Comments

  • This idea just gets worse and worse. It’s starting to remind me of of stories I read about about pre-1898 unincorporated NYC, before there were five boroughs. Bloomberg needs to make up his mind if NYC is one city or not.

    Posted by Anonymous
    on May 8th, 2007 at 10:18 am

  • As someone who takes the subway into Manhattan, but who hates tolls within the city, I was initially kind of POed about another toll for NYers to enter lower and midtown Manhattan. Frankly, I’d rather see NJ and CT foot the bill. But the more I think about it, the less upset I really am. I’d PREFER no congestion pricing, don’t get me wrong, and I won’t cry if it doesn’t pass. But if you drive into Manhattan and take the Midtown of Brooklyn Battery Tunnel or take the Triborough, or take a handful of the Bronx bridges, you’re paying a toll anyway, both ways. That’s about 8 or 9 dollars already. Yes, you can take the free bridges, but when you get to Manhattan (I refuse to call it “the city”) more than likely, you’re paying for a day-space at a garage. And that’s even more money. PLUS you’re shelling out three bucks a gallon for gas. So who are these “working stiffs” who can afford all this? The poor folks I’ve met who live out beyond the subway take the bus to the subway. Their commute is 100% MetroCard, not EZPass.

    Maybe this is a good thing. During the transit strike, people found ways to carpool. Now they can do it again. Websites can be set up where people can meet. Four people from neighborhood A can drive to work in neighborhood B. They can split the toll, split the gas, split the garage four ways. And the website will match up people with similar schedules.

    My real concern is for the outer borough companies who make deliveries into Manhattan. I know that this will burden them. But at the same time, THEY’RE the problem. They’re the white panel vans who double park almost as a matter of course. This takes a four lane avenue and cuts it in half. So if they delivered later in the day, we might not even need congestion pricing because just getting rid of the double parkers would ease traffic.

    Plus you can’t argue the reduced pollution part.

    Okay, I’ve said my say. Maybe I’m totally wrong. Maybe it really is cheaper to pay tolls and gas and parking than I think and maybe an extra $50 a week will screw most commuters. If so, I’d like it to be explained. But thus far, I think that adding express buses, making the subways run more frequently, and encouraging carpooling might do the trick.

    PS: The parking permit thing should be scrapped. I firmly oppose that one.

    Posted by Jon
    on May 8th, 2007 at 11:23 pm

  • Municipal park and ride lots:

    Downtown Flushing: being developed
    Elmhurst: half built on when the mall expanded
    Rego Park: would have made a nice one, but there’ll be a Whole Foods there instead
    Long Island City/Queens Plaza: to be demolished

    Go to NYCgarages.com and you’ll see why people drive to work. Parking in a municipal lot in Queens and taking the LIRR or subway costs the same as or more than a commercial lot in Manhattan!

    Posted by Julie
    on May 9th, 2007 at 11:40 am

  • Julie posted a link to NYCGarages.com. This comment is just to let readers know that the website has been re-branded as http://www.BestParking.com

    Posted by Benjamin Sann
    on August 19th, 2007 at 1:45 am

Post a Comment

You’ll pay us $8 and like it

Posted by Steve on Monday, May 7th, 2007

A couple weeks ago, when I got my panties all in a bunch about congestion pricing, it did occur to me that maybe there was a solution for the working-class stiffs from neighborhoods with limited public-transit options who would potentially be forced to pay $40 a week to get into the city. Despite the inconvenience, at least they could drive to Long Island City or Brooklyn Heights, park and take the subway from there.

Or not. The Bloomberg administration is listening to the concerns of the people who would be affected most by congestion pricing. No, not the drivers — the residents of the Manhattan-adjacent outer-borough neighborhoods whose streets could become clogged with interlopers, some of them, perhaps, even unable to afford the million-dollar condos going up in droves on the East River. According to the New York Sun (the New York what?), the city is considering requiring parking permits in the neighborhoods, a la Forest Hills Gardens.

Of course, there are some serious Central Queens implications here. If you live in Ozone Park or Glendale or Middle Village and the city tells you that you have to pay $8 to drive into Manhattan but you also can’t park by the 7 in LIC, guess where you’re going to go instead. F express, anyone? Hope your building has a garage!

Hypocritical as it is for me to say so in light of my love for the Gardens, parking permits are generally a bad idea in the same restricted-access vein as congestion pricing itself. If they happen, we’d better start seeing some real solutions for the hardships the affected drivers are going to have. But as usual, I’m not holding my breath.