a particular violation of the rights of states and cities. The deadline for the legislature to approve congestion pricing was formerly to be July 16, 2007, but the same bureaucrats who made it up postponed it, first to March 31, 2008 and now to April 7. Beware of arbitrary deadlines set by sellers, they are often an attempt to get people to buy things they might not swallow if they had time to think it over and consider alternatives.

Perhaps the world is changing, and free travel within a city is an obsolete concept. In the brave new world, we will travel as the authorities wish us to, or pay a penalty that they will determine. Sooner or later, there are likely to be restrictions on private automobile travel. Why not let New York City be the national leader?

Two hundred ninety seven years after they were written, the words of Alexander Pope come to mind:

"Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a very wise man. In addition, he was one of the most talented writers in our language. He was, however, never a holder of public office. We should all learn more about him and his work.

It is likely that congestion pricing will be approved. For one thing, money talks. For another, more important people are usually able to get less important people to do their bidding, unless there is a revolutionary situation. And local elected officials, accustomed to taking orders, are probably the least likely class to revolt.

Nor would the new restrictions be an unmixed evil. Major bridges are very expensive to maintain and renovate, and it is totally reasonable that users of the bridges should pay those costs, rather than the general public. But the other bridges and tunnels that comprised the Moses empire are now being used as cash cows for the MTA. They can't wait to get their hands on three more.

Now if the MTA spent sensibly, it might be more deserving of being subsidized by drivers who dare to enter Manhattan. But an agency which threw $450 million into rearranging the South Ferry station, and a billion or more on a Fulton Street track switch which is far from completion, and whose sister agency, the Port Authority, is wasting several billion on a Calatrava-designed station for the Path line at the former World Trade Center, although a new station at that site has already been built for $322 million, is hardly a place on which to bestow additional hundreds of millions of dollars extracted for taxpayers who wish to enter the golden isle.

The forty-billion dollar expansion plan outlined by the MTA shows its infinite, insatiable desire for more public funds. Never stop building, look at the Pharoahs.

The fact that the interest on their ever-mounting debt is charged to their expense budget means they will never come near breaking even on their operations. If elected officials are to vote them even more billions, should they not have some role in determining how the money is spent? 

There are three types of taxes: progressive, percentage and regressive. In progressive taxation, the rich pay at a higher rate than the poor. Income taxes are progressive. Percentage taxes are computed on value, like property taxes, people pay proportionately to what they have. Regressive taxes hit everyone rich and poor, with the same fee, but of course it is the poor who are more seriously impacted. A fee to enter a borough is a regressive tax.

To rich people, or to those who can charge the cost to their businesses, it means next to nothing. As you go down the economic scale, the tax has progressively greater impact. That is the heart of 'congestion pricing'.

This is a proposal made in good faith by people with the best of motives. It is not a scheme to injure people, although it will injure some and assist others.

One thing it will not do is reduce asthma rates in the South Bronx, unless more cars tie up that neighborhood with their fumes in order to avoid paying the $8 to enter Manhattan. The advertising for it has been over the top, and illustrates the fallacy in referenda. Yes, the people should decide. But the people are often influenced by others who spend millions to persuade them. Although this is not a referendum issue, skillful advertising creates a climate in which the normally unpalatable may be sufficiently garnished as to become desirable.

Improvements like bus rapid transit lanes should have been initiated years ago. It is irrelevant to tie them to congestion pricing. Unfortunately, the MTA has some of the habits of a drunken sailor, if it can get money in its hands, it spends it. That is what they did in Battery Park and on Fulton Street. The real beneficiaries of these projects are the contractors, suppliers, engineering firms and unions who are paid to design and build. Look also at the companies that sell railroad cars to the MTA, and to their army of consultants. We are just not comfortable with, pardon the expression, their track record.

Another issue is existing congestion. The pricing plan is supposed to take people out of their cars and into the subways. Just where on the Lexington Avenue subway will they fit? My experience every morning is that many passengers have to shove their way into packed trains during the morning rush hours. We look forward to the new riders who will be joining the crowd. Welcome to the zoo.

We conclude that this is a difficult question of public policy. It is not as simple as either side believes. Since our sympathies are intuitively with the underdog, we feel more associated with the resistance than with the juggernaut supporting the plan.. Unless, of course, we are in government, in which case we see the resistance as the selfish obstruction of progress for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many..

Being neither executives, nor legislators, nor candidates, we can say what we believe. If the toll on the East River bridges were set at a dollar, or whatever it costs to maintain them, that would be fair and reasonable. To impose a heavy daily burden simply to subsidize the spending of an agency whose record does not inspire confidence is another matter. 

The state legislature itself, in its budgeting decisions, is extravagant and irresponsible. How can we expect any better from the state's subsidiary agencies? And if they find a City Council which will approve taxing its citizens to throw more money into the pit, why not? Our priority for the transit system is a state of good repair That is not glamorous enough for some. But perhaps it is what we can afford. 

The present bill is being loaded with all kinds of provisions to satisfy interest groups. It is becoming a Christmas treee of goodies. It will probably pass because of the powerful interest supporting the omnibus measure.

If we disapprove of the way state officials spend our tax dollars, and we certainly do, why tax ourselves every time we cross a bridge that has been free for a century. One probability is that the toll will go up every time the transit fare rises, which is every two years or so. The latest state budget proposal by Governor Patterson calls for a $60 milllion reduction in the state's transit subsidy. Even if the toll funds are in lock box, that does not prevent the reduction or abolition of any other state funds for transit.