Just Call It A Car Tax And Then I’m All Ears*

New Yorkers are figuring out that congestion pricing will actually increase traffic and parking problems in certain neighborhoods:

Under the mayor’s congestion pricing proposal, drivers will have to pay a toll to go south of 86th Street in Manhattan. At a City Council hearing yesterday, Councilwoman Jessica Lappin drew a bleak picture.

“There will be a crush of cars circling around 86th Street looking for parking spots that don’t exist,” said Lappin, who feared the downtown-bound bridge-and-tunnel crowd would use her Upper East Side district as a parking lot before catching a train. “I envision idling, and more congestion, and more pollution in the air, because there aren’t places for these cars to go.” Parking in a garage would be out of the question, she said: “The garages up there are full.”

. . .

New parking garages would be an ironic byproduct of congestion pricing, which is meant to reduce commuters’ reliance on cars. The request for city garages was seconded yesterday by Queens Councilwoman Helen Sears, who noted that her Jackson Heights neighborhood only has one and it’s “the most densely populated district in the entire city.”

“Any thought of building municipal garages?” she asked, before complaining about cutbacks in placards that allow city officials to park with impunity.

(Nice dig at the end there!)

One thing though — if the number of taxis and livery cabs in Manhattan doesn’t change and the number of delivery trucks doesn’t change, how much will congestion pricing help reduce traffic? Even if you reduce traffic by ten percent — a huge effect — that only means that there are nine cars instead of ten. Or it could just be about raising money for public transit**:

Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to charge $8 to drive into a large swath of Manhattan would not affect most city commuters, the new transportation commissioner said yesterday.

Just 4.7% of working Brooklyn and Queens residents, for example, commute by car into Manhattan’s central business district, City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said at a City Council hearing.

And many of those motorists already pay tolls at the Midtown or Brooklyn-Battery Tunnels — so they’re already paying part of the $8 fee the mayor is seeking.

Still more could opt to take a subway because they live within walking distance of a station, Sadik-Khan said. That leaves just 1% of workers in those boroughs paying the full congestion pricing fee or having a longer commute if they live where mass transportation is less convenient, Sadik-Khan said. The benefits will include less traffic for those who do drive into Manhattan, less pollution and the health problems it creates, and hundreds of millions of dollars a year to improve mass transportation, she said.

*Besides — I take the subway to work. So what do I care about reducing congestion***?

**Which is fine (just call it that!)

***Unless you actually believe the cost of congestion is somehow higher (.pdf)****.

****And higher than what businesses would do to pass on a $8 congestion fee to its customers.