Congestion Pricing vs. Fare Hike
Gothamist picks up on the NYC Independent Budget Office's report that, thanks to mounting debt, the MTA may be forced to raise subway and bus fares to as much as $3 per ride by 2010. As the Daily News explains, the hikes will be necessary if the agency can't find the money elsewhere:
The doomsday scenario could hit if other revenue sources, including dedicated taxes, state subsidies and MTA bridge and tunnel tolls, are not increased, according to the report, which was commissioned by the Straphangers Campaign.
There is, of course, an excellent potential source of new revenue, as Straphangers pointed out:
"If we don't get financial help soon, transit riders will face whopping fare hikes," said Gene Russianoff of the rider advocacy group. He urged Gov. Spitzer to back Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing proposal.
If opponents of congestion pricing insist on labeling the idea as nothing more than a regressive tax increase, perhaps they'll consider which is really more regressive: a fee that would impact only five percent of New Yorkers, most of whom don't even need to drive into Manhattan, or a fare hike that would hit hard in the pocketbooks of the great majority of the city's workers.
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Congestion pricing | MTA
But
Submitted by Paul Curtis on 7 June 2007 - 8:17pm.
The shortage in funds for operating expenses is related to the cost of debt service for the money borrowed to pay for capital improvements. The issues are related and are going to be carried forward.
I agree with you that the current draft legislation needs to be overhauled to specify where and how transportation service is going to be improved.
But again, while the data is only preliminary, the PFNYC study suggested that the vast majority of those people who "must drive into the city" really don't need to be driving into the city. It's right and fair that the congestion pricing bargain includes expanded service to those in under-served areas, and the current legislation needs to be improved to account for that. But that's only one part in the larger ecology of transporation funding in NYC.
Fare hike or congestion pricing
Fascinating -- they're using the threat of a fare hike as a sledgehammer to try to push through a poorly thought out congestion pricing scheme.
It's a load of garbage! The money raised from congestion pricing (estimated at $400 million/year) is slated to go to capital improvements to the mass transit system, not to operating expenses. Therefore, congestion pricing would not affect any fare hike.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of people who, because of the inadequacies of our various mass transit systems, find they must drive into the city. If we are to implement a congestion pricing plan, we must first (as Council Member and chair of the Transportation Committee John Liu has stated) expand mass transit to give drivers a real alternative.