if NYC needs more money for mass transit... charge them the price of a gallon of gas!!!
Posted on 04/08/2008 1:55:56 PM PDT by knighthawk
Speaker Sheldon Silver and the Democrats who control the state Assembly were worse than wrong in killing congestion pricing yesterday. They acted against the best interests of New York without having the decency to take a vote.
Silver's Assembly Democrats put New Yorkers in severe jeopardy of riding deteriorating mass transportation - and paying increasing fares for the privilege.
Because those are the consequences looming over millions of people in the city and across the region with the rejection of congestion pricing.
No single matter taken up by the Legislature over the past few decades was as critically important to so many New Yorkers as congestion pricing was. Proponents and opponents deserved robust debate and an up-or-down ballot by every member of the Assembly and Senate.
But Silver denied the public even that basic exercise in democracy. He simply refused to let congestion pricing come to the Assembly floor for a vote, where it may well have passed with Republican support.
Instead, it was interred in a back room because, Silver said, most of his Democrats were opposed. Who? What was their reasoning? What was the count? No one will ever know.
So, it was "NO" from Silver to Mayor Bloomberg, who conceived of the plan to raise mass transit funding and cut gridlock by, in effect, tolling the four East River bridges.
And it was "NO" from Silver to Gov. Paterson, who saw the wisdom of congestion pricing when the MTA barely has enough money to keep trains and buses running, let alone the billions needed to upgrade signals and tracks and complete major service expansion like the Second Ave. subway.
And it was "NO" from Silver to U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who committed to $354 million in immediate federal transit aid.
And it was "NO" from Silver to the City Council, which backed congestion pricing on a brave vote.
And it was "NO" from Silver to mass transit riders who were in line for major bus and subway service improvements in communities as scattered as Bay Ridge, the northeast Bronx and southeast Queens.
In the end, the evidence seems overwhelming that Silver and Assembly Democrats never gave congestion pricing a fair shot.
They demanded a study and recommendations by a state-city panel. They got them. They required a special capital plan from the MTA. They got it. They demanded the blessings of the City Council. They got them.
And then Silver and Assembly Democrats rejected everything without a public vote or offering an alternative plan for raising the vast sums needed to maintain mass transit as a crucial engine of the region's economy and quality of life.
It was simply "NO."
The question now is what will Silver and his Democrats do, if anything, for mass transit.
Ping
Another scintillating editorial from The Bloomberg Fanzine - I mean the Daily News.
The authors a f***ing drama queen. Chicago just went through the same thing. Mass transit is ALWAYS whining for more money.
If traffic congestion is the problem, the solution is not in gouging even more money from citizens and small businesses, but in simply restricting auto traffic into Manhattan. That such restrictions are not on the table is enough to convince many that ‘congestion pricing’ is just another money-grab.
Coming to a state near you, the continual collapse of a socialist state. Who will stop the train?
T-minus twenty-one months and counting ...
The senate republicans were for it and the assembly democrats killed it. Chalk one up for the rats
I’ll give the devil his due.
Ping
Oh, brother.
if NYC needs more money for mass transit... charge them the price of a gallon of gas!!!
The Lincoln Tunnel was 6.00 last time I looked. I think the Verrazano bridge is more.
Screw this editorial and the NY Daily News.
Pretty soon they will tax the air you breathe.
There never happy. Always looking for more and more. Notice they talk about how it will cut down on traffic, but they leave out that most stuff is trucked in. And they were talking about 21 dollars a truck. So who is going to pay the extra cost? Not the politicians who will take most of the new money and use it for pet projects. Nothing but trying to be more socialist then London.
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