Don't Wait for the Congestion Pricing Pilot: Fix Transit Now!

Hope Cohen, April 2007

Is congestion pricing a "regressive tax on middle-class working families," as contended by Congressman Anthony Weiner, the former and future mayoral candidate who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens? Or is Mayor Bloomberg correct that Midtown congestion has gotten so bad that charging drivers is the only available tool for both reducing traffic and paying for the improvements that will lure drivers out of their cars and onto buses and subways?

New Yorkers will be asked to choose sides in this debate over the coming months. The plan can easily be attacked as a reprehensible Manhattanite tax on the other boroughs. Yet a recent Manhattan Institute study found that New Yorkers would embrace congestion pricing as part of a comprehensive solution to traffic problems—which is pretty much what the mayor is proposing.

The political obstacles to implementing congestion pricing are serious, but the mayor may be able to surmount them if he starts some long-overdue transportation improvements now. According to his own plans, he has about two years to put congestion pricing in place. In all likelihood, though, it will take even longer—for technological reasons as well as political ones.

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY, BUT...
Since the mayor wants to introduce congestion pricing while he's still in office, his administration will work hard for a spring 2009 launch. Deputy Mayor Doctoroff believes the technological implementation will be straightforward—but it will almost surely take longer and cost more than the administration expects.

The mayor's plan is modeled on London's geographic system: vehicles entering the charging zone during designated business hours must pay a flat fee. The proposal sounds simple enough: charge every car $8 and every truck $21 for coming into Manhattan south of 86th Street between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on weekdays. But first, all river crossings, including those that are now free, and all southbound avenues at 86th Street, will have to be equipped with EZ-Pass readers. In addition, cameras will have to be installed to find and fine violators, as in London. Then there are a series of adjustments and corrections that, while sensible, will complicate implementation:

1. Drivers will be credited for tolls paid at Port Authority or MTA bridges and tunnels, requiring a new, sophisticated back-office system to reconcile fees collected by various charging entities.

2. Since moving a vehicle already within the zone will incur only half the fee, sensors and cameras will have to be installed throughout the charging zone, not just at the boundaries.

3. Because cars moved for alternate-side-of-the-street parking within the zone won't be charged, the system must be able to distinguish among types of vehicle movements and trips.

4. The system will need to be able to recognize vehicles—ambulances, fire trucks, and cop cars, as well as buses, taxis, livery cabs, and cars with handicapped license plates—that are exempt from the charge.

All of this is technologically feasible. But information technology projects nearly always exceed the time and money budgeted by proponents—in this case, two years and $224 million, to come mainly from federal and private sources. Projects that mix electronic and physical infrastructure, notably intelligent transportation systems (ITS), are even more susceptible to cost overruns. Every major recent ITS project in New York has been far more difficult and expensive than originally planned. The most successful so far is the MetroCard system, whose actual cost was about a billion dollars when unplanned and hidden components such as the electrical upgrades required are included—hundreds of millions of dollars more than advertised during design. Initial implementation of New York City Transit's automated train supervision system and new signaling technology are years behind schedule and tens of millions of dollars over budget—with no clear indication of when they will be accepted for operation.

CONGESTION PRICING WILL PAY FOR TRANSIT
The mayor says the city needs $2.7 billion for the first two phases of the Second Avenue Subway, $2 billion to connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, and $175 million to reopen the defunct rail line along Staten Island's North Shore. Another $10 billion is needed to bring subway infrastructure and roads and bridges to a state of good repair.

And while the mayor is anticipating state and federal funds, congestion pricing will be the most important local source via a new authority, the Sustainable Mobility and Regional Transportation (SMART) Financing Authority.

Without congestion pricing, argues the mayor, the big projects cannot be built, nor is there money to complete repairs to existing transportation infrastructure anytime soon. The city doesn't even have the $264 million needed for a second round of Bus Rapid Transit routes.

