Bloomberg's Failed Driving Fee

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Mayor Bloomberg’s ultimately doomed $8 Manhattan driving fee. As you might know already, the idea was for New York City to start charging drivers eight bucks to drive in Manhattan below 60th street (which also happens to be the southern end of central park). The idea was that less people would drive, the city would be less congested and hectic, and there would be less carbon put into the air. The 8 dollars was going to be used to improve public transportation, I think. Plus the city had secured a federal grant for a couple hundred million dollars to help improve transportation. The deal passed the City Council but ultimately died in the State Assembly for unknown reasons.

To be honest, I’m not sure how sad I am that the deal failed. I question when the last time Mayor Bloomberg rode public transportation during rush hour on the weekdays. I assume he hasn’t done so in decades, or else he might have thought twice about cramming even more people into an already old, decrepit, and failing system than already use it. Don’t get me wrong – I tolerate the subway. But I think by most measures it’s very substandard. The stations are shabby and smell like urine; the trains are hot and way overcrowded; and it’s always running late. The buses, as you might expect, are even more crowded, and even less efficient.

The question that I’ve been asking myself these days is whether Teddy Roosevelt would have supported the fee. On the one hand he was generally right when it came to predicting the right liberal reforms. But on the other he was a realist, and a supreme compromiser. Maybe if TR had been around Bloomberg could have been persuaded to drop from eight dollars to three, gradually increasing it over several years to eight.

This would have initially encouraged some drivers to use public transportation, but not so many as to fatally overburden the system. In the meantime, the revenues could have been used to improve the public transport system. Over time, as fees increased – faster than the rate of inflation, of course – more drivers would start using public transport, leading to even more revenues and improvements.

The way things stand now we have a crappy, overloaded public transport system and a crappy, overloaded driving situation. I think eventually Bloomberg will be vindicated both for the congestion and environmental aspects of his plan. Was 2008 simply too soon? Maybe so.