Slow Going for N.Y. Traffic Plan

Proposed 'Congestion Pricing' Fees Hit Political Gridlock in Capitol

NEW YORK -- Traversing Manhattan's narrow width at midday can be an excruciatingly slow experience.

There are the delivery trucks unloading their wares. There are the taxis discharging and picking up passengers. There are the double-parked limousines, the lane-hogging tourist buses and the occasional slow-moving garbage truck, all contributing to the city's legendary gridlock.

All that congestion is not just inconvenient, it is costly. According to business experts and others, traffic congestion costs New York about 50,000 jobs and $13 billion annually in lost productivity. That includes slow deliveries, gasoline wasted in idling vehicles, and the repairmen who can make only a couple of stops each day. And it doesn't even begin to count the costs to human lungs from breathing in all that pollution.

"The city's the largest it's ever been," said Kathryn Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business consortium. "There's now a million vehicles a day coming in here, and the capacity to manage it's gone."

To address the problem, New York's powerful business community has formed an unusual alliance with environmentalists, civic groups and commuters' associations in favor of a plan, called congestion pricing, borrowed from another traffic-clogged city, London. It would charge $8 for cars and $21 for trucks to enter Manhattan below 60th Street during peak hours. The money would be used to upgrade the city's clogged and in places crumbling mass-transit system.

"There is nothing you can do to improve air quality as quickly and dramatically as reducing vehicular traffic through congestion pricing," Wylde said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg embraced the plan on Earth Day last year and made it the signature proposal of his second-term ambition to turn New York into America's greenest and most efficient city by 2030.

Just a few days ago, it appeared that congestion pricing might be close to becoming a reality. The state's new governor, David A. Paterson, signaled his support after intense lobbying from Bloomberg during a meeting at City Hall. And on Monday, the mayor cajoled and strong-armed a reluctant City Council to support the plan on a rare 30 to 20 split vote.

But the plan now seems to have run into serious political gridlock in the state capital, Albany, where lawmakers must also give their consent.

Paterson, a Democrat, and state Senate leader Joseph Bruno, a Republican, have backed the idea. But it faces a wall of opposition in the Democratic-controlled state Assembly. Objections include concerns that the fee amounts to a new tax on workers and worries that the dozens of cameras needed to enforce the new restrictions might violate New Yorkers' privacy rights.

In a meeting of Assembly Democrats last week, some members from New York City's outer boroughs expressed wariness that their constituents would be charged extra to drive into Manhattan. "Many of us believe it's a regressive tax on the working class," said Michael Benjamin, an Assembly member from the Bronx. "There's no exception for seniors driving into Midtown to see a specialist."

Polls have shown that a majority of New Yorkers favor congestion pricing, if the money raised from the fees is indeed invested in mass transit. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, support for the plan was 70 percent in Manhattan and 61 percent in Queens. Backing was lower in Brooklyn, at 56 percent, and in the Bronx, at 57 percent.