Andrew crosses a bridge
ongestion pricing is an idea whose time has come.” With those words, Gov. Cuomo has signed on to 1) reviving the ailing subways, 2) relieving crushing traffic, 3) rebuilding battered roads and 4) reducing dangerous pollution.
Having made the brave decision, Cuomo must now use his considerable powers of political persuasion to get the Legislature to agree to charge motorists a small fee for driving south of 60th St. in Manhattan and crossing the East River bridges and devote proceeds to improving MTA subway and bus service wildly inadequate to the region’s needs.
Cuomo did it on marriage equality. He did it on gun control. He did it for a higher minimum wage. He can and must do secure congestion pricing for the city’s future, and the state’s.
Each Albany lawmaker, from Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan on down, will have to take a public stand on the best and smartest and fairest plan to save the subways. Doing nothing, after breakdowns and derailments and delays, delays, delays, is no longer an option.
In doing their duty, the state’s leaders will reverse two mistakes of history. One: the folly of Mayor William J. Gaynor, who in 1911 abolished tolls on the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges.
Second mistake: the Legislature’s inability in 2008 to take up Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s plan for congestion pricing, after its 30-20 passage by the City Council.
Enter the old adage that in crisis lies opportunity. To cut traffic during repairs on Penn Station’s broken tracks, the MTA offered half-fare latenight tolls for trucks on bridges and tunnels. A week later Cuomo uttered the words “congestion pricing” and now says, “We have been going through the problems with the old plan and trying to come up with an updated and frankly better congestion pricing plan.”
He needn’t look far. The MOVE NY plan by our own Gridlock Sam Schwartz would cut tolls on all spans not going into Manhattan south of 60th St. — the Whitestone and the Verrazano and five other bridges, leaving the Brooklyn–Battery and Queens–Midtown tunnels tolls as is.
That’s why the AAA and the trucking association and politicians from Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn are on board even after having fought Bloomberg’s plan.
Still stuck in the mud is Mayor de Blasio, who voted no as a councilman and now claims Senate opposition makes any plan “a non-starter.” Actually, the problem was Speaker Shelly Silver blocking a vote even as the Senate stood ready. With Heastie, a Bloomberg plan backer, now in charge, the mayor should get on Cuomo’s bus.
Cuomo’s aides say he will use January’s State of the State speech to issue a congestion pricing plan. Starting sooner with a special session of the Legislature would be the best signal possible to beleaguered MTA riders: No. More. Delays.