wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

An Alternative Plan to Congestion Pricing
From
Councilman Lew Fidler, Assistant Majority Leader

The 9 Carat Stone Plan
A 9 Point Plan to Clean our Air, Reduce All Traffic, and Support Transportation Operations in New York's Environs

The most laudable goal of the otherwise regressive and undesirable proposal to impose congestion pricing is clean air. Yet, congestion pricing, at best, simply reduces air pollution in the central business district of Manhattan while potentially shifting poorer air quality to neighborhoods with higher asthma rates. We can and should think bigger and more boldly to clean everyone's air.

Traffic congestion and transportation are not questions local to one section of our City. In fact, both are regional issues, and call for regional solutions.

Even the staunchest advocates of congestion pricing admit that the City and our region cannot subsist on mass transit alone. Clearly, even improved systems would be incapable of handling all comers without other aspects of our transportation infrastructure. We need to craft a solution that will not only be able to sustain maintenance and improvements of our mass transit system, but of the commuter rails that feed into our City and the roads, tunnels and bridges as well.