Ticking countdown clock
One week. Seven days. That’s how much time New York’s elected officials have left to pass the state budget. And that’s how much time they’ve got on the countdown clock to reach consensus on a plan to save subways that wheeze and creak and stall, and daily spike our collective blood pressure.
The subways are an irreplaceable trillion-dollar asset. They’ve fallen on hard times. That demands not only management know-how but a new source of dedicated revenue.
The smartest source is congestion pricing — placing a modest price, equal to the existing tolls on bridges and tunnels, on all cars entering Manhattan’s central business district.
Raise money for subways and buses, reduce crippling traffic, make sense of tolls that are currently all over the map. What’s not to like?
If this were a state where legislators were leaders, they’d be paving the way. Alas, it’s a state where, on the big, tough questions, legislators are usually followers — so we have to settle for hoping they get with the program. Fast.
They should take a cue from the board of the MTA, which Wednesday, in a remarkable show of agreement from gubernatorial and mayoral and suburban appointees alike, endorsed congestion pricing, echoing an Op-Ed by two of them, Scott Rechler and Carl Weisbrod, in these pages.
They should have put it to a vote; it would have passed overwhelmingly and put more pressure on the pols. Still, at least they spoke with one voice.
MTA President Pat Foye missed the meeting because he was in Albany promoting a bad way of generating cash for the subways: claiming, without City Hall’s say-so, property taxes resulting from certain transit improvements.
Nothing’s wrong with so-called value capture in concept, but the language in Gov. Cuomo’s budget proposal is dangerously overbroad, grabbing a large chunk of the city’s real estate tax revenue.
The answer is congestion pricing. Everyone knows it. Who has the courage to make it happen, starting by installing the necessary cameras and sensors and assessing all taxis and Ubers and liveries a uniform surcharge on fares below 96th St.?
Cuomo — prime mover of the budget, guy in charge of the MTA — has to take the lead. Early this year, by accepting the recommendations of his Fix NYC panel, he dared broach a concept once considered political poison.
Now that the going’s gotten tough, he must twist arms.
That won’t be hard in the upstate-focused Republican-run Senate, which is open to the idea.
The bigger challenge is in the Assembly, where New York City Democrats hold sway. Before he became speaker, Carl Heastie long backed congestion pricing on private vehicles.
Now, as leader of the 150-member chamber, he is shy about giving his backing unless he gets the 76 for a majority exclusively from among the 103 Democrats, the bulk of whom represent the city.
Supporters, like Heastie, have to speak up. Fence-sitters have to pick sides. And the few staunch opponents have to get overridden.
That’s democracy, where the interests of the many override the fears of the few.
One week. Seven days. That’s how much time is left to get the subways back on track.