Congestion Pricing Is Popular Among Ideas To Boost MTA
Business leaders, academics, and activists are offering up a range of suggestions — which include reviving congestion pricing, selling city bridges, and eliminating subway fares altogether — on how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority should handle its looming shortfalls.
During a Ravitch Commission hearing yesterday at New York University, a former city transportation commissioner, Luicius Riccio, said yesterday that the city should consider selling the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges for $1 to the MTA, which could then charge tolls on commuters and use the revenue to finance mass transit improvements. According to Mr. Riccio, who is now a professor at Columbia, such a move could allow the city to implement aspects of Mayor Bloomberg's proposed congestion-pricing program without having to seek the permission of the state government, which killed a push for the idea earlier this year. He suggested such a move could raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year for capital improvements.
In a letter to the commission, the chairman of Nurture New York's Nature, Theodore Keel, suggested reviving some form of congestion pricing in order to eliminate subway fares entirely and provide free mass transit citywide.
The Fiscal Policy Institute's James Parrot proposed a slight fare increase, increased federal and state assistance, and one or more dedicated taxes, possibly including a modest uncapped payroll tax.
Members of the Ravitch Commission said they would take participants' suggestions into consideration in determining their recommendations to the MTA.
