End the delays
Tom Suozzi and Kathy Hochul, competing to win the Democratic nomination for governor, were both right to say in their Tuesday night debate that now isn’t the right time for congestion pricing. The right time was decades ago when it was first proposed by Columbia Prof. Bill Vickrey to curb horrible traffic in Manhattan, reduce pollution and pump needed funds into transit. Vickrey, who received the 1996 Nobel Prize in economics for his work, died just days later. His brilliant idea, now closer than ever, cannot be put off.
After finally winning the backing of a once-opposed governor (Cuomo) and mayor (de Blasio), then getting through the Legislature three years ago, all thanks in part to the non-stop arm-twisting of this Editorial Board, there can be no backsliding now. The implementation is also behind schedule due to Donald Trump’s reign of error and then COVID.
The pols aren’t even right about the politics. Even as Suozzi and Hochul were pandering to the motorist vote — the third candidate, Jumaane Williams, co-writes of his support for pressing ahead with congestion pricing in these pages — a poll was showing that the large majority of respondents, nearly twothirds, would switch from driving to transit if congestion pricing started. That’s exactly how Vickrey predicted it would work.
During this COVID time of reduced transit ridership, declining fare box revenue is one big problem; murderous-as-ever Midtown and Downtown traffic is another. With congestion pricing, jams on the road would go down, the number of straphangers would go up and the depleted MTA kitty would be injected with needed billions. Two city pigeons, one stone. Or is that three?
We’ll never get out of the bureaucratic gridlock if fearful pols, angling for votes from the minority in this city who drive into Manhattan (and still manage to pay for parking), keep pumping the brakes. In the decades since Vickrey created the concept, it has been successfully introduced around the world. Bringing it home, to where it was first envisioned, is long past due.