What Can We Give You? Ferry Service To Tottenville?

How will the mayor build support for congestion pricing? Pick a pet project — high-cost, low-impact, no matter — and “negotiate” away:

One Staten Island politician has separated himself from borough colleagues who either oppose congestion pricing or look at it with raised eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the state Assembly, regarded as the biggest legislative hurdle for a proposal that requires city and state approval, said it will introduce a congestion pricing bill today.

Insisting that the plan is the borough’s best hope of getting substantial money for mass transit, state Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Republican who left the City Council for Albany last year, told the Advance yesterday he is endorsing Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious, controversial proposal.

Lanza stepped into the pro-congestion pricing camp after a private meeting Tuesday with Bloomberg and his staff in City Hall, at which the senator said he was promised the Island will not be shortchanged when the projected revenue is doled out.

. . .

Bloomberg did not offer Lanza any new transportation promises, nor did he guarantee the borough would be given a specific percentage of the money pot — a proposal Oddo and Ignizio have floated to the mayor’s office. But throughout negotiations, Lanza said he has secured several assurances from the mayor’s office, such as completing a long-awaited private ferry line into Midtown Manhattan from the South Shore.

. . .

Island gains from congestion pricing so far include the expenditures laid out in the MTA plan, as well as 33 new express buses and a study of the dormant North Shore rail line, and Bloomberg is assuring the politicians that more gifts would be unwrapped if his plan is approved.

For the assignment desk: Cost-benefit analysis of ferry service . . . start here, for example.