By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — Even though there are a lot of Brooklyn snorts and sniffs about the mayor’s congestion pricing plan, the borough’s political leadership has to be happy that the plan does not include tolling of the East River bridges, three of which connect Brooklyn to Manhattan.
One might ask, “What’s the difference? Most of the people who drive over the bridges are headed to Manhattan. Who cares why the toll?”
In the money world, it really doesn’t make a difference. But in the political world, it’s a hedge element. Brooklyn drivers are not being singled out. Everyone who wants to get into Manhattan has to pay — even people from Cos Cob, even people in Manhattan who live above 86th Street.
The politicians who really have to scream are those in Queens. If the Daily News is correct, 31,400 Queens motorists drive into Manhattan every workday. Only one community district in Brooklyn — Canarsie, Mill Basin and Flatlands — is in the News’ list of the top 10 such areas from which people commute by car to Manhattan.
Two things should happen before congestion pricing can take effect in 2009, which seems to be the city plan. One would be a citywide measure. All the tolls on tunnels and bridges should be removed. If revenues from the Manhattan congestion-pricing toll do not make up the loss of that income, so be it.
The other critically important matter that has to be enacted in Downtown Brooklyn is residential permit parking. If nothing is done in this regard, congestion pricing effort will be totally detrimental and disastrous to Brooklyn.
The purpose of residential permits is not to guarantee every resident a parking space: That simply cannot be done. The purpose is to prevent people from elsewhere, including other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, from using Downtown as a dumping ground for their cars. Park here, take the subway into Manhattan and laugh all the way.
What Brooklyn’s political leadership has to keep in mind is that whatever approach to congestion pricing is used will get cars off the streets of Downtown Brooklyn, and this is an absolute requirement.
(Tolling the East River bridges would be more effective for Downtown Brooklyn than Mayor Bloomberg’s Manhattan-based plan. People have to pay the bridge toll both coming and leaving, but no one would pay a toll leaving Manhattan under the new city plan.)
Numbers will be all over the lot. Some believe that bridge tolling could reduce the number of cars in Downtown Brooklyn by up to 40 percent. Bloomberg’s Manhattan plan, according to one source, will reduce Downtown traffic by 29 percent and Williamsburg-Greenpoint traffic by 24 percent.
We will take whatever we can get. And Brooklyn’s political leadership has to step up to the plate on this issue. Some people are ridiculously accusing Borough President Mar-kowitz of flip-flopping on this issue.
I was in a public meeting after Mar-kowitz returned from a business trip to London. He asked to learn first-hand about London’s congestion pricing and, he told a Brooklyn audience, “I left opposed to congestion pricing, I returned intrigued.”
Those who are accusing Markowitz of flip-flopping have little credibility on this issue until they find out first-hand themselves. It’s like accusing someone who just learned the arithmetic table of being an intellectual snob.
Much has to be said about congestion pricing. To give a knee-jerk “no” right now is poor public policy when we need the best public policies we can muster.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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