Streetsblog Capitol Hill

"If you were to design the ultimate system, you would have mass transit be free and charge an enormous amount for cars."

So said Mayor Michael Bloomberg last April, right about the time he unveiled his plan to charge motorists a fee to drive into Manhattan's central business district. Eight months later, as the mayor's original proposal mutates for better or worse, the MTA is hours away from raising transit fares. Neither idea has exactly caught fire with the public, and the fare hikes could actually end up a foil for congestion pricing -- a plan originally intended as a sustained financial boost for the transit system.

And then there's Theodore "Ted" Kheel. The environmentalist, philanthropist, and renowned labor attorney has lobbied for free transit in New York for over 40 years. Last February he commissioned a $100,000 study that, as it turns out, could put the city's money where the mayor's mouth is. A summary of findings released late last week shows that if the city were to impose a $16 congestion fee ($32 for trucks) below 60th Street in Manhattan, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, along with higher curbside parking fees and a taxi surcharge, the MTA could remove its turnstiles and fareboxes forever.

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Congestion pricing advocate Carolyn Konheim and consulting partner Brian Ketcham are advising the Bloomberg administration to drop its resistance to a congestion pricing Environmental Impact Study.

The two say a study is needed to head off "likely 11th hour litigation" aimed at stopping the three-year pilot program from taking effect, a possibility Streetsblog alluded to following the first meeting of the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission late last month.

"[D]ecision-makers need to know that the selection of the system to be tested has considered all reasonable alternatives to achieve the Mayor's admirable goals," reads a press release announcing Konheim and Ketcham's open letter to Mayor Bloomberg.

The most promising alternative to be examined in an environmental assessment is "charging at the real chokepoints in roadway capacity -- our river crossings and highways," according to Ketcham, a traffic engineer who has regarded bridge tolls as the premier congestion pricing strategy since he introduced them in his landmark Clean Air plan for New York City in 1973. Tolling the four free East River bridges equal to all MTA crossings and across 60th Street, river to river, he calculates "would be at least as effective as PlaNYC in reducing congestion and would generate far more funding for transit."

The independent Brooklyn-based planners estimate that a pricing cordon that crosses bridge and tunnel spans and 60th Street would require E-ZPass monitors on about 50 inbound lanes, whereas the charging network necessitated by PlaNYC's complex avoidance of tolls could require detectors and cameras on1,000 to 2,000 lanes. Based on London's operating costs for a simpler single cordon, they foresee that the charging grid in PlaNYC would consume most of the congestion pricing revenue, leaving little funding for transit -- a major goal of the mayor's plan and the long-term aim of transit advocates.

Mr. Ketcham and Ms. Konheim suggest numerous strategies as alternatives to or companions of congestion pricing, particularly, the kind of comprehensive parking control and parking pricing program instituted in London before road pricing, and measures to reduce taxi cruising, a "major source of New York's congestion."

The full text of the letter appears after the jump.

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This comment from Carolyn Konheim of Community Consulting Services, which appeared on a thread that stemmed from our earlier report about the likely appointment of Michael Horodniceanu (right) as the next NYC DOT Commissioner, provides an interesting counterpoint to the "cars-first" rap he has been tagged with:

Michael Horodniceanu is more progressive than generally appreciated.  He really knows city streets and how they could function better for everyone. His firm's Technical Memo #1 to NYCDOT on Downtown Brooklyn so honestly reported traffic and transit conditions (including the penalty of "free" bridges) that developers' EISs and compliant agencies have been covering up, that the rest of the high level study -- a Mayoral commitment -- has been buried for two years.

Mike was a pioneer traffic calmer. In 1986, as NYCDOT Deputy Commissioner, he offered $600,000 to carry out a community traffic calming plan that would have done 20 years ago what the City's costly sidewalk cosmetics still ignore -- protecting neighborhood streets from through traffic.  He was so far ahead of his time that he took brickbats in a personal appeal to a skeptical community board that now rues the day they voted it down. Today, he uses graphic traffic network models (tools NYCDOT has refused for Brooklyn) to show how innovative pedestrian measures can benefit everyone.  If chosen, he'll know where in the agency to find good people ready to do the right thing.