As Traffic Tax Gains Speed, Silver Taps Brakes

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The New York Sun

ALBANY — The speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, who was instrumental in derailing Mayor Bloomberg’s West Side stadium project and foiling Governor Pataki’s plan to convert the James Farley Post Office into the Moynihan Train Station, is now positioning himself as the odd man out in the push for congestion pricing in Manhattan.

Distancing himself from Governor Spitzer, the longtime Democratic leader threw cold water on Mr. Bloomberg’s plan to relieve traffic and generate money for major transit projects by imposing a fee on daytime motorists driving into the southern half of Manhattan.

While Mr. Spitzer offered his strongest support for congestion pricing to date yesterday, Mr. Silver said he had a lengthy list of concerns about how such a complex program would be implemented and about the consequences of tracking and charging millions of motorists.

“There are a lot of legitimate questions,” Mr. Silver said.

Mr. Silver said he had privacy concerns about the use of a 1,000-camera-computer network to record license plates. He said he feared the proposed charges — $8 for motorists entering Manhattan below 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and $4 for people driving within the borough — could rapidly increase, much like London raised its fees to $16 from $10 two years after it started its own program in 2003.

The speaker also said the pricing arbitrarily punished some drivers more than others. For instance, motorists crossing over East River bridges, which do not have tolls, would pay $8 more than they ordinarily do, but motorists crossing via toll bridges and tunnels would see a smaller increase because those tolls would be counted against the $8 charge.

Apart from Mr. Silver’s skepticism, the plan appeared to be gaining momentum. The Republican-controlled Senate introduced a 45,000-word bill outlining the pricing plan, as well as other components of Mr. Bloomberg’s 2030 environmental and infrastructure initiative that need approval from Albany, and may vote on it before lawmakers break for the year on June 21. The Assembly will hold the first of a series of public hearings on the bill on Friday; Mr. Bloomberg is expected to speak on behalf the project.

In the city yesterday, Mr. Spitzer, the mayor, and America’s secretary of transportation announced that New York was one of nine cities named as semifinalists in a competition for $1.1 billion in federal grants for programs that combat traffic.

Mr. Spitzer said he was committed to congestion pricing but needed more time to work out the details with the mayor’s office. A consensus is emerging among state and city officials that talks will spill over into the summer and the governor would call lawmakers back for a special session if a final agreement is reached.

“This is a necessary investment in the future of New York City,” Mr. Spitzer said. “It’s not a question of whether — it’s a question of how. It’s a question of making sure we do it properly.”

The Bloomberg administration is counting on securing as much as $500 million from the federal pot but needs to assure federal officials that it will have approval for the plan by August.

A Spitzer official said a major open issue is how the estimated hundreds of millions of congestion pricing dollars would be spent. The Spitzer administration would like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is mostly controlled by the governor, to direct the money to transit projects, while Mr. Bloomberg wants the money to flow to a separate authority under joint city and state control.

Each side has its own wish list of capital projects, a potential source of conflict that could pit one project, such as the extension of the no. 7 subway line, against another, such as the East Side Access project.

The official said the governor would like to use some of the revenue as operating aid to pay down the MTA’s projected 2010 deficit of $1.8 billion in order to decrease anticipated subway and bus fare hikes.


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