BUT WILL CONGESTION PRICING REDUCE TRAFFIC?
But to be accepted—to get off the ground politically—congestion pricing cannot be seen as just a new source of money. New Yorkers have to believe that it will help reduce traffic.

The administration expects congestion pricing to decrease vehicles entering Manhattan by 6% and increase speeds within the charging zone by 7%. In other words, the traffic improvement in Manhattan would be modest. And many observers are puzzled by the choice of relatively uncongested 86th Street as the northern boundary—rather than 60th Street, which West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer notes had been the boundary negotiated with City Hall.

However, the program will surely reduce congestion in neighborhoods like Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City that have long suffered from through-traffic. The different costs for crossing the East River have demonstrated for decades that road pricing does affect driver behavior in New York. The free Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Queensboro bridges, as well as their feeder roads, are clogged daily, even as traffic flows more smoothly to and through the tolled tunnels. The mayor's proposal would correct this pricing irrationality by crediting drivers for the cost of their tolls. The price for a round-trip using E-ZPass through a tolled East River crossing is $8—exactly the same as the automobile congestion charge proposed for the pilot.

Many New Yorkers will welcome the news that the administration plans to step up traffic enforcement. The mayor wants to add 100 traffic enforcement agents to the Department of Transportation by 2009 and will seek changes to state law to allow them to issue moving violations. Currently, only police officers and a small subset of enforcement agents are legally permitted to issue blocking-the-box tickets, for example.

The administration's plan to install Muni-Meters (modern, credit-card-friendly parking meters) should ease traffic problems related to curbside parking in business districts outside Manhattan. There are projects to expand ferry service and promote cycling.

But one of the most important potential reforms has gone unmentioned—doing something about the excessive amount of free parking in the city, especially for government employees. Because they often receive placards that permit unlimited free parking at a wide range of designated areas, government employees drive to work in the Manhattan central business district at just about twice the rate (27% versus 14%) of private-sector employees. Just as bad are the many court officers, city cops, and others who simply park wherever they like, such as on the bridle paths of Central Park. To demonstrate its commitment to reducing congestion, the Bloomberg administration should eliminate free parking privileges for city employees—and urge other public and private-sector employers to do the same.

MAKE THE IMPROVEMENTS IMMEDIATELY
Mayor Bloomberg has sensibly suggested a three-year pilot, saying there is no reason we can't turn the system off if we don't like it. But the single most important thing the mayor can do to convince New Yorkers to give his pilot a shot is to implement transportation improvements first. Preceding its congestion charging program with increases in bus service was one of the keys to London's success.

In his speech, the mayor announced that transportation upgrades for underserved areas would begin right away, and the PlaNYC book features a chart of improvements for 22 neighborhoods with high concentrations of Manhattan-bound drivers. These include adding bus routes (College Point, Jackson Heights, Woodside/Sunnyside), adjusting bus routes (Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Cambria Heights), improving intermodal connections (15 of the 22 neighborhoods, including Co-op City, Soundview, and Flatlands), changing traffic signals to favor buses (Schuylerville, Flatbush, Sheepshead Bay), and improving access to subway and rail stations (Clinton Hill, Kensington, South Ozone Park).

Starting these improvements now—transportation services that should already exist—will correct a long-standing wrong and make Mayor Bloomberg's ambitious vision more achievable.

WHAT’S NEXT
April 30 is the deadline for cities to submit applications for Urban Partnership Agreements with the U.S. Department of Transportation to study congestion-relief options. Urban Partners (the cities that get the grants) will be named by August 2007. "The city has a very good chance of getting the funds since the federal Department of Transportation has said that an application from New York will be highly competitive for a large amount of federal money," notes Kathryn S. Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City.

The city needs state legislation on many components, including the SMART financing authority. Governor Spitzer has said he's open to considering the full range of the mayor's proposals.

New York City will begin to implement some of the near-term transportation improvements, in anticipation of starting the congestion pricing pilot in spring 2009.