To Kathy Hochul,
The new congestion pricing plan you are about to implement is highly unimaginative and if implemented will garuantee my vote for your opposition in the next election, regardless of party.
To go with, the timing of it is absolutely horrible. The city has not fully recovered from the pandemic and this new legistlation will only ensure the end of Manhattan as open to anyone other than the super rich and tourists. (Which it barely is at all)
There are plenty of ways to generate funds for the MTA other than taxing car owners in NYC. For starters, just ticket all the people on two wheels who are constantly breaking the rules of the road. And the rules of the cross walk for that matter.
If you havne't walked the streets of Manhattan, or any other borough in a while, you better look both ways. Because it's not a car that's going to hit you, it's a moped. And they are going to hit hard. As they often travel at full throttle in the bike lanes. (Thanks NYtimes for those bike lanes, btw... you all really are so much smarter than the rest of us! Hope you can run fast in your super affordable Amberjacks!)
Traffic in lower Manhattan is acurately horrible. But creating a toll as a solution is nothing more than a blatant cash grab for the MTA.
After fleecing drivers once again, can you garauntee the MTA will finally have enough cash? Is an additional billion dollars a year finally enough? Let me say that again, ONE BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Or will there be a fare increase next year...? I imagine there will be a fare increase and service will generally be the same.
What do the drivers get out of all of this? With a billion extra dollars a year can you make all the roads in NYC smooth? There are smoother dirt roads in Montana than the Manhattan to BK lanes on the Manhattan bridge. What about 95 north? That's a nightmare.
Or do drivers have to specifially pay to fix mass transit? Why can't mass transit pay for itself? Maybe everyone should bare the burden equally? Maybe we should clean up the MTA along with the air...
If a year from now, the conditions on the MTA and the roads are exactly the same, where will you say all this new revenue went? (I hope not to special interest and beaurocratic kickbacks.)
This will do little to ease traffic due to the nature and layout of the city. London is much more spacious than NYC. It's not an island with one road across it.
The upper class will not stop driving and the lower classes will bear the burden of this.
It will be the end of Manhattan culturally as it will finally just be a bastion of the rich. Manhattan has not recovered fully from covid. Attendance at theatres and shows is still down and making it more expensive to enter the city will only discourage patrons. (Rent is too damn high anyone?)
Fixing the congestion in Manhattan is going to take creative thinking and problem solving. Just making it more expenvise solves nothing in one of the richest cities (islands) on the planet.
As a believer in capitalism and prosperity I believe this is a horrible piece of legistlation that will be used to demarcate the end of NYC as a place of opportunity and hope. Much like college tuition, it will be the writing on the wall for young peole that NYC is not worth their time.
Signed,
Paul Jones
PS: one of the most frustrating things about this is there are rules being broken on the roads constantly that go unfined. Perhaps if we just enforced the rules we already have we wouldn't need to create new tolls.
And the moped/motorized-bike/scooter drivers breaking every rule on the road is especially infurating and dangerous at this time. Can we fix this as well?