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New York City bus (lunchtimemama/flickr)

NEW YORK, NY May 10, 2007 —Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to charge drivers who enter Manhattan comes with a carrot as well as a stick. The mayor is pledging to expand bus and ferry options by early 2009, when his congestion pricing plan would take effect - IF it’s approved by the legislature. WNYC’s Beth Fertig went to Eastern Queens to see whether commuters are persuaded by that tradeoff.

REPORTER: It’s 5:30 on a weekday night, and Raquel Barnes is calling her husband from the Q4 bus on the way home to St. Albans.

BARNES: You’re still on Queens Blvd?

REPORTER: Barnes and her husband both work in Manhattan. He drives, but she takes mass transit. For her, that means taking the bus to and from Jamaica to catch the E train. The entire journey takes more than an hour and a half each way. But she often makes it home before her husband.

BARNES: I mean like he leaves work the same time but then we’re racing home now. And I’m going to get home before him because he’s stuck in traffic. He leaves earlier than I do but the traffic normally holds him. FERTIG: So what do you think will happen if they start charging your husband eight dollars to drive to Manhattan? BARNES: I think he’ll do it. Because it’s, it’s, to me he’ll still do it because he loves driving and sometimes it works out better.

REPORTER: That’s a gamble relatively few commuters are willing to take. Just 5 percent of all New York City residents with jobs drive to Manhattan, according to a transportation study based on 2000 census data. Even in the outlying neighborhoods of Eastern Queens, only a third of those who work in Manhattan take their cars.

Robin Morisset is one of those drivers. As she exits the Farmbria Supermarket in Cambria Heights with her four year old son, Destin, she acknowledges she COULD take mass transit. But her car is more convenient.

MORISSET: It takes an hour if, you know, driving. It will take more than an hour if I take the bus or train, even cause the kids, dropping the kids at daycare and everything else.

REPORTER: Mayor Bloomberg is promising to add more express buses to Cambria Heights and 21 other neighborhoods that are currently under-served by mass transit. The city is already planning five new Bus Rapid Transit lines that would stop less frequently. And the transportation department is looking at ways of synchronizing traffic lights to bus routes. There are also long-term goals of adding more regional commuter rail service. But those options don’t appeal to this working mother of three.

MORISSET: That would be a little faster but even with kids you gotta drop off at daycare, then get back on a bus. So it’s easier to drive. REPORTER: So what would convince you to leave your car here in Queens? MORRISET: Nothing! Nothing! It’s easier when you have kids!

REPORTER: Not everyone is laughing at the mayor’s proposal. There are some who would love to see more express buses. Shana Ashwood says they’d just have to live up to their name.

ASHWOOD: For instance I was taking the express bus into the city for 2 years. But the express bus is a misnomer because it takes longer than the subway. If there were more direct route into the city from these locations that would cut down on the 2 hr commute I’d be taking the Express bus over Long Island Rail Road. It’s more cost effective.

REPORTER: But even with more mass transit options, MANY commuters like Ashwood oppose an 8 dollar fee for driving into Manhattan. For some, like Robin Morisset, it’s an issue of cost.

MORRISET: That’s a lot of money coming out of the pocket just to go back and forth to work. It’s like you’re working just to get to work.

REPORTER: And others in neighborhoods close to train stations worry about an influx from driving trying to avoid the eight dollar fee for entering midtown.

MAN AT MEETING: How many people are dead set against it?

REPORTER: This week, a community meeting about congestion pricing was held in Sunnyside. It was organized by supporters of the mayor’s plan, and many of those in the audience seemed favorably inclined. But John Smyth was among those with serious questions about the impact.

SMYTH: It’s beyond reason to think if this program goes in that the people that are driving into Manhattan now wouldn’t be parking in Sunnyside, and Long Island City, and Astoria and Woodside and around the Long Island Rail Road stations probably all the way out to Bayside

REPORTER: The Department of Transportation says it’s considering resident-only parking permits to prevent that from happening. Mayor Bloomberg has also signaled some flexibility about the boundaries of congestion pricing. But selling it to commuters - and their wary elected officials - means proving the MAJORITY will benefit from improvements in mass transit. Because most New Yorkers in and around the city have already made the choice NOT to drive, says Bruce Schaller, the transportation consultant who provided the city with much of its data.

SCHALLER: There’s no neighborhood in the city where you have most people going to work in Manhattan and driving. And in fact, you wouldn’t physically be able to do that. New York is a transit city and New York is growing and the only way we’re going to accommodate that growth is through improved transit.

REPORTER: The question is, if you build it, will they come around? Will express buses get people out of their cars? Or, is the opposition strong enough to convince the state that drivers shouldn’t have to pay a fee for entering midtown? Staffers for several lawmakers say the mayor has a heavy political lift because no politician wants to support what is effectively a tax. Bloomberg is planning a trip to Albany on Monday, hoping he can make his case by the end of the legislative session in June. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.