One of the most popular fallacies among supporters of a congestion tax is that they equivocate the proposed tax with meaningful mass transit improvements. They incessantly mention how we need improved subway service, bus rapid transit (BRT), HOV lanes, bike lanes, more express buses, and other alternatives and improvements. There’s certainly no argument there. They also argue that we need this massive new tax to accomplish these goals. That’s the error. One such victim of this flaw is the former Mayor of Bogota, among many others:
Former Mayor of Bogota Stumps for Congestion Pricing in NYC (WNYC)
by Matthew SchuermanNEW YORK, NY February 18, 2008 —The former mayor of Bogota, Columbia, is in the City today to stump for congestion pricing. Enrique Penalosa is known for instituting a number of transportation innovations in the late 1990s, including a bus rapid transit system, which some consider key to winning the congestion pricing debate here. WNYC’s Matthew Schuerman has more.
So far, outer borough legislators have been skeptical about any plan to charge drivers money to come into Manhattan. That’s in part because they believe the revenues would largely go to expensive Manhattan-centric projects like the Second Avenue Subway.
The community groups behind Penalosa’s visit want to shift more of that money into bus rapid transit, which is a term for any sort of system that speeds up public buses, such as forcing people to pay when they enter an enclosed area at the curb … instead of while boarding.
The coalition, which goes by the name Commute, has invited outer borough legislators to meet with Penalosa today to convince them that bus rapid transit is a way to improve mass transit in their neighborhoods relatively quickly. The City Council and state legislature are facing a March 31st deadline to make a decision on congestion pricing.
The problem here is that most of these great transportation improvements are not only already on the books, but are already funded!
The New York City Department of Transportation has already begun taking steps to implement Bus Rapid Transit on 57th Street in Manhttan, and is in the early stages of planning the improvements in other areas.
The first phase of the Second Avenue Subway is fully funded with all local, state and Federal funds guaranteed, so long as no agency breaks the multiple agreements governing the funds.
The only way most of these projects won’t happen is if government officials misspend the taxpayer dollars they already have to complete them. Now government waste and incompetence is a hardly a good reason for creating a new tax; after all, isn’t that what the whole water board hike hullabaloo was about?