Why Doesn't "Progressive" Mayor De Blasio Care About Congestion Pricing?

Mayor Bill de Blasio, for all the liberalism swirling in his veins, has always been an automobile man at heart. He doesn’t ride the subway to his Park Slope workouts. He was once very skeptical of the Prospect Park West bike lane. As a Brooklyn city councilman, he voted against a congestion pricing plan that would have funneled money to an MTA starved for funds.

Now, a decade later, he has a chance to throw his weight behind a new and better plan to add tolls to the East River bridges and lower them at other outer borough crossings, including the Verrazano-Narrows and Robert F. Kennedy bridges. The plan, known as Move NY and advanced by noted traffic engineer “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz, would also toll vehicles traveling south of 60th Street in Manhattan. A couple of years ago de Blasio said the pricing scheme needed to be taken “seriously”, an encouraging sign for transportation advocates that maybe, somehow, momentum would build around a logical plan to cut down vehicular congestion and fund our crumbling transportation infrastructure.

On Tuesday, in response to a question from a Newsday reporter at an unrelated press conference, de Blasio stamped out whatever little hope transit advocates had of making Move NY a reality in the foreseeable future.

“As long as there’s a Republican State Senate, it’s not even going to get to first base,” de Blasio said. “It’s not part of my vision.”

Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/why-doesnt-progressive-mayor-de-blasio-care-about-congestion-pricing-9684596