OPINION:
New York City’s “congestion pricing” cash extraction scheme went into effect last week. Already, drivers are fuming.
Under this project, the Big Apple outsources the traditional job of picking the pockets of commuters to a set of robotic cameras. Anyone headed south of 60th Street must hand over $9 for the privilege of using roads already paved and maintained by the highest state and local tax burden in the union.
Lawmakers paid so little attention to the details in setting up this racket that locals trying to avoid the charge are being hit with bills. For instance, the escape from uptown New York to Queens on the Queensboro Bridge results in a $9 tax — even when the same trip in the opposite direction is free.
This happens because the ramp headed toward Queens briefly dips into 59th Street, where a spy camera eagerly awaits. Locals near the tolling zone’s border face a similar dilemma. One-way street layouts can force them to momentarily step over the charging zone’s invisible line, even when both their origin and destination is outside the zone.
Such horror stories are of little interest to copycat bureaucrats in places like Canada. The Toronto Star says “transportation experts” heard what’s going on in New York and have begun lobbying for adoption of congestion pricing in Toronto.
Such experts generally come in two flavors. The first is the academic researcher who happens to receive generous grants from the same voracious government entities anxious to see a tolling windfall. The second is the consultant for the contractors responsible for operating the machinery in return for a generous share of the loot.
Just setting up the cameras was a half-billion-dollar undertaking. The headline figure is the cameras will pour $15 billion into city coffers. The claim omits mention of the extra $3 billion or so that will be extracted from drivers to pay the contractors.
City figures show existing tolling operations incur operating expenses of about 20% of profit. “Expenses” are payments to the army of middlemen responsible for maintaining the fantastically complex system.
Thus, billions will be distributed among industry insiders who hire the right lobbyists and arrange generous campaign contributions to the local and state politicians who made it all possible. It’s win-win for everyone — except the public.
Congestion reduction is a ruse. Manhattan has made the deliberate policy choice to encourage bottlenecks.
A decade ago, the mayor and council implemented the “Vision Zero” policy of stealing road capacity to build bicycle lanes that are used by a paltry 1.6% of commuters, according to Census Bureau data.
Big city traffic is never pleasant, but cars squeezed into fewer lanes have nowhere to go, especially once there’s a bit of double-parking. Traffic snarls are inevitable and by design.
Government functionaries think they can make motoring so unappealing that more people will be shoved into the subways. Already, half of Manhattan’s most daring commuters pile into public transit each day. Most drivers rejected the travel option that includes harassment from mentally unstable vagabonds locked inside an overcrowded metal tube.
It’s true citizens might, for instance, avoid downtown tolls by going to an uptown restaurant. This change of behavior won’t reduce traffic. It merely displaces the gridlock to areas outside the zone.
Perhaps the biggest increase in congestion of all will come as yet more double-parked residents stuff their belongings into the back of U-Haul trucks destined for red states. Even New Yorkers can only tolerate so much.
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