Mayor's Congestion-Pricing Plan Advancing, With Some Changes
After four months of deliberations, the commission on congestion pricing will recommend today a plan that largely backs Mayor Bloomberg's original vision of the fee-based traffic idea, but does not include Mr. Bloomberg's proposed 86th Street boundary.
The recommendation would have drivers who enter Manhattan from above 60th Street paying $8 between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., according to sources familiar with the commission recommendation. Drivers traveling by car within the zone would be exempt from any fees, but a $1 taxi surcharge and higher parking rates would be enforced to decrease traffic below the northern boundary.
The mayor's office declined to comment, but during his weekly radio show last week, Mr. Bloomberg said that a lower boundary "would bring in less money and would leave us with another traffic problem."
The commission's recommendation must be approved by the state Legislature, the governor, and the City Council.
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, an opponent of congestion pricing who is a member of the commission, said the recommendation would meet resistance in Albany.
"I do not believe it will become the law of the state," Mr. Brodsky, who represents Westchester County, said during a telephone interview yesterday. "They've taken a bad plan and made it worse." The commission chairman, Marc Shaw, spent yesterday discussing the congestion-pricing plan with state legislators, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.
Proposals that had been considered but were ultimately rejected included a toll on the East River and Harlem River bridges and a rationing program advocated by Mr. Brodsky that would have restricted drivers entering the congestion zone based on the last digit of their license plate.
