Brooklyn's Progress
August/September 2007

BY JILL SHEEHY

An agreement between New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and state lawmakers ensured New York City remained in the running for federal money to fund a traffic congestion reduction plan. The main component of the plan, the formation of a 17-person commission to examine ways of reducing traffic congestion including the Mayor’s proposal, is complete. The work that lies ahead means the Commission must approve a plan by Jan. 31, 2008. Legislation created means any plan approved by the commission must reduce traffic by 6.3%, as the mayor's plan would. The agreement and formation of the commission came about two weeks after the Brooklyn Chamber held a congestion pricing forum at Polytechnic University.

Members and public officials gathered at university located in Downtown Brooklyn on July 12 to debate the Mayor’s contentious congestion pricing plan. The guest panel, made up of Kathryn S. Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, John C. Falcocchio, professor of transportation planning and director of the Urban Intelligent Transportation Systems Center at Polytechnic University, and New York City Council Members Lewis Fidler and David Yassky. Daily News columnist Errol Louis moderated the discussion, which highlighted the ways the plan would affect Brooklyn businesses.

Chamber Members Speak Out
The event also served as a forum to announce the results of the Chamber’s congestion pricing survey, which found that while 85% of Members say the City needs a plan to deal with congestion and its consequences, they were actually split (45% in favor, 41% against) as to whether congestion pricing was the best way to do it.

For complete results of the survey, log on to http://www.ibrooklyn.com/ and go to the recent news section.

Still, a fair amount of respondents didn’t yet know what to think.

“The discussion was extremely valuable,” said Mark Kessler, interim president and COO of the Chamber. “Because our membership is so diverse, survey results were varied. Thirteen percent of respondents were undecided or didn’t know enough about the plan, so we were really doing this forum for them as much as anyone else, so thanks to the panelists, we touched on many topics and that helped to educate Members,” he added.

The timing of the event was also crucial, as the deadline draws near for the New York State Legislature to approve congestion pricing so that the City is eligible for $500 million dollars in federal funding to start a pilot congestion program.

The Cost of Congestion
Ms. Wylde talked about the amount of traffic in the City, the price tag of which, she said, makes the pricing plan necessary. She argued that 52,000 jobs are lost to congestion each year due to loss of productivity, and that the epicenter of the City’s traffic comes from that eight-and-a-half-mile parcel of land marked as Manhattan’s central business district where the charge will apply to.

Small businesses are at a disadvantage when considering the plan, Ms. Wylde admitted.

“Small businesses don’t track the cost of congestion,” she said. “There’s the wear and tear on vehicles, the mileage put on them, gas costs, wasted time sitting in traffic,” she said. “It seems like they might lose out at first, but they will win in the end.”

In Their Backyard
Councilman Yassky, represents Brooklyn Heights, Greenpoint, parts of Williamsburg, Park Slope and Boerum Hill – came out in full support of the plan, arguing that it’s “markedly better than what we have today.”

“We can’t sit and wait for a perfect solution,” he stressed. He supports residential parking permits that would keep his constituency from becoming a parking lot for out-of-area drivers trying to drive as close to Manhattan as possible before having to pay. 53% of survey respondents felt the same.

But Member Gil Cygler, president of All Car Rent A Car, argued that since car owners are already wily enough to register their cars out of state for cheaper insurance, Brooklyn could count on people to falsely obtain parking permits.

Other Options
Mr. Falcocchio said that 30% of the trips into Manhattan’s Central Business District are, in fact, just driving through and do not stop within it. He advocated cracking down on those drivers, but questioned the congestion pricing pilot plan as a whole for being “put together in a hurry” and inflexible. He suggested instead of using London’s strident guidelines as a model, looking at Stockholm’s levied fee plan, which ebbs and flows with the traffic in the city.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz announced that while he has not reached a decision on the congestion pricing issue, he is open to it, as opposed to his original rebuff. He favors changing the plan, with things like giving senior citizens free transit rides and ensuring that those from outside the five boroughs pay bridge and tunnel tolls in addition to the $8 fee.

Councilman Lewis Fidler came out swinging as a staunch opponent of the plan. He represents the Canarsie, Flatlands, Marine Park and Mill Basin areas – in other words, neighborhoods without a subway station.

He agreed that while something has to be done to improve both air quality and traffic in the city, the solution is “probably federal,” and recalled Congressman Jerry Nadler’s cross-harbor tunnel plan as way to take one million truck runs off the streets annually.

Passing the Buck
Peter Petino, president of Active Transport Services, Inc., said that he expects to pass the cost on to his customers if the plan is implemented. He sees it as forcing companies to raise prices across the board.

“This will cause increased pricing of every aspect of goods and services … in one fell swoop.”

He doesn’t deny that traffic is a problem, however. His solution? Taking single drivers off the road with carpooling.

“After Sept. 11, when they mandated carpools for security issues,” he said, “the traffic was much more manageable.”